Screw Facebook

by Jon Sullivan - 2021-12-02 - Internet

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We used to be able to sort of deny Facebook was a major source of evil in the world. Wall Street Journal's Facebook Files series eliminates any doubt.

At what point does a company become too evil to be allowed to continue? It seems to me Facebook has blown through that milestone long ago. I've unfriended almost everyone there. Not because they aren't friends or don't post cool stuff. But because I need to just stop using it. I need to stop feeding the evil thing ad revenue. Hating Facebook is hypocrisy if I just keep using it and generating ad revenue.

"For profit" violations of privacy policy via Cambridge Analytica

Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election

A welcome platform for hate speech

Endless lies about the science, coronavirus and vaccines as suggested content

Unmoderated Marketplace fraud

Instagram damaging the mental health of teenage girls

Increasing profit by sowing discord and rewarding outrage

Drug cartels and human traffickers using the platform openly

Employees confirming, "Facebook [...] has shown it chooses profit over safety."

A VIP program that allows celebrities and politicians to break its rules

Actively tweaking its algorithm to encourage angrier content

Studies showing the higher the Facebook use, the more a person's general knowledge declines

Deceiving users to secretly conduct psychological experiments on their emotions (yes, really)

Using a series of shell companies in tax havens to avoid paying billions in taxes

Facebook's own research on how it's algorithm perpetuates an echo chamber by hiding content

Research on the algorithm being one of the principal factors amping up polarization

Facebook studying these problems, finding them real, and then stifling and downplaying it

And personal intervention by Zuckerburg to prevent fixing any of this.

You want proof? You think this is an exaggeration? Here are the citations. All 450 of them. The stuff above is the tip of the iceberg. Checkout the WSJ investigation.

For Facebook, you are just a product. You are a tool to sell ads. And the way they sell more ads is to block the truth (not showing you certain content), and make you mad (promoting certain content). I'm not going to be their product anymore.

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