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Edit: You may not agree with my opinions and that’s fine. Post, tell me about it, I promise to keep an open mind. More respectful conversation is necessary in a time when we are all drifting farther apart.
As promised, I come to you with my reasons for abandoning Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
Let me say, since leaving social media, I have refocused on writing and reading, my attention span and concentration have improved, and I am much happier. I do have less outreach; I’ll save that discussion for a different post.
To say my leaving is because of one reason over the another would be disingenuous. The reasons, large and small, are legion.
Small annoyances are easily ignored and tolerated. I’d been dealing with those since I joined. Changes to how the feed works and the interface are always frustrating, but never enough for me to delete my accounts.
Medium sized issues involving how the algorithm does or doesn’t work, or the barrage of ads no one asked for (though I can’t be too mad about that as it’s the reason I discovered the Remarkable Tablet, which I love) are annoying, but a not good reason to take a flamethrower to all the time and energy I put into my accounts and reader outreach.
So, we come to the BIG reasons. And they go hand in hand, feeding of each other like co-dependent leeches or parasites.
First, the straw that broke the camel’s back. Mark Zuckerberg slashed their misinformation policy. Instead of fact-checking, FB will be integrating a community note system, same as what Twitter did. It didn’t work well there, and I don’t see it being better on Meta products.
Second, social media is just bad for your mental health and productivity (see above re: more productive and happier). Yes, many of us have found communities we wouldn’t have without it, however, we’ve also wrapped ourselves in echo chambers of what we want to hear, reinforcing ideologies we already hold without fear of challenge. It’s very easy to block people and forget they existed, but they still do and no one remains to challenge their nonsense because only the people who agree are still there to reinforce it. But I also get needing to cut bad actors out of your life. Look up the Internet Dickwad Theory. It is fun and frighteningly true.
But how do my two reasons go together so well? You see, community notes will allow users to mark news stories by their own personal standards. The label with the most votes is displayed to the whole of the app. So, for example, if the Elon Musk arm gesture story is marked as “out of context” by enough people, that’s what becomes fact for that app. One ideology can force their viewpoint onto a large number of people. We aren’t checking facts; we’re voting on opinions.
Now add in the news that Facebook officials have said they can foresee a future where AI bots will create and hold Facebook accounts and will be indistinguishable from human users. What happens when millions of pre-programmed AIs sway the votes on whatever news perspective they want?
Fact checking, unfortunately was heading the same direction. Many of the fact-checkers were members of an assortment of news outlets. Trust in traditional media is running low and for good reason. Every news source is owned by billionaires with vested interests on what the public is told about the economy while more important changes are happening right under our noses. While politicians make outrageous claims that can barely be taken seriously, we have forces moving to destabilize both our government and economy.
We are told time and again we live in a capitalist society yet watch as our government bails out another criminally mismanaged private business with tax dollars but refuse to fund schools and hospitals in the same fashion. What is more important to you? That one or two car companies out of several can keep building cars even though they failed so epically that they are on the brink of bankruptcy or that your children are educated and healthy?
One thing is certain, we do need a change in society, but that change can’t come from a self-appointed oligarchy that has systematically taken control and purchased our news outlets. And it won’t come from burying ourselves in the warm glow of social media.
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