In case you don't remember in 2004, in a conversation with a friend at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg had this conversation:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
(redacted friend's name): What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why
Zuck: they "trust me."
Zuck: Dumbf***s.
-India Today Tech
New Delhi
March 22, 2018
While he was young then, only nineteen, it does still reveal something about his character, a callous arrogance. When that conversation hit the news, I immediately closed my Facebook account. To my disbelief, when I submitted "yes" to close the account the words on the screen read, "You'll be back." Wow. I couldn't believe the irreverence, the gall. But you know what? I did go back a few years later deluding myself that I needed it to promote my business. I pushed down my personal pride and gave the website another try.
In the past few years that I've been using Facebook, I have tried to keep to a moral code. First, no bragging. I asked myself before submitting each post, will this offend someone? Will this make someone feel jealous or otherwise bad about herself? Secondly I asked, is this meaningful? Will it make someone smile or contemplate in a positive way? And the third rule was to stay away from politics. I wanted Facebook to be a safe space to share pictures with friends and family and to promote my books and artwork.
Over the years, the political bit of my moral code became increasingly more difficult to follow as my feed became inundated with anti-Trump, anti-conservative rhetoric. Slowly I began unfollowing friends, colleagues, family members whose posts left me feeling personally attacked, judged and criticized. Then the pandemic hit and it was like everyone completely lost their filters. I mean everyone. People of Facebook, members of the media, politicians and Social Media itself all finger pointing, name calling, fact checking, and then finally censoring.
I'll give you an example of censoring. A few months ago when the Democrats unrolled the plan to promote mail in ballots across the country, I shared a popular quote that read something like, "If you can stand in line at Wal-Mart you can stand in line to vote." A relative of mine replied with an article explaining how mail-in ballots were the same thing as absentee ballots and that many states use the terms interchangeably. While this is true to some degree, it is only true that all absentee ballots can be mail-in ballots, but all mail-in ballots are not absentee ballots. This is because for it to be an absentee ballot, a voter must request it. This is a huge distinction because along with it come many implications. Facebook would not allow me to post those words. Every time I tried to send the reply, I got a notice saying something really vague about not being able to send at that time. It allowed me to say all kinds of other things at that time, but not that.
Whether you are a Republican, Democrat or Independent, this should give you pause. I understand that many people have a strong visceral response to Donald Trump and I feel bad about that. I know what it's like to have no respect for your president. It's hard. But I don't understand the obsession with hating him. I see these news reporters who are supposed to be objective journalists acting like emotional basket cases. Michelle Obama said, "Let's remember that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos and division." (USA today.com) What? Does she know what status quo means? If anything is status quo, it's voting for a lifetime politician. And lies? Hate? Whether you want to admit it or not, the same rhetoric is easily true about the other side.
Whoopi Goldberg shouts on the view that Republicans should suck it up! and says about the election results, "How DARE you question it?" Well, this is still a democracy republic. Any candidate is welcome to challenge election results or simply ask for investigations into them and any person interested in liberty and free and fair elections should embrace that about our system. Stacy Abrams filed lawsuits in the Georgia Governor's race. Democrats had no problem with that and have exalted her as a victim of the system and the rightful symbolic winner of that contest. After the 2016 election, the Washington Post headline read, "'I would be your president': Clinton blames Russia, FBI Chief for 2016." And of course everyone knows the story of Al Gore and Florida.
So let's all please stop pretending that the Republican response to this election is unprecedented because it's not. The only thing that is unprecedented is the number of mail in ballots cast, and given this is the first time we've voted this way as a nation, it's not too much to ask that we get it right. Another thing that is completely new to our time is media bias which brings me back to Facebook. I tried to keep my Facebook experience free of politics until Facebook made it about politics. Now, you can't get through any feed without propaganda links explaining how Joe Biden won the presidency. Next it will be about your social duty to wear face masks, then to get vaccinated and then...what else? I promise more will come because it is the nature of power.
So the conservative response to things like this is not to burn buildings, topple statues or spit in peoples' faces. It is to break the monopoly. There have been other social platforms waiting to get a piece of the market share for years and we've all been too comfortable and complacent to go to the trouble of giving them a try. Well I'm no longer comfortable or complacent and I will not be complicit in allowing the flow of information to the people to become stifled by big tech and their agenda.
Above all else, since I am leaving Facebook and may not have a chance to express this to as many people as I can in this moment, to my friends and family who are Democrats, I love you. I think that you are smart and kind and have integrity and I am sorry that you have disliked our president so intensely. I ask you to please consider what is happening in the media and become a voice against it. Our media cannot become a series of propaganda machines as we have seen what's happened on Facebook. You can think for yourselves and don't need the entire power of every celebrity and television network behind you. The name calling has got to stop on both sides. It is ugly and undignified. We are better than this. We are all so much better than this.
So I will say farewell to Facebook and hello to any other non-biased platforms who want to join the ranks of social media. And to Mr. Zuckerberg, I assure you, this time I will not be back.
