Facebook was a wonderful tool. But it has now become plagued with users puking out their political agendas and need for self affirmation.
Being connected is actually a good thing believe it or not. When family members and close friends find work abroad, or happen to move away somewhere, it’s useful to have an electronic platform where people can log onto and update each other on where they are, what they are doing and who they are seeing.
Facebook was that platform. But over the years it has somewhat lost its way. Where as it’s nice to know what your friends are up to , it becomes irritating when people post near everything about their day, week, job, who they met… you know all the mundane things we your ‘friends’ don’t give a shit about. Posting holiday posts is fine and acceptable ; posting a stream of selfies and plates of food isn’t. Though I understand the temptation.
Quotes also seem to be popping up all over my news feed. Some philosophical, but most are imbued with a sense of moral signalling. Not to mention the odd true love Quote. It’s getting a tad tiring now. If you are love struck or have just broken up with your partner, leave these quotes for yourself please. Meditate on them, don’t share them.
Oh and another thing, before you post or share something ‘factual’ – Check. Your. Source! Manipulated photos , so called ‘scientific studies’ and other sayings or quotes attributed to the wrong person is starting to become epidemic. Fake news, fake people, fake Facebook. People aren’t taking these lightly, so I always find reading the comments section highly amusing. Who would have thought that people log into Facebook just to argue a point , correct a source that has been shared ignorantly or to just rant and rave?
To be seen , and to be seen first is the goal nowadays. Who cares about what they post , the real issue is how many ‘views’ they get, how many ‘likes’ they accrue and how many ‘shares’ , ‘followers’ and ‘friends’ they posses. We see this on the news, when reporters ‘report’ how many views a specific video or photo have accrued, or how many twitter followers a ‘celebrity’ has gained. Why do we care so much ? We care because human beings are driven by status. Not just the big corporations, but your everyday Jack and Jill.
And all this going on when our own private data is being analysed and used for marketing, political and business means. Not to mention manipulation…
Why do we allow this to happen? Lets be brutally honest here: The Cambridge Analytica scandal, advertisers, big corporate businesses and politicians who have vested interests in manipulating the public for their own gain, shares a large part of the blame. But we, the everyday 9 to 5 user, should own up to the fact that we are also to blame. These users have their own ideological agendas at stake too, and are trying , albeit on perhaps a micro scale, to manipulate public opinion as well.
Forget about Russia’s influence in the last American presidential election. Instead focus on yourself; what you are uploading, sharing. And hence what message you are sending out to the Facebook community?
Perhaps Facebook has become too big for it’s shoes. Regulating millions of users is going to be a big ask indeed. If Facebook had stuck with its original philosophy of connecting friends and family together, perhaps it wouldn’t be in such a mess. Yet instead Zuckerberg has clearly opted to take Facebook into a different direction. By creating tools and updating the user interface to include more ways for the online community to interact with each other has only opened the site up for exploitation – which is what is happening at the time of writing.
Facebook and other social media sites that use the same business model are at a cross roads, and they should be very careful which path they decide to walk down. For one would be the plank.
