2876

Oh no, there’s truly a lot I LOATHE about Facebook, but I must use it for a variety of reasons, so I make the best of it.

2877

Why exactly do you have to use it?

2878

A variety of reasons.

2879

Ah, the Eternal September theory.

2880

Sorry I meant “delete facebook unless it will literally cause you to die” my b

2881

A variety of deaths

2882

My wife and her entire family are entrenched on it, a good deal of traffic to my blog and streaming sites come from it.

2883

True.

I think they just highlight an aspect of us that already existed. If Fb or Twitter were to be banned, something else would just spring up. And how does one police that?

2884

FB is just a tool(and like most tools it can be used as a weapon). Deletion, vowing to never use it etc., these are fool’s errands. There is a critical mass of people who use social networks and that’s not changing any time soon so they won’t just go away no matter how many boycott them. The main issue is the lack of govt oversight and regulation.

2885

I’ve gone round and round with FB, but think I’ve finally settled comfortably with what I consider its negative content by simply ignoring and not engaging with it (kind of what I do here), and only focusing on the positive content. It took me an embarrassingly long time to get here, but it works for me now.

2886

Oh, I’d disagree pretty heavily here. I’d rather the government not regulate public forums to the maximum extent possible.

The problem is the same problem that media sources have had for centuries: these spaces are designed to put eyeballs in front of advertisements. The thing that makes internet social media so vulnerable is the vast number of eyeballs available, which means that algorithms decide how to shuffle eyeballs around, which means they’re subject to pernicious capture. And there are whole industries whose purpose is to manipulate Facebook algorithms to put designed content in front of the very eyeballs most likely to be sympathetic to it, which sounds exactly like the mission of propaganda.

2887

So regulate the algorithms, try experimental solutions, force the companies to be 100% transparent re what the algorithms are doing, etc. There is no other way, a few people going off the grid accomplishes nothing when so many are on it.

2888

You can’t ban it… this isn’t something we can have the government fix for us.
We need to, as adults, decide we don’t want to engage in this behavior.

2889

And then for my next trick I will contract individually with each of the 2 billion ranchers living upstream of me not to pollute the river

2890

You know I was working on something for this, but I’m glad I held off. Nailed it.

2891

I read Timex’s post in the context of First Amendment protections. There’s no constitutional protection for polluting rivers… wait, I think? Sounds like the kind of thing the GOP would have done over the past four years.

2892

Libertarianism says you should be free to sue people who damage you or your property.

Of course the subscript there is that they have so much more money than you, that you’d never be able to do it, but at least it leaves open the possibility for them to also do it to you. You know they’re polluting your water supply and poisoning you, so you go break their poison machine, they want a way to sue you for it.

2893

My post was just saying that you can’t ban facebook, and that my suggestion wasn’t for the government to make facebook not exist… but for us to just not use it because it’s bad.

2894

Sure. Convincing my mom is the problem.

2895

Ya, there’s no way I can stop my parents from being brainwashed. That ship has sailed.