For
several months now I have avoided opening Facebook. I reported back in the
fall that I had spent over four hours in a couple of frustrating sessions
trying with no success to delete my Facebook account. I got entangled in a
closed loop of password-guarded steps where my password first worked to give me access to
the delete process but then was declared invalid for confirming that I choose
self-exile from the little, billionaire bastard’s empire.
Over
coffee with one of my new Pratt board friends, Bonita told me she has over
4,000 followers — all over the world. She depends on Facebook to keep up with
family, former associates in France where she has lived and worked, colleagues,
and people she’s never met face to face but feels akin to. She posts every day,
at least once. I voiced my concerns. “There’s no such thing as privacy
anymore.” she responded; “How will you keep in touch with your family?”
Valid
point; good question. Since then, I have resolved to call family more regularly
(a resolution still being worked on, for before I know it many days go by
between calls) and to persist in not opening Facebook or Instagram. That latter
resolution has been easy — I do not open Facebook.
But
what exactly is my beef?
- I
disrespect Zuckerberg and his me-too Sandberg for lacking any sense of right or
wrong. They just act out of immediate self-interest. Washing his hands of
enabling hate speech and falsehoods; hiring a company to smear George Soros as
the source of antipathy to Facebook — this is ethical? If you believe that
a sense of right and wrong is inherent in humans, that it stems from inherent
empathy, which I believe, then Zuckerberg and Sandberg are flawed, deficient
humans.
- I disdain their intentional dissembling. “We do not sell data” Zuckerberg earnestly testified to Congress, in answer to the question about sharing private data with other companies. The weasel weaseled. He does not sell data on us, he gives it away! Then those to whom he has gifted us pay him for access to us.
- And
perhaps my biggest beef: I resent his making billions on me and
millions of others who innocently want to keep in touch with their families and
friends.
So,
my Facebook account still exists. But, I have unfriended all my followers and
friends. And now I ask you, when you open Facebook, take a moment to Please,
Unfriend Me.
I
know, he already has used the connections in my account, to you and others. But
the account will lie dormant, its linkages progressively obsolete, its few
photos of no value
Until
- Zuckerberg and Sandberg abdicate in favor of someone who demonstrates ethics
and a sense of morality, and
- until that someone agrees to pay me a residual each time my data is used, just
as a singer or actor earns a residual on each replay,
- until
then, my account lies dead.
Fat
chance, you say? Probably so . . .
. . . but
in the meantime, Congress must continue to debate how to regulate social
networks and their use of data. There are only four resources one can call on
to accomplish something — time, energy money and information, and of these,
information is king. In this era of big data and AI, the use of and access to
information is critical to sustaining our democratic republic. I’m not smart
enough to know how society should regulate use of information, but I know it
must. I have some confidence that a marketplace, paying me for use of data on
my behavior and associations, is one way of establishing that I, the millions
of I’s who use Facebook, have a stake and a say in how we, in turn, are used.
Not
likely, you say? Perhaps. But what other path is there except into an Orwellian
future of autocracy and mercantile serfdom?
Alarmist,
you charge? Guilty. Please become alarmed with me.
PS:
Perhaps I'm inspired, today being the 243rd anniversary of Thomas Paine’s
publication of his small pamphlet, Common Sense. It sold 120,000
copies in its first three months, into a population of but two and a half
million, and fired the revolutionary spirit; think on that. I surely am no
Paine, but someone out there may pick up the thought: use common sense and
Please, Unfriend Me.
PPS:
Today, at lunch, my Olympic Club buddies dissected intemperate speech, leading
me to review my strong words herein. They duly stand reviewed.
