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Social Media - The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly ...
- Thread starter Michael Scally MD
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2/ I'm using sort of over the top language here. Facebook must be destroyed. Facebook Delenda Est #FDE. But it's actually true. And I mean it. I know there are great people out there who work at Facebook. I know some of them. But this is true. Through a mix of covering ...
3/ the news and things like the uses of the platform for paid propaganda campaigns, often illicit ones and also from being deeply involved in digital publishing since almost the beginning of digital publishing (i've been running TPM for 18 years), I have a pretty ...
4/ broad view and understanding of the full scope of Facebook's participation in the economies of publishing, telecommunications, distribution of information, uses of monopoly power etc. And on really every front, Facebook is a bad actor. I don't say this lightly or casually.
5/ In some cases, that's not simply or entirely a matter of intent. It's simply the way things grew up, how its control of certain things evolved, etc. There are key aspects of the way the internet creates network and path dependence that creates a heavy gravitational ...
6/ pull towards monopoly. But there are many gravitational pulls which need to be balanced with government regulation or anti-trust enforcement. But there is also a common and deep-seated pattern of bad-acting that you see repeatedly and in an entrenched form.
7/ I basically never go on Facebook anymore, though I have not deleted my account. Most of the time I've deactivated. I think at the moment my account is live but I never sign in. But I get that Facebook is cool for keeping in touch with people: school friends you never would ...
8/ been in contact with again, relatives etc. I have definitely gained from that. But on all these other points it is simply a deeply malign force. It's not the government's place to wipe it out. But in economics, regulations or our personal choices I think we should ...
9/ all recognize that it is a malign force across this great swath of activities and tailor or own actions accordingly to the extent that we can.
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I joined Facebook in 2008, and for the most part, I have benefited from being on it. Lately, however, I have wondered whether I should delete my Facebook account. As a philosopher with a special interest in ethics, I am using “should” in the moral sense. That is, in light of recent events implicating Facebook in objectionable behavior, is there a duty to leave it?
In moral philosophy, it is common to draw a distinction between duties to oneself and duties to others. From a self-regarding perspective, there are numerous reasons one might have a duty to leave Facebook. For one thing, Facebook can be time-consuming and addictive, to no fruitful end. In addition, as researchers have demonstrated, Facebook use can worsen depression and anxiety. Someone who finds himself mindlessly and compulsively scrolling through Facebook, or who is constantly comparing himself unfavorably with his Facebook friends, might therefore have a duty of self-care to get off Facebook.
From the perspective of one’s duties to others, the possibility of a duty to leave Facebook arises once one recognizes that Facebook has played a significant role in undermining democratic values around the world. For example, Facebook has been used to spread white supremacist propaganda and anti-Semitic messages in and outside the United States. The United Nations has blamed Facebook for the dissemination of hate speech against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar that resulted in their ethnic cleansing.
Facebook also enabled the political data firm Cambridge Analytica to harvest the personal information of millions of voters in the United States so they could be targeted with personalized political advertisements. A significant amount of fake news can be found on Facebook, and for many users, Facebook has become a large echo chamber, where people merely seek out information that reinforces their views.
I have no more social media platforms. I found that my "duties" to others was nothing but pure ego. To which I was more worried about what others thought of me rather than what I thought of myself. Neglecting the duties of myself which consists of inward reflection and meditation making me right on the inside. Because my outward appearance masked my internal unmanageability. Facebook can be useful. But I find it nothing but mindless indulgence consisting of gossip, skewed perceptions, and an attack of individual opinions. I definitely owed it to myself and my fiancee to delete Facebook. It brought an insecurity that I ended up projecting onto her. I found that I was reading way less. I stopped playing the piano. Basically free time was spent staring at a screen looking at peers being superficial striving for attention. It was indeed a relief when I deleted it. Now the whole entire concept seems very odd.
BigNattyDaddy
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Scally only converses in tweets and scientific studies. If you want a response, you will need to respond with one of the two.
valuum
Member
I hate social media, really thinking of deleting my facebook and just keeping messenger. There's something in my generation about depression being cool and it's just constantly people whining about "no one ever hits me up WAHHH".
People used to make fun of facebook because people talked about mundane details of their lives, remember every morning radio "comedian" had a bit about "hahaha why would WE want to know you went to starbucks!?!?!"
I wish people posted stuff like that, now it's all just reposts of content other people made.
Another thing I hate, "gangster" memes. Where it's a picture of Tony Montana and some words about "LOYALTY TRUST RESPECT"
People used to make fun of facebook because people talked about mundane details of their lives, remember every morning radio "comedian" had a bit about "hahaha why would WE want to know you went to starbucks!?!?!"
I wish people posted stuff like that, now it's all just reposts of content other people made.
Another thing I hate, "gangster" memes. Where it's a picture of Tony Montana and some words about "LOYALTY TRUST RESPECT"
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