Good bye, Facebook
Theoretically, Facebook gets us out of our bubble.
In reality, Facebook reaffirms our bubble.
Facebook is like alcohol. Addictive. Subject to abuse. Dangerous for some people and a threat to public safety.
I enjoy seeing bits and pieces of the lives of people I went to Roosevelt Elementary school with. I see photographs of my nieces and nephews that I probably wouldn't see, were it were not for Facebook. I like this part of Facebook.
American politics would be more healthy if people got outside their bubble more often. I see people blinded by their silos. (I realize some people will think the same of me.) I get this feeling most acutely when I get another email sent in broad distribution by someone from the conspiratorial right wing. The emails tell me that vaccines are a plot to poison Americans, that Democrats plan to go door to door confiscating Bibles, and that Trump won in a huge landslide. That last one particularly frustrates me and makes me want to hit reply-all to the chain letter. I want to write: Hey, idiots, Trump got a lot of votes, but Biden got more of them. Trump is a provocateur. Can't you see he has opponents?
Very possibly not, if one is in a bubble. As this blog noted a week ago, in some neighborhoods the vote was over 75% for Trump, and amid some subsets of people, say White, male, non-college Evangelicals, the number might be 95% or more.
There are Democratic bubbles, too. During the 2020 primary election season Facebook groups of Bernie Sanders' supporters were so confident Sanders would win, notwithstanding polls showing him tied with Buttigieg, that group members thought fraud can be the only explanation for Sanders failing to win in a landslide. Moreover, Buttigieg must have conspired with Hillary Clinton to arrange that the software tabulating the Iowa caucus vote be designed to fail. That conspiracy faded away. Leadership mattered. Sanders did not join in support of the conspiracy.
Sometimes a comment in one of the political blogs I read has a useful observation. Here is an anonymous one in Matthew Yglasias' blog he calls SlowBoring:
Because of the way we're all segregated, a lot of left people I known genuinely don't believe anyone could be disagreeing with them in good faith – there must be some nefarious underlying reason. So they think 'well if everyone agrees with me, how can we be losing elections?' Mobilization – 'we're just not enthusiastic enough' – is a way less threatening answer than 'actually people don't agree with me.' It's similar to how my grandmother didn't believe in atheists. People might SAY they don't believe in God to be rebellious, or contrarian, or evil, but the idea that the belief was sincerely held seemed literally incomprehensible to her.
As we are learning, Facebook is designed to drive engagement. It seeks cheering or outrage, and in both cases it confirms and hardens a Facebook visitor's opinions. If I saw something I liked on Facebook, I clicked thumbs up or down. Sometimes I commented. I become the advertiser's dream customer: Facebook knows where I am and what I am reading, and what I like. Facebook knows a lot about me. I told them.
I don't mind having one of my silos be of people born about 1949 who grew up in Medford, Oregon. I do recognize the danger of a feed that hardens the walls of a political silo.
Why did I get Bernie Sanders Facebook chatter if I disagree with some of it? Because I intentionally sought it out, becoming a member of various Sanders' groups. But my frustration with some of what I read was a valuable to Facebook as if I had loved it. I was engaged, and clicking thumbs up and down hardened my opinions.
I put all this in the past tense. I have largely abandoned political Facebook. I decided it was dangerous to my mental health. I will try scrubbing my Facebook page of everything except family, friends, and old classmates. I won't be clicking thumbs.
A college classmate, John Shutkin, wrote me saying he was deleting Facebook altogether, and I have heard that more and more people are doing it. Possibly this will become widespread. John dashed off this:
My reasons are pretty succinct and maybe more visceral than logical. I have always been ambivalent about FB: it is insidious and avaricious, Zuck is an asshole, it is a great time sucker and, oh yeah, if it doesn't actively encourage and spread misinformation, then, at the least, it does little to quash it, lest it somehow cut into its massive profits. So the whistleblower on Sunday was simply the straw that broke this particular camel's back. And, even there, once I finally found and navigated FB's deletion procedure, it had me confirm that decision twice and then told me via an email that I had 30 days to change my mind and only then would it begin to delete my info. It is relentless!"