On why I'm leaving Facebook
After over 10 years activity on the platform, I've deactivated my Facebook account, and I hope to delete my profile in the near future. Here are my reasons for doing so.
In The Lakota Way, Joseph Marshall talks about a trickster called Iktomi. Iktomi is lazy and lacks talent for hunting. He survives by tricking other creatures. For example, he leads a flock of ducks to believe he will sing sacred songs for them. While their eyes are closed, he methodically clubs them to death, one by one. The carnage only stops when one of the ducks finally opens his eyes to the truth and tells the others.
When Marshall asked his grandfather — Lakota like himself — what truth is, the response was: “I don’t think I’ve lived long enough to know that … all I know is that without it Iktomi would be the most powerful being on Earth. And that’s the truth.” Iktomi comes in many shapes and forms. Do giant tech firms like Facebook present the latest incarnation?
There are lots of different philosophical ideas of what truth might be, in a broad, abstract sense. A related question is what truth might mean for us. We're limited creatures, living in a tiny corner of a vast universe, a brief moment in the stretch of aeons. Truth should be truth for us insofar as it matters to us. American pragmatists, such as Charles Sanders Peirce and William James have argued that truths, if they are to play a significant role in our lives, need to be useful for us.
According to William James, truth not something you just find out there. It has to be related to the people in whose lives they make a difference. We actively help to shape truths through inquiry. We need to re-evaluate the truths we accept in light of our lived experiences now, so they can continue to be useful for us. If we do not do this, then truths simply become anchored to people in the past, they become, in his words, dead or inert truths. Living truths are truths we make today, in response to today’s problems. As José Medina points out, the living truths of today may well become the dead truths of tomorrow. We need to scrutinize the truths we use today and see where they come from, and whether they are still fit for purpose.
If truth was just about facts, then the present might seem like a golden age. Browsing my phone or computer, I can learn a bunch of facts in a matter of minutes (try here for random Wikipedia page generator). I recall, as a child, cycling to the local library if I wanted to find out more about something, as we had no good encyclopedia or thorough dictionary. The idea that this is now all at my fingertips still amazes me.
The problem is, most of those facts we can so freely find or that are presented to us, are not useful to us, and we get so much information that we suffer information overload. Worse, as James Williams argues in this recent open access book Stand out of our Light, contemporary mass media actively sabotages our goals, including our goals for personal connection and for living a truthful life.
Williams likens tech giants to a faulty GPS that is "adversarial against you". Not only does it not bring you to the address you want to reach, it actively leads you several streets away from your intended destination. The goals of tech giants are very different from ours, for example, maximizing your engagement with their product, or extracting the maximum amount of data they can sell. We start out wanting connection, learning more about the world. But we end up being more polarized than ever before, being presented with micro-targeted ads that distort the truth.
How should we respond? The story of cynic philosopher Diogenes serves as an illustration (and provides the book's title). Alexander the Great had heard of the wisdom of Diogenes of Sinope and went to meet him. Lying in the sun, Diogenes took not the slightest notice of the ruler. Alexander asked Diogenes anything he wished for, whereupon Diogenes replied "Stand out of my light".
The scarcity of attention, the vying of platforms like Facebook for our attention, makes living truthfully a challenge. Maybe we should ask, like Diogenes that the giants step out of our light and help us see the truth more clearly. We should focus on the things that can be living truths to us, the stuff that matters.
I've been with Facebook for over ten years. The decision to de-activate was not a light decision. But it's useful to reflect on how I started, a journey that is diagnostic of what is wrong with participating in it. I started using Facebook because I needed a FB account to write blogs for a platform called Typepad, and at the time it seemed you could not log in by email to Typepad. Reluctantly, I signed up, not wanting to go on social media (I had heard bad things about it, but knew little about it). The first year or so I did not actively use it. But I gradually got sucked into Facebook, a platform I did not sign up to to use in the first place. As the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out (see here), I disconnected my Facebook login from all platforms and stopped using those that required Facebook. I deleted the app from my phone. But I kept on using it on my computer as I wanted to keep in touch with friends and people from the philosophy profession.
Still, worries remained as Zuckerberg had clearly no interest in making the platform more ethical, and he announced that the platform would continue to use fake news in micro-targeted ads.
I still recall friends sharing those ads from the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016. Spooky visions of overfull hospital wards and GP surgeries. Images of Muslim terrorism (do you want Britain to go down that road? No? Vote to leave the EU). Are those things that can be living truths to some people? I do not think so — the micro-targeted ads are carefully massaged to make people vote and believe things against their own interest. They are used as tools to serve the interest of those who target them. For example, GP surgeries in the UK are not overfull because of freedom of movement, and Brexit (in and of itself) will not make the NHS function better. Quite the opposite, it will drain the NHS of funds as net contributors to its functioning cannot move in freely anymore.
Given that I believe micro-targeted ads cannot present living truths to the people targeted, continuing on Facebook (in light of earlier revelations and the continued decision of Zuckerberg to continue on this path), my continued participation is morally harmful. As philosopher Matthew Liao argues, if Facebook is harmful then you have a moral duty to leave it, even if you are just posting pictures of your cat, because the critical mass of people is what gives the platform its power. I asked on Twitter what would make people consider leaving Facebook, " which, if any, kind of revelation on what FB is doing would cause you to quit the platform?"and several people responded that there was not anything that would cause them to quit. At that time, I thought the same, and that thought worried me.
Aside from my worries about Facebook openly collaborating and aiding far-right causes, I also found how interactions on Facebook changed in the years I spent on it. As a rule, I try to only post things I would be comfortable posting in a public venue, but the widening circle of friends, and the ambiguity of the concept of "friend" ultimately made interactions difficult and ambiguous. Over time, I noticed how people with nuanced opinions, and people who are not extroverted or ready to pick fights about their opinions became quieter and lurkers online, whereas more the more outspoken people and more clear-cut opinions came more to the fore. The overall effect was polarization, resulting in pointless discussions about a range of issues. It became predictable in advance how discussions would go, who would say what.
I tried to keep a diverse friend list because I do not like echo chambers, but I experienced overall that a semi-public forum like Facebook is not the right environment for thoughtful discussion. I have also come to a point where it becomes difficult to justify spending all this time without tangible benefits for anyone.
Managing one's time on media that are designed to pull you in and to lure you to seek or respond to clicks is very hard, as James Williams remarks. Facebook is distraction by design: "Yet in the absence of environments that reward self-control or provide effective commitment devices, we’re left to our own devices — and given our inherent scarcity of attention, the resulting cognitive overload often makes bringing our own boundaries extremely challenging, if not prohibitive."
I value the friendships built on Facebook and will miss them. Right now, I've moved to the US and am experiencing culture stress as a result, and I don't think I can add many other sources of stress to it. More and more, Facebook has become a source of stress, anxiety, and chasing clicks. It is not in line with what I value, and so, in spite of these friendships, I ought to quit the platform.
