The 'do-over' needs to start with the resignation of Sandberg and Zuckerberg both.
158
This is the consequence of the single minded diefication of STEM disciplines in education and the corresponding denigration of the humanities. People believe that it is sufficient to know how to do something. They do not understand that it is just as vital to know what to do and why.
97
Damn! You are absolutely right on target! It is interesting that we still have the ancient thinkers of 2400 years ago who have something to say about the modern world. I loved philosophy when I was way back in college but took a different road. Two thumbs up to Plato and Aristotle, and to those who have come after them.
27
For once i can agree with much of what is in this opinion piece by Bret Stephens. It is a thoughtful, not political.
22
November 17, 2018
To reflect on the wisdom of Facebook – to quote:
What you think of me is none of my business.
- Terry Cole-Whittaker
To kill an error is as good a service as,
and sometimes even better than,
the establishing of a new truth or fact.
- Charles Darwin
We should not pretend to understand the world
only by the intellect.
The judgment of the intellect
is only part of the truth.
- Carl Jung
The most important things in life
are seldom the most obvious.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
JJA Manhattan, N.Y.
6
Just because you can post, share, or like something does not mean you should. The prevalence of fake nonsense on Facebook is entirely down to an army of unthinking, poorly informed Facebook addicts who will take pretty much anything at face value and blast it out to their nearest and dearest 5000 ‘friends’.
If anything has been proven over the past several years, it is that our society is not yet ready or worthy to use the power given us by social media. I believe that is the core issue and it’s unclear to me what Facebook can do about it. How do you fix stupid?
115
tl;dr
Writing is bad wrote Plato so share this post to FB
6
One often finds Stephens' articles disingenuous and just as often , aside from his on-point Never Trump critiques ( but really, justhow hard is it to hold that racist, sexist, serial liar, serial bankrupt, mountebank, traitor and punk bully in contempt?), part of the problem.
Not this time.
Bret Stephens, well done, well said, and well concluded.
11
I regard this as one of the many inevitable consequences of the diefication of STEM disciplines in education and the corresponding denigration of the humanities. People honestly believe that they need only know how to do things. They do not understand that they also need to know what to do and why.
37
“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference....” —Edward R. Murrow
22
takes me back to political theory class...
Facebooks pattern of deception runs long and deep and far beyond the scandals mentioned here in. I urge readers to look back at the “oops, we found bugs” that overestimated what we should charge advertisers.....
The lies and deception run deep....deactivate your accounts on fb and Instagram.
7
I always see the conflict of Facebook doing social good and making money at the same time.
7
Good reference to a summit of the intellect such as Plato. But it goes at the end close to that aphorism by an old Roman Emperor: —Let's give the populace the Circus and be able to eat supper in peace at home— The Circus being of course Facebook et al. Only, the Circus nowadays may become point of rally for not so uninspired people, rather unscrupulous individuals.
1
@José Ramón Herrera
We now give them the circuses, but without the bread.
8
Last night my Grandson suggested I write down "my story." (I am 85 with a terminal lung disease.) I said, "No, I want you to remember what I tell you rather than looking at some printed words in some future time. That way you can embellish my virtues and minimize my faults." That is how I would like to be remembered. This Opinion piece validates my wisdom. Thanks.
272
Great piece, did not remember that bit of Socrates I read just 40 years ago, but it is timely as ever, and much needed. Someone commented on the need for anti trust laws with teeth, and that is a great goal: to bring businesses out of the Godlike sphere, and down to earth where a few humans might be able to talk sense to them. Think of this: whenever he wants, Mr Facebook can deliver a message from his phone to over a billion people, or at least those who have not blocked him, I guess. Trump, not a Facer, still can speak to millions in 288 letter epistles, though none so far approaching the pithiness of Socrates or Mr Stevens. That power to communicate the same message in real time to millions, wherever they may be at the moment, is so recent on the human timescale we have not grasped the full significance, but we are beginning to see the edges of a phenomenon that is changing us all in ways we cannot comprehend. Gods limitation, or strength, in moving the human spirit was that he could only speak to individuals at first, and that person had to tell others, one to one or in small groups. Printing allowed millions to at least see the same message, when they had The Book and took time to stop and read. Today, perhaps half the world, with cell phones, could hear God speak to them at exactly the same time in the best translation possible, but would we recognize Him, or assume a telemarketing company was robocalling the world?
4
Zuckerberg's net worth is estimated at 81.6 billion dollars. I think we all know where his priorities are and it is not "truthiness, connectivity and information sharing".
15
We can also apply these thoughts to "the freedom the private auto" brings us. Very often driving instead of taking a bus is much more convenient. On the other hand, if you have thousands "conveniently" driving their own one-passenger cars, you get lots of stalled cars.
I've been on both sides. I've been stuck on stand-still "freeways" and I've driven a bus on the shoulder with 20 or so passengers, passing dozens and dozens of idling cars.
One perennial problem is the number of people who complain that a well-funded, convenient public transportation system is "taking their cars away". They never look at it as giving them more room on the road.
6
I tried to disconnect from FB a while back. This is what I would have missed: pictures of a great-grandson, pictures and movies of a great-granddaughter from birth to today, pictures of great nieces and nephews, pictures and video of a niece's wedding and shower, etc. I think what I am going to do is to cut my list of people I have friended, even if they are cousins I will never see, or had a relationship, and purge it to only immediate family.
I will do this today, and see if I can change my FB profile to my few members. Who knows, this may be just enough to not trigger any ads? or hacks.
It is really too bad that I have to do this. I really keep my likes to ME ONLY, but I think they really spread out to be telegraphed to a lot more people than I wish.
If I had a choice to filter FB, I would like to remove share to the Public. Also give me more control over who sees my posts and whose post I can see.
4
FB certainly has the responsibility to behave ethically, and if it doesn't, its users, despite being addicted to FB have the responsibility to wean themselves, which brings me to Mr. Stephen's article. I openly admit that the developers of FB and similar platforms are likely more clever than me, at least as far as getting my eyeballs on the products their advertisers are hawking, but I am not powerless in this transaction. If I get unsolicited ads for jet engines after reading an article on propulsion I make a mental note to not spend my billions on that company's fighter planes!
3
Superb observations, thank you. You may consider one other object these companies give us as an out to the written word: THE EMOJI.
And the menace behind all of these shiny objects like FB and Twitter? Advertisers and marketers and the dollars reaped behind the allusion that FB and Twitter are actually transforming the world. Laughable.
2
It is odd that YouTube is escaping scrutiny. It is just as bad as FB, owned by Google. But Mitch McConnell flies under the radar too, while doing so much damage. I guess we can really not focus on more than one at a time.
10
Facebook is one of the many faces of Frankenstein, also known as the World Wide Web.
4
Before Plato's theory of truth, there were the Sophists, who gauged "truth" by persuasion. We have re-entered the world of the Sophists, super-charged by the internet.
13
I spent far too much time on Facebook for 3-4 years. The recent revelations have soured me. I have avoided many of the pitfalls, because my friends post things that are actually useful. The current dictum insists that you not get your news from Facebook, but I often find connections to news articles I have missed from reputable sources. Many of my friends are interested in the same things I am, so I don’t get much that I consider garbage. There are usually one or more posts that are inspiring. Some of the funny stuff leaves me smiling, never a bad thing. Despite all the enjoyment, I have drifted away. I simply don’t want to patronize a business led by two of the most arrogant and ethically challenged individuals society has produced.
8
A brilliant column. Informed, precise, and rigorous.
4
'Move fast and break things' is the philosophy of privileged children, like Zuckerberg and his ilk. They have been raised with the notion that someone else, their mommy, or the federal government, will clean up their mess. Worse, these tech gazillionaires are behaving as independent nation states.
There is nothing democratic about the technology that has thoroughly changed our world. Thank you for expressing so concisely what I have been unable to express myself.
10
When I deactivated my Facebook account a couple of years ago, I ceased to exist to my friends and family.
5
Beautifully written and creative analogy!
Yet, alas, apropos across many media sources these days:
'The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality'.
Sound familiar?
6
Facebook and ALL the social media concepts developed by the young and supposedly knowlegable geniuses(?) are no more the latest Madoff schemes. Robberies plain and simple The creators are swindlers who have and continue to rob users of thought and individualism
I hope that the charities M Zuckerberg and same are funding are with hard cash and not promises to pay, i.e. pledges. His and others ideas are but childish writings in the sands. Here till the next tide.
I got scammed years ago in the early days of the INet. Wasn't much cashwise but brought to instant memory , grandfathers wise ole saying, "a fool and his money are soon parted". I haven't trusted much on the net, never will. Zuckerberg is as smooth an operater as Bernie and his wife were
Todays fools are those who trust the net and its schemers.con men & women,selling the current snake oil product
The last sentence of the author, "read an ancient book instead".
are wise words and true
3
The hypocrisy of this story is quite evident. It could not be shared without letters and the written word. The evolution of technology is not bad or evil , but rather increases human beings ability to exploit and twist it to their own greedy and self serving means. From the first time man picked up a stone for a tool, he had the ability to choose it's use for good or evil. Facebook and it's like are only reflections of ourselves behaving like the imperfect beings we are.
10
"Work harder to operate ethically, openly and responsibly. Accept that the work will take time."
Great points, sound advice...but in this culture, right now, its apostasy! As a nation we've been struggling, especially in recent times, with these very worthwhile goals. Politicians all campaign on the promises to bring more transparency to Gov't. Yet, when pressed on actually being transparent, like now, under Trump, with a GOP controlled Senate - they run under the cabinets like roaches.
We have a Congress, mostly Repubs, but not all, who have been pursuing more avenues for Corporations, employers in general, to hide their dirty deeds, and then avoid any consequences when caught. They've been undermining whistle-blowing, gutting the power of the class-action lawsuit. Doing nothing to protect the victims of crime - like rape - who are not male, white and/or wealthy.
As to the advice; take the time to do the best work. That's not where this nation is as a people. We want results before the work even begins. Again, looking at Congress. 95%of the time, neither party will make a move till they can ensure they have the votes before any work is performed.
The last election shows how weak-willed we are for the process of doing careful work. Even if its using toes and fingers to count in the era of Cray computers. "Let it work", is anathema. We want fixes, but we dont demandthem
Facebook, Google, etc are Data mining companies. Period. Anything they say they are is propaganda.
3
Beautifully written.
Unfortunately, the people who needs to read this article spend most their time on Facebook and get most of their news from Google news. And using App to split the check down to the penny. Oh, the humanity!
3
One of your better columns Brett and no sideways insults at others, as you make a great argument and important points ( which you truly excel at. Much appreciated!
I loved this :
"But the deeper reason that technology so often disappoints and betrays us is that it promises to make easy things that, by their intrinsic nature, have to be hard"
I might add - that it is human nature to think that things are hard have a simple answer - isn't that how we got trump as president? A hard job - the presidency - done by a simpleton?
3
Human beings have not changed since we began wandering out of Africa. We can be generous and selfish, wise and foolish, open-minded and narrow-minded, loving and hateful. We just keep inventing new tools--and that is all that "technology" is. And so any technology used for communication--writing on papyrus or on social media--simply channels and even amplifies who we already are. Zuckerberg was a naive college student to think that Facebook would only be used to better ourselves. Oh, sorry, he was out to make money after all.
3
This was a common idea back then. Caesar, in his commentaries, wrote that books were making the minds of the youth soft.
Luddites have existed throughout history and are always proven wrong.
So the irony is - without the use of letters - no one alive today would know about the “wise king” named Thamus.
8
“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture....” —Neil Postman
15
I'm glad you differentiate between social media and the internet generally, too often they are lumped together as one. There's an opening here for a FB competitor that is properly regulated, what we're seeing is the weakness of unregulated capitalism when monopoly takes hold. Only financial pain will change FB behavior followed by regulation that places legal responsibility on the people that deliberately post false and harmful information and on the platforms that allow it to proliferate. If you yell fire in a crowded theater and people are injured as a result you should be brought to justice.
3
Of course without writing Mr. Stephens would be out of a job and we wouldn’t be reading this.
3
Mark Zuckerberg reads Latin, and his sister is a classicist who just got her Princeton PhD. The problem is less ignorance than greed in an under regulated system.
176
Bret isn't wrong here, but there's a lot of irony inside.
Which party has always labeled itself as "the party of business?"
Opposing sensible regulations which get in the way of profits?
Is there a parallel with climate change and environmental deregulation?
Start over? A company worth billions is going to simply start over? Corporations, and true Republicans, only care about profits and pleasing Wall Street analysts.
Meanwhile, as another commenter pointed out, countries in Europe have enacted regulations on firms like Facebook, concerned about issues like privacy and data collection. Bret conveniently omitted mentioning that fact, even though there's still plenty of work to be done in that regard.
4
I enjoyed your piece. I didn't know this story from Plato. Human nature is a complicated role of the dice. What explains why we do the destructive instead of trying kindness or some gradation therein.
2
Bret Stephens' fine essay reminds me of what his colleague Frank Bruni wrote about not too long ago. That is how traditional college majors as philosophy, literature, etc., are more important than ever. It is the fact that we will grow more, and be less inclined to abuses of our First Amendment rights by reading the works of our Greek and even Buddhist philosophers as well as those great novelists of the present and past centuries. They are about reality, but with that element of ethics and morality. Those two attributes are being lost in today's paradigm of greed and power.
The entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg has lost his way. I believe he has a moral compass - especially when compared to Mr. Trump who is devoid of one. However, it is buried deep within due to his unyielding trajectory toward the Cardinal Sins for downfall..pride, lust and gluttony for money and control, to mention two. It is not too late for him, yet. But he will do well to heed Mr. Stephen's advice.."Start over, Facebook" and start reading.
5
Bret,
Sorry, but Plato's story is flawed. The written word is an invention that is one of the greatest engines to the betterment of mankind Ever! Plato did not envision the invention of the printing press, which enabled the blessing of the dissemination of written knowledge. Yes, there have been negative consequences. But what is the alternative? We always have to live with the bad as well as the good. Try to operate in a successful way for a single day while ignoring anything being delivered to your eyes in a written format. Your day would not end well.
2
Yes, it seems that technology dumbs is down as to some basic human interactions. I’m often struck by how a text or email is often taken negatively when no negative intent was intended. You cannot discern inflection and this changes the meaning. Did John take that? Can be 4 different meanings depending on which word you emphasize and the tone of voice.
I also note with great interest that the written word also corresponded to the decline of the Goddess cultures, which relied on verbal storytelling to pass down wisdom to new generations. An excellent look at this phenomenon is the book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, The Conflict Between Word and Image, By: Leonard Shlain, Release date: 12-26-17.
Often we seem to allow technology to drive us to distraction while losing our basic skills as human beings. I hope we can strike a more respectful pose towards ancient wisdom that predates the written word.
2
We choose to go to the moon and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Technology can make the things we do far more simple, but simple has nothing to do with easy.
1
“But how many of our personal, professional or national problems might be solved if we desisted from depending on shortcuts?”
I’ve been thinking recently that the labels we use in our politics are essentially shortcuts, ways we approximate whether someone has the judgment, governing philosophy, character, and temperament to hold office and exercise some part of the sovereign power in our representative democracy. Conservative, liberal, libertarian, left, right, centrist, moderate, progressive - these labels tell us some things but not nearly enough. But the labels engage the emotions, are subject to manipulation by people who take things out of context and keep scorecards, and can take on a life of their own.
Next thing you know we’ve participated in a process that in the aggregate makes us prisoners of our own devices, people who have saddled themselves with misleading maps and yet still confuse the maps with the territory.
Time perhaps to bring a little skepticism to bear, but not too much; to step back a moment to gain some perspective; and to bring both conscience and one’s own best sensibility to bear.
Had Thamus prevailed over Theuth:
We wouldn't know the story of Thamus and Theuth
We wouldn't have heard of Socrates
We wouldn't study Plato
Stephens wouldn't write this article
I wouldn't write this comment
Not one of us would sit down this weekend with an ancient book
And there'd be no Facebook (yes, a book itself) to worry about
True, a few of us in the privileged class might have better memories—or at least be able to pay a bard to commit our collective knowledge to rhyme, meter, and melody to help us better recall the limited things we knew. But the vast majority of us would live like humans lived for thousands of years before Theuth's letters—lives of unrecorded poverty filled more with work and struggle than poetry.
So yes, technology does take from us some skills we must employ in its absence. But history has shown that, for the most part, Theuth was right that our letters (like our digital data) “will make [us] wiser and give [us] better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit.”
5
I'm a person who loves, recognizes and understands innovations. The Pony Express, telegraph, telephone, television, newspapers...I get those, and recognize their respective roles and how they forwarded communication and knowledge - but I've never understood Facebook's role. Never.
2
@David Well, as the proud owner of a 1979 MG Midget, I am connected to fellow owners all over the world via Facebook. We can exchange stories, tips, and cautions in a fashion not possible via traditional media.
Perhaps not an earth shattering issue, but multiply that by all the other groups of aficionados of everything under the sun, and you have one purpose of it.
As an editor, translator and teacher, most of the work I do emphasizes speed, not beauty or accuracy. There is a horror of anything taking time and *hacking* has become something we just love to do, make something hard easy. But with what result? I love this essay and am grateful for its message and its clarity. These words do not betray us.
5
These same points about technology apply to many fields, including music. The “Facebook” of recording technology is “ProTools,” (followed by “LogicPro” and other platforms). On the one hand, it has become an invaluable tool, lowering the costs and simplifying the recording process for all. On the other hand, it has lowered the bar, making it possible track a small section of music, edit to perfection, then copy/paste into a whole song. For those wondering why popular music often sounds so mechanical today compared to that of the pre-digital period, look no further. To add to Mr. Stephens’ fourth from last paragraph: Building a song on ProTools is easy. Performing a song well enough to record it and then doing so is hard.
3
I for one welcome our Facebook Overlords.
I prefer this more measured take on Facebook to Ms. Goldberg's, who seems ready to anoint them as the leaders of a newfangled digital "axis of evil"(TY forever, David Frum, for the Mt. Everest of unintentional comedy)
While I can't fight off her claim that that Facebook hired Russian oppo research firms to link it's enemies to George Soros, there is just something about that that makes me laugh out loud as opposed to filling me with the dread that I believe is her intention.
It's just hard for me to take that charge too seriously when the people running Facebook are named Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.
Facebook is a mess because it's a dynamic imprint of the entire spectrum of thought of the people that partake in it, which seems to be fairly substantial and varied.
How do you even attempt to meaningfully throttle that? I don't think it's possible.
Should Facebook try to do better? Of course.
Am I going to blame them for increased gang violence in Chicago? No.
It's the users of this platform who are the problem, not the platform.
I don't know how you fix stupid, I think we're always going to be stuck with that.
3
@JayK
You fix stupid by setting limits, so stupid can only go so far. I’m presuming you’re thinking that Zuckerman and Sandberg would never have hired Russian opposition research because they are Jewish. The Russians, among others, haven’t been known for their kindness to Jews.
Zuckerman and Sandberg are in this gig to make money. While they may hold themselves to high moral standards personally, which I doubt, they sure aren’t applying those morals to FB.
Even tho’ they say appealing things like FB is meant to foster greater world intercommunication w/ the outcome of more global understanding and peace, the opposite is in fact true. For every ounce of mutual understanding FB has fostered, there have been pounds of dead Rohingya, Chicago students and others produced.
I hold them responsible for those deaths. They didn’t monitor hate speech.
Consider Realpolitik, where morals don’t apply. Money and power trump morality, which is why we have Jewish FB power promoting anti-semitism.
Businesses can act morally, but if ignoring moral standards brings in more cash, that’s where they’ll go.
I’m not paranoid yet, but I don’t trust a politician or business leader further than I could throw them and I trust them even less if they introduce their
morals as a justification for any behavior. They’d kill you, sooner than they could look at you, if they thought you stood in the way of a dollar.
All you really need to know is the old Portuguese proverb, the fish rots from the head down. Zuckerberg is now and always has been narcissistic, amoral and without conscience. Why would you expect his company to be any different? The idea that Facebook exists to bring the world together is laughable. It exists to harvest your data for free and sell it to the highest bidder. If you’re willing to put up with that to get whatever benefit Facebook provides for you go ahead. I don’t.
11
@Robert Trosper
I've always assumed Facebook was nothing more than Zuckerberg taking the college "pig book" electronic.
2
@Robert Trosper
"The idea that Facebook exists to bring the world together is laughable. It exists to harvest your data for free and sell it to the highest bidder."
Welcome to Capitalism.
Corporations exist to make money, and large ones will exhaust vast sums and use all of their power and influence to protect itself against outside actors trying to harm it.
That's how this works, it's a tradeoff, and sometimes those tradeoffs are weird, unwieldy and ugly.
Facebook is no better or worse than any other Global corporation.
1
When the young child with “...so much potential...” takes many bad turns along the way and fails to fulfill the promise, the parents are almost always bewildered. And often they won’t let go because they still think they can fix things, which generally makes it all worse.
Let go Mark, Sheryl ... you need to turn this over to others who see FB as a young adult with many problems who is doing damage to those around her/him. Only they can see FB for what it is now and only they have the perspective and knowledge to try to straighten this out.
You cannot fix this. You are not objective. You lack the tools that are needed now.
Walk away.
149
I’ve been off Facebook for 5 years and am happier and more productive for it. Facebook will never get me back.
I’ve never been a fan of Zuckerberg. And now he’s given us Trump. Way to go, genius.
6
Your inclusion of Tesla with social media platforms confuses me. What does a startup automobile manufacturer, which indeed is "accelerat(ing) the world's transition to sustainable energy," have to do with technology business models based on selling subscribers' personal data to advertisers?
3
Suppose Tesla can make a cheap electric car with lower running costs because of your own solar panels. What does that do with congestion on streets and the lack of physical movement from the drivers that used to walk or bike? The point is, that every innovation will have a dark side. That is the nature of human beings. Technology innovates but the human species hardly. That is why Plato or the Bible or any other book about human behavior, ancient as they are, are still very topical.
1
I'm going to share this on Facebook. (Smile)
77
Thank you Mr. Stephens; I had been trying to remember the source of this story told by Plato.
Here's my take as a cultural historian: Every major step "up" to a new age of human society has been accompanied/enabled by a major new development in communication.
There have been six such transitions to date. The invention of writing was part of the fourth; part of the transition from (among much else) polytheism to monotheism, to the iron age and coinage, and the arising of the great ancient empires.
To date humanity has seen:
1. Hominins become Homo Sapiens (Old Stone Age)
2. Middle Stone Age: Cave art, animism
3. Early agriculture; polytheism
4. Iron Age and with it monotheism
5. Age of reason, industrial age, science
6. Post-modernity, existentialism
The emergence of each new era is typically marked by very turbulent transitions (dark ages, wars of religion etc).
Among much else, each new era has demanded a whole new set of self-disciplines among those who will be citizens of the new era.
Today we are seeing the emergence of a seventh new era on earth. I am hopeful that we too will make it. So far humanity has a strong track record of making it up to the next level after a period of grave turbulence -- at least in aggregate.
So I am betting that after much turmoil enough of us will get on top of yet another new disciplines. Our new era too will emerge. I just hope things don't get too much worse before they start to get better.
4
@Karen S. Voorhees: And Facebook is those shadows on Plato's cave wall.
1
@Karen S. Voorhees This I believe. A truly long view of the future using a long view of history and philosophy as a guide. I hope to be emergent with people like you, when the punditry (including Bret Stephens) is still buried in their words.
Plato, apparently, "foresaw" a good deal. This brings to mind an intriguing, if somewhat well-worn, observation by Alfred North Whitehead: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato”
3
Props to you, Bret, for making Plato relevant.
4
Unbounded, unbridled data-mining & monetizing is Facebook's business model.
Ethically-sourced data-mining is an oxymoron.
Zuckerberg's data-mining was felonious from the first.
His unethical practices to create "Facemash," his "Hot Or Not" Harvard clone, got him hauled in front of Harvard's disciplinary board. He was charged with breaching security/violating copyrights/violating individual privacy. (Harvard Crimson, 11/19/03)
Feeding our data to Obama in 2012, gratis, was felonious.
In this Disinformation Age, whoever controls speech controls the world.
Algorithmically banning malicious enemies of America also captures loyal Americans and denies them their constitutional rights.
More pernicious, creeping algorithmic banning, e.g., shadowbanning, ghost banning, is a way for hyperpartisan social media sites and others to censor dissent, and to do so stealthily: The victim often doesn't realize that he is banned.
Algorithms—vs. AlGore rhythms—rule the world. Hard to believe—the latter was the lesser evil.
The ironic state of affairs: Facebook et al. censor speech from alternative news sources that they deem unacceptable, as they promote the agitprop of MSM, whose lies of omission & commission & whose shadowbanning of dissenters are increasingly a primary operating principle.
Facebook, Twitter, etc. are opaque, untouchable threats to democracy. But so are our neo-Pravda news sites.
2
The ancient practices of marketing and advertising are on full display with the growth and profitability of Facebook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising#Pre-modern_history . Those early practices pre-date Plato, and can be found in ancient rock paintings as far back as 4000 BC. Any technology that could be used, would be used. When we got to the era of international broadcasting, what did we think would happen?
Architects are well-versed in the representation vs. reality dilemma, but this metaphysical argument here is misplaced. Facebook's invention in itself would have been fine for its creators and users and a mild system of morality. But the original sin of Zuckerberg was greed -- monetizing personal data and pushing ads into the space (as did Twitter and Google, though to a less direct effect). This created the toxic public square -- where extremism is pushed to the front, and enlightened debate is pushed to the back.
I'd warn Bret to make this distinction more apparent -- what this sounds like is his typical narrative of the unruly mob vs. enlightened elites. When the reality is a morally bankrupt elite that pits extreme individuals against each other while the majority of normal conversation is ignored (kind of like the GOP debates).
2
“But the deeper reason that technology so often disappoints and betrays us is that it promises to make easy things that, by their intrinsic nature, have to be hard.”
These technologies disappoint because they serve the interests of capital over culture.
The more relevant text is not Plato but Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit if Capitalism.
https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/podzim2013/SOC571E/um/_Routledge_Classics___Max_Weber-The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism__Routledge_Classics_-Routledge__2001_.pdf
1
Great ideas, Bret. But surely Thamus wasn't speaking of your writing when he complained about the written word.
Yes, many of us were skeptical of Facebook when it was developed, but none had the wisdom to buy the stock. We had watched the evolution of usenet with its incipient conversations which were far and away more intelligent than those on Facebook, but we could see the bottom of the barrel.
Facebook is in the race to the bottom, and, while I think that Twitter has won that one handily, (trump is its poster boy) Facebook is a close second. Still, lots of old people use it; FB is a mindless form of communication that is a pastime; it fills the void, much in the way that silent motion pictures did, or radio. People would devote hours to that media. What did they do before there was radio? Oh, right. Read.
And we could equally say that people used to read before there was Facebook or Twitter. These media remove the complexity and entropy from writing that make it so creative, and, uh, informative. They make writing simpleminded, hence the race to the bottom.
Facebook's naive ideal was to share everything (well, okay, it was to make its executives and investors *rich*). This ignores the need for information assurance tenants that were well known at the time. Now FB execs are paying the price.
Writing is a tool; FB is a tool. It can be used to create great works or total nonsense. Our education is the way to teach us how to use it beneficially.
3
Hey everyone, if you have one of those social media accounts, post this article's link there. Implore your "friends" to read it!
2
@Steve: Naaah. Bret uses words that are too big.
Back in the 90's,when my teenage kids connected up with someone in Sweden on the internet,I became a champion of all things digital.I was enthralled by the iPhone,as Steve Jobs pulled it from his back pocket.This was the future...a connected world would be a better place,
Now my adult children get most of their information from Twitter or Facebook.They don't go beyond the tidbits of information provided.They don't seem to reflect on it or develop any knowledge which might change their viewpoint.It's on to the next crises or to Trump's tweets.While I read your columns on my computer,I have gone back to old fashioned books.The book I am reading now is "Reader,Come Home" by Maryanne Wolf.It fleshes out the points you make. I'm giving it to my kids for Christmas but fear it may take up too much of their time to read.I have also copied and sent your column to them.You have provided an excellent version of their dilemma which, just maybe,they can understand.Thanks.
2
What's a "Facebook"?
3
This is Mr. Stephens’s best column ever. So true, and so well written. I am afraid though that asking young masters of the universe to heed Plato or read an old book is a lost cause. One has a better chance of tripping on their ombilical cords.
3
This is what happens in a materialistic "meritocracy" in which worthiness equals power, and success equals stuff. You get a society in which true mastery and accomplishment and character are all too often kicked to the side by self-authenticating narcissists.
3
All said and done, I just can't help admiring Mark Zuckerberg.
The guy is only 33, for heaven's sake! And Look at how much he has achieved. Things have gone wrong somewhat but not because of any malicious intent on his part.
And look at what MBS, also about 33-34, has achieved and all because of his own malice!
(Sorry I mentioned this contemptible guy here, but I couldn't help comparing two guys of about the same age and of comparable power.)
1
I use this story all the time to illustrate how luddites will argue against any new technology, including even something as obviously valuable as writing.
Or Facebook.
We all get tremendous value from reading and writing . . . as we will from Facebook.
@Rayboston: Your post sounds like those that support trump's "accomplishments" by using the future tense: "as we will from Facebook."
Why haven't we gotten tremendous value from FB in the past decade?
@Charles Who's to say we have not? I am in contact with fellow MG owners all over the world, fellow followers of Cold War aircraft followers, and a large group of inveterate punsters.
Value consists of the ratio of what one gets to what one spends. I have gotten all this and spent nothing. My only "cost" is that I get ads I can ignore. That sounds like tremendous value to me.
Facbook's attitude reminds me very much of certain provocative media personalities, who, when their inflammatory rhetoric is seen to have driven some susceptible soul into violence throw up their hands and plead, "But I'm just an entertainer!"
Little Marky Zuckerberg is either a Trump League liar or totally incompetent. I'm not sure which and I'm not sure it matters since the end result is pretty much the same.
I've never been on Facebook or Twitter or any other social media platform and I never plan to be, but I'm also 67 years old. If I was younger and working and actively seeking a social life I'm not sure that I would still be able to make that choice.
1
No; Plato was wrong. His student, Aristotle, demonstrated how writing causes meaning beyond that of speech. Among other obvious possibilities such as review and critique, the written word enables the fast propagation of ideas.
Moreover, it's obvious that speech is far more inclined to inject 'instant belief' than script.
Zuckerberg & Cie polluted the net because they were simply permitted to do so. This poses legislative issues of control which the author--a rebublikan-- ostensibly opposes.
Strange to tell, then, that he'd kick the rhetorical can over to Classical Greek Philosophy! Not so strange is his middlebrow understanding therein.
1
As useful and to the core of key elements of this issue the Bret raises, the most impactful is the algorithm Facebook uses in its newsfeed. That algo fosters confrontation and tribalism. Russian trolls know this and exploit this. Zuckerberg and Sandberg know this and deny, delay and deflect this. For they know that the algo drives interactions and ad dollars. And ads are the source of Facebook's revenues, profits and growth. As a publicly-traded company, institutional investors demand growth and profits as do the C suite execs at FB. All the theorizing about Egyptian kings and Greek philosophers is interesting. Know the the core financial drivers and you know the real key issues at work.
2
I forgive Bret for being a Republican.
The column is beautiful in it's presentation of a universal truth.
Zuckerberg professes Buddhist beliefs yet acts transparently antithetical to them. The Facebook platform has devolved to an id extravaganza - publishing the hate in many peoples soul isn't what Mr. Zuckerberg had in mind - just making loads of money. And in the process selling his soul.
1
What the Times editorial is saying(and driving down stock prices-ooi!-), is what once, Americans knew and learned both as a result of the Great War and after, and as a result of all the mistakes and miscalculations before and during the Second World war to be careful skeptics.
For those who really want to see how badly propaganda can be, and can severely affect nations , cause death and destruction, I suggest they read Barbara Tuchman's ,(short), "The Zimmerman Telegram". In the Great War, the British beca overconfident by having their propaganda accepted by many Americans, as a result it was impossible for them to expose Germany for violating US neutrality and using our neutral cable to Sweden , lying to the government,while sending both military and intelligence material to Sweden. Few Americans now know that the "neutral Swedes" were on Germany's "side", helping the Kaiser fight; loaning him cash , selling him weapons and metals .
So Americans by the end of the next iteration: WWII, were cognizant that much of what is written may be no more useful than square wheels on an express bus. Kids and many adults today, have lost much of the thick ,tough rind, grown then, which demanded more than "I saw it in Factibook -on da Instanet! IT must be TRUE!"
Over 2 decades have passed since I have heard anyone but myself knowingly ask :
"Don't believe everything you read!"
We have a whole lot of relearning -maybe starting by dumping the portable phones.
Can something’s “nature”be anything other than intrinsic?
2
Good article. Reminds me of all the tweets POTUS sends out to communicate to us directly, as they are consistently superficial by virtue of trying to explain a complicated issue in a limited space. Some are just blatant lies, others are just passing along a snippet he heard somewhere which he latches onto because in his mind it serves his purpose.
1
I dropped my facebook account two years ago and I have NO regrets. I read and write, with pen and paper. It is so liberating. Try it!!!!
1
It’s a start, Brett.
Recognizing Facebook as a delivery system for highly effective Nationalistic/fascist political propaganda is a good first step for anyone who is concerned about the health of liberty and democracy in America.
1
“Everybody gets so much [useless] information all day long that they lose their common sense.” Gertrude Stein
Let’s hope we can find our common sense again.
1
..."But Thamus rebuffed him. “O most ingenious Theuth,” he said, “the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them.”..."
How true this is of many inventions!
Do more than just log off for the weekend-delete your account
Hey … this guy Socrates (or Plato, if he was just being modest in his attribution) … seems he was pretty smart ... Where's he from?
s/ Either Too Old Or Too Smart for Facebook (All alone am I ... Am I?)
P.S. But … were tinder (tinder, is it?) around in my prime, it woulda been fun to collect 'boatloads' of 'swipe-rights' … that's the 'lust for' indicator … Right?
EXCELLENT article!!!
1
Selling our personal information should be the least of our concerns. Having the government in control of all the collected data along with their surveillance data collection is much more frightening.
American consumers have been duped by marketing since the first sales pitch on mass media probably a newspaper.
How much data does the NY Times or any other subscription I have know about me? How did that ad show up while reading an article? I just looked at those on Ebay?
We give up a phone number and email for the chance at a free trinket.
Facebook has connected more easily and readily to stories around the country and the world than many other aggregation sites. Photo's of every major event and minor from near and far. Its as quick as texts, it gives a more complex and robust platform to share easily and a easy way to connect, whether or not you diminish this mode of connection, overall it increases contact with others. I think especially true for older humans where social events become less frequent and more difficult for them to manage traveling.
Our world is based on a every expanding consumer market for its economy or war. If we haven't noticed it's unsustainablilty yet
There should be a nonprofit, open source version of Facebook that doesn't sell anyone's information. Like Wikipedia, but for cat videos and high school reunions. Do any universities want to take on this challenge?
Isn’t the real problem with social media that it has given us a vastly more detailed view into the character and motivation of fellow citizens, even family members, and that in too many cases we’re rightly horrified by what we see?
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Humans are innately curious -- just watch babies. Some parents, many churches, and some schools squelch that curiosity with authority. But whatever the reasons, almost all of us are weak when it comes to asking "How do you know that?" -- perhaps the single most important question that everybody should always be asking, and should be trained to know how to evaluate the answer.
Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and others were brilliant thinkers, but what we seem to need now is the Scottish skepticism of David Hume.
Authority is both essential for society and a great poisoner of it.
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I wish Mr. Stephens had stressed more aggressively the point that the more we assume technology is neutral, the more leeway we give it to replicate and compound our problems since that assumption means we don't even reflect and question it. For example, the rise of the use of artificial intelligence. We assume science and technology are neutral despite examples of biases affecting our use of such tools. Even racial bias can get coded into AI algorithms in ways.
3
The ancient Greeks were quite aware that much of their learning was originally derived from the great civilization in Egypt. Even though this was a myth, it shows how Socrates/Plato were aware of the pervasive influence of Egypt.
1
Every civilization actively borrows from civilizations that came before. It is the way of the world and human thought. Egypt borrowed from Mesopotamia, Greece borrowed from Egypt, Rome borrowed from Greece and then adopted norms and ideals from the lands it conquered, e.g. Christmas is an adapted German area celebration. The USA borrowed from the English and German Empires. Canada shows its English and French borrowings. These are good things.
Lands are still borrowing from other traditions through multiculturalism. It is natural and normal. Yes, ancient Egypt has had influence, but only because it came before. And the meaning behind the symbols, much like Christmas, has changed continuously as it is adapted to fit current societal requirements. We may see Egypt in ourselves, but I doubt ancient Egyptians would recognize it.
1
Facebook faces a nearly impossible task. The American public cannot agree on what news is real and what isn't. One person's honest opinion is an offense to another person. Truth has become a sociopolitical construct, which differs depending on one's point of view. Regulation and censorship are bound to reflect biases and prejudices. Selling or sharing private information is quite another thing and if it is done without the user's knowledge, it is dishonest, even if it is legal. Facebook's efforts to deal with its problematic issues seems to rely on buying influence in Washington and buying criticism of its rivals through PR firms, with no real attempt to deal with what has gone wrong. The kind of vehicle Facebook provides may present a dilemma in information dispersion that is nearly impossible to solve.
Many of us have gotten used to using social media to express our opinions and feelings as much as to keep in touch with friends. Our need to make contact without having to go through the trouble of actually getting to know someone or to be heard without fear of people turning away has become a facet of our society. Look how we do the same thing by commenting on NYT articles! The only real antidote may be to redevelop the kinds of face-to-face social groups and relationships our society had in the past. I'm not sure how that can happen.
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As a university writing instructor, I work regularly with a population that doesn't think twice about using social media as a space to "share," with no concerns about the larger issues of evil corporate intentions behind the technology. Why would they care? When we buy a coke or a kombucha or a bottle of spring water, we are thinking of quenching our thirst, not of advancing the profits of a company; using Facebook and Twitter elicits the same (lack of) attention to the entity behind the tool. We want what we get from it, now.
But therein lies the problem: the tool is indeed just that. And what we get from it is more complex than many realize. Those who use social media have little interest in pursuing the social movements extolled in corporate mission statements, and therefore fail to care--until a crisis occurs like we've been lately seeing--about the motives behind the machine.
Stephens' article is an excellent articulation of what surely we all know: words come from people, not the media used to compose and disseminate them. Some people are wonderful human beings; some are not. This applies to users as well as tech business owners. Through social media, we get to see them all, and need to understand the implications of that exposure before diving in. I'll loop this article into my course next semester as required reading.
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What I learned in general about the "digital revolution" was that in the workplace, some times people - consumers, bosses - everyone expected instant responses.
There was less and less consideration that there might be thinking for problem solving which was not speeded up by increasing the speed and number of emails, texts, or what ever is used. The forms also do not emphasize explaining issues, or those with questions often fail to provide sufficient information to understand what they really are asking.
When someone can write well, and be brief, that's elegance and it takes a real understaning of your message.
Now people use shortcuts, but the short cuts are not condensed, well considered ways to communicate - they are ways to avoid having to think about your message or your audience.
1
Another outcome of separating the knower from knowledge via writing and print was that people then saw "knowledge" as a thing and not a process. Once knowledge was in books, it could be sold and was thus commoditized. That's the basic business plan in higher education, or at last was. But, knowledge is, instead, a process, and higher education needs to re-think how to teach process instead of "transferring content." Good article.
4
Facebook was cool when the platform existed as a way to legitimately find and connect with people. Instead of exchanging phone numbers, people would say "you can find me on Facebook." Which was true. However, you had to be a college student and the profiles basically amounted to picture with a few lines of demographic info.
Somewhere along the line, Facebook morphed into a shared online journal. The experience became much more about the user's own pleasure and desire than connecting with anyone else. I think the introduction of "timeline" sort of solidified this strategy in my mind. Instead of a digital Rolodex with a basic bio, I'm reading journal entries from people I hardly know. Not so cool Facebook.
Not surprisingly, maintaining an interactive online public journal is very invasive to your privacy. Moreover, people can easily manipulate the unsuspecting in less than reputable ways. Facebook made itself evil on purpose. I honestly think people should drop the service and move on. Don't even bother regulating. Social media existed before Facebook. We can easily create something better on better terms.
The saving convenience of internet technology is the abundance of switches with which to enforce one's option to ignore.
When you think about it, that's the implicit reciprocal right of the First Amendment's freedom of expression. Peace results from the rule that I cannot make others change their mind or shut up but they cannot make me agree to listen.
So, many years ago, after her three-day trial with the useless annoyance, my wife asked " How do you stop that?" Happily, I showed her.
Brett has placed blame upon Facebook as a sun if technology, when in fact it is nothing more than the profit motive elevated above all else.
1
I have a friend who supports every good cause out there but she won't quit FB, even after reading about all the evil things it does in the name of profit. Why? she is convinced that her business won't survive without it. FB - and social media in general - have a lot of people convinced that they have to be on it.
I'm a coder and network engineer with 30 years in the IT industry. I don't have any social media accounts. I do just fine.
I did briefly have a FB account in 2012 so that I could develop FB canvas apps. I saw first hand the culture of 'move fast and break things.' The takeaway: 30 somethings who have zero life experience should not be running $500B corporations with global reach.
Go ahead, delete your FB account. You'll get over it real quick. You and your business will do just fine. And if you don't it's not because of Facebook.
7
At the end of this excellent article one finds the following on the Web version:
"Log off Facebook for a weekend. Read an ancient book instead.
"Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram, join the Facebook political discussion group..."
Ah, the irony!
8
Let’s not forget that Plato also foresaw democracy’s folly when he advocated government by philosopher-kings. Looks like the great philosopher himself was no less susceptible than Mark Zuckerberg to the allure of power.
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@Robert Schwartz in the Republic and in Aristotle's Politics, yes, that's a possible outcome but if you read all of Aristotle's Politics, which unfortunately I have to do every year despite being trained as a Chinese politics expert, you see that Artistle has two solutions to the problem of just rule. The ideal one is that philosopher king. But the realistic one is a blend of democratic input and oligarchic input, because it would be unjust, unwise and destabilizing to prevent all the commoners from having any input into the rule of the country.
18
@Robert Schwartz
The Egyptian Pharaohs and the Roman Emperors became gods.
1
Another philosopher said, 'I have met the enemy and the enemy is me.' Social media...a megaphone for venality.
6
So happy Plato wrote down Socrates's story.
Nicely put.
Stephens” exhortation to Facebook is pointless. Their business model is based on exploitation of personal data and privacy for sale. The purpose of the sale is to allow the purchaser to sell you stuff or politically or criminally manipulate you.
4
It is true that human beings often truncate and diminish lofty ideas until the idea is whittled down into a baser form - Christianity is a great example. Fine concept, poorly applied. FB is a double-edged sword but it's highly impractical to ask people who have become part of the swill of interrelationships of modern life to put down their smart phones and stop using computers to communicate. If Zuckerberg hadn't "invented" it someone else would have. FB doesn't corrupt us, we are simply corruptible and always have been. The environment will sort all this out, because we can't continue to degrade it by foolishly believe we are special as a species.
4
Bret, next time you are in Bethlehem, PA, give me a call and I'll buy dinner. Wonderful column.
1
Good article.
There is a reason my best friend calls it Fakebook.
Follow the money. This is capitalism running wild. They covered it up to protect the stock price. They lied because they want less restrictions on their new industry. The GOP loves to blame the Democratic Party for restrictions and laws inhibiting growth. But they are necessary. Facebook and other large corporations must exist for the good of the people and not just for their own profits. They need to learn to measure twice and cut once.
In the fourth century before the Common Era Socrates saw contradictory and self-destructive behavior among the Athenians by way of allowing deceptive word images to enter their brains. He identified it as “sophistic thought.” We are experiencing the same contradictory and self-destructive human behavior today in America and throughout world.
We are removing ourselves from reality.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
1
Left FB in 2010 after some death threats. Will never go back.
The cesspool that FB can be isn’t worth the knowledge that a guy you went to college with 35 years ago and haven’t seen since had a good workout and see pictures of his lunch.
1
would there be any nyt columnist if the wise king thamus had prevailed? Facebook has done good just as nyt has and the bad they have done has sadly happened. I suppose the god who gave us the wheel is responsible for my grandson crashing his bike. What has given me hope is that he got back on the bike and tried again
1
Facebook has been a great way to connect with friends and family.
twitter has turn me into a crude monster.
As the old bumper sticker in Berkeley advised '
Dont Believe everything you Think ' should now be revised as 'Dont Believe everything you Read'
1
Television was once described as a “vast wasteland,” and yet, along with the garbage, it brings us great arts performances and documentaries and films that people might not otherwise be able to see. Technology is never to blame for humanity’s shortcomings; it’s a neutral medium that happens to be an excellent way of disseminating both our virtues and our faults.
2
Wise counsel from Bret Stephens and imperative advice that the leaders of Facebook must take.
Facebook was and promised to us all as a social platform to meet, greet and make friends but has become a means to an end for others with different agenda and motives.
Unless things change, it could mean an end to an experiment that failed as we who also failed to not see or be affected by the way it has and is more becoming used to do those things it should never have done or be used to do...and for so many to follow and believe.
Speaking of Plato, here's a quote - Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and BOTH of discontent.
Here's another - Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder. It dispenses a sort of equality to equals AND unequals alike.
1
I like technology. I don't love it, but I like it a lot.
That said, a lot of us here had lives before Facebook, and My Space (remember that one), wireless everything, cellphones, the internet, iPads, remember chat rooms, PC's, cable TV, and all sorts of cool stuff. Ya know, I almost never "misdialed" when all there was were rotary phones.
We had lives and from what I remember, my live was good. Filled with lots of fun stuff, too.
Although I haven't set a date for its demise, I've been saying for years that the internet is just a phase and a fade we are participating in.
Same with Facebook. I like seeing what friends and acquaintances are up to and I like posting poignant (in my mind) comments.
However, if Facebook was gone tomorrow, it would take me about a day to get over it.
Facebook is just another fade/phase that we are caught up in. Remember disco? I have no idea what will replace it,(No, not disco. Facebook), but when it's over, fine. Read a book? Hey, maybe even write a letter, or send some friend a birthday card.
Good luck and best to all.
While Plato has the most exalted position within the history of Western philosophy, I would be surprised if many contemporary philosophers accept his metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, or politics as valid. And, eschewing technology as the root of all evil is simplistic. It isn't Facebook or Twitter that makes Trump a liar and it isn't Facebook or Twitter that makes his supporters believe him when he is obviously lying.
It is the subversion of technology by greedy people that damages society. Greedy people who accumulate wealth and power and use it to expand their own wealth and power at the expense of others. It is not the false god of technology that worries me, it is the lies and hypocrisy of the powerful.
2
So much of this world eludes Mr Stephens, incl. the latest election. What a nicely furnished cave he writes from.
"[I]n politics, intensity is not strategy. You have to be able to convert. The Resistance didn’t convert." - Bret Stephens, 11/8
here, here.
as his dad once said to Calvin with Hobbes present; Calvin, go do something you hate, being miserable builds character.
how does a 4-panel strip contain that kind of wisdom? Marshall Macluen is laughing at us all daily from the beyond.
2
What, like there is not false and misleading information in longer works in print or in orally transmitted lore prior to print? The problem is not in having information more readily available but in not being suspicious of it or knowing how to evaluate it in a reasonable way. Whatever moral or logical errors Zuckerberg made, they are not in making the platform available or easy to use. That would be like arguing that Gutenberg is responsible for Mein Kampf and Fifty Shades of Gray and the tabloid news or that Philo Farnsworth and Heinrich Hertz are responsible for Fox News.
The reality is that as communication technology becomes easier to use, it carries more noise and more trash, which is why my exaggerated first law of technology is that: The quality of communication technology is inversely proportional to the quality of what it is used to communicate or transmit.
1
If Zuckerberg, the creator and founder of Facebook intended Facebook to be a social medium. If that was his true intent he would shut down Facebook realizing the horrendous repercussions of misuse of his medium. After all he has made billions and his minions millions. His hedging, evasions, blaming youthful ignorance as he testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee was just hogwash of his true intentions. He promised to fix problems. Fix problems?
Facebook is the problem. Shut it down. But he is so clever. Why would he kill the golden goose? The only fix now is Facebook users shut down their accounts. If Thamus was alive today, he would not have to fear writing. Unless - love it!, great! so cute! wow! is called writing.
2
@NNI: Really great post because you reveal the problem. It's difficult to define what misuse of FB really is. It's seems a misuse to allow Russian trolls, but FB was designed to be used that way, as well as transmitting random acts of kindness.
This is why FB is in such a funk today. To have avoided this mess, FB could have come up with a more cautious business plan that restricted the kind of material that it published. But the social media fever had taken hold. Why restrict anything? Problems will take care of themselves. If Russians publish lies, then others will publish truth.
FB is a huge publishing platform that attempted to sneak under the radar as having inconsequential, anodyne content that attracted advertising markets. But it is such a ridiculously large platform, in no way can it avoid controversy. FB founders might have seen that at its inception. Instead, FB's business was treated like a toy, albeit a very lucrative toy.
Just 'cause we can do it, doesn't mean we should. Just 'cause the gadget works, doesn't mean it's good. Ah, but the great caveat: who decides?
3
This is an outstanding piece to memorize and metabolize into contemplation and prayer. Some might read this and say: who does this cynic think he is? But I say thank you and well done. I will stand on my chair at thanksgiving dinner this week to recite it, then sit down and weave it into as much conversation that my very small circle of family and friends that day can stomach. In the meantime, I think yours is a meditation for 21rst century man to begin to know himself.
152
I agree with what you said but I blanched at your last sentence. Before meditating, every 21st century man should not only know himself but should know that misogyny exists even in the words we use and should strive to correct and readjust the way he thinks and uses words that promote biases. Every 21st century woman knows this and recognizes this in her meditations.
10
@BeamInMyEye
Please don't abuse your fellow diners on Thursday so egregiously. Don't be "that guy"
-- the proverbial Uncle at Thanksgiving -- who thinks everyone else must be his audience. Even if well-intentioned (aren't they all?), it's the way to make even the best ideas toxic.
13
@BeamInMyEye
Sadly, my family would say, “Huh?” Especially my 91-year old mother who is addicted to her Facebook and Twitter accounts.
I will memorize this on my own to share with my friends in private discourse.
3
Having spent the past two years reading and rereading The 11,000 pages of Will Durant’s “The Story of Civilization”. Our forebears didn’t have our instant communication and technology, but they were no fools when it came to understanding the basic nature of Man which hasn’t changed in 10,000 years.
2
About 500 years ago the invention of movable type exploded the written word in Europe. Instead of leading to a world of learning, it unleashed several centuries of religious warfare. By most accounts, the 30 years war was the deadliest (in terms of the percentage of the population killed) in history.
In the mid-19th century, the invention of the telegraph and telephone, followed by the invention of radio and television, had a similar effect, leading to several worldwide conflicts.
Why should we expect any different from the internet and Facebook?
284
@John Graubard
It is about the speed of misunderstanding.
Our conventional speaking means are based upon local communications and often resulted in physical fights over emotion. We have to assume that any positive communication mechanism over a global reach should have something other than emotion at its core?
I've see few fist fights over logic. Logic will rule all global communications for here and evermore.
16
Superb observation, John Graubard.
The printed Bible and Koran have let to a world of utter religious conflict.
"Imagine" no religion.
Indeed !
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@John Graubard
It also led to a world of learning, though.
35
I have never had a Facebook or Twitter account mainly because I knew both companies profits came from selling my personal information and preferences.
It does not surprise me about Facebook's unethical and perhaps illegal practices. After all they are in the data business and anything that helps them sell data to both the scrupulous and unscrupulous is fair game.
The same, unfortunately goes for the other tech giants like Google. The pressure to make a profit often outweighs any ethical issues. Shareholder value is all that matters.
To fix this I think we need to change corporate charters where values other than profits for shareholders are part of the mix. Corporations are legal entities created by the State and the State can change the rules they have to abide by.
170
I, too, avoided Facebook and Twitter. But it is remarkable how much they seem to know about me through the accounts of other people who also know me. The day doesn’t go by that I don’t get an email from Facebook or a text from Twitter. It seems to me that companies with such reach and technical sophistication that they can so easily find me would be able to detect and eliminate misuse of their tools. If they really wanted to.
5
@azlib, you make a critical point. There is already a solution in place in nearly 40 states - the benefit corporation. This legal entity is still new and needs to improve, but it's promising. Maybe a forward looking state will take a leap at some point and require a similar, minimum legal structure for all corporations. Awesome if that would be Delaware.
4
@azlib Maybe these companies should be public utilities, or closely regulated as one.
5
I see Plato’s anecdote about writing here as described to point to something else - the ancient and continued demonization of new technology. Then it was written language, now it is digital technology and specifically Facebook. There will always be reactionary forces and their arguments will always amount to a fear of change.
That being said, I can’t stand the incessant spectacles we live through. Everything is a spectacle. I read this to be the underlying critique in Plato’s writing here, instead of an anti technology argument : spectacle as a subversion/obfuscation of reality, spectacle as a replacement of lived memory. Funny and quaint that it would be applied simply to writing, thinking of all the wonder that has come since from written words. And of course Plato did write it down after all.
1
This brings to mind a passage from the Qur'an:
O you who believe! If a wicked person brings you any important news, examine it carefully, lest you should harm some people in ignorance and afterwards you may have to repent for what you did.
I have pretty much withdrawn from Facebook because it is not worth my time to evaluate every claim.
I’m kinda old (73) and I fought Facebook for ages until my daughter suggested that if I wanted to see pictures of my great nieces and nephews, who are scattered around the country, I should join. I said fine but she had to set me up with privacy settings so that I could really just have people that I wanted to connect with on Facebook there. I have no idea what she did but I only have friends and family as my “friends” -although I do giggle with them when our Facebook anniversary shows up as two or three years and I have known them for 60 years! I have no apps through Facebook nor have I ever bought anything through the site. But I reconnected with a long lost cousin who grew up in the same small town I did and that’s has been a blessing. And we actually talk on the phone periodically. So somehow my daughter made it work for me. And those “friend requests that come through their algorithm-I happily ignore!
2
I have 10 FB friends, all relatives. I joined because I live a thousand miles from my young grandchildren, and I wanted to see the short videos and photos of them, sometimes showing monumental life stages. I saw my granddaughter take her first tottering steps seconds after she did it. I heard her first babbling words within a minute. I felt like I was there. When my daughters post these moments, they can reach all their relatives and friends at once. I loved shows on Amazon streaming, and I loved buying Amazon used books for a few cents, but I've gone off Amazon, because of their workers' conditions. I would dearly love to quit FB too, but I want to see my family's seminal moments; and this is the way it's now done.
3
Yes. I work in secondary education, and remember the days when every school wanted all their students to have ipads.
Administrators loved it because they think education is a problem and that every problem can be solved with money.
Well, that was a disaster.
Now the best schools are trying to figure out how to get technology OUT of the classroom.
Sit at the back of any classroom and all the kids are texting, watching youtube, playing video games, or on FB.
Whatever supposed benefits tech offers in education are completely overwhelmed by the deluge of evil.
I think the day is not far off when elite schools will be advertising tech-free campuses.
4
It’s ironic that all the anti-Facebookers in this comments section are doing just what they detest about Facebook—sharing their opinions and thoughts. I use Facebook less these days than I once did but still like the platform and use it to check in on friends from time to time, share thoughts and articles, and post photos of things I see that amuse me.
Oh yes. I am also an advertiser who finds it a useful vehicle and appreciate its efficiency in targeting people who are most likely to be interested in the products my company makes.
So for those who don’t like Facebook, you have the freedom to not use it. For those of us who do like it, leave us alone to use the platform as we see fit.
Freedom. It’s an American precept.
Twitter, Facebook - people accepting “information” posted on these sites uncritically have only themselves to blame. The issue is more one of gullibility and personal responsibility than malfeasance. I shudder to think what would happen today if “War of the Worlds” were posted on Facebook.
1
Another more modern fable that comes to mind is Frankenstein. Facebook is an out of control monster, and the brilliant scientists that created it are more concerned with PR than actually saving the towns people where the monster is running amok.
1
Stephens writes: 'Facebook’s mission is “to make the world more open and connected.”'
Surely, everyone must know by now, those, that is, who give it any thought at all, that Facebook first creates and confirms cliques and separates and then marginalizes people who refuse to join in what is considerably more an anti-social medium in its impact than it is a social medium. Let me count the ways.
1
Too many people are still satisfied hearing that someone in tech is working on fixing "computer problems."
And every means of communication has those cute little icons to grow and perpetuate the lie.
1
I fully agree. Information sharing/learning, has become faster, lazier, less accurate, and ironically, more consequential than ever. "Garbage in. Garbage out." Perhaps the most time proven cliche' of the digital information age.
2
I was a stockholder of Twitter and Facebook. As an investor and someone interested in technology, I felt it was prudent to buy stock in companies who would be creating the next generation of industry scions.
It was pretty clear within months of Twitter going public that Jack Dorsey and his leadership team were pirates in search of treasure, and really had no map or compass. It is no surprise that Twitter could be taken over by the rampant ID of Trumpism or that a conniving apparatchik such as Putin could manipulate it into a platform to upend Western Democracy. So I sold.
I held on to Facebook until January 2018, believing somehow that it’s management was learning on the job, figuring it out along the way, learning from its mistakes. When I read the first reports of Mark Zuckerberg's willful ignorance of Russian interference, the first thing I did was to sell Facebook because I really don’t want to support any company that is so brazenly in pursuit of profit over country.
It’s important to remember Facebook and Twitter declared themselves “Platforms”, not publishers, shirking all responsibility for what said is on their “passthrough platforms”. Government won’t regulate them, so the only real alternative is stockholders. Returns on these investments are stalled because of management incompetence results in a lack of trust, and loss of shareholder value. Investors can force a change. Because they are actually the only ones Zuckerberg and Dorsey will listen to.
2
“I like people. It’s humanly I can’t stand”. You can’t blame Facebook for the weaknesses of humanity. They made mistakes, but for most people it is a great way to communicate.
Socrates was against the written word, but even memory corrupts....
I have never used Facebook and from all I’ve read recently I’m not missing much. I know I know I’m one of three or four people in the us that isn’t on Facebook but I’m going to be ok
1
mark has complete control he is therefore completely accountable for what Ms Sandberg deployed for him
which included denying his jewish roots and exploding the idealism of his marketing a product/service that enhances everything in all peoples lives
he must break up his entity before someone does it for him
take the cash and fundamentally atone for being a partner in the destruction of democracy
I retired and moved to the woods, 45 minutes away from an easy coffee shop conversation with friends, I began using Facebook as a way to keep in touch with friends and distant relatives. I enjoyed sharing family pictures, events and recipes. I became acquainted with friends of friends from all over the world and enjoyed learning about their culture and perspectives. Yes, it made my social life easier but what is wrong with that?
Then the 2016 election began and I found out information about distant relatives that I wish I had never known. There were postings from them that were ethically abhorrent to me and simply not factual. I spent about 18 months fact checking posts and memes from mostly the right but sometimes on the left. I was rarely thanked for it and those from the right just doubled down. Although I became more knowledgable about the world and current events I felt like I was not achieving anything and was becoming entrenched in negativity and frustration.
I quit Facebook about 6 months ago when the privacy breaches came to light. I miss the easy flow of personal information between some family and friends. I send and receive more emails and post pictures on Instagram sometimes.
My husband thinks I am foolish to expect Facebook to fact check the billions of users posts because, in reality, this is not Facebook's goal. The goal is to make money and not to give the people of the world a platform for sharing and discussing their lives and ideas.
3
My experience with Facebook is so similar that I could have written this myself. I recently deleted my account and while I miss some parts of it (news from distant friends and family), most of it (everything else) I do not. I do wonder, though, exactly why it has become what it has. Is it the fault of the users, the creators, or both? Is it human nature to eventually weaponize nearly everything? One thing I will say for Facebook and most of the rest of social media - it has revealed the true nature of the world we live in and it is not a pretty sight.
2
Thank you for this column. Never used FB or any social media for exactly the reasons you state. Discipline and dedication are not quick or glamorous. And looking at what the ancients said about the nature and demands of friendship supports your conclusions. How can one have "friends" one has never seen and is not always sure who they really are?
1
With all the talk of Facebook's problems, people seem to forget one of the biggest challenges we have as enablers of this system. We seem to forget that we have allowed this company and many others to use our most proprietary information--us, who we are, what we like, who we like and what we think in general, what we call "privacy" absolutely free and unabated.
Our most intellectual property, as in the things we create (music, writing, art, etc.) is really us, our inner most thoughts, loves and dislikes.
If I write a story, it is technically trademarked and I should be paid if someone else wants to use it as their own. This is not the Facebook model. We should be asked for notified prior to Facebook using any of our personal information, then duly compensated for that use. Facebook is running free and amok in our lives stealing every ounce of our intellectual property second by second, day by day, all absolutely free.
That is truly the crux of the problem and I doubt it will ever change now that the Google, Facebook, Instagram, Apple, on and on consortium is allowed to mine our minds--unfettered and for free.
4
Whatever its flaws Facebook can be engaging and fun. It makes it "easy" for me to keep in touch with friends and family who live far away from me. It was the thing that helped find and bring together some of my friends from a summer camp of 50 years ago. It has helped my small number of friends from high school grow into a large bi-coastal group that has reunions every year. It allows friends to post interesting news and articles about what is happening in the world. It can also be annoying so, when that happens I take off for a day or so. But all in all my experience is great. I would not quit it permanently for anything.
2
Just want to add what an wonderfully thoughtful and well-written article this is.
2
Facebook should be renamed Fakebook. But spellcheck in making your life easier, will change it back.
2
Wow! Thank you.
Gossip was a stabilizing factor when humans lived in groups of 150. News spreads faster when it is juicy but people could easily verify what’s closer to the truth. It also gave people the illusion of power when they trashed their leaders in words only.
Gossip spreading seamlessly through a population of a billion has turned in to a fierce force of destruction. There is no good way of verification and the worst rumors travel the fastest.
Until Facebook can fix this flaw, people are advised to keep a close circle of friends and not allow third parties to enter the conversation via links or memes. That business model hardly pays the owner but benefits everyone else.
4
A well stated comparison- Thank you Mr. Stephens. Facebook is a proponent of the untruth of emotional reasoning. As such we need to take it down.
3
I don't see how facebook is really any different from any other form of media. As King Thamus points out, this been the problem ever since we first started writing down language. We read a historical account in a book and think we know what happened. But do we really? How do we know that our stories aren't being manipulated by the authors? Facebook will always do what it needs to do to protect it's profits and that means protecting it's reputation and providing a service that people like and depend on. But how is that different from the NY Times or FOX News? Of course they should be ethical. And we should demand that they be ethical. But facebook isn't going away because people find it to be a helpful way to connect with friends. And it's difficult to imagine a viable alternative.
1
The danger of Facebook is not that it offers easy, shallow interactions to replace the hard work of meaningful relationships. Humans have always found ways to do that. The new risk is that the technology behind it has created a book more skilled at critiquing it's readers than vice versa. Every feed, like and click has been weaponized as continuous psychographic surveillance, allowing Facebook to know us better than we know ourselves.
2
And Siri does not know when to not use the apostrophe in “its” during dictation, but the failure to catch that during editing is on me.
"After three thousand years of explosion, by means of frag- mentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man-- the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society....." Marshall McLuhan; Understanding Media, The Extensions Of Man, 1964
Time to resurrect McLuhan. As prescient a prognosticator as ever there was.
1
Lots of possible classical references possible here. Odysseus constantly gave in to the Siren song of curiosity as he went ashore and lost himself in distractions. It took him a decade to get home and lost his crew along the way who were his only true companions.
I personally never used Facebook as I was always wary of it content and distractions, but here I am sending my words off into the treacherous world of the internet and spending a lot of time doing so. Scammers love the internet as they can say and claim anything and keep their innanimity. But the Siren song of being heard by someone chains us to it and lures us away from the hardship of actually making friends.
As with all our technologies it is a two edged sword of possibilities and the internet in its power only magnifies its possibilities for gain and freedom or pain and loss.
1
At his core Mr. Stephens apparently has a belief very similar to my own: Each new technology takes away some human capacity.
Writing does indeed diminish the capacity for memorization. Cars have left many people unable to walk for any distance. Cell phones obviate the requirement to plan ahead. Google turns everyone into know-it-alls. And social media - don't get me started...
Their is a pleasure in the basics of living. Splitting firewood in the summer and maintaining the wood stove in the winter. Going to the root cellar for onions, squash, and carrots that you bought in bulk from a local farmer (who emailed you about his surplus vegetables). Taking a few hours to prepare a beautiful stew (from a new recipe you found on the internet).
And yes, as the author suggests, reading a good book. Maybe even listening to it read to you (as an audiobook) as you do all of the chores mentioned above. After all, hearing a story is the ancient way, listening around a fire long before writing was ever invented.
This is how technology can be used to enhance life without simultaneously diminishing it. Use your car to drive you somewhere beautiful to then take a long walk. Use your cell phone to call an actual friend to join on that walk and then leave that phone back in your car...
5
Mr. Stephens shares Plato's worries that outsourcing memories and skills impoverishes us. Doubtless some capacities are indeed lost by new technology--with printed books, e.g., we no longer had to memorize ancient texts, and lost some memory. But there's another side to this coin: We improve and amplify our talents with technology. We can do more and different things, we can reach more people more efficiently, we can gain access to information and opinions. Sure there is loss. But there is also gain. Both need to be weighed.
@Lad Sessions
Of course you are correct, but where is the leadership helping people to know how to integrate technology into their lives?
Humans evolved to face hardships. And when technology does everything for us we humans tend to create our own problems just to have some adversity to face.
Building a $400B company with over 1 billion users across the globe is hard. Writing a condescending opinion column is easy.
1
@Brandon
Hiring a few extra hired hands to filter out the manmade fake news sewage when your annual profits exceed $10 billion is easy.
Unfortunately, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg lack any true sense of social responsibility and only understand cash, greed and their own egos.
The problem is fixable, but Facebook’s leaders have no consciences.
7
@Socrates They are capitalists and respond to the correct incentives, in my opinion. Buy the stock and enjoy the ride.
Plato invented “the Cloud.” Amazing how so many of his philosophical concepts have become real. That is, if you can call cuberspace real.
"We shape our technologies; and then they shape us." A common observation from history. In the 1990s and early 2000s the companies that now make up the Big Platforms pushed the idea that they were just "pipes" or "wires" and had no responsibility for the information they gathered and transmitted. This shielded them from liability and helped them grow. Now there is ineluctable evidence that evil is flowing through those pipes or wires. Big Platform companies must evolve and grow. If they continue to take the view that baby pictures and family reunions are no different from white supremacy, Nazi style propoganda and incitement to extreme violence, they are complicit in propagating evil. They are not neutral. The evil flowing through their pipes or wires makes them complicit in evil. They must own this. And take action.
4
For me, Emily Dickinson provided the crystallizing moment:
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know!
How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one's name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
The prosecution rests. . .
5
@RBT
Great words, thanks for offering them.
The human compulsion to "be somebody" is tragic beyond words. If only we saw as clearly as Emily did. And had her sense of humor. FaceBook is exactly "an admiring bog!"
The big question, the one that could change the world: how do we wake up from the "be somebody" compulsion? Answer: only one person at a time and only right now.
Perhaps a "new Buddhism", free of he trappings of ancient eastern culture, one that speaks contemporary technological language?
Is there a way to 'short' humanity?
The written word gives us Plato 2000+ years removed. Writing is just fine. In fact, it is the basis for large parts of our civilization from the Bible to the Constitution. It is power, it allows more. It also allows Mein Kampf but frankly if you as a writer dont think the good outweighs the bad here, you have more in common with those who burn books thsn those who read them.
Further gossip and fear mongering does not require writting it down. The first thing that executives and criminals both learn is don’t write down anything incriminating. The real Socrates fidnt write things down and the Athenians killed him anyway.
Facebooks problems are no different than Newspapers yellow journalism or the NYT on the rush to the Iraq war. Nothing to be lauded, lots to be abhorred. But nothing unique.
But make no mistake. The written word allows for conversation, it allows for most peoples religions and ethics to be greater, it allows gor the transmission and rebuttal that is science.
If you want to cower in Platos cave, you’ll die more ignorant and without all that technology helps with. Your life will be brutish and short. With feeble memories and no references.
1
Luddites. Saints and sinners use automobiles and telephones. Do we blame car makers and the phone companies for the use of their technologies? The future will involve huge corporations liking people in social media networks. The NYTimes crusade to bash Facebook helps Sina Weibo be the dominant player in the future. Do they look better to you?
2
“Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names.”
— Joseph Campbell
1
Log off Facebook forever.
2
oddly, i sometimes fear when i write a comment to NYT that a file is being built up on me to be used for nefarious reasons by unknown somebodies.
@gtuz
Relax.
Paranoia is a psychic toxin.
2
@gtuz
The only thing you have to fear are the dreaded comments moderators. Speaking from experience.
Seriously.
1
@gtuz
Good comment. I guess you'll find out when you're nominated to the Supreme Court in 30 years.
God always leaves me hanging, do answer... we have to keep living to find any answers, and so we go
He, he, you would think that in 2000 years humankind could figure out how to manage a written language.
Short cuts are great as long as you still know how to maneuver back to the longer route if something goes wrong.
Knowledge is easy; wisdom takes time.
At 80 years old, I’ve transversed life without TV, computers and instant gratification. We lived with radio, newspapers & Saturday Movie Reels at the theatre. If we wanted to know something that we didn’t know, we had two choices; the library and if you were really lucky, the Encyclopedia Britantannica. The downfall of that was old news sucked. Want to know something instantly today? Google it.
Please! Let’s NOT throw the baby out with the bath water. We’re never going back nor should we. What we do have to keep in check is responsibility. Film Flam Men (and women) have been in existence probably from the beginning of time. Once exposed by the public, they were usually run out of town or tarred and feathered. Today, the President is a perfect example of “The Flim Flam Man” of old, except, because of the internet, he’s managed to convince millions of followers that “Fake News” is the one that’s lying. I guess that’s what’s bothering me the most about todays “instant” gratification. Years ago, a lie was a lie. Period! Today, all you need are some obsequious sycophants as part of your inner circle to support your deceit and you’re a hero.
So–the newest and fastest technology in the world still requires the individual to investigate using Wisdom when making supreme decisions.
3
So, what will you do for a living when you stop producing written words?
ironic that the NYT's most sophistic columnist should invoke Socrates. What would Phaedrus say to the notion that the midterms were a split decision?
This from someone who makes his living with the written word.
Thank you.......Perfect Article
Folly, what folly? Facebook has made billions for Zuckerberg and Sandberg, and millions for thousands of others. This is America, values are counted in dollars - ethics and morals be damned. We blindly worship capitalism, live with it. Since the capitalist Saint Reagan, it's only been about shareholder value, nothing more nothing less. Why change course now?
1
Sage commentary. Serious points.
But then: Hey kids - no worries! Just feigning concern...
"Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook..."
1
I have written two comments in the last two months
concerning Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg noting
that he was not wise by the standards of Greek Philosophers.
[ Yet, no column space was offered to me - not even a
NYT Pick ! ]
Human nature has not changed since there have been
humans: Ignorance, Greed, Lust, Vanity, Dishonesty and Pride
live in the hearts of those who work for Google/Twitter/
Apple and yes,
yes, even
Facebook.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ?
2
Boy howdy, is that not the essence of the "conservative" critique?: "progress is harmful".
But to be fair, Stephens, who sometimes -- sometimes -- seems to see beyond his identity as a right-wing pundit long enough to transcend it, albeit temporarily, does a service by raising the issue of public trust in a thoughtful, rational and concrete way that begins to penetrate the problem.
But his solution: "Log off...read an ancient book" is particularly useless and woefully inadequate given the technological soup we live in now.
What we need is a way to understand what and who we are as individuals and something of the context we find ourselves in existentially. The Universe has gone to a lot of trouble to produce the human animal, a knowing but compulsive creature dominated by a false and arbitrary, albeit naturally-occurring -- self-identity which produces the core problem of self/other (where "other" is not only other humans but also existence itself). Until we see beyond our arbitrary self-images we are doomed to conflict between them and with reality as well.
A so-called "spiritual revolution" is the only - but perhaps futile - hope, both for individuals and for humankind. But at least when we sleep, we often wake up.
1
The story of democracies devolving into autocracies isn't exactly new either Bret. You can read about it in Book VIII of Plato's Republic. Compare it to our republic's path since the latter 1970s and weep.
Facebook and other social media, internet as a whole versus traditional news media in the United States?
The traditional news media in the U.S. is running scared before Facebook, the internet as a whole, but it cannot outright ask for government help in propping itself up, like big banks do when they get in trouble, because that would just risk having themselves painted exactly like the news in so many places around the world which is government controlled and monitored (for example, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea).
So what the traditional news does in the U.S. is proceed indirectly and ask that the government regulate Facebook, the internet, as if the internet is just too wild and as if traditional media in the U.S. has never had a close association to government even though of course one look at the major papers shows them riven by ideology, with thinking right next to dominant politics and economics in the U.S.
It's amusing to watch traditional news accuse Facebook of everything from invasion of privacy to fake news when for decades traditional news with its reporters has been snoop central and with ideology which more than declares itself in pockets of politics and economic interests. It's going to be even more amusing watching how traditional news manages to get government to regulate Facebook and the internet without itself seeming to be government mouthpiece like news in Russia and China and so many other places in the world. Maybe the NYTimes can form a plan.
If the argument is that Facebook has polluted our mind and makes us unthinking zombies we have ourselves to blame. We probably have deplorably weak minds. Are Facebook and Google peddling data and content or they propagating their own point of view? Is the complaint that they did not post signs "strong undertow, swim at your own risk". In the consumerist society we live in, there are many products and services that are offered with subtle advertizement and inducements. If we fall for these ads and buy and consume these indiscriminately it is our fault.
And that's why one calls it "media". It mediates your experience of reality.
"Medium"; neither rare nor well-done.
Why is Bret asking "Facebook" to change? Is asking a crook to not commit crimes the way to end the crime spree? Is "Facebook" beyond the law? If "Facebook" is as much a part of life as electricity, water, heating fuel, etc., then shouldn't it be heavily regulated like other utilities?
The heretofore policy of "hands-off" the social media gurus was ill conceived and that policy has brought forth it fruit. These contemporary robber barons are no different than those that went before them.
2
Technology's claim to make hard things easy is false you say, with conservative sneer. Try telling that to hunters who find guns better than spears for dealing with bears, or doctors who prefer antibiotics to mercury as a cure. And keep this in
mind - - Socrates and Plato harked back to the greeks deep intellectual debt to the darkskinned Egyptians. You conservatives generally try to forget that.
The one 'easy' you missed was the vile or bullying post. It is hard to insult or say horrid things to someone face to face, but oh so easy on social media. Of course Trump doesn't mind insulting anyone face to face or on Twitter, he's that vile. But what disturbs me is how many kids are hurt by social media, by the rejections, the caustic remarks and mean comments. Many know it but can't stay away and many cruel kids are masters of its use. Facebook must face up to itself honestly or be gone. I like the be gone part.
Over 40 years ago I began instruction in computer programming at my employer. One of the first lessons was the acronym GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Nothing much has changed.
The technology is neutral to the society - the human determines its value. The issue with Facebook is not technology, it is the typical problem of human nature - very similar to the problem of the communism. Marx never expected that communism implementation will result the Stalinism and Maoism - a devastating human genocide and national suffering. The cesspool of vomiting from "useless class" of Harari and failed states remained unchecked because of profit motif, indicates the behavior of management that is very similar to Stalin and Mao. Mark Zukerburg and Ms Sander's are open example of failed individuals, and society should class them on that group. This nature is very dangerous and society should expose these characters and prevent them from inflicting farther harms to the society. Connecting people and creating global village is excellent business objective, but maintaining the cleanliness of the village is integral part of it. If you create a global village of criminals, nursistic and hateful people, there is no pride of that creation.
Advertising companies want you to understand that the product they are selling is the best thing for you. You need it. You want it. You cannot live without it.
2
I read the piece, but being written, now I can't remember it very well.
Can Mr. Stephens please transmit his ideas more orally?
Perhaps a podcast on the internet?
1
I am afraid that you are preaching to the converted here, but don't stop.
My own foray into Facebook was compelled by love, by family ties: do I want to see photographs of our large family reunion, including newborns and favorite aunts and uncles? Or not? (hmm...same operational premise as used by vampires in "The Strain").
I reluctantly joined, and instinctively gave only the minimum profile info. I soon found that people who would have little to say to you in person would get very chatty just hours later -on Facebook. People who I have no earthly connection to would be prompted by the algorithm to request that I "friend" them, "like" their every comment. This is a problem, since still have actual friends, who I actually do like.
I discovered that some of the people I am connected to are posting every half hour or so, which made me feel really nervous. The post that made me quit: "Just got back from a killer run. Famished! Made a grilled cheese sandwich with garden tomato. OMG! So good even the dog is drooling! Gonna save the other half for later, though."
276
@Allen Totally. hahahhahahha
10
@Allen I left Facebook months ago but by the time I left the algorithms on Facebook somehow gave me almost no posts from family and friends and a multitude of posts from people I didn't even know. When I realized that I hadn't seen anything from my relatives, son, or daughter in months and was getting all these posts from people whom I had never met I knew it was time to go and so I shut it down. I haven't missed it since and that was 8 months ago. Meanwhile I'm emailing my son, daughter, and relatives. We pick up the phone and yes, we text each other. That's much better. No algorithms. Just relationships.
14
Hey Bret
Do you really believe that the NYT holds a higher moral ground than FB?
Or is it more like “partners in crime” or “honor among thieves”
Two prostitutes with different hair colour, perfume, and makeup.
Welcome to the New York Times.
Plato, Socrates,
Troll us from Antiquity,
Ironically, with their words
1
Unlike Mr. Stephens, who asks that we join him in the hope that Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg shall one day again be "touched by the better angels of our nature," I harbor no such illusion. Seeing them for what they are, good capitalists red in tooth and claw, the American citizenry has need of serious regulation of the FB behemoth and the other tech giants who at present hold unfettered dominion over our data, our pocketbooks and our privacy. Seeing such creatures for what they are—“Corporations are people, my friends”--serious students of human nature don't question the need for governments to represent and protect the interests of the many from the predations of the powerful. Alas, Mr. Stephens and his ilk have for the last 40 years peddled the lie, bought lock, stock and barrel by a credulous populous, that the government is their enemy. This, of course, leaves us all to the tender mercies of the “free market.” With Mr. Stephen's party actively seeking to dismantle the regulatory framework and the Democratic Party doing nothing to stop them, we find ourselves today left to the whim of whether the likes of Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg are more motivated by the idea of doing right by their customers and fellow citizens or instead succumbing to Wall Street’s iron law of maximizing shareholder value. Unlike Mr. Stephens, I know the answer to this question. "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Folks, we're no angels.
2
Sorry, I'm not buying it.
What we need more than anything is an educated public, capable of critical thinking.
You are using a "free" service.
Think about it.
We have a population that gets news from internet entertainment platforms like Facebook, Twitter, blah, blah.
A platform designed to take advantage of people's desires to feel more important than they really are.
Collect likes, collect friends. Show the world how great you are.
Facebook is an ad agency.
Nothing more.
5
And had it not been for the written word and this gizmo called the internet, I probably would not be reading and responding to your insightful piece.
1
The fact of your column belies its contents. If Theuth had not won, I would not know your thoughts. That would be my loss. You are so intelligent that I thought this might be ironic, but apparently not. A writer who uses an attack on writing to prove his point. Like the haters of social media who post their oh-so-erudite opinions Facebook. Maybe you can also find a valuable use for the thing you attack.
It is easy to criticize someone on social media. It is much harder to do that face to face. Social media takes a full measure of kindness and decency out of the conversation. Social media divides us by allowing people to hate with impunity. Comment sections, a form of social media, in some major newspapers are nothing but a steaming cesspool of political hate. Tools can be terrible and wonderful or both, but I have yet to find a tool, including books, that makes me wiser.
@dudley thompson
The NYT comment platform, which is moderated by real humans that filter out the sewage, is a model that is civil and educational.
All it takes is a little social responsibility and paying for the expense of a few extra people to enforce civility, something that most greedy corporations refuse to pay for.
6
And people who control financial support for education want to take philosophy out of schools???? Knowledge is power. Look to the Greeks and all the foibles of humankind are carefully laid out.
As an educator for over over forty years, I sadly watch the phones sucking out my students' brains, and I tell them so.
I heard that when TV was invented, people said how great it would be for education. Then the computer arrived and people said how great it would be for information! Yes, both exist, but take a sorry look.
1
Unfortunately, Zuckerberg does not have a degree in journalism or ethics. His goal is to grow and become rich. The moral compass is never a factor and he has no oversight. Words destroy and I now understand people are mere puppets, most of them unable to step outside their own prejudices, unable to open their minds.
Humans really are ignorant creatures and flock to those who say only what they want to hear. Facebook bring out the lowest common denominator in humanity while they take in huge amounts of money from advertisers who manipulate the mindless.
The result of such an unchecked torrent of written words fulfills this universal truth. People are idiots and believe anything the are told.
1
As Thamus said “When, or rather if, they read the user agreements, they will lack the brains necessary to comprehend the evil hidden within.”
5
Blah blah.
Charles Darwin along with James Watson and Francis Crick have more to say about this matter than either the Ancient Egyptians or Greeks. This is all about biology aka evolution by natural selection. Neirher philosophy nor theology matter much.
We are by nature and nurture African primate apes who evolved naturally fit in Africa 300,000 years ago. We are programmed to crave fat, salt, sugar, habitat, water, kin and sex by any means necessary including conflict and cooperation. Our hubris places us on a pedestal that attributes higher motives to our endeavors and enterprises.
What is the business of Facebook?
The ethical obligation of a business enterprise is to maximize the profitable return of it's shareholders. Facebook users are on the menu as prey for the diners aka advertisers to whom Facebook sells their personal information at a profit. Facebook users are not the customers.
History teaches that our technology typically runs ahead of our socioeconomic educational political legal moral governing ability to adequately control and weigh costs and benefits.
2
@Blackmamba
Alfred Wallace, Gregor Mendel, Ernst Mayr, Willi Henning and E. O. Wilson too.
Plus Mary B. Shelley's masterpiece Frankenstein.
1
Quit yesterday (not like I care or use those platforms much, but my mom and family are on it and that was the only reason I was there to begin with). After the NYT story, it buttressed my view that f and tweet have become cesspools for the ignorant to stew about conspiracies.
Oh and Bret, it was one of your better columns this year. When you stop wading into politics, you aren't that bad ;-).
1
"Read an ancient book instead."
In hieroglyphics or letters?
Great article! Just shared it on Facebook!
Social intercourse enables and invents plenty of squiggly jiggly interfaces and there’s more fiction to come. Too much nasty sophist junk out there? Ask the right questions that gently ease the cacca into full view. Apply Socratic truth deodorant on the smelly stuff. Venerate the authentic experiences that shape joy and well being for one another.
Reading an ancient book is certainly very good advice, but so many people never read any books at all. The illiterate and semiliterate masses have elected as president of the United States a man who is proud to say that he never reads anything.
3
Much has already been said about Facebook's propensity to exacerbate loneliness and isolation.
But Facebook serves an enormously useful function that few seem to recognize: it is far and away the best babysitter for our most self-absorbed, narcissistic friends and relatives.
Rather than calling or emailing all of us incessantly with their complaints, boasts and uninteresting daily musings, our closest and dearest can take care of business by posting all of the above to Facebook. And they do. And rather than spending hours enduring all that, we can simply "like" and move on, or not read it at all.
Thank you Facebook!
1
There are certain things from which the profit motive should be removed. I am thinking health care for one. Social media just might be another.
Now if some very wealthy benefactor were to come along and build an alternative social network that either accepted no advertising or modest advertising that was not pegged to who was logged on, there would be no need to track and store data on anyone. This would be its promise to its members.
Of course, there would still be the potential for the dissemination of disinformation and other abuses. But what an improvement this would be over the Facebook model!
2
This is a great article, but I think the point is one of the actual differences that divided Socrates and Plato, which is to what extent philosophy should be reduced to the written word. Socrates believed it should be oral, for the very reason set forth by Thamus. But the problem is that this means that idea is lost. We only know the philosophy of Socrates through Plato as Socrates left no writings. So in the end, how reliable can it actually be. It is true that we can put too much emphasis on the tool, be it written text or social media, but at the end of the day, these are tools that enhance knowledge, but only if we use them as tools and do not become slaves to them
4
Facebook would be vanquished overnight if it’s users would be willing to accept the inalienable truth that not a single person feels genuine joy when viewing the user’s studiously curated happy life moments with the exception of, maybe, the user’s mother.
5
Excellent column. However, as Mr. Stephens points out, it is the human element that is failing with Facebook and not the technology itself. I am not a member myself, but I envy the way it has allowed my adult children to easily keep in touch with so many people who meaningfully touched their lives. The issue reminds me of the discussions from my generation re: the good vs. evil of television. Ultimately, one's opinion of the technology of television (seems rather quaint now) often came down to what program appeared when you turned the knob. Was it Sesame Street or the WWF.
3
"Accept that the work will take time." That is easy. But to accept that the work will reduce profits is a bridge too far for Zuckerberg and Sandberg.
Accepting that things need to change is easy. Accepting that they might not be the ones to bring about that change is hard (too hard) for Mark and Sheryl. Indeed, you can never see the whole picture when you're in the frame.
5
Like any other company, Facebook wants as much money as it can get. Where does it get the money? From advertisers, to whom it supplies infinitely parsed and sorted data on its more than two billion users. Those users get a free ride thinking they are connecting with all their bffs in so-called communities. Except they are not getting a free ride. Far too many of their personal details are shared with advertisers. Why is any of this even vaguely okay? Why do we feel the need to present what TS Eliot once called a face to meet the faces that you meet in a dimensionless digital world? We’re a long way from Plato’s cave.
114
@Mark Siegel
Yes. Did Zuckerberg ever think about the socio-techical aspects such a thing as Facebook? Of course not!
So is he really go blame in this? Not in my view. I have always viewed this in terms of just dumbly walking into the capitalistic wave. It's somewhat excusable.
What's going to work between groups, and between disjointed peoples, its going to be logic.
2
@Mark Siegel
Interesting comment but aren't we still in the cave? Aren't we so comfortable in the cave that we keep moving away from the light at the entrance?
10
@Mark Siegel Get rid of the advertising and charge ten bucks a month to be on Facebook . Also let the users control their own data.
21
You could even read a modern book, fiction or non-. Make "friends" of the authors you enjoy, whose writings make us think and, therein, make us more than we were.
What we have on Facebook today is a long listing of often guttural conversations that are psuedo-politically oriented at best, and an Irish bar brawl,with ill-aimed punches and four letter words.
We are fast losing the ability to peacefully dialogue and replace with maniacal monologue. In the meantime, Facebook and Zuckerberg continue to make billions, falsely creating bilge with their wolf in sheep's clothing: social-media, an oxymoron if there ever was one. FB exchanges are far from social, and they separate instead of mediate.
Bret Stephens is right. You could also read Hesiod's story of Pandora's Box. That boxful of hateful is what Pogo the Magnificent meant when he reminded us that we are own enemy.
Facebook is a pandora of our faces from whose books comes our ills.
7
I always thought that Facebook’s view that it is simply a platform to share information shields it being accountable for the content. Similar as the Post Office cannot be responsible for the content of a letter I send, Facebook is not responsible for the information I write on my site.
I now recognize that this thinking is flawed, because Facebook opens every information, analyzes it, and decides to whom to distribute. That is why it should be held accountable for distributing that information. They make money by knowing content. This is a critical distinction and thus should be held accountable to standards prevailing in the news industry.
I think the regulator needs to step in.
721
Great point. Once FB assumes the role of curator they can no longer claim to be a neutral platform.
52
@j
Agreed.
And another difference is that the Post Office isn't allowed to insert ads into your sealed mail or aggregate data from your sealed mail in order to build a profile of you and sell ads based on that, or simply to sell those data, aggregations and profiles for whatever purpose to whomever.
On the user side, we need to stop making it possible for that to be done with our personal information. Let's reboot the concept, and practice, of privacy as a vital tool of freedom, independence and democracy while we still can. And let's demand of social media, and those we elect to protect our interests in the above matters, that they get with the program.
46
Spot on!
21
I think the lesson to be learned again is that no matter what form of technology overlays human thought, emotion, and behavior, be it the written word or software, our true intent eventually shows through and takes over, be it greed, laziness, lust, or love.
2
Technology promises to make things easier that need to be hard?
Interesting proposition. It’s what my teachers and parents used to say about cliff notes. (Now I say it to my kids.)
But in reality, the exceptions swallow the rule.
Does it need to be hard to travel from New York to California or London, let alone to New Jersey? Does it need to be hard to treat infection and heart disease? To communicate with friends and family who don’t live near you? Does it need to be hard to acquire new music or a new book, let alone access and comments to a story or op-ed in this paper?
I could go on and on, but you get the point. If there’s one universal truth, it’s that universal truths are rarely true - including that one.
4
@Steven..... you missed the point...too much Facebook glance and react mentality and not enough thought or proper inspection...the man said "things that should be hard"...meaning that some should be and some not...never said it was a universal truth
1
In the mean time, while we wait for the IT tycoons to grow into maturity, please let's adopt European style privacy and data ownership law and regulations. As with health care, the hard work has already been done by our friends across the pond. Just do it.
924
@PM33908 thank you, Nancy.
3
To me the good thing about technology is that it gives us more freedom as to how we spend our time. Up until about 100 years ago, most people spent the bulk of their time looking or working for food and shelter. They didn't need to think about how to spend their leisure time because there wasn't much.
But having spare time puts the responsibility of what to do with it on the individual. And the internet opens up a whole new world. It brings to mind the saying -- often times what you look for is what you find. You can choose to look at porn sites or sites which have extremist political views or waste your time on Facebook, or to look at the NYT, Wikipedia, etc. It is all there, the good and bad a click away.
What does not change is that each person conducts his/her life based on ability, intelligence, industriousness, etc. making use of whatever tools he/she finds useful. Just because others are wasting their life gossiping on the computer, doesn't mean that I have to.
2
Any other entity having perpetrated what Facebook has on the public would have been criminally charged and put out of business.
But when those in decision making roles, our federal legislators, are all getting what amounts free internet constituent related services free that they not only could not otherwise afford, but would not have a clue as to developing an analogous alternative, the results are evident, harm to the public and our national institutions and election process is irrelevant.
Ok to put the country’s telephone system out of business, but Facebook, don’t dare, hands off the golden goose, or should we say the Trojan Horse.
1
Bravo, Mr. Stephens! This is it, in a nutshell.
2
To steal and reframe a half-truth from gun advocates: technology doesn't spread lies, people spread lies. (I feel so dirty writing that)
To say that texting is easy and writing a letter is hard is another half-truth.
One whole truth (or at least three-quarters truth) is that the old gatekeepers of "truth" are angry to have lost their roles and power.
Social media are the new gatekeepers, the new fourth branch of government. Unfortunately, it's a fourth branch infected with uncountable fifth columns.
Oh well, people are people, meaning we're as crazy as we've ever been. Technology merely makes it more obvious.
3
Right, and agriculture is too easy, too. We should all be hunter-gatherers, to be closer to nature. Building houses? Too easy! How could one truly live the human experience without getting wet every time it rains? Language? Too easy! We should all get along with reading people's minds based on nonverbal cues. Breathing oxygen and being multicelular? That's cheating, too! :-)
1
@Bob, your point, sir?
1
The majority of Facebook works great.
Connect with friends.
Follow and message with them.
Join groups.
Get ads that match your interests.
For 99% this the experience.
All the other nonsense can be fixed easily.
There will be a moment where they will announce they still are making gobs of money, because they are delivering a service that for 99% works well and is enjoyable, and then the stock will shoot back up.
Opinion writers like Bret always way over emphasize the negative, and report a false reality for click bait.
Like he did with Tesla.
And then people are surprised when things go well and the stock shoots back up.
1
Bret that's IT exactly. I have not spent one nano second on Facebook. But, I have a Ph.D. in Philosophy. I have a house that I worked hard to get. I own a working car. But more to your point, I know how to write a complex letter, instead of sending a text like " R u UP?". Terrifying the level of indecency we have seen of late. Of course, Trump, who never once read a Book is the Twitter President. Macron called him on that rightly! Don 't forget that Socrates also said that writing things down might make it hard to change your position in the future. Knowledge, Life and Friendships are a Dialectic that those who are ignorant never get a chance to enjoy. So sad.
6
Really great application of ancient wisdom to understand a modern platform. Thank you.
3
Nice piece, very thought provoking.
1
What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.
I may not be Plato, bit I am 67 years old, raised a family, served my nation and my communities. I am not as rich as Zuckerberg, but as a good friend of my father once said of the WW2 hero who never held a credit card, nor graduated H.S., but saved people on a battlefield, while living well into his 80"s: "He must have known somethin'"
1
Facebook is a symbol of the times as much as Trump double-speak and the relentless erosion of the various languages of the world.
There is no hope of a return to rationality as long as we, the world, do not wake up to the manipulation of forces intent on control of our lives and societies.
They, governments, like those led by Trump, are intent on control, regardless of the damage they do as long as it profits them, while the people who adhere to their stated beliefs are losing as much as those who defy them.
It's all in the subtle phrases of manipulation and subtle, or not so subtle, distortion of half-truths and utter lies spoken as truths purveyed by charletons and shiesters that deceive the self-interested down the path of non-redemptiom.
Plug your ears, citizens of the world and stand against the forces manipulating you.
3
Bret, are you coming over to the light side from the dark, and becoming (gasp) more liberal?
If so, welcome to the light. But remember, we need legislation, and regulation. This Facebook knot isn't going to untie itself, no matter how prescient Socrates was.
Also, don't forget, Socrates was poisoned by the powerful, for speaking truth to power.
3
Google hasn't dropped their mantra, they're re-tooling it. Mantra 2.0 is "Don't Be Evil; Leave That to Us."
Plato's wider point seems to be that we aren't well-situated to judge the implications and effects of our innovations. As an educator, I am particularly appalled at the way our education institutions so willingly adopt technologies with little consideration of the ways those technologies will change the ways we go about our business. It's not just things like campus-wide wifi (which everyone should have seen was going to create problems), but more insidious things like the way the introduction of grades (which would have made no sense to Plato) have distorted our educational goals.
Facebook is a just a tool, and like other tools, in some ways productive and in other ways dangerous. Like the opium problems we face, it calls for oversight and regulation from outside itself and increased awareness of its dangers by its consumers.
2
Fantastic! Hoping Facebook takes your recommendations to heart. But then, I am also hoping Trump resigns for the greater good of the country and the free world.
1
The problem with blaming Facebook is that it is a private company responsible to its shareholders. As a society, we cannot rely on a private company to enforce ethical standards, just like we cannot rely on a murder suspect to make a judgement on his case. This has to be supervised by a higher authority, i.e. a government mechanism. There has to be a digital ministry just as there is a ministry of commerce or agriculture. Ultimately, as you say, information is about trust and that trust must be instituted independently.
5
In the early days of Facebook I saw it as an ongoing high school yearbook for children of all ages. I am happy I kept to my decision not to join after the platform morphed into the thicket of thorns it has become.
1
Really, really smart. Technology gives us another way to avoid taking on the messy, complex, difficult, deeper challenges of life -- the engaging of which is the only means to meaning and satisfaction and contribution.
3
One of your best columns, Mr. Stephens.
I've also taken the time to read a lot of the comments, appreciating that there are still people out there who can think, read and write in a complete sentence with punctuation! Thanks to social media and a lack of thoughtful discourse and action in our education system today, we are victims of our own diminishing attention spans. Stay with this one. It's important.
5
The danger of advancing technologies is that they put people at a remove from actions that aren't supposed to be easy. I'm not advocating that we do without technology but I don't think we should be kidding ourselves about the possible negative consequences before jumping in with both feet.
I have only to examine my own social media interactions to realize the downside of that universe. It has been far too easy to fall into a kind of mob rule type of mindset online. Similar to physical addictions it can take real determination to tear yourself away from it particularly if you find yourself living too much in the online world.
It's been almost 50 years since I last read Plato. But I don't need to remember one word of it to see the fatal flaw at the core of Facebook. It isn't just the overwhelming greed of its founders and investors; It isn't the overweening hubris of Zuckerberg, and his executive cadre -- although these contribute greatly.
Facebook's technology clearly proved to be scalable to world-wide dimensions. What could not scale, and what Z. and Company didn't consider was the the shared ethos of the walled garden that its birthplace, Harvard, that nurtured and proved the concept would not, indeed, could not scale beyond those ivied walls. The world is a much messier and nastier place than Cambridge, Mass.
As soon as Facebook reached beyond Harvard to invite in the hoi polloi, it was doomed to become a playground for cons, fraudsters, and propagandists for good and ill. Facebook has become an instance of Gresham's Law applied to outside of economics: "Bad information drives out good information"
3
Facebook helps me feel connected. And informed. I say the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.
And it's helped me reconnect with friends from other ages in my life. Plus I get a lot of my news and updates from news publications, musical events, horse journals, funny dog videos, and almost anything else I would like to hear from. I use it daily and love it.
If you don't like it, don't use it. It's a free country.
1
@EStone True, but do you like, and do you give consent, that Facebook also keeps track of every one of your connections, attentions, and purchases, and sells that info to entities you may abhor?
1
@EStone
"Plus I get a lot of my news"
The problem is that what many people think is news really is propaganda, which they then share with "friends" who take the sharing as a label of approval, helping to spread half-truths and outright lies.
1
@EStone
The implicit suggestion that not using FB will address the reason(s) for not liking it depends on the assumption that "dislike" arises only from personal use.
But such FB dislike as is - usefully imo - topical, arises from "impersonal" use, for example, from dissemination of Russian propaganda and of fake news generally.
And yet the study of the humanities has dropped in our colleges and has relinquished its role in society to STEM studies. Of course, the humanities rely on the written word, but with the loss of humanities as a serious and respected major, I believe our younger generation could have a lesser ability to think critically, communicate verbally and on paper, compare works and perspectives, develop coherent arguments. Add to this our increasing reliance and shares and likes of news without trusted authorship and context and tweets of 280 characters, and our society appears doomed to take a further downward turn.
3
It often appears that the instinctual reaction of companies that have grievously erred, intentionally or negligently, is to fix the bad p.r. instead of fixing the underlying problem.
And the secondary reaction is to send out the lobbyists and make generous campaign donations.
I am not a prodigious consumer of social media. So I have a hard time understanding why anyone would rely on Facebook for news, fake or otherwise.
But is Facebook the problem or only a symptom of the problem? How could people be so gullible as to believe some of the more outlandish conspiracy stories? Has logic departed? Discerning facts and reaching conclusions based on facts is evolutionary. It looks like we are regressing.
7
Read an ancient book -- good advice. But remember also what Plato said about books: that when we read a book we seem to be hearing the voice of a person; but if we ask it a question, it can't answer. Reading books requires -- and has always required -- just as much attention, wisdom, perspicuity and caution as playing in the the tech sandbox demands.
8
Awesome critique.
What also makes the Facebook problem even more complex is it's very nature. They don't make a product that they have to stand behind, The don't publish articles or sell advertising that has to be scrutinized first for legitimacy. I would argue that they need to one or the other (media company or producer of content) and treated as such. The novelty of it's business model doesn't allow to escape the rules of the road.
4
Am I the only one thinking in terms of The Sorcerer's Apprentice?
7
@Lisa:
Wonderfully funny image! Mickey Zuck in his crumpled wizard's hat, desperately trying, and failing, to stop the flooding waters and the now-alive brooms carrying in more and more buckets-full. Yep, it fits.
1
This is what I tell my kid - the internet is like fire and water.
It can do a world of good, it can bring us great knowledge in an instant, unbelievable music, understanding, communication, and more.
And, it can be very very destructive, awful. Beware. Be skeptical. And never spend too much time on a screen. The woods never disappoint us, the screen often does.
9
I don't know whether the biggest problem is (1) that tech companies promised to contravene the most fundamental principles of business; (2) that they failed to live up to their promises and ideals; or (3) that the public was stupid enough to believe them in the first place.
While it might be comforting for self-satisfied techies to believe that they are creating a digital utopia, the simple fact is that they are selling products and services for profit. And, as with all products, there are both costs and benefits. And as with all for profit businesses, there are people who's job it is to create, cultivate and protect the company's image. And there are people who's job it is protect the company from external threats, including lawsuits, regulations and other constraints on the company's freedom to operate. When the company is attacked. it's time to call in the lawyers, lobbyists and PR people. That's life!
Welcome to reality! What fools actually believe that tech companies would or should simply roll over at the first sign of controversy, foregoing billions of dollars of revenue or fundamentally disabling their business models. And, as for their whining employees, if your idealism kills the golden goose, we will see how much you like getting along on the type of money ordinary people make.
Quite frankly, blaming FB for all of this nonsense would have been like blaming the inventor of the printing press for fake news in the past. FB was right to fight back.
1
And among Facebook's many sins is that it decides which of my friends' posts I get to see to cut down on "noise" unless, I just discovered, you make somebody a "close" friend. Yet, when I visited a website to cancel a subscription to Product A, the next time I logged into Facebook, I saw for the first time an advertisement for Product A.
I have announced to my Facebook friends that I will be deleting my account later on today. How many of them who are logged on will be seeing this farewell?
2
It is only half true that "technology is only as good as the people who use it." Technology is also only as good as those who design it. I find it hard to see Facebook as anything but colossaly evil, a grand-scale carnival hoax, the world's most massive bait-and-switch scheme. It's a siren singing, "Come share and be utterly transparent," but the siren's manifold motives are to exploit you and everything you share, and also to enable anyone with enough money to do the same.
It's time for Zuckerberg and Sandberg to shut Facebook down until they can rebuild it not to be exploitive. But that's the whole business model. Technology is only as good as the minds that create it.
These people are not a lot different from the NRA—they have the blood of countless people on their hands.
2
Fair is fair. Excellent column for a Saturday morning.
3
The paragraph that begins with "Tweeting and trolling are easy..." is what I save from Bret Stephen's statement." It also points to the insoluble problem faced by those of us who only know how to engage in discussion by writing and reading whole paragraphs.
Case in point: Thomas Chatterton Williams, fine writer, sometime NYT columnist. He tries to discuss important subjects via Twitter. I find most of these efforts unintelligible. But he being human could not carry out Email discussions with us.
What to do?
My answer. TCW, write more columns, read and reply to 5 comments, and finish and publish your book. While we are waiting give us a provisional title.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
2
Fundamentally, FB is a gigantic magnifying mirror. We see the nature of ourselves (and others) revealed, and we don't like what we see.
Why blame the mirror?
3
@Bob Krantz
I think you reveal the real problem when you say that FB is the "revealer" of our nature.
It is this belief in itself that one must question.
A mirror is only projecting an image not the nature of anything.
“In a better world, Twitter might have been a digital billboard of ideas and conversation ennobling the public square. We’ve turned it into the open cesspool of the American mind.“ Truer words were never spoken. And the same can be said about many FB posts. Below FB claims that the negatives of Plato may be attributed to all written media. Apparently nuance is lost on the gentleman.
4
Like so much foolish commentary on FB - FB is a tool - it is like a pen or a piece of paper or a wall posted with anti-Semitic diatribes. What - we are going to tear down every wall now?
Just in passing, Plato also said in the Republic:
"Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils."
2
Excellent article very timely and pertinent story.
1
The so-called social media is inherently anti-social. It replaces a handshake with a "like," a face with a picture, and adds a complex layer of distortion between people. Regrettably, they, especially Facebook have managed to hypnotize the masses as if we are living in a dystopian science fiction movie.
The problem lies with losing sight of what technology is. Earlier this week, the CEO of Google said that technology does not solve humanity's problems. That is how they have collectively missed the mark. Technology is a way of achieving something. Rolling huge rocks on timber to make the pyramids was a technology, so was understanding the fulcrum and leverage, and so on. Lately, this concept has been upended and we started seeing technology for technology's sake, totally ignoring the "human benefit" aspect of it.
Facebook created the illusion that it brought family and friends together, yet it actually pushed them apart. Instead of picking up the phone (another technology) and calling a family member or a friend it has become much easier to click on the "like" with each click pushing people away from each other. By removing the "face" it also removed personal control on one's behavior and made offensive dialog easier, even desirable. After all, we can unfriend the person if they put up a fuss. As you see, it made us consider "unfriending" as a viable way to resolve matters.
Plato, dolor unius crustulum! Thank you.
4
I've never participated in any social media platforms at all; I've never regretted this decision.
If contact with distant family members or old acquaintances is important enough, one can actually reach out to them using traditional methods. If the cost of contact through social media is zero, I assume the value of the contact is zero as well.
Facebook, twitter and their ilk are clearly a cancer on society, and while they can't be made to go away, their managements owe society enormous responsible management commensurate with the enourmus profits they are reaping from them.
9
Facebook is part of the problem, but technology in education is a greater evil.
The symbolic representation of life is not the same as life itself. Perhaps the greatest harm done by technology is an act of omission. Every hour of screen time, whether in school or at home, is an hour not spent in some much more important activity, especially those things that involve real human engagement.
But these neurobiological and psychological questions about digital immersion can’t withstand the incessant press for automation and standardization. Technology is just the most recent manifestation of the industrial model of education. Inherent in the technological model of education is economy of scale. It must be impersonal, and people and parts must be interchangeable. It must be replicable. It must be quick and efficient, and measurable with terabytes of data and clouds of metrics. Most importantly, it must be profitable.
We're taking away children's lives in service of greed.
5
As an extension of who we are words are a mask that both reveal and hide. One example is the common adage that we follow the rule of law. Well, yes and no because who creates law and what is the intent hidden behind its words. Then there is not only the making of the law but the practice of the law. Herein is, of course, the significance of debate over adhering absolutely to the letter of the law, the strict observance to the constitution and why the Supreme Court should actually be nonpartisan. The human condition is fraught with contradictions hence the repeated calls for politicians and businesses to "operate ethically, openly and responsibly." Thanks Bret for an excellent piece.
3
Topical and engaging article. Thank you Bret.
From my vantage point, we should have seen this coming. It is somewhat facetious and convenient to point the blame laser at Zuckerberg and Sandberg and does not serve to adjudicate a wiser outcome for the future. Blame never solved any problem.
Did we not know that the outcome of an unregulated media is a lot worse than a self regulated finance industry. Where was our headset as a society while we sat by and watched the internet industry become omnipotent? Obviously, everybody knows the unsavory outcomes of eating at every roadside stall simply because the stalls are selling something labeled "Food". But somehow we forgot to apply basic rules of sensibility to the consumption of information and here we are. This was the fault of all of us for becoming inebriated about the wonderful benefits of the information superhighway. If you are going to start driving at 200 mph, then the consequences of even very tiny errors are going to be vastly magnified and the outcomes usually traumatic.
I will simply say this : DeFANG the FANG before the venom consumes all of us.
12
Sometime around 2007 when Facebook really started to blossom, my manager and co-workers all confessed they were spending 2 hours per day on it and encouraged me to join.
But I declined, having already been exposed to the evils of chat groups and social sites. Unlike edited journals, any individual can spout any amount of nonsense. Non-truths appear on-screen with exactly the same fonts and dignity as truths.
When my wife joined Facebook I helped her upload albums of photos but wanted no part of it other than that. Then the trouble started.
My wife's family members began to fight amongst themselves on Facebook, saying hurtful things, they were addicted and couldn't stay away. It got so bad she told me she was disinheriting her kids and it hurt me greatly to hear her say it. In the end, her laptop broke down and I made no attempt to repair it. She moved on to other things but the emotional damage was done. The relationships toward her son and daughter were never restored. When she lay dying in the hospital, neither of them came to see her, a direct result of their interaction on Facebook.
8
No one forces you to use FB and the ads that are a part of the system are they any worse than tv, radio or print. If you want to look at a monopoly look at Google. Google makes more money and controls 80 percent of all searches.
4
I recall when then Harvard President, Larry Summers (coincidently the president there when Mark Zuckerberg was studying) argue that students don't need to learn foreign languages anymore since they now have Google Translator. Probably not the most brilliant idea to come out of Harvard.
8
I don't see tenacious moral leadership fiber as the remedy here. Gathering and selling attention has frayed our culture for a long time. Facebook and Google now produce and sell the most refined streams of attention imaginable from wherever we are at whatever time the day or night.
Consider the sale of child porn, or children for that matter. Woeful would be the culture that placed its bets on the moral fiber of its child pornographers and peddlers.
Karl Polanyi trumps your Plato. When the market is left free to commodify, society is ripped apart in its vain attempts to adjust to what it does not see. For even conservatives there's much more at stake here than moral fiber.
3
I'd been feeling for a long time that we were all going out of our minds. Now I understand. We've outsourced our minds to the cloud. We no longer have to think or remember. It's going to be an arduous climb to get back to the wisdom of Thamus.
6
He is actually alluding to "Plato's Pharmacy" by Derrida. I would second readers who suggest that media outlets that criticize Facebook should show some spine and stop doing business with them.
3
Nice piece, thanks. Does your close owe something to your exchange with Nate Silver? Good on you if so...
1
I, who have always been very critical of Mr Stephens, applaud him for this insightful and brilliantly conceived article.
Social media has given a loud voice to many crackpots who once were restricted to soap boxes in the park or busy street corners; it has also provided a platform for venom spewing, conspiracy promoters, who advocate a vicious political agenda. Medias like Facebook have turned the written word into a weapon wielded by frenzied individuals hellbent on inciting gullible people with wild claims and little, if any, regard for truth.
Ironically, in the future, social media could be the catalyst for draconian curtailment of free speech--or even the total elimination of the First Amendment.
4
Funny, I was ranting to my wife yesterday about the advent and celebration of self driving cars and she asked me when I became a conservative. I tend to be a pretty liberal guy.
But the point of Bret's column is exactly what I hate about self driving cars. Another way to have technology make our lives easier, make us less "able" and more simple. We already are losing our ability to do basic math in our head, or to write properly in full sentences. Our memories are now more stored in Google than our brains. Coping with stress is now accomplished with meds rather than grit and determination.
And driving, which at 58 years old is one of the things that still makes me feel young and challenges my reflexes and reactive skills, will now be done by a machine.
Bravo, Bret. Making things easier should not always be the goal of "progress." You know, there have been many articles written recently about which dystopian work best predicted our current world. To me, Woody Allen's movie "Sleeper" might actually capture today's society best. His people of the future were "happy" and incredibly shallow. Instead of sex they had the orgasmatron; a magic ball was rubbed to arrive at nirvana much more effectively than Prozac; pithy silly phrases were considered poetry; and original thought was gone. But everyone smiled a lot. And was "safer." No thanks. I am proud to have never had a Facebook account.
5
Whatever happened to the highly valued attribute of discretion? There is a time for everything, a time to keep silent and a time to speak. The discerning know when to keep silent. Formerly scorn was reserved for the tabloids - the cheap magazines and newspapers (the gutter press) which indulged in gossip. FB is the new tabloid, open to any fool who wants to see their name in public.
"Fools' names, like fools' faces, are often seen in public places"
4
Just curious Brett. Had you read and remembered the Phaedrus or did you find the quote on wikipedia?
3
Better than Plato...Jimmy Fox played by Tom Hanks, in “A League if Their Own”, if it was easy everyone would do it!
1
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al are to communication as water is to the surface of Earth...if that water were no more than a millimeter deep.
2
What is the difference between posting a comment on a Facebook post or posting one on the New York Times website?
As Mr. Stephens points out the parent or inventor is not able to objectively be the judge. So thus we contribute our comments as if a NYT comment holds more weight or has more value than a Facebook comment. Have we not judged?
Recognize the hypocrisy and our paradox, our truth and non-truths.
What are we to do?
4
Facebook is better described as an advertising appliance than technology.
5
Just stop. Let’s ask Shakespeare about how the use of words has been a negative in our advancement . Using Facebook doesn’t mean one has lost the ability to relate or develop meaning in one’s life. I stay in touch with the many far flung friends and acquaintances I’ve met in a life of being a “globalist”. Facebook got greedy and thereby abused the trust of its users. Not too late to change, and I hope it will. All the apocalyptic references are way over the top. Nobody should get their news on Facebook, but birthday wishes, travel snaps and garden shots of prize pumpkins are great.
4
Thank you for this connection to our thoughtful past as part of this dilemma we are immersed in as a culture between those who believe fake news and those of us who care deeply about the one and only truth. I have personally sworn off Facebook and refuse to use any platform of social media. I have replaced any of the time I would have spent there with thoughtful reading and reflection and a deeper inquiry into our American Democracy focusing recently with another look at Lincoln.
4
What would happen to FB if it found the way and the courage to block every negative newsfeed and post, every name-calling? "If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all" was my mother's watchword, and she was one of the happiest people I ever knew. Love is viral!
3
A simple, provocative article, Mr. Stephens. Thank you.
Yes, it’s time for FB to start over.
But can it? Will it? Does it even want to?
Rebranding it with a new name such as ‘Ethics,’ ‘Conscience,’ or ‘Truth’ (if not already taken), would have to have a ‘?’ at the end, while, sadly, one such as ‘Counterfeit’ or ‘Orwellian’ wouldn’t.
Yet that would be easy but only cosmetic, since it’s what inside that really counts.
Intelligence can breed brilliance as well as arrogance.
Wisdom will always be more valuable.
Bob Mueller for President.
3
Written words give people “not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things but will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”
Welcome to Facebook?
Exactly the same lessons this columnist draws from Plato against Facebook apply against all media, particularly corporate mass media which presumes to set the standard for what “right thinking” people should believe, and does so without encouraging the rigorous dialogue between opposing opinions which Socrates regarded as critical in the search for truth — and often suppressing such dialogue.
Tiresome company indeed.
1
I would like to propose a name for our current era: The Age of Accelerated Hysteria.
Social media enables chicken Liken, Henny Penny and Turkey Lurkey to communicate instantaneously. We can then all agree that the emperor’s new clothing is made of the finest materials.
Human nature has not changed, but rapid and enhanced communication brings the worst of us to the forefront.
8
FB revenue growth is projected to reach 40% yoy as of 11/1. “Facebook made an average of $6.18 off each user in Q4, more than double three years ago.” Of all things discussed about FB why has no one done a statistical analysis of the probability of votes changed by the targeted propaganda sent to over 100 million American users by Russia and Cambridge Analytica? Surely, advertising companies and their clients know what results they can anticipate. Why hasn’t there been ANY hearings or any News stories that provide answers. Everyone just walks around the issue. Everyone admits that Russia did the deed. No one estimates the outcome? Why?
Sure, most Americans would want to know?
The duality of invention for good or for ill goes back to Eden and the Tree of Knowledge and to Prometheus and the discovery of fire. That duality is also present for Facebook which originally was for staying in contact with one's "friends" and family members. That is how I have tried to use it. But, along the way the evil Facebook showed up as a source of rumors, conspiracy theories, political propaganda, and hate speech which became the real social cancer of "Fake News." It is this socially destructive Facebook that needs to be eliminated through regulation. The internet is still a public utility and as such demands such regulatory control by the public through their elected officials. Let's work to keep the good Facebook while ridding its evil twin from the public square.
1
The anonymity of Facebook et al. seems more redolent of the tale of Gyges' ring in Plato's Republic.
Nice column. I feel that it will get off the planet and wonder like another aimless asteroid. But I will take a cue from you and make the effort to be hopeful.
Brilliant piece, Bret Stephens, how Socrates via Plato foresaw Facebook 2400 years ago! We've been betrayed by technology today. We didn't know when the newest invention by Homo Sapiens came down the pike -- horseless carriages -- that it would lead to the plundering of Planet Earth for fossil fuel to run cars. We didn't know when Socrates wrote about the wonders of the written word (technology!) that the unintended consequences from two millennia ago would bring us to the cusp of planetary damage by humankind in this 21st Century. We're seeing today the folly of invention -- the horrifying unintended consequences of human intervention caused by technology on Earth. Whales were hunted and killed almost to extinction for their precious oil to light lamps to read words by until electricity was invented. We didn't fly (and crash) in planes through the air, until planes were invented. We no longer trust the lies -- the untruthful words of social media -- FaceBook, Twitter, magic phones that you swipe (literally, not steal!) -- that promise communication but deliver only anger, unhappy feelings, bigotry and tribalism and more misery in this odd life on Earth. We Americans are slow learners of truth. There are no shortcuts to knowledge. Let's just unplug from technology, go outside, and read a book (not an e-book) in the shade of a tree while trees still last!
3
Best read Brett. Thank you for your insights. Now FB really has to do the hard work.
Mr. Stephens, perhaps you might enjoy a copy of 'The Egyptian Book of The Dead', which according to my brother, Bear, a professor of these ancient times tells me was their bible.
At a Christmas reunion once hosted by his lady, we had a lively political discussion, where Ireland, Jerusalem and Austria remained engaged, while I tried to retrieve a Brussel sprout which has rolled under my velvet shoe. The name 'Huckabee' rang hollow to this ear and carried a Twain note to it. There was no mention of Trump because he had long faded from our memory banks.
Murdoch, Iris Murdoch, knighted by The Queen for her writings, once wrote that philosophers did not make for great writers, and cited Plato as an example. Iris took her thoughts to the creation of many novels, one entitled 'Message to The Planet'.
Few among my acquaintanceship remain on Facebook these days. My godson, a rapper, is the one I care about as he runs to find himself in the midst of these chaotic and uncertain times.
Facebook is a tool like any other, and needs to be controlled by enlightened sharp minds who tread its latest news bites and fabrications.
It is none of our business, Mr. Stephens, to ask for your political party of choice, your religion or your sexual orientation, and continue to be a sphinx without a secret.
Our Country is trying to go forth in the light of the day, without crying.
Excellent. The real lesson is not Facebook or Twitter per se but the inherent dangers in technology itself. After all it's just a stick, but we have evolved it into lever of such proportions (thank you Archimedes) that anyone is able to move the world regardless of their intelligence, morality or stability. The really scary news is this is just the tip of the iceberg. Just wait until technologists come out with "build your own virus" kits or 3D printers capable of making bombs.
1
I am amazed, amazed I tell you, to have a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying, tight-fisted Republican commentator lecture me on the importance of wisdom and morality and concern for all humanity in business, and how those things over-ride profit, and how the immoral and self-centered behavior of one of America's greatest (the Republican version: read 'richest') corporations needs to stop earning for just a sec and reconsider.
What a day.
What does it mean?
2
@oogada
Notice that he doesn't really attack the business model. He just hopes a good person will run the business, diverting some cash flow to editing to mollify critics. This is classic conservatism from the television age.
2
Facebook is a social media forum nothing more. Has it transformed my life or swayed my political views? Absolutely not nor do biased opinion columns. What has happened to independent thought and deductive reasoning? I can only assume that our liberal educational system has done what it was intended to do, create a generation of entitled followers devoid of independent thought not leaders.
This insightful column reminded me that the ancient Rabbis had a similar insight about the BabylonianTalmud, the written version of Jewish oral law that persists to this day.
The ancient Rabbis forbid it to be written down, lest it become immutable and unable to adapt to changing needs. In each generation there were genius scholars who knew the entire code of law by heart, taught it in academies, and transmitted it, as amended if necessary, to the next generation.
Finally, between the 2nd and 5th centuries of the Common Era, the Rabbis permitted, indeed insisted, that it be written down because the Roman conquest meant the loss of a Jewish homeland and center of learning in Palestine. The scattering of the Jews endangered the consistency of the Talmud as a reliable oral document everywhere they settled in their wanderings.
so what is the take away from this
column? "a little knowledge is a
dangerous thing?"some so called
conservatives like Stephens seem
to think that the lower orders have
no right to make their own decisions
or have any "book learnin."Facebook,
in and of itself, is not evil.it is an
instrument that in the hands of the
right people can be enlightening or
entertaining. in the hands of those
who wish to do evil,it indeed can be
insidious. the more I read Stephens,
the more I get the conservative agenda:
education is only for the few for whom
the elites deign to grant it.count me
on the side of reading and writing
and the education which any number
of choices bring us,not whatever an
elite choose to let us have.
2
Great piece Bret.
I'm sorry, but anytime a Republican references a great philosopher to support one of their theories it makes me want to cringe. It's like their love affair with Leviticus.
Written words, Thamus concluded, “give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things but will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”
Welcome to The Modern GOP.
AKA: "Believe The Big Lie!"
Facebook has nothing on Fox News.
1
I am old enough to remember when television was still spoken of as a transformative technology, which would bring the world into living rooms and educate the masses.
Mr. Stephens column also recalls Claude Levi-Strauss' chapter in *Triste Tropique* titled "A Writing Lesson", wherein the author describes the introduction of the written word to a tribe where it had not previously existed. The chief immediately employed it to further assert authority. If it is written, it is true, and it is the law and unassailable. Levi-Strauss concludes that literacy is a tool of oppression and enslavement.
As a younger man I found Levi-Strauss' conclusion appalling. As a young man, I probably believed the nonsense about television, too. Further proof that, given time, even I am educable.
1
Bret Stephens is spot on here. It is easier to hide behind technology, to troll and throw emotional hand grenades anonymously, to hook up with dates just for sex, to avoid real conversations altogether.
Just look around the next time you are at a restaurant. Note the people who are sitting at the same table but are emotionally separated, their eyes glued to their i-phones. If everyone threw in a dollar each time the phrase "Sorry, I have to take this call," is used we could finance universal health care with ease.
Look at people using public transportation, or just plain walking on the street. Their eyes are down, fixated on their cell phones, oblivious to their surroundings. It's a crazy world. People need to be MORE aware of their surroundings, not less.
Rather than Facebook starting over as Mr. Stephens suggests, how about this: Delete your account completely, and vow to re-connect with the people in your life who are your real friends. In most cases, that number is manageable enough for you to meet for lunch and have a real conversation, face-to-face.
3
For starters, Zuckerberg, himself, looks like an android. The man does not look like he is composed of human flesh and blood. Zuckerberg looks like an Alien trying to pass as a human being.
As far as technology goes, "everybody says" that installing Snapchat (just for one example) is easy. It took a professional hi-tek technician a good half hour to install Snapchat on my cell phone. I could barely follow her much less have done the installation myself as she did. And she did it all right out of the knowledge in her brain/mind/head; she did not need to refer to any instructions or manual.
One of the problems with high tech is that most of us "average citizens" are not high tech people or inclined to be so. The vast majority of us like to push or pull or flip ONE switch and the product in question does everything it is supposed to do and is capable of doing. The products foisted on us in today's marketplace are overengineered for basic, average consumer usage.
All of our products should operate for us at their fully engineered optimal capacity simply by us turning them on.
2
Yes, read an ancient book this weekend. But remember, you'll have Theuth to thank for that pleasure . . .
1
Russian ads to destroy our republic OK
Me, advertising my book about a forgotten 20th century female hero BANNED.
No recourse - their decision is final, and without an explanation why; a ban which also destroyed my job as a social media marketer for other companies. So arbitrary. For me, Facebook has jumped the shark.
1
Well done. If Facebook really wants to help America, it needs to stop only helping itself.
1
Any technology is not good or evil, but just believing the technology is a good, is evil. When humans first 'discovered' fire, if they had narrowly been about the fire, the fire itself was good and the only good, we would have become extinct.
They believed the fire itself is a good and burned us all.
1
Mr. Stephens - despite the (always welcome) reference to Plato in the public press, your own technophobia is made fairly clear in your column.
In two subsequent sentences, you make the following claims:
1) 'technology is only as good as the people that use it'; and
2) we 'degrade it [technology]'
The latter statement betrays your unwillingness to hold the former seriously - or, perhaps, you hold a rather more pessimistic view of human beings than your columns normally betray.
In any case, Plato's text is indeed hostile to technology, but it's writing that's the main target - so everything you say about tweeting also holds for all other forms of 'serious' writing. It'd be wise not to invoke his imprimatur if you're not willing to go along with all of the consequences.
If it's an issue of 'holding on through the good and bad', then maybe you should (all things considered in the current context) invoke the Phaedo, in which Socrates was willing to die rather than betray the laws of Athens?
And, without wanting to be any kind of provocateur here, I'd recommend you read Jacques Derrida's famous treatment of this text, 'Plato's Pharmacy' - the real challenge of the Platonic text is that the word for what is bad about writing (its poisonous character) can also be translated as 'remedy'.
After all, this column of yours? You wrote it.
Excellent article but I don't know that we can stop this tide when our young are weaned on these devices. With the young having the world at their finger tips today, it reminds me of a friend who has a photographic memory. He admits it didn't serve him well in school as it spared him having to think.
2
Excellent point and cogently presented Mr. Stephens. I do not use the "anti-social" media and have always thought it was just an electronic outhouse wall...When the telegraph was invented it was hailed as a marvel that would allow Texas to communicate with Maine...as Thoreau observed "That's assuming Texas and Maine having anything worthwhile to communicate..."
Ah, a civilized thoughtful piece in an age of chaos and routine unethical behavior. This is a substantial contribution. Thank you.
3
@Kevin Somerville
What did the old wise white guys think?
1
Brilliant. Now how do we get people to limit their intake of technology? Unless this leavening with reality starts where virtual reality gets its start, in the nursery, any attempt to substitute reading, the exercise of one's imagination, real conversation, memory, and deep thought for the cheap thrills of that entertainment-device cum-computer in your hand will be a fools errand. Young minds are sponges. As long as proud parents bring their 5-year-olds to school more adept at using technology than their teachers, its highly unlikely formal education will be up to the task of wringing out the sponge in time for its submersion in reality. Oh there is a reason that a classical education was once, and perhaps will again be, the gold standard.
Excellent essay and great writing. I would posit a question: what is the difference between the lying and deceit of FB and big pharma, big oil, big banks, big tobacco, ...
They all lie, and continue to lie, for money. And ordinary people suffer, and die, directly or indirectly.
But the mantra of conservatives is to role back regulations, and let for profit institutions steal, extort, and pollute. You have exposed yourself with this essay. Now answer the question.
2
The creation of something that seems real is the trajedy. Thanks Bret for refering us to reading something worth reading.
I am a big fan of Phaedrus and his ideas on Quality, so this article is well sourced.
The reality of Facebook is that it has enriched my life. Long a hold out on joining, because of my concerns about privacy and corporate manipulation, I now find myself connected to many family members with whom I had lost touch. A few weeks ago, one of my cousins suspended his account but was back online within a few weeks. Like everything else that we prize, we must find a way to coexist with its downsides. And the answer for Facebook is?
1
After reading this excellent article and scrolling down, I was jolted to find the Facebook icon as first among equals in methods of forwarding the contents on to others. This arrangement gives Facebook a prominence that, as the author makes clear, it does not deserve. Perhaps the NYT and other publications could rearrange the icons to put the more neutral choice of email first. Facebook could then follow way down the list, if at all.
15
Thank you, Bret Stephens, Plato, Socrates, and King Thamus. But Theuth, too.
Some of us would soon go to the wall in the world of Thamus, trying to get by on our native powers of memory. At the same time, it's a relief to be one of those who missed the ramp to the world of Facebook and Twitter. For us, words on paper or in a moderated online space like this make a world in which we can hope to read and write without going too far wrong.
The reading we do in the responsible news media gives us at least a chance of understanding the next news we read. The reading we do in books that have stood the test of time gives us, among many things, a chance of appreciating the breadth and depth of, say, an essay in the Times.
If only I hadn't found it necessary to step over to a bookcase just now and look for cracks in the spine of The Last Days of Socrates to be sure I had even read Phaedrus. I had -- and made copious notes! Which means that King Thamus has the last word, after all. But Theuth, too.
Anyway, thank you for an excellent column, and please feel free to use it again in a month or so.
3
There are many benefits to FB and other social media, it does make it easier for friends and family to connect. It has been credited with creating some beneficial social/political movements. What is needed is government controls. We rely on our government to keep us safe from predators- to secure our lives and our liberty. Social media is relatively new and as with everything else that is new ethics must be put in place. We are all slow learners we forget that humans have always been tempted by pride, greed, dishonesty and all the rest. Our problem today is that money and politics are so tightly linked. Our government can only be a wise moderator for our darker nature if it is not bought and influenced by large entities. Money is the root of all evil.
1
@Saramaria
Sure....let’s put Adam Schiff et. al. in charge of what’s fit to make the editing cut on Facebook, Twitter etc... I’m certain that would work out all the kinks...
Thank you Mr Stephens. I enjoyed reading your thought provoking opinion piece this morning. It gives me added faith in our ability to prevail in this fraught moment of change and anxiety and fearfulness.
1
This is brilliantly written and full of wisdom. There has always been a general concern that something is not quite right with Facebook. You clearly and convincingly expose what we all have feared. Not only that. You have diagnosed with precision the root cause of multiple symptoms that ail us all today. I am reminded of the warning in the book of James. Greatness is only achieved by doing great things.
1
Love reading Bret Stephens, it reminds me that I can admire and find much common ground with someone whose politics differ from my own.
As for his comment,”Twitter might have been a digital billboard of ideas and conversation ennobling the public square. We’ve turned it into the open cesspool of the American mind. Facebook was supposed to serve as a platform for enhanced human interaction, not a tool for the lonely to burrow more deeply into their own isolation.”, all I can say is yes and yes and yes.
3
I think it's important to make the distinction between hardware and software when discussing technology. The "smart" phone doesn't Twitter on it's own. The written word is frequently false.Technology is neutral when born, what it matures to depends on it's upbringing. Gunpowder comes to mind.
Predictably, Stephens uses a very real problem as a pretext to attack the left again.
Stephens is incredibly clever and manipulative. His a tale from Plato’s "Phaedrusm" is great set-up. Who can possibly disagree with Socrates? However, Stephens doesn't really care about what Socrates said about the pitfalls of creating Letters. Stephens uses it to set the stage for an attack on Facebook, and who could possibly disagree? At this point many think Facebook deserves to be put out of business. However, Stephens doesn't really care about Facebook either. This piece merely mirrors excellent critiques already done by numerous others with one huge difference; Stephens seeks to exploit how terrible Facebook is to attack the left.
As Stephens states: "Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants have sold themselves not so much as profit-seeking companies but as ideal-pursuing movements." That's how some, but not all, Silicon Valley giants marketed themselves, but anyone with any sense realized along ago they were in it for the money.
It's the "ideal-pursuing movements" aspect which Stephens is furious about, because Facebook positioned itself as aligned with the political left. If Stephens really cared about profit seeking companies idealizing their motives he would have attacked Big Oil long ago. However, as Big Oil is aligned with the far-right and has marketed itself as the savior of mankind for over a century, Stephens will defend it, no matter what it does, to his last breath.
@Robert B
To attack 'ideal-pursuing movements' is to attack the modern left, not the old left. An old-left move would be to attack Facebook's commodification of attention and the modern left's claims of authority in the realm of ideas.
Thank you, Mr.Stephens for introducing us to,the apt fable from Plato.There is nothing about Facebook that was developed to start a conversation and bring people together.The first thought was how to monetize these digital conversations.This led to the design to make the content addictive , controversial, and appealing to advertisers.The designers of the platform wanted to collect information without letting users know what they were giving up.All new technologies have some downside- Facebook kept ignoring the defects as long as the money from advertisers rolled in and the company became unbelievingly profitable.As the King in the fable cautioned, people forgot how to think and analyze.
7
On the mark but the concluding exhortation to read an ancient book is kind of ironic in light of the column's beginning point. Maybe the perils of technology are all relative.
1
Bravo. Stephens (with whom I rarely agree) has gotten it exactly right. Facebook provides only the illusion of "connectedness"; the "virtual" social interactions it provides are in fact the opposite of actual interactions between human beings.
11
Plato may have implied that documents are too easy, but a bigger point was that they unleash information, freeing it from personal responsibility. Writings have only the semblance of intelligence, Socrates said. Ask them new questions and they just give the same old answers. They float in cyberspace and have no ethical relations, being detached from a person. It’s easy to make information but hard to speak responsibly. Facebook doesn’t connect people, it connects and empowers irresponsible islands of information.
3
@99Percent
One can internalize the information contained in a piece of writing by working at it. Once internally organized and stored, the information is no longer just stuff on a page. Once a person builds her capacity to read in this way, she is able to see and understand as much, and maybe more, as she would have from engaging in a conversation or listening to an oral narrative.
The amazing phenomenon about Facebook and other internet inventions is how we have entrusted their operation to the companies themselves, under the guise of "free enterprise," and created the technological version of the new "wild west," with a level of potential lawlessness that is breathtaking.
Why did we not have either government regulation, supervision or records collection capability when the technologies were in their infancy? Would it have been so impossibly difficult to have oversight by the government, even if the exercise of being able to gather information in their operations required court orders or laws?
No. It could have been done, but it was deemed much more important to let these technologies run freely and without any constraints - probably under the name of the free markets. Now, we lack the ability to have a true "referee" in the activities - many of them illegal and incapable of being corroborated - that can be passed through this free communications and information source.
Let the internet "wild west" reign supreme, without regulations and without any kind of supervision. We've created this monster with our lack of vision and caring.
4
@Srose You forgot one. Fear of "Big Brother". Many of those that touted the "freedom" these new technologies were imagined to bring were haunted by fears of "1984" and their ingrained distrust of Governmental and Religious powers that stifled free exchange of information.
Right on point and beautifully expressed! I canceled my FB account many months ago, after learning that FB had been involved in accepting Russian ads and after my account had been hacked.
Here's the problem I see: People of a 'certain age' can remember a different time, when people communicated directly with each other, used verbal skills to express their thoughts and opinions and dealt with each other face to face.. We know that what this article says is true because we have lived it. What is happening to our youth today is an insidious loss of something that, once gone, may be irrevocable because, when we seniors are gone, this new world of tweets and texting will become the norm, by attrition.
Part of this problem and solution lies in our system of education. I am not berating teachers, here. They are unsung heroes, but something is dreadfully lacking in the way our youth is being taught. Government principles need to be instilled earlier ,as well as , the art of communication.
Of course, I realize that every generation has something negative to say about the 'youth of the day'. I am not saying that. Our younger generation holds the highest promise for our country's future. They are a beacon of light and tremendous potential. We must focus more on making sure they're prepared to inherit our country as our next custodians.We must re-vamp the way we use technology and educate our younger generation on the necessity of direct communication.
7
It isn’t technology that disappoints, it is capitalism’s relentless drive to monetize it.
In this respect social media is no different than any other economic sector and, now at least, the U.S. government itself.
Profit and shareholder value are more important than anything. Until that philosophy shifts, don’t expect any interruption in our sociological race to the bottom.
15
So Brett is now going all Neil Postman on us? interesting column until you say that "technology is only as good as the people who use it." In each machine, in each medium, in each technology there is an idea embedded in it -- despite "how" people use it; and people use of that technology will change over time, won't it? dylan writes, you can't win with a losing hand; what's wrong with facebook is in fact, facebook; the book you could read, with all due respect, is Technopoly, by Neil Postman -- where he also explains, with a little more insight than here (no disrespect), the story of Thamus
2
Bret, I don't frequently agree with your takes, but here I think you are spot on. Sooner or later each of us must face the reality that life is replete with complex facts and situations that are fairly or extremely tough to figure out and deal with. So we should be wary of quick technological fixes, as you point out, but also distrust the quick *ideological* fixes which too many politicians and pundits promote on a daily basis.
12
Here's a philosophical thought for you, paraphrased from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics - "Political Science is the most important science, because it determines what other sciences will be studied."
And that Science is now, thanks to the Republicans, in the hands of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump.
So much for the lessons of history.
11
@Chicago Guy
There is no science in politics. There are way too many variables and unknowns to craft the double-blind experimental controlled tests that provide predictable and repeatable results. History is not science either.
1
One of the basic tenets of democracy is not to let the extremes rule.
The classical Greeks started it, the Renaissance revived it, America codified it and Lincoln saved it.
Moderate conservatives and progressives are always needed in a democracy. They put a moderate check on each other.
Whether you have Trump on the right or the billionaire IT guys on the left, they are the greatest threats to democracy.
12
The Times investigation Stephens refers to was one of the best pieces of investigative journalism I’ve read in a long time. This column is the icing on the cake.
Well said.
17
The irony is, it is EASY to read this article only with the use of language and technology. History showed that tyranny and misinformation occured in all times and locations, by word of mouth and otherwise. Even higher education can instill bias in values and judgment, using beautiful language and illustrations.
3
Brett is giving us the first pebble on a very long road upon which we must journey. Until everyone, users and non users alike, is presented with the full data set which Facebook and its related companies have collected on us--including the numerous psychological profiles that have been developed from this data by third parties--we will still be in the dark as to how Facebook and social media have completely eliminated any sense of privacy we think we still have. No one is exempt. Any site linked to Facebook is a pass-through portal for personal data to Facebook.
To insist as Zuckerberg does that Facebook is a 'technology company' is laughable. Who signs on to Facebook to use their underlying technology? Only the data miners seeking to influence the gullible users. It should be no surprise that the pioneers in mind control methods---Russia, North Korea, China--are at the forefront of cyber warfare, much of which is conducted via Facebook.
Facebook is a media company, but more more. It is designed to provide the tools that will manipulate people in the privacy of their own minds.
5
It is indeed ironic that Mr. Stephens begins his column quoting the Platonic advice against relying on the written word, yet ends by telling his readers "Read an ancient book." What makes a book any more truthful or thought-provoking than web-surfing for information? Thus, he skirts the real problem that currently exists - the unscrupulous use of user information .
As long as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al., remain "free" and function under the "business model" of generating income via advertisements without ensuring sufficient security for its users, then the problem will never be resolved.
One way that these companies could continue to be be profitable would be by imposing a small monthly fee for "ad-free viewing" to its users to post their thoughts and photos, in the same way that many successful web sites now do.
Putting their use behind a paywall would not solve the intrusion of all hackers of these web sites, but would considerably diminish their access to the personal information of its users, and permit these companies to hire full-time staff dedicated to eradicate suspicious and dangerous intruders.
What will not work, however, is national legislation passed by a Congress that is composed of media-ignorant representatives and senators who can't even tell the difference between the various platforms that are available. Perhaps the only hope is that any proposed legislation copies the privacy provisions now in place in Europe.
1
It might be wise to add that using something for a purpose other than what was intended for it, pollutes and ruins the intended purpose. If FB is intended as Social Media, then let's take politics out of it. Use FB for socializing and keeping in touch, not for political comment, or any ideological thought. Just say hi to friends and neighbors, check in on the grand kids and let political expression happen in other ways. Don't get news from something called Social Media. Get news from a News Organization that verifies and researches their information. Hear-say is not "news."
6
The original purpose of Facebook was tech that “works around” human error (Mark’s failure getting the girl). It didn’t work. He didn’t get the girl in college.
So why did investors pour money into something that didn’t work? They saw the network effect potential of playing to the human flaw of believing that the grass might be greener in the virtual world than it is in the real world.
Businesses that start with the premise that humans are flawed and the real world consequences can be escaped are the ones that are flawed.
Hopefully the result will be a revival of ethical business purpose and practices.
1
In saying "technology is only as good as the people who use it," you suggest we have a choice, as if Facebook, and the web itself is just a tool. But it's not. It's an environment, perfectly structured to do exactly what it is doing. Thinking we can force it to do otherwise is very much like Socrates railing against writing.
2
I wonder if the Internet had been proclaimed a Utility if this would have changed anything. For instance, utilities are ruled and regulated by State and Federal Governments Perhaps it is time to look at this as somewhat of an answer. Just sayin'.
6
The irony of this piece, of course, is that Brett is using 2,500 year old written text to make his point. It’s not the medium that is the problem, but rather our collective lack of awareness and consciousness. Let’s recognize the good and bad in FB. We can do that without being lemmings. Thank Brett.
4
The propitiation Stephens writes is easy - communications platforms are easy; managing them is not.
I am reading this paper on line, commenting on line. This is the only platform on which I comment, or bother to read the comments, because it is curated for civility. Comments may be unfactual, but straight out trolls are flagged and gone, if they make it through the initial screen.
Moreover, this is also, along with WaPo and a few other papers and journals, the one of the few sources I trust - because, this and the others are edited and curated. Opinion and bias exist, are well known, not hidden, and most of all facts matter.
I also expect that the equation is very expensive: it relies on me being willing to pay for trust.
Stephens posits the problem, but then punted on a solution. "Start over, Facebook. Do the basics.... Work harder and more openly.... Read an ancient book." Great advice.
But really, what is the real solution to easy mass communication aimed at people who are not willing to apply critical thinking? "Read a book, Facebook" doesn't cut it, anymore than "Wise up, people!" does.
10
A thoughtful essay. My students sometimes seem to think that the internet has rendered classes, reading, and study unnecessary. But the ability to think is acquired painstakingly. The internet is a great and convenient source of information, but information is not the same thing as knowledge, much less wisdom.
14
"Read an ancient book." Well, not the bible, which is a mix of falsehood and truth. As with everything, it's not the delivery mechanism we need to be judicious about, but the source.
12
It never ceases to amaze me how both the religious zealots and bigots manage to make everything (no matter how unrelated) about religion.
What I worry about is that every child born in the age of FaceBook will be known by every person they have ever known for the rest of their lives. There will be no opportunity to reinvent themselves. And if they try their legacy is sitting there in someone else’s timeline somewhere. What they wrote, who wrote about them, pictures they posted or tagged by others. It’s a legacy written is stone.
11
Yes!!!!
The beauty and strength of America and the modern age we have helped build is that people are not beholden to their own and their familial and ancestral past.
Facebook eliminates this and freezes our personalities and codifies our choices our choices forever.
Exactly hits the points I have thought about after terrible experiences on social media. It's a child's minds playground. Children, being defined as, undereducated, and/or, under experienced, and/or, isolated individuals, who, when unable to keep up with other participants intellectually resort to ad hominem attacks as a means of validation.
What Mr. Stephans missed entirely is the groupthink and tribalism that has gained an instantaneous national footprint and power. These "children's minds" find 'kindred spirits' and take over message boards, Twitter, and Facebook pages driving out anything meaningful being discussed. That then drives moderators, gatekeepers, and filters to close out anyone who doesn't conform to the slippery slope and gray areas within there 'terms service and compliance' and in doing so creates another kind of groupthink. The counter tribalism creates its own tribe itself.
I think Facebook, Twitter, and message boards are here to stay. What we need is a better means to bring participants up to or near the knowledge they would need to maintain a competent discussion for or against the ideas or topics being discussed. Instead of banning, removing, or denying comments maybe a series of readings, research, and background teachings followed by a test of knowledge before one's comment are included. It may be a bridge to better understandings and communication among many different viewpoints.
6
Bravo! This op-ed should be required reading for all teachers, parents, and students from middle school forward.
32
Writing diminished the oral traditions and changed the balance of power. No longer did the priests and seers who spent their lives transmitting the lessons of history have the monopoly on information. New priests tried to control the written words and fierce battles were fought to maintain that control.
If there is a lesson in this, it might be that people who want to manipulate their fellow beings will use all the tools that are available. It is difficult, if not impossible, to control that.
Money is still the root of evil, but it is not the only evil. Power and the ability to dominate are closely aligned.
On Facebook, I see people posting things that someone has provided. They ask for people to share what is obviously manipulative and often, if you care to investigate, untrue. That is dangerous. That postings generate profit gives even more reason to undermine truth.
Evil has escaped Pandora's box. There's little reason to hope it can be contained.
11
To take it one step further, the real Socrates never wrote a single word of his philosophy, and yet we still consider his the greatest mind in western thought (as documented by Plato). It seems the more Facebook posts and Tweets there are, the more we have lost touch with the morals and ethics that Socrates considered so critical to humanity and "the good".
5
Well said. It is not only a Facebook problem, but affects society as a whole. Let’s reflect before we speak, write or mindlessly hit the share button. The world would be a better place.
4
AS neither Plato nor Socrates supported democracy, might it have been preferable for Mr. Stephens to quote Aristotle: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true”?
4
About 20 or so years ago, I was sitting alone at a pizza place eating lunch. One table away there was a mom and a daughter having their lunch.
The mom was on her cell phone the entire time, even when paying the check. Once or twice the mom interrupted her conversation to give instructions or something to the daughter.
I watched them until they left - I ate a lot and slowly. When I got home, I discussed this with my wife. We talk with each other a lot. I explained I was appalled that this mom ignored her daughter, completely, for the entire time. Neither of us could imagine talking on the phone while with a friend or family member.
Five or six years prior this, I was in China. Cell phones were just taking off there. In numerous meetings, my Chinese counterpart would answer his cell in the middle of a sentence - him speaking.
I wonder if this particular generations fixation with non-direct interaction is the fruit of their parents talking on their cell phone rather than with their kids? BTW, last time I was in China, couple of years ago, young people at the same table in restaurants were communicating with each other via text on their cell phones.
10
I rarely agree w Mr. Stephens full stop, but this is right on. I thought it was wonderfully written and very very true:
“Tweeting and trolling are easy. Mastering the arts of conversation and measured debate is hard. Texting is easy. Writing a proper letter is hard. Looking stuff up on Google is easy. Knowing what to search for in the first place is hard. Having a thousand friends on Facebook is easy. Maintaining six or seven close adult friendships over the space of many years is hard. Swiping right on Tinder is easy. Finding love — and staying in it — is hard."
This is brilliant, insightful writing.
213
@BNS
I too rarely agree, but read his columns for the highly skilled writing. This is the paragraph that I had to read out loud to my wife when I encountered it.
7
We have entered a time when it is possible to live without any interaction with another person. We can order what we need from Amazon and get on Facebook to talk with "friends." If we get hungry there are deliveries from restaurants. Someone told me that Facebook allows us to be sociable without actually talking to another person. There are many who work from home via the internet. I wonder how much this accounts for the tribalism and extremism which we see today. There must be many people who seldom interact with real people. I find that when I have a nutty idea or feel depressed, if I go out and talk to people and mix with people I get over my crankiness.
What does the future hold? I have this suspicion that computers will be the demise of humans. A few hundred years from now (if we are still around), people will be so dependent on the internet and computers (we will have lost all ability to remember, do math, write, cook, build a fire, etc.) and there will be a massive solar flare which will wipe out the electrical system world wide. Over night we will be back in the stone age and humans will be helpless.
9
@Aubrey
Makes one think of "Hal" the computer in "2001 A Space Oddity".
There is no starting over for Facebook, no re-invention, no rejuvenation. There will be a replacement though - too much money and power are there for the taking.
What that replacement will be is hard to envision now, but the forces of personal privacy and public truth are gaining the high ground. Believe it or not, I'm optimistic about the future.
5
@JFR
Too much money and power at stake. Your optimism is unfounded, but I truly envy your ability to have any.
Excellent column. This reflects some very true characteristics of the social media environment. It seems that, especially since the beginning of the 2016 elections, the level of social media volume increased while the quality of interactions decreased. You're correct - "We’ve turned it into the open cesspool of the American mind."
I take issue with one point, however. Blaming the platforms is like saying guns don't kill people, people do. Why have users succumbed to their darker tendencies and become "keyboard warriors" instead of engaging in more thoughtful and civil discourse?
The social media interactions that devolved into vitriol and ad hominem attacks was not a function of those technologies but of the users of those same technologies. Whether merely for the sake of agitation, or because sitting in isolation allowed their true natures to be freed, bypassing the"hard"part of having a conversation or debate went by the wayside. I referred to it as "social media psychosis."
I don't know how to put the genie back in the bottle. Yes, Facebook and Twitter must look for ways to moderate conversations and monitor the platform for unethical or criminal usage. I don't think those efforts are First Amendment violations but reasonable"terms of service."
In my view, the platforms still have the potential to expand our worlds and our breadth of interactions. Without looking deep inside our own mind or souls, however, the technology itself stands blameless.
5
The ancient fable that comes to my mind is that of Icarus, the man who thought he had invented a way to make men soar but who's wax wings melted when he flew too close to the sun. TV was considered a great educational tool but morphed into the boob tube pretty quickly. The problem is money. Indeed our food, education, transportation and politics have all been degraded by money, even though they promised to make things easier. I'm pretty sure Mark Zuckerberg didn't think his little dorm porn project was going to make him one of the richest men in the world but, like Icarus, he might be in for a big fall because he got too close to the sums.
186
@Rick Gage
Given the fact that Zuckerberg stole the idea and then tried to cheat his first investor/partner our of ownership, I would say he is all about the MONEY, not anything else.
He and Sandberg have already proven this by their insistence that they had not idea, then changed their story several times. They should run for the Senate. They would fit right in.
20
@Rick Gage
Right on!
And Mary Shelley's fictional character Frankenstein.
4
Wow, wow, wow.......Probably the single most crisp, cogent, crystalline collection of 750 words yet written on the root awfulness of the platform world that the Zuckerberg’s, Brin’s, Dorsey’s, and Page’s have brought to us — we, the short-cutting-seeking, expedient-preferring, humanities-neglecting masses. Bravo, Bret Stephens!
29
The conflict between "Do good or do well" began the day that Zuckerberg accepted his first dollar from an investor.
From that moment, Facebook's primary obligation has been fiduciary. First and foremost––repeat; foremost––the company is beholden to its investors to return profits. The more, the merrier.
To that end, Facebook is a monopolistic data-mining company masquerading as a monopolistic, high-minded social media company.
You're addicted to Facebook so you provide your most intimate data. Who, what, when, where. Everything about your existence.
What you don't reveal voluntarily or inadvertently can be intimated very accurately.
Facebook slices and dices your data and offers it for sale to the highest bidders, including enemies of democracy.
Everything else––all the kumbaya, connect-the-world happy talk––is just that, happy talk. Window dressing.
25
Well said. Thank you.
6
Man bites dog, Bret Stephens writes a relevant column without trying to spin things for his team. Encore!
3
I often agree with you, but this is misguided at best. The rest of us poor schlubs who do not have a column in the NYTIMES, which can reach millions of readers have facebook. The Times, NPR, all the old mass media severely limit our ability to reach an audience. Try to get any of these traditional media sources to even in the comment section, allow an errant idea, or get it through a screener on NPR. This is calling the kettle black,while whistling the same old tune.
41
@imamn It's fair point, and probably the various institutions (universities, traditional media) that contribute to Mr. Stephens having this platform all need to be more inclusive than they are. But I also think you are reinforcing his point. Is it a human right to be able to broadcast an idea to millions of people? Would it be a bad thing if it were a little more difficult to do that? Maybe you don't think so, which is fine. I would just point out that it's pretty easy and cheap to get a little server space, spend an afternoon learning basic code, and make your own website where you can show and say whatever you want. No Facebook needed. Your ideas will immediately be available to millions of people. Getting those people to actually pay attention to you is a lot harder, but why shouldn't it be?
20
@imamn
I think you're missing Stephens' point. As a communications platform, Facebook has a responsibility to police the content that circulates in its ecosystem. The Times' reporting revealed that, rather than acknowledge its failings and work to correct them, Facebook instinctively denied it in order to protect its brand and bottom line. Democratizing info-sharing is laudable only if the info being shared and consumed is credible. Democracy doesn't work if citizens don't have the facts to make informed decisions needed for self-governance.
21
@imamn
Pray tell, why would any of "our poor schlubs" want to reach millions of readers?
The vast majority of Americans gets their information from their telly and don't "read" at all. A few lines on Facebook can hardly be called reading.
15
From the same technology (the MSM) that brought us Sadaam's WMDs.
Don't make me laugh.
Excellent column. Thank you!
3
Please, please, please--don't make me have to face other human beings in the flesh. Just too scary and time-consuming and confusing.
Kind regards, your friend,
T
2
Some of the dumbest sounding ideas come from the ideas that have no money-making ideas attached.
Sorry but, some of smart people die poor. And in heaven, money is worthless.
1
Weask: When testifying before congress, did Mr. Z. and Mrs. S. tell the Theuth and nothing but the Theuth about knowing of the Russian attempts to influence the election(s) using FB?
2
Interesting pick of the writings.
Would have thought Democracy's inevitable fall into Tyranny more appropriate.
People becoming city states of their own, and the rise of a charismatic fool to enslave them all.
Hmm. Who'd ya vote for Bret?
4
Piling on and abusing George Soros is pathetic. Facebook, Zucker and Sandbergs are pathetic.
The written word isn’t all that bad. Reading and writing are therapeutic for organized thought. The ancient philosophers were exactly right to question the implications of the written word but they had no way of knowing how it would play over the arc of history.
On the other hand they were prescient re many aspects of depersonalized
communication. We now may be very much less human than , once upon a time, we were.
4
This, like the Times investigation and revelations, is very important communication. The untold story is how beneath most every failure of humanity are DOLLAR$. The almighty dollar turns people away from decency at critical points. It is the reason that guns are such a force in America (with the NRA worshipping cash); why Democracy struggles with electoral politics; why public health never wins a battle with wealth; and why the future of our entire planet is compromised. It would be nice for the Times to do a series on the proliferation of business schools in our recent history, where decency, biology and even oxygen are reduced to commodities.
6
Takeaways from an excellent commentary....or what maybe you already knew:
An awful lot of billionaires, American or otherwise are just horrible, loathsome, dishonest people.
Inspirational and noble corporate catch phrases, mission statements and mottos can hide an awful lot of horrible, loathsome, dishonest rot.
7
@L Martin,
Americans, regardless of origin, shade, background or profession, are compassionate, hard-working and decent when 'united'.
A young Nation being placed to the test, The Will of The People carries the day, and it takes a bit of all of us to show our courage in resisting and reacting to false prophets and propaganda.
A wave, the size of Melville's whale and beyond, is about to engulf the political anchovies lodged at The White House in its overheated watershed.
Some of us remain with feet in the gutters, but we always look to the stars at the most dire of times.
2
Doing everything you can to make money is easy. Acting with ethics and integrity is hard.
Zuckerman, Brin, Dorsey and their ilk are no different than Vanderbilt, Carnegie and Rockefeller before them. They want to be rich and powerful. They want to “transform the world” so long as they make a lot of money doing it. Their high-minded mission statements are just a bunch of empty words.
5
Hard = deleting your Facebook account once and for all
Easy = life after deleting your Facebook account and never looking back
10
Always thought it was dumb, never used it, no problem.
8
@GreaterMetropolitanArea A comforting thought to the Rohingya, Muslims in Sri Lanka, and US citizens who voted in the 2016 Presidential election.
@GreaterMetropolitanArea
No -- sadly, there IS a problem: everyone else is using FaceBook and you cannot divorce yourself from them all, or the consequences of the magnification of evil it makes possible, any more than regular, non-ideological Germans could pretend that the Nazi catastrophe would pass them by untouched. We're all in this together.
1
"...open cesspool of the American mind...". Spot on, Mr Stephens. Similarly, Stephen's colleague Michelle Goldman today wrote of "epistemological derangement". Utterly perfect choice of words, Ms. Goldman. But both of these phrases point to a deeper truth: Social media is but a symptom of our broader crisis of collective epistemology. How did willful ignorance become the default mode of millions? How did they come to knowingly disregard obvious facts in favor of convenient fallacies? In the marketplace of ideas, truth should always prevail, shouldn't it?
8
"Work harder to operate ethically..." writes the author. That word, "ethically". It's pretty evident by now that nobody, not one forlorn soul, in Facebook's top management knows what that word means.
3
Facebook was unethical from the moment it was created.
3
The 100,000 pound elephants sitting on Plato in the corner are capitalism and its attendant greed.
5
Facebook and Twitter, Tinder, SnapChat, and Instagram are all crack to the vacant Millennials' souls. Good luck breaking them of the habbit. And don't forget that they have no broad-based education in the classics to rescue them from feelings of meaninglessness. They, and we, are doomed.
2
I wish everything in the paper were this good.
2
Would we now remember Plato if his works hadn’t been written down?
6
Well philosophized! Now I have to think of a way to share this without resorting to facebook!
4
I will reread your column when I am completely sober.
I appreciated your conversation on "Real Time With Bill Maher" of 11/09/18.
You were a complete gentleman when you were repeatedly interrupted by Katty Kay (is that really her real name?). Bill Maher also interrupted you, and I was so aggravated by their incivility to you. Perhaps you might consult with Richard Painter (I like his West Texas twang, although I am an East Coast liberal.) I respect people who are honest enough to admit to changing their allegiance based upon facts.
Thank you.
4
@Miriam: Although I might be mistaken.
Hate to tell you this, but it’s just advertising, and no one cares. When I was in my teens, I got a job distributing some kind of “newspaper” to houses in my neighborhood. After a few weeks, I realized that no one wanted them any more than my own family did, so I just dumped them in the garbage and headed off to do other things. There was probably someone somewhere with a hand calculator and some lines about reach and impressions and conversions and value and so on. It’s a peculiar arrogance of the clicky-clicky generation that people have somehow changed.
2
The Bernie Wave that undermined Hillary, since shown conclusively to have been pumped up by Russians utilizing fake FB accounts, was only exacerbated by FB authentic account holders with privileged posting rights to these comment threads, incessantly, if unknowingly, parroting the Russian line. Maybe Times could set a trend by distancing itself from FB in favour of a more responsible, less voracious, social network partner. Now back to Jude the Obscure!
5
Wow! That was such and interesting take on technology in our lives. It summarizes a bunch of ideas and concerns that I try to explain to my graduate students about the challenges/joys of thoughtful communication and interaction. Their reliance on social media makes it harder for them to transition to an intellectual life. But this article gives me some points of contact where i might be able to help them with the transition.
4
It's starting to look like the Titanic. Was it the rivets, creaking and unsound, which caused the hull to give way? Was it the Iceberg? Or the even more deadly iceberg of hubris? This company never made sense, and now that it's coming apart, there will be a hundred theories and analyses, but one thing is certain, the captain will not be going down with this Titanic disaster.
5
Facebook is the single greatest technological innovation for the creation of trivia ever devised by man. It’s sinister genius was to provide the intimacy-starved population of the global technocracy with a virtual substitute for human contact while harvesting their personal information for sale on the global market. The simplest way to win the battle for our humanity is to delete our accounts.
7
Neil Postman’s book Technopoly, published over 20 years ago begins this exact same story. Since Postman died before social media took off, he was spared the miserable condition we are all now in, but it would be nice to see Stephens credit the original thinker here. Postman was a leading media critic and it’s sad to see someone literally paraphrase his entire opening chapter with not even a mention. Do better Stephens.
3
The example given, of Thamus, is too good; and so is the author's idea to draw a parallel with that, to make his point/s regarding Facebook.
Wish he was as able intellectually as Plato/Socrates to present his viewpoint regarding Facebook.
2
Facebook didn't create a world of dunces, it just gave them all a clubhouse. There's probably one in a million people on Facebook who are capable of writing a letter as eloquent and heartfelt as that of an "illiterate" teenage Civil War soldier. I sincerely doubt Mark Zuckerberg could, at least not without the help of roomful of overpaid consultants, and in the end, who would believe the sentiments were actually his, except maybe him?
6
A modern version is the Sci-FI classic 'Forbidden Planet' in which the lost race on the higher-tech planet discovered by the Earthmen have been destroyed, leaving their wonderous machines. Turns out that the machines, seeking to carry out their masters' wishes, ended up making "Monsters from the ID" (Freud's name for the unconscious urges of the mind). Human-generated ID monsters then attack the Earthlings, whose ideas the machines read and make real.
Sorta like Facebook and Twitter. And ... in the movie and on the WWW these tools were free to all.
3
@Old Ben
You do know that was based upon "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare.
1
Facebook was obviously duped by Russia. A lot of smart people were fooled. I doubt anyone there expected Trump to win. Perhaps they were misled by the NYT's 2016 model that put HRC chances of victory at 85 percent. Yes? Lesson learned. Truthfully Facebook didn't have a big impact on Trump winning the 2016 election. HRC was a bad candidate who ran a poor campaign. But for arguments sake lets say it's true. So what. Would these same people complaining now if Facebook had swung the race in Hillary's favor? Absolutely not. We would see countless editorial on how it saved democracy. We all know that. So lets stop the revolting hypocrisy. The overwhelming majority of people made up their mind about HRC long before she announced. I have yet to see any evidence that Russia's micro ad buy changed the outcome in one district let alone one state. Many progressives are calling for investigations and of course more regulation. Facebook is a luxury not a necessity. It would close shop next month if people walked away from it. And anyone can. I have. So have many of my friends. It's voluntary. Just because it isn't a "woke" company is no justification for demanding antitrust actions. Maybe establishment institutions despise the fact that the internet is going to leave them behind, obliterating their influence. Maybe they can't stand the fact the "people" who's will on Earth they purport to represent will need them less & less. Isn't that the reason for all this hyperbolic hand wringing?
4
Facebook is unnatural. if you really have friends you're supposed to interact with them face to face, so to speak. If you try to replace that with an internet website created by a stranger you've never even met, it's as if you asked that stranger to let you visit with friends, but in his living room and not yours.
Why would you do a thing like that?
2
I am a Semite and try and wrap my brain around Western thought. Each year as we read the Torah it takes on new meaning to fit the situation. The words are flexible and grow and shrink as we grow and shrink it is we who give the words their impact.
It was Lewis Carroll the professor of logic who introduces us to Humpty Dumpty who confronts Alice with When I use a word it means what ever I want it to mean no more no less. Who is the master me or the word?
I have never used Facebook but right now it is teaching us more about ourselves then a thousand Platos. Who shall be the master ?
With so much of who we are tied to Facebook and other platforms maybe Socrates has become a more important philosopher because the more we need Facebook the more we will require truth.
2016 has taught us without truth all our technology will not serve us well.
2
The bottom line for me, is that nobody every cared about what my thoughts were. As much as I put into them, as much time as they might have consumed, and as much time as the products of those thoughts consumed, they weren't worth a spit of dust on anyone alive today or anyone that ever existed.
Except for God.
1
The story of Thoth always stuck to my mind in the sense that you should watch your words, that you should speak consciously.
The reason being words and writing make it easy and attractive too inflate and pretend, to give any meaning you want to them.
I've been involved privately an professionally with information technology for 40 years. Your piece brings together a substantial part of my live and thinking in a way I had not imagined. Thank you.
1
Facebook is captured by the millions of revenue $$ that pour in daily. They will not be able to work ethically as long as the incentive of profit stare at them. That same stare is like the stare o Medusa that turns one into stone.
2
So let's create a system joining disjointed groups using logic. Does this sound acceptable.
So let's create a system joining disjointed groups using logic. Does this sound acceptable.
Yes!
In general, I know I have enough challenges in life and I can't fight these kind of things.
In so many terms, I ain't no good but garbage trying to move out of the pit. And I feel like it.
Fine. Don't listen to me. Watch me die, decay and turn into the garbage that feeds your lives.
1
In Plato's REPUBLIC, Socrates said the Philosopher King would ban the flute and other instruments “capable of modulation into all the modes.”
He also called for the Noble Lie--a contradiction in terms if ever there was one.
Dictators like Chairman Mao and Ayatollah Khomeini banned many kinds of music. They also instituted thought control, their equivalent of the Noble Lie.
Plato was the grandfather of totalitarianism.
1
Different versions of one's second selves remains a successful strategy. Greed is not a second self. It is a spectrum. We are not what we pretend to be on Facebook.
My actual friends plead with me not to lift the veil. My friends are nothing like your friends. My friends have always lived in the margins, they are not mainstream, they are not average, they are not typical, they are not contributing members to society.
They're nocturnal.
They're thieves. Hackers. Criminals. Junkies. Artists. Poets. They're drivers of the getaway car. They're prostitutes. They're young boys with HIV who do sex work. They're not consuming content. They're making it. They know that surrounding themselves with colorful junk insinuates a suburban mirage of stuff, constructing a shell they can retreat into that deflects cultural radar.
Man has worn disguise since the day he started walking the Savanna upright. Fat Homo sapiens projected wealth. Emaciated humans projected compliance to a hierarchy whose greed only allowed for other members of the species to own a superficial version of net worth.
Who you mated with was not a game of throwing dice. GNP was no longer limited to the branches of a tree. The hides of other animals could be worn blatantly as a message not to mess around with anyone who could wear someone else's skin. Power arrives in images.
Facebook is about images.
No one wants to be left behind in the branches of the tree.
Facebook is...
No one really know what Facebook is.
2
Either Bret Stephens is a professional gas-lighter, or he vastly overestimates the breadth of his own historical understanding. Or it’s both.
I’d wager that it’s both. And the name is ‘Thoth’, last I checked.
Zuckerberg lost me at the gitgo when he unilaterally decided I - none of us - had a right to privacy. Sorry, but I think I do, and I think we all do.
4
If Facebook misinformation had instead helped Clinton and the Democrats win the US elections would we be having these philosophical discussions at all or would it have been a case of “business as usual”?
Please...
She would have been impeached and convicted or do you not recall the ‘lock her up’ chants.
Fake equivalencies are as dangerous as fake news.
1
Bravo. Finally a clear analysis of what social media, especially facebook is about. Thank you
"Looking stuff up on Google is easy. Knowing what to search for in the first place is hard."
Excellent point. For example, when listening to music on YouTube, I'm often astonished by how few visits there are to some of the most extraordinary music; music that has the power to inspire and even transform people of all ages if they only knew about it.
5
It's been a long time since I have read any Plato. I should do it again. I don't seem to remember much of it. But then, it's all written down somewhere.
I take issue with throwing Tesla in the mix here, and for this reason. They make a thing that is hard to make and they do it well. It's a bit over priced, but then they knew that there are those that would love it both for the novelty and because they would be early adopters helping to solve a real issue in our world. Anyway, they have hard assets, real factories and make a complex machine that is the best in it's class. That's not fake or useless. By the way, Tesla was started before Musk dumped a bunch of money in it. He is really the financier rather than the inventor or creator and while he says things that are sometime questionable his intent is good. You should spend some time discussing all the dumb stuff other CEOs, COOs, Board members, and billionaire owners say. You could fill volumes with absurd and dubious statements of ridiculousness.
As for the failure of Facebook and Twitter and Google or any other human manipulation infrastructure there are two sides to this issue. People don't need Facebook, but they use it because they are vacuous and childish. Sure, Facebook should grow up but that can be said for most people who patronize Facebook. The slaves are volunteers.
2
Bravo, Bret. Facebook is a drug, the crystal meth of the Internet.
Not for treating the disease, but for fueling and exacerbating the affliction: Narcissism. Never used it, never will.
Seriously.
5
There's a common thread between the rise of chaos and disruption as legitimate business strategies, the increase of mega mass shootings, and what happened in the election of 2016.
It's the unfailing predictability that the advertising dollars will flow to the most outrageous acts, to guarantee massive exposure. Clicks and eyeballs rule all.
Harnessing the power of free media by pushing boundaries, outrageous claims and utterances, killing people for the sake of nothing, whatever it takes.
The President is the Symbionese Liberation Army and the media, is Patty Hearst. Captive. Traumatized by him but dependent for its survival on the revenue his antics produce.
If it's not a mass killing, or a storm, or some other catastrophic event, it's our equally catastrophic leader at the center. Often, it's all of the above at once, as he perfects his approach. He's learned to hijack tragedy to shed more attention on himself.
It's why killing sprees just get larger, because the press glorifies them commensurate with the numbers. These guys are trying to set records. For infamy.
Mr. Trump uniquely found the golden key to the algorithmic behavior of the media and rode it all the way. Say something outrageous, sell more advertising, guarantee dominance of the airwaves. All for free.
How do you stop the public from rubbernecking a bad accident on the highway?
Until our geniuses figure that one out, or until we all get bored with it, these tragedies will be repeated.
3
Basically all the people I see as seeing themselves smart are not very smart.
They don't even to the basics of engaging in intelligent, opposing thought.
I can conclude, without question in my mind, is that our schooling system is a total failure at producing open-minded citencens capable in meaningful engagement.
Down goes civilization. Nothing lost.
Where are our Plato’s and Socrates’ now? For that matter, where is the Greeks’ greatest gift to mankind...democracy? We are faced with quite a conundrum, it would seem - our precious right to free speech versus its abuse through what is written as well as spoken. It is too easy now to spread hate, lies, and deceit via the words we type. And Mr. Zuckerberg’s Facebook provides a platform which abets this destructive behavior.
Mr. Z and his CEO’s know exactly what they are doing. And the bottom line is greed. Bret suggests that Facebook start over. But perhaps it would be more redeemable for Zuckerberg’s soul to restart his life in general, a life that is free of self-glorification.
2
For me, the most frustrating and equally unsurprising thing is that people use Facebook.
1
This outrage over simulacra is not new. Marshall McLuhan said the same about Tv 50 years ago. But is technology responsible for ourselves? Isn’t the laziest argument actually blaming media for our self neglect? Social media just gives us choices to exercise. If we make the wrong choices that’s our responsibility and no one else’s
2
The problem is not with writing. I've taught writing for 32 years, a nd philosophy; what Plato got wrong was that there could be critical and engaged reading. There is very little of it going on in social media, and even less in the general public. What is worse is that ludicrous positions somehow get the status of being tenable because of the very lack of actual critical ability. So conspiracy theories about mass shootings, false flags, and bad science get the same consideration as ideas that can truly stand the rigor of proper scrutiny. But as the article points out, this is hard to do.
2
For decades as a computer design manager in Silicon Valley, I believed the good guy facebook story, they just want us to have friends, which was naive.
Yes , they obviously need oversight big time. Who however when confrontronted with rapidly losing a good percentage of there market value, many tens of billions of dollars, might not want a moment to think about it. Yes a soft outer approach and a dirty rotten inside game stinks something horrid. For most large corporations this may be common stink if caught. But frankly this is probably advice from the best crisis management corporate minds in America. But is that a ten billion dollar smell or a twenty billion even worse smell. I think one truth is Zuckerberg never anticipated the power and success of facebook and a major learning correction is over due.
Lets make this more sure with a congressional inquiry.
2
I'm not on Facebook even though it would supposedly help my business (which doesn't really need any help). To me it's a waste of time. But zillions of people still love it, or at least are on it, despite the security breaches involving users' personal information, the manipulation of the technology by the Russians and others, and the self-serving mendacity of the company and its leadership. Didn't P.T. Barnum say something about a sucker being born every minute? That's what Facebook users are -- suckers.
1
What a strong essay. Excellent, Bret, you Republican you!
Not related to this column, I have a peeve with the recent discussion of Facebook. Commonly, Congress people are criticized by tech fanciers that these people can't control the problem because they are so dense they don't understand the operating nuts and bolts of the social media platforms.
Ah,the ignorance of youth and arrogance.
Your Congressmen and women (and the President, though you'd never know it with this one) have open access and even the responsibility to demand experts to explain things or even ask their questions. While these elected officials may not be adroit enough to question these Tech Sharks of other specialists, they can most certainly assemble those who can.
In large measure, Congress people and the President are simply figure heads. They don't know about a lot of stuff, so they call in and defer to experts.
This is why almost anyone can be a better President than the one we have.
2
I stopped checking my Facebook account 4 1/2 years ago after I noticed the garbage showing up on my page. Then I closed my account a year later. That was the best decision I’ve made. Absolutely no regrets.
3
Thanks so much Mr Stephens for reminding us to go back to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle our masters in thinking that, fortunately left written their thoughts. But your account of that precious dialog between the Egyptian king Thamus and that particular god Theuth is so rich. You’re right to put Facebook in the foreground as a good example of the foolishness where the written word can go, but it’s the entire world of the news circulating non stop in endless wires and visual media which is creating that virtual reality for which we’re not prepared to survive easily.
You can take this argument as far as you want to. Basically any tool is in and of itself only a tool. How it is used depends on us. To blame the tool for our own folly is in and of itself foolish. Microsoft unleashed the power of programming to many people. Most wrote useful stuff, some wrote viruses and malware. Do we blame the programming languages? Of course not. Similarly, with Facebook, Twitter, or any similar technology, it is only a platform conveying ideas and information. One has to use a bit of common sense and intelligence with these as with most anything else. Perhaps these show that we are most lacking in both common sense and intelligence, an for this they get the bad rap. But then, television was derided as the "boob tube" even though it was just another communication medium. Perhaps it comes down to the old maxim, "the more things change, the more they stay the same."
61
@Patrick: Well, we always look for something or someone else to blame for our ills, don't we? Common sense and intelligence? Knowledge and wisdom as well. There are some number of us who "always expect a train", who understand the potential for what can go wrong to actually go wrong. Then there's the vast majority of us who blithely coast through on the motto of "what, me worry?". My only consolation is that "this too shall pass". Zuckerberg started FB as consolation, and possibly revenge, for his circumstances and situation. The ongoing operations described herein show his prime motivation hasn't evolved one iota. He'll no more start over than Trump will offer a "mea culpa" and resign.
6
I agree with your point but the article lead my thinking down a different path. We have amazing talents and contributions to make in this world, more so then any tool. Even if the tool is new and has seemingly limitless potential. In some ways, a call for quality over quantity.
1
@Patrick There are limits to the use of every tool that are imposed once we agree can hurt our society. For every road there is a speed limit. You need a prescription to buy certain drugs (and can't buy others). No one can buy a grenade at Walmart. And we already know that FB has the power to cause damage, and the potential to become even more damaging if left unchecked. It is not an easy discussion, I agree with that - free speech must be preserved, for instance. But it's time for some speed bumps and cops on the road.
11
Finally, someone has crystalized the discomfort I feel about social media and certain types of technology. These things are marvels unto themselves, but we debase them by distorting their original intentions from the betterment of ourselves and our world to a showcase of all our more primitive instincts.
2
As a high school teacher, I have seen kids increasingly dependent on their phones. In some cases, they are addicted to their phones and the social media apps that come with it. That said, kids over the years have decreased interpersonal skills dramatically. Sometimes they have a hard time laughing unless it’s a meme or something coming from their phone. Maturity and intrinsic qualities have gone down, too. I’m reminded of the 1st Matrix movie with that scene where everyone is in pods plugged in. This article is spot on.
3
I do not have a Facebook account but my wife does and I on occasion look at it. She often shares posts that her friends make.
It seems to me that the users of Facebook have the responsibility to analyze what material is presented to them and decide if it is true or not.
I suspect that most users are not critical thinkers and if are presented with false information that fits with their prejudices they believe it. If they are presented with true information that is contrary to their prejudices they disbelieve it. FOX viewers are similar. Facebook does not change peoples minds but may reinforce their positions.
There is no doubt that the CEO etc at Facebook are hypocrites pretending that they are elevating human connectivity while having a license to print money from ads and selling users personal data.
But who is going to judge what material and from whom is permitted? I fear that would be a slippery slope to diminish free speech.
If what Facebook does offends you stop using it.
89
@Edward Blau Stop using FB is exactly what I did (actually I deleted my account) over 7 months ago when it was divulged that over 1.5B users' accounts from Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America were moved from Ireland to the US to avoid new data privacy protections from the EU. Of course there had been the usual worthless promise from Zuckerberg that they would abide "in spirit" with the laws and apply them universally, but FB's actions repeatedly speak louder than his words. This is not a corporate monster out of control of its CEO, this is the calculated making of a monster that monetized to the extremes everyone's personal data.
10
@Edward Blau. If we don't like Facebook, quit using it? That's like saying if you don't like buses, quit using them . You can still get run over by one, though. Ripples in a pond. Stupid, idiotic conspiracy theories repeated as fact with absolutely no proof DO affect me. Americans have indeed been dumped down and become incapable of critical thinking. Yes, Plato was correct.
13
@Edward Blau Always the righteous commentor lecturing all to simply not use FB. Folks used to say this about email, then mobile phones. It's not that simple when it's the medium you use with friends and family, ironically, as your wife still does. But our use of email and mobile phones was not monitored, sold, and manipulated like this communications platform is and something needs to be done about that.
8
This piece articulates the (should have been anticipated) likely devolution of Facebook. Though this argument needed to be surfaced, the gasoline added to the fire is in how the back-end of Facebook was orchestrated to extract value from our own information, contacts, and tendencies. It fueled the echo chambers, connected more like-minded people, and created brand new paths to mental deterioration and institutional destruction - at a tremendous scale.
Twitter is equally culpable but it was always obvious how that platform could lend itself quickly to vacuous interchange and self-serving interests. Facebook's 'crime' is not only the damage it has done but that it did it while wearing sheep's clothing.
3
Self-regulation is not a plausible possibility.
It even seems unlikely that a Congress at least as fuelled by money as Silicon Valley could ever write legislation that would effectively regulate these companies.
Busing, integration, and the breakup of cartels are all comparably complex issues that required the intervention of courts.
1
I get the point, it’s generally a good idea to be skeptical of change that promises so much. And I appreciate the invitation to question and debate - it’s healthy.
However, for someone who’s grown up in the shadow of the baby boomers it’s hard to hear a criticism of what was for better or worse a product of my generation.
Maybe I’m remembering overly fondly, but Facebook for me was part of the family of social media, including MySpace, that was relatively pleasant and innocent at the beginning. I remember hesitating more about what I put on there once my parents started joining up. Facebook has evolved into something that is now the platform for all people and all occasions. Like Amazon wants to be the everything store. It felt nicer when it appealed to a smaller audience (though cyber bullying was and remains a malicious presence).
It’s as much a monopoly problem as a technology problem. Or a monoculture - we’re putting so much in the hands of so few.
So ok, we should question progress, but the horse has bolted, our children are growing up in a digital world now. 20/20 hindsight is wonderful but not particularly constructive.
What would Socrates say about Facebooking better ?
3
And Plato also opposed Democracy. The good thing is, it's hard to picture Donald Trump as a philosopher king.
2
A fascinating article, really like it. I do want to point out that if one is careful, some of these technologies can be benevolent. I have a small Twitter account, where I learn interesting things about music, archaeology, piano tuning and other good things, follow a couple of my journalistic heroes and get a chance to applaud performances I enjoy, share jokes with my acquaintances. It takes vigilance, however, not to see it turn into something less than entertaining. Facebook I have long found repellent and boring, and sensed immediately that it could be treacherous. "Oh, just let us do all that for you" and "We are all friends together" Fie! Thanks for the article.
4
@SFR Daniel: Ah, Twitter as a tool to learn about archeology. Yep, there's definitely a shortage of sources for learning about that subject. Thank god for Twitter.
1
I suggest that those who gain profit from any enterprise that earns money, whether it is a chemical factory or a cigarette maker of a social media platform will defend their profit making - sometimes to absurd lengths. In the 1960s industry put out a full court press to lambast those like Rachel Carson who dared suggest that industry is conducting a chemical experiment on Americans. Similarly, year later, cigarette executives lied as a group about the addictiveness of nicotine. Exxon too tried the big lie. So no, Facebook is not any different. The only difference is that they can send their messages on their own platform to millions, so don't need press spokesmen to find a platform.
Facebook became blinded by greed. An old story.
28
Plato's "enemy" was the written word, which he opposed to the direct spiritual presence of his mentor Socrates. Yet the written word, and then millennia later the mechanically printed word, became the instruments of modernity and of democracy. Television, another tool trumpeted and then demonized, brought masses of people together at the same time as it took away the agency of individuals who were drowned in an ocean of mass culture. And yet, there is still writing, and publishing, and television - evolving as we human beings learn, over decades and centuries, to use these media. We have barely started to consciously use television (and I think this was ultimately McLuhan's point, that we must transform media into conscious endeavors rather than let them unconsciously control us). Facebook has a presence in our civilization now that is (I'm quite sure) beyond the capacity of its creator to fathom. Since Plato didn't understand the power of writing, that's hardly an insult to Mr. Zuckerberg. The problem (not just for the Facebook corporation but for elected officials) is that a private corporation must now contend with the fact that it has created what must be seen as a public utility. Facebook is not to be compared with a specific television network, but rather with the totality of the television bandwidth, which is and ought to be recognized as a public space to be regulated as such.
12
"might have been a digital billboard of ideas and conversation ennobling the public square. We’ve turned it into the open cesspool of the American mind"
That depends on the user, what you put on it, and what you choose to read off of it.
But the concern seems more to prevent the other guy from posting or reading things disapproved.
Censorship. That is a much bigger problem than what it censors, because it is so easily abused to do so much more harm.
So let people post drivel, and read drivel, if that is what they want. If they should want better, talk to them about it, don't censor.
4
@Mark Thomason
Well put. Our physical world is a combination of cesspools, swamps, mountain vistas and peaceful shorelines. We don't commend or condemn them all.
What we see with Facebook today is another manifestation of our (sorta) democracy and our (sorta) free market adjusting a series of interdependent set points. This happens better when people of good will minimize yelling and lying from extremes, and focus on addressing issues that affect large numbers of citizens. Plato and Socrates understood this, I believe. And fortunately, the written word has conveyed their wisdom down through the ages.
2
I would stand this argument in its head.
The invention of writing finally challenged the self-serving delusions of memory and opened up history based on documentation (including Plato himself). I don't see a downside, despite Plato's reservations.
The problem with Facebook is not that it is a new technology, but that it is a commercial enterprise driven by advertising revenue. Thus it needs to maximize attention with clickbait, from whatever source.
Until that changes, nothing will change.
The same was true of television. As long as it was based on a free to air advertising model, it was lowest common denominator. With the advent of cable and online subscriptions, we got the present golden age of TV programming.
9
@gs Plato himself wrote a lot. His mentor Socrates wrote nothing. Plato wrote about Socrates, didn't want Socrates or his teachings to be forgotten.
Paradox!
1
I remember when television was the controversial topic. We NYT readers know how to manage television now, and we know all about those who are /were dummed down by it, we know its pros and cons.
We also know of billionaires who have given their money back to society in the name of democrat (Carnegie, Rockefeller) and wonder, why are there not more like them?
We know that the population of the world is soon going to be 9.6 by 2050, and that by then there will be a replacement for social media like there has been for television.
It is the organisations like Wikipedia on the Internet that deserve more attention - people who are giving something to society based on donations and democratic values.
5
@Jane Wikipedia is awesome. I had been skeptical of it but a friend encouraged me to try it. I was wondering the exact meaning of a very technical term in linguistics. Wikipedia nailed it.
Recently I was interested in Brenda Snipes, an election official in Florida. There was a Wikipedia entry which defined "snipe hunt" as a type of voting fraud (in reality it's a practical joke). This obviously bogus entry was very soon removed. Wikipedia's immune system is quite effective.
A few months ago I listened to a long and probing radio interview with Sheryl Sandberg on the BBC. The interview covered the devastating grief she felt after the death of her husband, her love for her children, the philosophy behind her book “Lean In” and particularly her professional hopes and goals for Facebook as a force for good. She came across as honest, empathetic and caring.
This week, after reading the article in the NYT about the outsize and very “hands-on” role Ms. Sandberg played with Mark Zuckerberg in the truly nefarious cover up at Facebook my eyes were certainly opened about any noble aspirations I might have heretofore attributed to Ms. Sandberg.
They say “ when someone tells you who they are, believe them,” but boy was I naive in believing Sheryl Sandberg!
9
@Susan
I own Sandberg's book, (hard copy, not kindle), but didn't get around to reading it. Now I never will.
The problem with this is that the only reason we have Socrates's argument against writing is that Plato wrote it down for us. Mr Stephens's point is well taken but comes with its own implicit caveat.
17
Facebook, social media, more broadly the internet and the accusations it faces from traditional media, particularly newspapers?
Typically traditional media accuses entities such as Facebook along the lines that it invades privacy, spreads disinformation, results in fake news, etc. but to understand traditional media's accusations it would be instructive to examine what traditional media is first before allowing it to accuse social media and the internet as a whole.
Traditional media is analogous to big banking except it presumes to control currency of thought. Traditional media has always been invasive of privacy (on the beat and reporting anyone?) and always with ideology for it's a business model and must make thought predictable, cannot stand disruption in thought unless it can make genius itself appear with regularity and integrated in its business scheme, which of course it cannot...
Therefore traditional media acts exactly like banking when faced with the internet: It expects government protection. It claims to be protecting currency of thought when actually it's a vast system of regulation, doing no service to genius for it crushes everything to minor facts and ideology, predictable business model, and based on invasion of privacy because it cannot presume to know right from wrong thinking unless first busy bodying about the thoughts and actions of everyone.
It's actually ironic: Every critique of internet could have, and should have, been applied to newspapers.
1
@Daniel12 Fake News!
I thoroughly disagree with your analysis.
With banking we obviously need strong government regulation otherwise the level of banking fraud would be through the roof. The fact that we still have some banking fraud is an argument for stricter regulation not for no regulation. Amazingly there are those who make the latter argument. You seem to be one of them.
BTW it's the government which controls the currency.
You make no attempt to actually defend Facebook and its peers. You accuse the news media of having ideological biases. Well of course it does, as do we all. These biases actually used to be far worse in this country and, in fact, the dread Mainstream Media had made great progress in reining the ideology in.
The Times, for example, has often been accused of burying certain facts, i.e. not mentioning them until later paragraphs. To which I say if you're too lazy to read an important article to the end that's your problem.
Then came Fox, which has a couple of prominent journalists who make some attempt at objectivity but is otherwise filled with lying propagandists. The shortcomings of mainstream media do not justify this.
As for your claim that " traditional media acts exactly like banking when faced with the internet: It expects government protection." What in God's name are you referring to. Show us even one example of "government protection". I really don't think you can.
Great article
Very thought provoking
Facebook will not be able to turn the corner
Culturally that is beyond them
Although their behaviour in the Western world is what has brought their current situation it is their lack of effort in developing nations on Facebook and WhatsApp (India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka) that is the most alarming. They cannot be trusted when nobody is looking.
If your only metric for success is maximising shareholder value then you have essentially created a morally bankrupt company. Given its enormous media presence this places Facebook in a dangerous situation for mankind.
5
I'm astonished anyone has ever actually taken drivel like "Facebook's mission is to connect people" seriously. I mean, really. Facebook's mission, and business model, is simply to sell you, and your personal data, to advertisers. Everything it does follows from this. It makes the app interface as addictive as possible (employing behavioral neuroscientists to provide input on achieving just this) to retain your engagement as much as is possible. After all, that's the product it is ultimately selling -- you. It find ways of getting you to disclose as much personal information about your preferences, friends, family, interests and activities for it to sell, tracking you even when you are off Facebook. The platform provides "free services" as a means for collecting said data. Anyone who *really* thinks this is designed to make the world a "better place", except perhaps for Facebook's shareholders, is beyond naive. I mean, sheesh. Why would anyone be surprised that the results are socially toxic?
52
Instead of telling Facebook to "start over," Mr. Stephens, I have a better idea.
The government should start regulating these behemoths.
Time to bring back our good, old-fashioned antitrust laws and apply them to Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google and the rest of these 21st century monster companies.
They might pretend to be a new kind of company, but they're like so many companies that came before them, i.e. driven only by greed and their stock values.
Let's revive the Sherman Antitrust Act, just like Teddy Roosevelt did, and stop them from doing irreparable harm to our country.
91
@V Yes. Yes, Yes! Please regulation. Too Big Too Fail!
1
I think this is just a lot of ludditism. Facebook, etc. are all tools: how humans use it is what matters. Humans will never stop inventing new tools and technologies, pushing the limits, with good and bad results. The results are because of human actions, shortsightedness, and other human flaws.
I think overall the way the Internet has been used since AOL got online (to the broader Internet) in 1994 is a lesson in what happens when you go away from the ideals that the Internet and the nascent Web managed to evolve into before that period (when it was mostly educational institutes). We used to worry about September whenever the new students got access with poor netiquette. When AOL users got access, we said it was September all year around.
Nonetheless, for those who use the tools properly, it is not an issue. It seems you're the one who wants to make it easy for humanity for suggesting something should be done in a way that makes the users not responsible for their actions (whether it is trusting posts without application of reason, or being greedy, or approval and attention seeking behaviour).
5
The truth of this piece of writing is staggering and pervasive. It is also broadly applicable.
I have, for too many years now, been working as a consultant and it is frightening how often people in senior management positions insist that extremely complex and multifaceted problems be reduced to a couple of bullet points or, even better, a binary choice, up or down, left or right, 1 or 0. It is equally frightening how often they are accommodated in this.
Life is hard, choices have consequences, intended ones but also, and just as real, unintended ones. It is especially galling when people actively seek not to be aware of hidden cost or side or knock-on effects.
It is, in a way, the curse of plenty. Too many things are ours for the taking. We no longer wonder what has needed to happen for them to be presented to us. And this means we no longer care what we need to do to ensure that they keep being available...
One of those things of course is peace.
31
@Rudy Flameng very well stated. Thanks
Facebook could have been so wonderful: it was an easy and fun way to keep up with old friends and acquaintances who no longer had to be gone from our lives because we all moved to new places. It was a natural home for support and social groups. But anything that easy must come at a steep price, and now we know how terribly we’ve paid. It’s past time to walk away.
Facebook began as a idea pilfered from other people. So I suppose it’s not terribly surprising that it turned into a vehicle for ethically stunted individuals to profit by selling out pretty much everyone. Even entire nations were (still are?) fair game.
And still Mark and Sheryl offer hollow apologies and defend themselves. Just resign, already.
If only some people with integrity could run things like this. Just once.
22
@Valerie People with integrity would have no desire to. If you know power corrupts, why would you want to wield it?
2
Some of us (some few of us?) were never buying the idea that Facebook, or its immediate predecessors or direct and indirect imitators, represented anything remotely like a breakthrough in human communications - let alone a technological one. As Emerson (I belive) asked, roughly, upon the advent of the telegraph: 'Now Maine can talk to Texas in an instant but is it clear they have anything to say to one another?'
77
@richard
I never signed up either, and rode out the pressure from work and friends to do so, sometimes using the very same quote you mentioned. The whole thing got totally out of control when social media became an all day every day phenomenon with the arrival of the "smart phone" to add to the effect. I think a great many people are aware now how disconnected we've become, due to so-called "connectivity." Hopefully we can start to engage more directly and roll this back at bit in the future. But they've deployed a lot of the psychology of addiction in designing and deploying these programs and platforms, so it's not going to be easy to back up from the road we've gone down.
1
@richard
Henry David Thoreau, maybe?
@richard
The lines attributed to Emerson are Thoreau's, in _Walden_.
2
If Facebook creates a paid version of its platform that takes away the ads and prevents them from selling my data then I will happily subscribe to it.
My data is worth a lot of money. I know it and I am willing to pay to keep it that way.
10
Some human minds are no matches for the mighty internet and the rancid right-wing.
Take 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch
He drove five hours from his hometown, Salisbury NC, to the Washington, DC Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant in December 2016 and fired his military-style assault rifle inside, believing he was saving children trapped in a sex-slave ring.
He was investigating baseless internet reports of children held there in a child abuse scheme led by Hillary Clinton, a widely believed crackpot conspiracy theory known as “Pizzagate.”
No one was hurt or injured per se, aside from the emotionally traumatized restaurant owner, staff and customers.
He was sentenced to four years in prison for letting his entire brain be swallowed by the internet.
After his arrest, Mr. Welch did show some signs of coherence; he said “I just wanted to do some good and went about it the wrong way....the intel on this wasn’t 100 percent.”
Welch said he learned about 'Pizzagate' through word of mouth. He had had internet service recently installed and he was “really able to look into it.” He said that substantial evidence from a combination of (baseless) sources had left him with the “impression something nefarious was happening.” He said one article on the subject led to another and then another.
The Pizzagate fraud started with a John Podesta Wikileaks email leak, and then metastasized as fake news on Reddit, 4chan, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
"Houston, we have an internet problem"
389
@Socrates
Yes, we have an internet problem - but we have a much bigger gullibility problem! In the days before the internet, we had tabloid newspapers, Faux News channels and hate radio leading the blind over the proverbial cliff.
13
@Socrates
About 63 million Americans including 58% of the white voting majority elected Donald Trump. Aided and abetted by Julian Assange, James Comey, Mitch McConnell, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin.
17
Basic tenets of dissonance theory indicated that people gravitate to information that confirms their existing beliefs. That includes distorting information so it is consistent with their current schema. I seriously doubt that facebrook is as influential as u claim as misinformation will always be a problem in an open society and ultimately we learn from our mistakes and take corrective actions.
7
@gm
Facebook is as influential as the writer claims AND misinformation will always be a problem. They are not mutually exclusive.
The writer is warning us, and Facebook, that it can and should do something about the extent of a the problem, to the extent we can do something about it.
Throwing your hands up is easy, fighting the good fight is hard.
1
@gm
Got it right.
Cognitive bias becomes confirmation bias.
1
Internet platforms, like pretty much all technological innovation, are driven by commercial goals, and are therefore easily manipulated to unforeseen ends. Freer speech encourages hate speech; freer expression enables pornography, freer markets result in exploiters like Uber. Convenience is ethically neutral, and the idea that a for-profit company exists to better our lives is at best a shadow on the wall of our cave, which was perhaps Plato's most famous insight.
19
The flexibilities of the human mind make us each able to manufacture our individual versions of truth and reality even to the extent of lying to ourselves to convince ourselves and others of our particular version. And memory is quite plastic, as studies have shown. Writing and other forms of fixed information merely petrifies the thoughts of the moment that can be confronted with objections. Even in science which refers to demonstrated experiments, the reinterpretations of these demonstrations can change radically. And when this is combined with the great human skills of aware lying we must manage as best we can.
5
Facebook is not the Internet, uncontrolled Capitalism, including outright theft of data on who is using the Internet, and for what, and compiling and selling lists of effectively stolen detailing exactly who each ‘net user is to sell us a bar of soap or a president is far from what the ‘net was designed to be.
And it’s past time to stop s few things that began with IBM’s pre-internet days idea of only leasing, lately tenting, software.
We need to go back to the era of the first desktop computers to be mass-produced by Digital Equipment Corp. and the idea that both computers (IBM would only lease theirs) and software should be sold to the buyers, not rented, and under the sickest Internet development now called the Cloud, you cannot even do that, you must use our software on our cloud computers, though yours will do the job quite well, AND no discussions, if you want to use key sections of the ‘net or important software, you have to do it under dozens of pages of small print, that say not only do we set all the rules, you cannot even take us to court if the programs don’t work, but we have the right to steal all sorts if information about you, including, often, anything you write that might give us a full picture of who you are,but let us mix it from everything else we can find out and sell it, even when stolen through programs we snuck onto your computer.
What can be done - start by banning the abuses mentioned above.
31
Wecomment: Ain't no going back to those earlier days ...
1
"Technology promises to make easy things that, by their intrinsic nature, have to be hard."
Well, maybe. But it also complicates things that ought to be easy; like voting, for instance, with which Facebook has more than an nebulous connection.
In this advanced nation we cast our votes with the "help" of technology and they can allegedly be counted so that the winners can be known within minutes. In reality, the votes disappear into the ether as soon as we cast them and we trust technology outside the public domain to deliver their totals.
Mr. Stephens writes: "......we tend to forget that technology is only as good as the people who use it. We want it to elevate us; we tend to degrade it." Exactly. We entrust electronic voting technology and its supervision to relatively few experts, which is its Achilles heel.
I grew up voting with ancient technology. I marked an x with a non-proprietary HB pencil on a non-proprietary actual paper ballot and put it in a non-proprietary box. Votes were counted by hand by many people, very publicly. Both counters and their supervisors were intimately familiar with the technology, and their very numbers were a barrier to corruption.
The only modern technology in the whole process was under the hood of the vehicles that carried the secured ballot boxes from the polling place to the counting location. And, allowing for any recounts and the farthest-flung areas, all results were known with within 24 hours of voting.
40
@mancuroc,
You wrote, "...things that ought to be easy; like voting, for instance." That is a false statement. Our right to vote is purchased at enormous cost. We have chosen to spill the last of life's blood to defend our God-given right to self determination rather than remain safe in our homes. We have chosen to forego an additional silver coin to retain our right to vote. To claim that our right to vote ought to be easy is facile, thoughtless, and self-serving. "Easy" voting is the greatest peril that our experiment in democracy faces. If we aren't willing to renew our nation in strife and struggle we will be the first generation of Americans to shirk that duty, and perhaps the last generation of Americans.
2
@mancuroc
It is still possible!
I vote by marking a paper and putting it in a box. I trust my vote is properly counted in this lovely state of mine.
I love much about the net, it has made my life easier and richer in some ways, but have never taken part in Twitter or Facebook as they seem like a huge waste of time and, too, lack of privacy gets my goat. Facebook is annoying, and a deep con game (and now we know, also very bad, deceptive, malicious and entirely unwise).
We all need to go outside more, have a slice of pie with a friend more, go be silly with the kids more.
4
@Charles Becker
That's just a way of saying that the corrupt obstruction of people's franchise is OK, dressed up in highfalutin language.
We all have rights and obligations as citizens. I happen to believe that voting is both. There are too many examples of citizens prevented from fulfilling their right and obligation when they live in the wrong zip code. Careless voting technology is just one way it's done, but we all know that there are others.
Facebook is founded on a simple lie. That lie makes it difficult to see reality.
Facebook and similar ilk were named “social media.” “Social” created the illusion of a good, new communication channel.
The reality? It’s not “social” media. It’s GOSSIP media.
Facebook is designed to elicit gossip. People love secrets. Recall the term, “A bit of juicy gossip.” People pay attention to it. It rewards the provider with attention. It possesses the power of revenge.
Retail companies want gossip. Gossip allegedly reveals true feelings; provides a manipulative tool to increase sales.
Zuckerberg and similar ilk work at monetizing GOSSIP.
Civil societies long spurned gossip. It comes back to harm the originator. It deludes and misleads those caught up in it. It harms community relationships. It wastes time. It harms people with lies. It sidetracks innovation.
Facebook is a cheap thrill. No reliability vetting is needed. It’s phony egalitarianism. Everyone seemingly makes equal noise in the chain communication of the “gossip telephone.”
How to get it under control? Turn our institutions loose to drive home it’s gossip. Let a TV host or White House spokesperson ask, “Did you get that from gossip media or from Fox Propaganda, Inc? At job interviews ask, “How much time to do you spend on gossip media?”
Belittle the reliance on it for factual, vetted, reliable information. Regulate and punish the willful distribution of harmful gossip.
Identify what it is: Gossip Media.
24
Bravo, Brett Stephens. I'm a frequent critic but have to say that this is one of the best essays I've read...by anyone!
156
@Grant Edwards :-)
A day late and a dollar short, Mr. Stephens. Where were your op/ed pieces warning us about Facebook before all this Russia stuff became known. And why are YOU still on Facebook at this point?
13
@stu freeman: well, because a lot of this "concern" is hysterical nonsense.
If Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election....even though the same stuff had happened....how much would the lefty media care about it all? The Russians would just be pathetic nutcases, trying silly stunts that didn't work.
BEFORE 2016...we'd heard for many years about how smart, savvy politicians SHOULD use the internet....to connect with young people, raise money, go outside of the traditional venues ("dark smoky rooms") and communicate better. Howard Dean was considered an early, clever adopter (until he blew it). Obama was widely praised for utilizing the internet and social media (then pretty new!) to win in 2008.
In short: it is OK if liberals use Facebook/Twitter, but evil and awful if the conservatives do it.
2
The problem is not about technology. The problem is not specific to place or time. The problem is in people.
Human nature, unfortunately, entails some ugly traits: greed, deceitfulness, gullibility, insecurity, laziness, cunningness and more. These characteristics, especially in concert, lead to catastrophes. Only the details change; the plots are the same whenever, wherever, however.
Technology was created by, and is utilized by, people. So humans are the ones who should be scrutinized. None of our problems - no network, no media, no device - is independent from us.
42
Thank you Mr. Stephens, I agree with your points. Social media provides a false substitute for real experiences and living and tends to remove us from one another. I remember life before I had tons of "friends" on facebook. I focused on the people in my immediate circle and took time to reach out them and spend time with them.
While social media has broadened my contacts it has provided a lot of tenuous relationships and weakened the bonds I had with people in the past. It is a "weaponization" of social interaction, where you can scale your social contacts by diluting it.
Reminds me of something my mother told me as a kid - she said, "if you have one or two true friends, consider yourself fortunate as most people are only acquaintances".
13
It is not Facebook that is the problem but the character and morality of the people who founded and run it A gun can be used as a instrument to defuse a potentially violent situation or to protect someone or to cause great harm or abuse It depends of the skill and moral character of the person holding the gun The same can be said of a scalpel
Instead of facing the problems that Facebook was creating Zuckerberg sought to hide them deny them and/or deflect blame onto others instead of addressing them head on That is not the problem of the Facebook format but of the moral character of Zuckerberg
The same is true of the sound byte format of both Facebook and Twitter Einstein said that if you can't find a way to explain something complex so that a six year old can understand it you don't really have a grasp of the topic yourself When I did post graduate study at a psychoanalytic institute I was always struck by penchant to express simple processes in the most complex terminology and manner I think this was done to create the illusion of a monopoly of knowledge and wisdom
We cannot stop progress and innovation The problem is the morality of the individuals who control these innovations
That is why those why propose deregulation are running a con All deregulation does is make it easier for amoral people to abuse their power Zuckerberg needs to face consequences for his amoral irresponsibility and Facebook and Twitter need oversight
14
@Martin
Using a period every once in a while would make your comment clearer.
2
There have always been the disenfranchised and there always will be. Perhaps previously one would lose oneself in the fictional characters of books compared to the fictional relationships online. The point is, one was still lost in a world of one’s own making forgoing live interactions. The issue is not new. Posting online is no different than previous generations’ use of scandal sheets or village gossip. During wars and elections, spies were placed to disseminate false information. Perhaps it is easier now, but it is not new.
The main tennat of Socratic philosophy is one does not know as much as one thinks one knows. It is about critical thinking. To put it into perspective, however, it must be acknowledged Socrates was a celebrity of his time and ended his life by a death sentence for stating his beliefs. His works, almost exclusively reported through Plato, are excellent reminders to ask questions. They are not as useful in supplying answers.
A question that needs to be asked at this point is: in a forum for collecting and posting thoughts, who has the right of censorship? Not the right to censor, but of censorship. These are two different things.
So again the question: who has the right of censorship? Does Facebook contain a higher culpability than the creator of the written word or the creator of paper? It is not an easy question nor does it have an easy answer.
8
@Naomi-Lynn Marguerite Bravo. That is as original a bit of thinking and writing as I have ever read, regarding your 'commentary' on Socratic philosophy.
Excellent and timely column. Facebook and other social media platforms are designed to addict users (consider some recent confessions of people involved in creating social media platforms). This constant distraction of "connection" has ironically led to "disconnection" as people are constantly tethered to their smart phones (with at times dangerous consequences). Yes, I'm well aware of the positive ways these platforms can connect people but we need a "corrective" in how we use technology so as to renew "authenticity" in human relationships and regain our ever-shrinking attention spans.
The key is for us to control the technology not let the technology control us. Facebook is one example of large corporations motivated by profit (greed) regardless of the negative consequences.
10
This piece is right on in its analysis of the topic, and also in recommending more discerning ways of engaging the world, especially through technological means Yet, it seems Mr. Stephens, perhaps because of his economic conservatism, leaves aside the perverting profit seeking element inherent in this problem. Is it not a glaring factor too often omitted by the supply-side camp?
7
Wise thoughts. The easy of connecting and exchanging information has affected our society for a long time. The mass media has become a means to share without much concern about the complexity of reality. Noam Chomsky is one of the most thoughtful people among those who write for popular consumption. He is rarely asked to comment about anything because he just doesn’t express his thoughts in sound bytes. But he expresses himself with great care to cover the subject. No extra words no digressions. But it is too much information for most viewers, they prefer simple expressions with little new information. But by rejecting the well informed but complicated discourse from people like Chomsky they remain ignorant of information that they would benefit from knowing.
14
@CO
We live in the age of the flickering screen that tries to garner our attention from multiple sources 24/7/365 with 15/30 seconds snippets, essentially all yelling that we should pay attention to them.
Couple that with degradation of public education, moving away from the ''classics'', cognitive debate, and just basic writing/cursive (that slows us down to think) and voila.
I am not sure what the solution is (certainly sitting down to read multiple books would help) but more and more society is demanding of us to keep up - or be left behind.
Thoughts ?
8
So if Plato's argument had won the day, we would never have developed textbooks, libraries, or any other form of the written word, which allowed most of the advances we've made since his time. Bret Stephens presumably thinks this would be a better state of affairs as well, from what I can gather of his praise of Plato's critique.
Writing was one of the first forms of external storage for our brains, which meant that we could vastly expand human knowledge since you weren't limited to what you had personally memorized. Computers and the Internet are among the inventions that this made possible.
I realize that Bret Stephens is using Plato's cautions as an analogy for our modern dilemmas, but he's wrong in both cases.
Facebook isn't problematic because it's too "easy". It's problematic because it became a platform for extreme right wing propaganda and hired Republican consultants to fend off anyone pointing this out.
Going out to the beach and looking at the waves is easy. Sitting quietly is easy. Does Stephens thinks these are dangerous activities that stunt our growth because they're too easy? Easy is not the problem.
No one in their right mind could look back at Plato's misguided notion and say yes, writing ruined us by making knowledge too easy. On the contrary, it made things much harder, but the rewards much greater.
Bret Stephens closes with the words "Read an ancient book instead". Maybe he should listen to the audio version, otherwise it will be too easy.
43
@Jeo "Going out to the beach and looking at the waves is easy. Sitting quietly is easy." Actually it's not. Recall Pascal's famous remark:" I've often said that all of man's miseries derive from a single thing, which is not being able to sit quietly in a room." That innate restless and distraction has been amplified a thousand-fold in the age of social media. You misconstrue the point here: Plato himself was a literary master(not an advocate for abolishing writing -which would have been impossible even in his day) who created a new type of writing, the Socratic dialogue, to deal with some of the difficulties of writing that were discussed in the Phaedo. Go read an ancient book.
21
I think there might be a maxim that may be even older than the wisdom/writings of Plato (perhaps from the very beginning - whenever that was) and that is that anything that is grouped in the world will only be as good or strong as its weakest link.
That could be the bonds of love, a marching army, or society itself. There will be those that might judge these things with different criteria, but especially for society, it is how we take care of our weakest and less well off, that we are to be ultimately judged in the end. - by who or what I am not sure.
There are really only two things that corrupt anything in this world - even the most altruistic things. Those are power and money.
Sure, a platform that supposedly brings us together, will have the makers in between seeking power over us while charging us for the privilege.
So, I suppose when we log on to watch the latest cat video, or be inundated by ads or by harsh messages from trolls, we must take head of the original principal of connection.
That could be for social media, our democracy or world.
6
The solution is not to suppress freedom of speech by censoring social media post, but to teach Americans not to believe everything they see or read on social media, or for that matter, newspapers and network news. Censoring "fake news" will eventually lead to censoring expression of opinion on ground unpopular opinions are based on faulty logic or misconceptions.
8
I would expand: not to blindly believe anything they see, read and hear anywhere. Remember, lies of WMD in Iraq were delivered via regular news channels? The people who deliver the news are just people. They are biased, mistaken and sometimes pure dishonest.
@yulia
And one step deeper: people believe what they think and think their thoughts about themselves are who they are.
I disagree with Bret more and more since he left The Wall Street Journal but I must say this was an excellent column. Well written and I learned something new from Plato and Socrates - proving that there really is nothing new in this world other than the history we do not know.
308
@Alan
Read The Republic closely and understand how deeply ignorant Plato was. Stephens here is contextualizing beyond the original work. If we read Thamus’ words without context we see the original Luddite. History is a synthesis and it never repeats itself.
7
@Jon
You might want to look into the possibility that in the later "Socratic dialogues" we are getting more and more of Plato, well beyond what Socrates' method of probative inquiry was about. I have some sympathy with your point, and I know it was a previous commenter who conflated Plato and Socrates (as, perhaps, did Plato himself), but I don't think Mr. Stephens overplayed the Socratic angle here.
10
@Jon
Plato was ignorant? Oh golly. Only the ignorant say that history doesn't repeat itself, especially at time when fascism has become de rigueur on this side of the pond.
21
Would that Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg would follow your advice! Facebook is like any other large monopoly, a machine for making money for its owners, so the odds on anything changing without strong government intervention are slim.
137
@Andrew Gillis
Speaking of money, and power, follow Sen. Chuck Schumer’s involvement with face book, and see what his offspring is doing at face book. Might even a better article, if one digs a bit!
I'm not sure "Plato Foresaw Facebook's Folly," or that the article's quote from Phaedrus is directly relevant to Facebook. But I do appreciate that there is much wisdom that philosophy can teach us nowadays, and it's great to see Socrates quoted in the NY Times.
We keep looking to technology and business to solve our problems. Facebook supposedly wants to "bring us closer together," and we're told technology will make that possible. But the problems Facebook and other social media companies face are problems of ethics and wisdom, not public relations and algorithms. In fact, our democracy is living in an epistemological crisis now; not only don't we know what's true, we don't even know *how* we determine what is true or not. Philosophers have been thinking about this for millennia.
Perhaps it's time our culture places a higher value on philosophy, civics, and the liberal and fine arts. They have much wisdom to teach us. In the meantime, our political and business leaders might wish to read Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations" - they can learn from a fellow emperor about self-insight, human values, and the limits of power.
221
@jrinsc, Well said and I truly appreciate your optimism but I'll bet against humanity every time.
The human race and it's many great civilizations historically seem bent upon their own destruction.
Modern philosophy also gave birth to modern sophistry.
Both Plato and Socrates were in agreement that the absolute worst way to run a government was democracy stating the ignorance of the masses. Neither philosopher however gives a truly sufficient explanation for ignorance causes but I will venture a guess it's self interest.
We live in a society that largely values that self interest without care or concern let alone contemplation for the effects of our endeavors on our neighbors or society as a whole. There is no amount of education that is going to change that.
I will further conclude that while Facebook may spread falsity to the ignorant ( seriously even used properly, at best it's a highlight reel ) how's the mainstream media doing? Oh yeah that's right, they are held hostage to a 24 hour news cycle and serving their own interests.
12
@Daniel
"...but I will venture a guess it's self interest."
Yes, indeed, and an excellent comment, as far as it goes.
We can easily see that human problems on all levels can be sourced to the way we instinctively and compulsively need a self-identity. That it is an arbitrary and contingent construction (time and place of birth, family dynamics, reactions to experiences, social pressures, fortune itself) is also obvious. So what we need is an understanding of that self-interest problem...why and how identity is required, created and sustained and whether a deeper seeing is possible which objectifies that identity and detaches the essential, knowing self from it to a degree that allows for the revolutionary insight of its falsity and so providing a glimpse beyond it to our true nature. There are rumors that suggest it may be possible.
But that's the spiritual conundrum of human existence: the separate, thought-of self is a natural and necessary developmental stage, but it holds all our problems within it and it must be included but transcended for us to finally understand ourselves and so others. As one very smart man once said: be very careful what you say after the words "I am...".
5
@jrinsc
I would be happy if our culture placed a higher value on education, period.
7
"But the deeper reason that technology so often disappoints and betrays us is that it promises to make easy things that, by their intrinsic nature, have to be hard."
Thank you, Mr Stephens, for this thoughtful piece - this is the kind of analysis we need to think through these issues.
I submit that the mission of connecting millions upon millions of people in a positive way would rely on human decency - and it's trite, but it only takes a few rotten apples to spoil that mission, even without the lure, or motive, of money and political power.
Some things - many things - are hard, even impossible, to do right - and doing it quickly can just make it all the more wrong.
63
@csa
''...but it only takes a few rotten apples to spoil that mission,'' - indeed, but it also only takes some strong and cohesive leadership to guard against that. As far as social media companies, I do not see that.
You would think that once you had a billion dollars (more than enough for several lifetimes) that would move heaven and earth to make society better - give back.
Sadly that is not the case...sigh
20
@FunkyIrishman - agreed - and it creates a brutal circular reference when leadership should come from Washington DC, but easily hijacked social media stymies democratic elections so that instead we "elect" Trump & Co.
6
You might say the same for the invention of language.
Is Facebook really so different than the invention of the printing press, and how it took us from monks on Irish Isles laboriously preserving ancient texts and wisdom by hand to mass produced bibles, pamphlets, posters and newspapers inciting wisdom, revolution, rebellion and mayhem? Yet we survived, and now recognize the printing press as perhaps the greatest invention of modern man. FB is a baby step requiring a steep learning curve. Critique it sure, but it's not going away.
5
Facebook is a far, far less significant technological advancement than was the printing press. It's merely a disposable convenience, and it is a malevolent corporate entity driven by boundless and amoral capitalist greed.
4
@JEB I think what we are seeing is the beginning of the social etiquette forming around a technology that was widely adapted. Things are invested and society exams how they are used for good and bad and develops informal rules.
There will always be idiots, but getting the greater part of society to demand from these platforms changes to make them behave more is a good thing. The rules are just beginning to be collectively created.
1
Um, I created the anti facebook, anti twitter, philosophically correct platform close to a decade ago. It was based upon logical thinking, but more than that, it used technology to leverage our existing abilities and marginalize our existing, counterproductive tendencies, to produce good, product conversation on the internet.
I still have it. It's withering away in my basement. It needs a new look and a new marketing scheme to make thinking more deeply and more importantly more attractive to the human species.
I have the thing. I need some money. Any buyers?
7
@DudeNumber42
Ok, so here's how it works. People say whatever they want in a forum just like Facebook or any blog allows. However, if they respond, they have to either agree or disagree with the original post. It's annoying, I know. Our first intention is to play politics, to get the person to like us and use our 1000s year old rhetorical abilities to personalize our viewpoints. The problem in the age of the internet is that it doesn't work anymore.
So we have to default upon the logic. I agree or I disagree. Here's why... And then we have to rely upon groups to confirm those points of view, essentially verbatim, but malleable such that the verbatim agreements are almost impenetrable to poor logic.
That's the idea. It's not that complex.
@DudeNumber42 Best of luck selling your device. The device accommodates a cross-cultural multilingual group? It, of course, being accepted that Democrats and Republicans cannot be allowed to participate at the same time. You'd never get anywhere.
@DudeNumber42
Substitute money for likes and dislikes, let the amount vary, and let no money be a possible response as well.