silly me, I'm not really sure what all this huff and puff about facebook is about
then again i've never joined so I don't have anything to leave
I guess I prefer talking to people, wandering around aimlessly in the world bumping into strangers, and not overly concerned with being part of something bigger than myself
I'll wake up and go to bed each day knowing I may be missing out on something but I'll survive some how
59
OK, so Facebook is a commercial enterprise and needs to grow and make a profit. Same as Bank of America or Toyota. I expect both, and Facebook, to maintain oversight on their customers' activities. And take corrective action if required. By its nature the potential to exploit Facebook brings a heavier burden. But that's no reason for me to abandon it.
I value Facebook for its value in sharing high points, and low points, in my life with friends and family. I value it for learning the viewpoints of others, especially those whose thinking I admire. I value it for letting me publicly criticise those in power who abuse their privilege.
Faced with cancer you don't kill the patient. You work assiduously to kill the cancer.
11
Wow, such blatant attack on a media competitor and this passes as an ethics discussion? The Times' near constant barrages against Facebook are ridiculous and insulting to billions of users who appreciate the ability to self-publish their thoughts, opinions and yes, pictures of their cats, as well as connect with old friends who would otherwise be lost forever. Facebook's issues are perhaps newsworthy, but the Times has made slamming Facebook part of its basic mission and this has become obnoxious to readers. Now the Times poses the absurd question whether such bashing is compelled by "Moral Duty." We all know that the news business is tough, but please, save it for the boardroom and not the Sunday Review.
12
I think to the contrary, stay in and fight against the fake, the falsehoods, hate speech, and so forth. Should we not be morally obliged to speak up on this platform, instead of shying away?
I would rather fight to see FB add a sticker/label to political and relevant posts about its provenance and credibility of sources. Facebook must become accountable for certain type of posts, similar in standards to renowned news outlets.
So I’m inclined to disagree and take a stand.
16
You rationalize your Facebook usage just like everyone else. The only way to stop using drugs is to stop using drugs. The only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you take in. The only way to be free of the chains of Facebook is to cut them. Not say, well... um...I could definitely see myself leaving Facebook (this statement would likely make you feel as if you're going to do something, thereby making you feel better about yourself). Then you wrap up your argument in a tidy little bow like everyone else does who just needs one more fix - well, if they cross a moral red line then I will definitely never use them again. This sounds like drug using behavior. You are addicted. Everyone who can't just simply delete it is addicted. They love it that way.
I simply deleted my Facebook account over 2 years ago. And you know what I've heard since? Not "oh I should have never done that..." "oh, I wish I still had my Facebook account.." or even "Darn, I sure do miss Facebook.".. Instead, I've heard countless stories like the one you've written on the harm Facebook is doing, has done, and will likely continue to do. I've heard people talking about hours and hours they've lost scrolling through spaghetti dishes and cat memes. Go ahead and stay glued to Facebook - I'll be out here living my life.
85
Leaving Facebook:
It’s not a moral duty.
It’s just self respect.
41
Dr. Liao, You have just surrendered whatever credibility you may have had as a philosopher. You may glory in your Sunday afternoon fame. The fact is, as you should know, real philosophers don't help newspapers (like the NYT) compete with emergent news sources (like Face Book). The media is a big big place. Adults can make their way therein without the help of people like you. The NYT has for some years tried to misrepresent philosophers as political pundits. You've signed on to this project. Plato and Spinoza, and many others, would look sadly on your efforts.
5
"Someone ... who is constantly comparing himself unfavorably with his Facebook friends, might therefore have a duty of self-care to get off Facebook."
Such a person, without Facebook, would be comparing himself unfavorably to the Joneses next door.
"Facebook has been used to spread white supremacist propaganda and anti-Semitic messages in and outside the United States."
Facebook has also been used to expose white supremacists and anti-Semites, making many Americans aware of the danger they pose.
"The United Nations has blamed Facebook for the dissemination of hate speech against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar that resulted in their ethnic cleansing."
Facebook has also made people all over the world aware of the violence perpetrated against the Rohingya by the government of Myanmar.
In short, Facebook is fundamentally a tool that WE can use or misuse.
The 2 valuable points in this article are:
1. WE need to get our acts together and stop reposting garbage posts.
2. Until we have gotten our act together Facebook's owners need to create better systems to prevent us from using what is a very convenient and well designed communications platform.
Re. Cambridge Analytica: If FB violated its own terms of service by sharing information about its subscribers with CA, then FB needs to be reprimanded and fined in some way. On the other hand, if it did not, then the onus is on us for not understanding the terms of our agreement with FB when we signed.
13
Here's an equivalent question one might have asked a generation ago.
Should I cancel my subscription to a newspaper that runs discriminatory housing and employment classified ads? This newspaper is repeatedly taken to task for running these ads, repeatedly promises to correct the problem by adding more skillful and better trained advertising telephone sales people, and repeatedly fails to do those things.
Facebook's problem is this: for ethical judgments to exist in their worldview, those judgments must be automated.
If I called my newspaper and tried to place a help-wanted ad saying, for example, "No Irish Need Apply," the salesperson would have a hard time keeping the disapproval out of his voice, and I might think twice before trying to place the ad.
But, that sort of human restraint doesn't scale up.. "Scale up" is Sili Valley speak for "completely automated." If it doesn't scale up, it doesn't exist for Facebook. So they sell a lot of rude and illegal advertising.
What will stop this? Hauling executives into local courst to prosecute them for profiting from this kind of advertising. What "scales up" even more poorly than human restraint? Jail terms.
7
Just leave it. Delete your account. After a week or two, you won't miss it. Facebook is the most overrated "service". It's not really a service because your data is the product.
35
I would be Interested in knowing, if possible to determine, how many people are reading this article through the NY Times on Facebook, as opposed to the NY Times in print or online.
6
My answer to your question is: yes. And I have done so. The integrity of representative democracy is more important to me than being “connected” (whatever that means). As Tocqueville once said, “Freedom is difficult to acquire but easily squandered.”
16
Not everybody has a family that fostered positive social relations nor skilled learning in the community our fetus landed. To some of us, Facebook, Reddit, Wiki etc was a godsend. As well as podcasts. All dependent on freedom to click.
5
What some people may not be willing to do is be fully self-aware a about their addiction to it. Get off of it and watch the compulsion to get back on -- observe that compulsion. The "pull" is real. I got off of it and realized that "pull" and the addiction (dopamine or whatever) -- mostly it takes courage to sit with ourselves and observe us trying to fill up our time with the nonsense -- the conversations that are not real conversations, the endless dopamine hits, etc. Go ahead -- it will be life changing in a good way to get off if it. But it takes a self-reflection and honesty many people don't want to face.
11
I wouldn't say anybody has a moral duty to leave Facebook, but take it from someone who has left, you have an emotional and a psychological duty to do so.
26
That would be like leaving the United States because our President refuses to hold Russia accountable for election meddling, refuses to hold SA accountable for a brutal murder of a US resident, etc., etc.
2
Never signed up, never will. The thought of giving up my information and contacts to such a mercenary organization is simply never going to happen--and most people don't need FB. Emailing and texting pictures and thoughts to friends and clients is simple and straightforward, with the bonus of not enriching already rich, morally bankrupt people like the current powers that be at FB. Just delete.
13
Jaron Lanier in "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now", describes Facebook, Google, et al as petrostates. They are cannot make the money they are making without our data and our resulting behavior modifications. Think of Saudi Arabia's vain attempts to diversify from oil. The royal family's riches cannot be maintained otherwise; it's easy and it's all they really have.
9
Well, I left it and will not return until it changes its basic business model and demonstrates that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. I value my privacy as we should all do, and this company currently profits on invading it.
It seems somewhat like the proverbial monkey wanting a goody set in a trap. He can put his hand in and grasp the goody, but he can't then pull his hand out unless he lets go of the goody.
8
I deleted Facebook; a waste of time.
17
The problem is that Facebook is where the people are. For all of its failings, there isn't anything else that tells me when my friend on the other side of the country is having a birthday or a new job or really good takeout.
I get that people have issues like hating themselves for comparing their lives to other's sterilized representation, but I'm sure they do that in real life, too. And we don't call for not watching Fox News, and they don't even share cute photos of my kid.
Facebook does not get a pass, however. They could shut down the hate and stupidity if they wanted to. It wouldn't interfere with my enjoyment of food porn.
5
Facebook has used its troves of data and its powerful algorithms to help shady advertisers find the "morons," as one of them put it, who, for example, will sign up to receive each month vitamins or other items of questionable value, and who then find it almost impossible to cancel their "subscriptions," losing a good deal of money before succeeding.
Tens of millions of dollars have been made by those who engage in such shady deals, and they have done so with the enthusiastic connivance of Facebook, which aggressively markets to them its capacity to find the "morons" for them. That, after all, is how Facebook makes its money, not from our sending cat pictures to each other or using its site to stay in touch with friends, family, and groups we belong to.
To me, this aspect of Facebook's practices is reason enough to quit it, for the good of society and our own, whatever the inconvenience involved.
For details on this appalling side of Facebook, see https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-27/ad-scammers-need-suckers-and-facebook-helps-find-them
7
The answer: no, you do not have a duty to leave Facebook.... You have a duty to stop being idiots and to stop reposting lies and rumors.
20
I quit FB nearly a year ago and don't miss it in the slightest. I consider it to be a total waste of time, and don't think that Mark Zuckerberg benefited humanity in any way by bringing it into existence. It's a real time suck.
15
Hmm -- I tend to think FB does more harm than good, but it's odd that you don't consider the potential good it does: the dissemination of truth (which happens); fundraisers for good causes; friendships that might otherwise not occur.
8
re, 'By sharing or reacting to a post, even if one explicitly criticizes the post, one is amplifying the message of that post and signaling that the post warrants further attention'--not the same as amplifying the message of the post itself. it's good to know what sorts of opinions are out there.
1
no problem, no moral justification or practical to keep FB after selling our data to the highest bidder for whatever purpose.
4
Facebook is not the first social media platform and doesn't need to be the last. It feels like the world would end if there were no Facebook, but it's really not that important to anyone except those who have used it for businesses. They can move, there will be other platforms.
3
I am back on Facebook but only infrequently. I had left 4-5 years back when I received one of their "friend suggestions". Not the name of a friend of a friend but the same name as that of my Primary Care Physician. Not a name I had ever searched for but one I had only mentioned in an email to a personal friend. Was Facebook spying on my personal communications?
I realize I give up a large amount of privacy in being a member of the so called community. Fine, you can enter my house by invitation but Little Mark Z has no right to rifle through my medicine cabinet.
3
I left Facebook for many reasons, not the least of which was the constant fact checking of “friends” posts. I don’t have a problem with different opinions, but constantly arguing about facts gets old. I liked a lot more people before Facebook and the fact that I don’t now is a problem. I don’t need a platform that slices everyone into more and more defined demographics. It’s counterproductive to reasonable discourse.
13
facebook crossed a red line already for me, someone who suffers from (at times) crippling anxiety and depression. ive never felt like one to "keep up with the joneses" - instead ive felt like facebook is like being lonely in a crowd.
but the red line isnt my emotions, or how facebook impacts them. the red line for me was the june 2017 revelation that facebook filed for a patent to use your front facing camera to read your facial emotions, while scrolling through your feed. this builds upon an earlier study from 2014 (reported in the NYT no less) that facebook did an unethical study manipulating certain users feeds to change their emotions. combine the two technologies, and the knowledge that negative emotions keep people scrolling longer - and you realize youre being manipulated. big time. for profit.
FACEBOOK IS NEGATIVELY MANIPULATING YOUR EMOTIONS FOR PROFIT.
if youre someone who is lucky enough to not suffer from mental health issues, maybe this doesnt bother you. but for someone whos had bouts of suicidal thoughts of the years, and often feels down on their luck (even though i have a lot to be happy for) - i can no longer with good conscience use their platform, and not only did i deactivate my profile (i still use messenger because i have no other way to communicate with some friends) but ive been spreading the word about the patents and the experiment years before.
i wish the NYT would do an investigation about these two things. maybe more people will quit.
27
The columnist has just argued persuasively that we have a moral duty to others to leave Facebook. Then he ends saying he won't leave unless some future "red line" gets crossed. This reminds me of Republicans saying Trump is bad, and then voting in favor of everything he wants -- adding that crossing some future "red line" would be different. Then he crosses it, and they continue to support him.
I'd suggest to this columnist that he shouldn't try to have it both ways -- either argue that it's not our moral duty to leave, or else leave Facebook, but don't pass the buck to some vaporware "red line".
22
I wonder hw many of the people who have voted to leave FB which I agree with also voted in the last election?
2
Just before the Cambridge Analytics story dropped, I ask my daughter what she was doing with her FB account. She mentioned that she scrubbed her account to a mininum. Given her decision, i deleted my account and have not looked back. Since then, i consider FB a virus to be avoided. You should too. Beware.
16
I volunteer for an NPS site and help maintain our facebook page. We post about history and special events. I cannot control the world. If someone makes a better platform we can shift where we communicate but for now there is not similar platform that will reach the numbers we reach.
7
agree
1
For me, I've been on Facebook for 5 years now. It's been helpful in many ways, making friends, getting dates and being in touch with older friends. Being an older single person, I belong to several groups for people within my demographic who I would not have known otherwise.
I tend to block out the negative stuff as much as possible. I think all social media has it's pros and cons.
I am more concerned about those who take everything seriously on this platform and are so emotionally involved that they cannot tell the difference between reality and Facebook, especially when it comes to friends and others.
Facebook is a valuable tool as long as you use it for the reasons that it was originally created for.
10
Facebook is an example (one of many)that we need government regulation and oversight. Wouldn't it be nice to think that we can deregulate everything and have a small hands-offgovernment. But history shows that regulation is necessary because humans are greedy. Witness: the high price of pharmaceuticals, advertisements for smoking (before that was regulated), too-easy access to firearms, carbon emissions, and the list goes on. We are deluded if we think we can have a civilization that does not first harm its weakest members and ultimately destroy itself entirely if we do not believe in the need for, and actively deploy regulation.
7
From the perspective of one’s duties to others, the possibility of a duty to leave Facebook arises once one recognizes that Facebook has played a significant role in undermining democratic values around the world....
[ What nonsense, offensive as well. ]
2
Face book is an incredible waste of time. It’s toxic in so many ways. People live their lives on it and Twitter. There is beauty in the world and Facebook adds nothing to our lives.
19
Do You Have a Moral Duty to Leave Facebook?
[ What an arrogant, personally offensive question. Look to your own moral duty, I can look to mine quite well with no help from Mr. Liao. ]
9
If Orvil Dryfoos (1912 – 1963) had been publisher of The New York Times today, he would permit neither his paper nor his employees to use Facebook or Twitter. These platforms are undermining our democracy and create a distorted view of popular opinion. Whenever I see any newspaper article using "quotes" from Facebook or Twitter, I cringe at what journalism has become and how far standards for reliability have fallen.
Case in point: Quoting the latest tweet or Facebook post by "Billy F." should not be allowed in news print as a sampling of popular opinion. For all we know, Billy F. is a Russian Bot.
9
I think Zuckerberg and Sanberg have a moral duty to leave Facebook.
21
If I didn't quit the NY Times because they fostered the election of Donald Trump, and underplayed the importance of Bernie Sanders, why would I quit Facebook?
13
@J. Matilda
Well, because Facebook is sort of obviously worse.
1
@J. Matilda
A very bad comparison. And I be the you know that.
I chose to lead by example. I use Facebook, it has served the purpose of helping me stay in contact with family and friends. It is also where I learn that my favorite band is playing a show in my town or the sheep farm is having an open barn. However, you will not find a single meme posted to my timeline, nor will you see me “like” a meme. I do not post anything political, nor do I engage in political chatter. I do not share news or other media content, and do not like or engage when others do so. A couple of folks who only share memes or media content have been unfollowed. That leaves my newsfeed with only the latest baby and cat pictures. And I like it like that.
7
Now that all of these self-righteous people have left Facebook maybe they can use their extra time to end poverty, combat opioid addiction, and stop police killings of unarmed black children, mall shoppers, and security guards.
8
Oh please. Poor Little Matty Liao, self-proclaimed Philosopher. Quite a few people on Social Media want to be implicated in something that is larger than themselves. Many others, being unwitting dupes, will defend their failings because it is human nature.
Some unknown philosopher who refers to them as 'Regular users' comes across rightly or wrongly as a smug elitist who is a part of the problem. Far too many people are enjoying the disruption of elections (if they win) and some are just web-trolls out to feel empowered and relevant - not feel responsible and insightful into their roles and participation in it all.
Propaganda works. Ask why?
Hate? It's attraction is to the flip side of the Better Angels of our Nature
"This platform has been used to disrupt elections, disseminate propaganda and promote hate." ... so has this newspaper.
Any media for people to tell their stories will include falsehoods and propaganda. I use facebook and I support the work of the New York Times via subscription. I appreciate the accounting of the actions facebook has taken and will give the proposal some thought. But, I don't blame the New York Times for publishing the falsehoods others believe and I think newspapers have an obligation to fact check. While facebook should be vigilant to prevent people from using their medium to harass or solely to attach others' point of view, it's up to the users to deal with falsehoods.
2
I don’t pay attention to politics and advertising. I use FB for keeping in touch with family and friends. I have very tight controls—I never post anything on my page and I don’t allow for others to post to my page. It can be addicting, but you just have to control your habit to run to FB constantly.
3
I left fb upon reading how it was weaponized by Myanmar military to foment genocide against the Rohingya. FB is a tool of war, so yes, I felt a moral obligation to leave fb.
7
I quit Facebook in October, 2016, convinced that the company couldn’t care less who bought ads. Then they stonewalled, lied and dissembled. Prior to that, I watched in horror as friends, acquaintances and family members revealed misogyny, racism, and unrepentant privilege. Facebook is not for me-I choose to assert my privilege to vote with my feet.
7
The reasons are many.
"Ten Arguments for
Deleting Your Social Media"
- JARON LANIER
https://www.channel4.com/news/jaron-lanier-interview-on-how-social-media-ruins-your-life
4
Only old people use Facebook. None of my friends do anymore and neither do I. What stinks is that the one thing I love is Instagram. I have thousands of followers and I make about 60% of my income from Instagram. Facebook owns IG, and if they decide to FB it all up I may have to make a really hard choice. Leaving FB was easy. I make tens of thousands of dollars off of IG though and the fact that Zuck owns IG scares the heck out of me.
3
I have lost count of the telephone calls I have received that spread false information about candidates and use fear tactics and hate. Do I have a moral duty to abandon the telephone? I receive piles of campaign propaganda mailings during elections. Do I have a moral duty to disengage from the post office? My radio (I have long since given up on television) floods me with paid political announcements which, to put it mildly, engage in puffery. Should I toss the radio?
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
6
Moral duty? I say we have a moral obligation to impeach Trump. We have a moral obligation to stem white supremacy and Fox News. There is Hate speech, racism, exploration, sexual harassment everywhere. Facebook is a business by Zuckerberg out to make money. No different than much other social media. I find him to be immoral and despicable so I never was on Facebook. We are just too eager to always be part of the party so leaving Facebook for many would feel like they are missing something. Start with the moral obligation to yourself to get rid of the junk and garbage filling your brain from Facebook and other social media. It’s a frenzy of “OMG what will I miss if I leave? I can assure you: NOTHING. go for a walk. Read a book. Watch a good movie. Cook, bake. Enjoy life. And DEFINITELY LEAVE FACEBOOK
7
Many of the news topics have no comments section recently. Is the Times reversing its practice of inviting comments on news?
If so, does that mean Donald Trump has won his war to ban all but fawning comment? (And Mitch McConnell's war as well, since he is chief supporter in all things Trump.)
The question is pertinent here because if the Times is knuckling to Trump, we would-be commenters have a renewed interest in seeing to the survival of Facebook, which continues to print open comments on news topics.
2
We must close face book down for they destroyed our 2016 election. We must also not vote for the culture of corruption Republicans who are just plain immoral supporting coal and the evil Crown Prince from Saudi Arabia.
2
Obvious we should leave, problem is of course, several family members post and is a great way yo keep up to date. If we all would decode to leave then this scam is a no brainer. Wow the coin they made. Wasn’t that long ago Sheryl was destine for Hillary’s cabinet.
1
I'm so glad I don't let the opinions of self righteous "progressives" affect my decisions.
2
Anyone who uses the platform legitimizes the fake news it publishes and is at least partly complicit in the huge upsurge in worldwide hate speech, genocide overseas and a stolen election here. Is finding out whether your high school girlfriend is still pretty worth the harm you are participating in?
3
The article asks whether there’s a moral obligation to leave Facebook due to its history of “disseminating propaganda” and its “significant role in undermining democratic values around the world.” A more interesting question is whether there’s a moral obligation to quit reading “mainstream” publications like the NYT, for just the same reasons.
The NYT has supported every aggression of the US government, even the worst of the lot, invading Iraq based on lies about “WMD.” The NYT has never suggested that any officials should be held to account for this catastrophe, which was a far more significant “undermining of democratic values” than anything Facebook has ever done. The US has been officially “at war” since 2001, bombing 7 different countries along the way. The NYT has supported all of this, while managing to largely avoid any critical coverage of the ongoing war in Yemen. In the midterm elections, the “minor matter” of out-of-control US militarism was not deemed worthy of mention by either party or the MSM.
Dr Liao complains that “A significant amount of fake news can be found on Facebook.” But as it happens, a significant amount of fake news can be found in the NYT as well. For example, the hysteria about “Russian meddling in the US election” is fake news, supported only by the evidence-free claims of US intelligence agencies. Though it would come as a great surprise to most NYT readers, these agencies often lie, or are wrong, or intentionally “disseminate propaganda.”
3
Glad I never signed up for Facebook or any other social media. In addition to the arrogant and self serving nature of these companies, I find the oversharing of personal info by users narcissistic and off putting. I like my privacy.
In any event, doubt Facebook will be around in ten years. It is already losing users.
Of course, what replaces it could be far worse......
4
I see absolutely no moral aspects to one's subscribing to Facebook, or not. Facebook, like all electronic media, is an instrument of shearing people of their money and exposing them to the spying by all kinds of agency. To the inventors of Facebook, as of all other commercial enterprises, only profit counts, while "pecunia non olet".
1
Facebook was originally created to rate the "hotness" of women on & around the Harvard campus, using stolen images. How do you justify your morality in joining in the first place & belonging for so many years?
5
When your gas station wants to "friend" you on Facebook, this speaks volumes about the platform.
6
@EarthCitizen - Ha! And I thought it was bad when my dentist popped up on my “suggested friends” list. Gas station definitely takes the cake and then some.
2
What moral people must do is work to discredit the apparent authenticity of Facebook. It should be treated like Infowars. It's fine to read these for entertainment, but people must do so with the understanding they are not sources of reliable information.
If you believe Hillary is running a child slavery ring, does it really matter if you saw this on Facebook or somewhere else? To paraphrase the Great One, "Don't trust, but verify." They say you can't fix stupid, but we have to.
I left Facebook about 2 months before the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. I was noticing a lot of questionable activity on my page and I didn't like the tone of it, plus I was concerned about my privacy, which I knew was a moot point. As time has gone on, I have felt more comfortable with my decision. Facebook has not been fully forthcoming, nor do I believe that it has behaved in good faith with its customers. The time has long gone for it to be regulated. If the Congress and Senate are unfamiliar with the technical aspects of Facebook let them appoint an Independent Commission of experts to help them.
6
I quit FaceBook over two years ago and, as you stated, for one reason, "time-consuming and addictive, to no fruitful end."
5
I like FB, it links me to news stories - posted by my "friends" - that I might not have encountered. And it links me to friends with whom we share political opinions (some in agreement, others in opposition).
I agree with Matt Liao, to stay for now, but to watch carefully if FB acts to mitigate its previous faults, especially that of giving Cambridge Analytics or similar social manipulators, access to FB's users' data.
1
Traveling in Europe, especially here in Portugal, was made easier, cheaper and more interesting by joining three Facebook groups for Expats and even one that was for those interested in a particular stretch of Portuguese Coast above Lisbon (Silver Coast). I am also using FB to share the trip with friends, posting once or twice a week, more of a historical bent than pictures of us. Video clips of musicians playing on bridges and in castle keeps. Palaces and Roman Ruins and yes some incredible beaches. A handful of people who won't be traveling this way (can't afford to or are not healthy enough to travel) are enjoying what is offered (if they want to). Earlier this yeae my high school class used FB to find our graduates (after 50 years) and then to organize a great reunion. Kudos.
Some of my friends post five times a day and I don't follow them any longer. On the other hand I had a friend that took a month trip to Tibet and India and email bombed everyone each and every day with two reports including 6-20 photos with each email. Now that was annoying. But not as annoying as family members who used FB in 2016 to spread fake news. They've since stopped for the most part...
Like anything else this tool can be used correctly, over used or even abused. I wholeheartedly agree that it influenced our 2016 election and subverted our democracy. I've read very little about FB's impact on our 2018 election. Let's see what happens in 2020.
4
Philosophers are concerned with separating truth from illusion. I would argue that Facebook gives one the illusion of being connected. If you quit Facebook, I think you will find yourself visiting your friends more often.
7
I lack a 'herd' instinct. I don't have tattoos, hate pop art and pop music and have never been tempted to join facebook or twitter. It was obvious to me from the start that Zuckerberg was out to make money selling the personal profiles of the members and could care less about privacy concerns.
The initial inspiration for FB was a college yearbook and it 's whole culture of 'likes' and 'dislikes' reflects this adolescent perspective. I don't know if it's a moral obligation to exit from the platform, but it sure is common sense.
7
It is so neat to see the many NYT Commenters using Facebook to sign on to post comments.
Commercial aggregation and dissemination of information has been going on since the beginning of time.
Matchmakers were among the first.
White Pages even charged extra for not listing you.
Yellow pages listed all businesses but charged extra for bold listings.
Political Organizations paid canvassers to go door to door.
Facebook, Google, Mapquest and thousands of other organizations, on and off the internet, are doing the same thing.
They are in it for the money and that is the beginning and end of it.
As it should be
I am extremely uneasy with the premise of this Opinion.
Facebook is merely an open forum. On any open forum, anyone will inevitably be offended.
It appears that the author would like Facebook to censor posts that challenge his simple-minded group-think. Sadly, as a society we are moving toward that censorship. The tools used are belittling, shaming, violence, economic, legislation and prosecution.
The protesters that Liao alludes to violently suppress anyone who dares to offer an opinion. Personally, I want to hear all opinions, facts and assertions and be allowed to sort them out using my own reasoning.
A call for "moral agents" is eerily reminiscent of "thought police".
As always, light is the best disinfectant. Beware of those who tell us what and how to think.
4
@James
The needed "light" is full disclosure of who is doing the posting. That is a really tall order and I do not think it is possible, but I hope I am wrong.
1
My respect for someone is inversely related to how much time they spend on Facebook
6
When it's all done and dusted, the only people that will be left on Facebook are those that didn't get enough hugs from their parents when they were children.
5
Thinking of Facebook as something friendlier, warmer and fuzzier than a cold, capatalistic and profit driven corporation keeps many from understanding the real issues. Yearning to see evidence that FB is defending our democracy is pathetic and irrational. I carefully deconstructed and deleted my page after the election. More of us need to wake up to the realities of our capitalistic society. Foreign governments and conspiracy theoriests already have.
2
680 x 0.02= The downfall of FB.
The argument the writer poses that Facebook holds some responsible for any of the following is justification to blame others for one’s own failure:
1.Russians hacking the 2016 elections
2. Ethnic cleansing in Myanmar because of what people have posted
3. Personal data was sold to third parties.
The answer is yes and I have.
5
I frequently see the complaint that participation in platforms like Facebook creates narcissistic behavior, and only encourages a self-centered society. It is true that people display themselves; their products; their likes and dislikes; loves and hates. People expose themselves in ways that can happen nowhere else in the natural world. So what? Isn't it more narcissistic to believe that dropping out of Facebook is some kind of substantial statement about yourself? Facebook is just a mirror of the world we live in. Parts of it are just like the fun house at a carnival. If you don't like what you see in the distortions, take a close look at what you are putting into the mirror.
71
Thank you for your compelling case. Particularly after the New York Times mocked critics like me, who left Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica story broke open in April.
7
If you have any self respect, you would have abandoned Facebook after reading the small print in its no-Privacy statement.
If you quit, be sure to send the company COPYRIGHTED e-mail, also noting that you claim the contents of the letter that your name be stricken from ALL company records, marketing lists, mashups and other products after taking the steps listed below.
If you have any respect for your privacy, you owe it to yourself to leave Facebook, get a good VPN (virtual private network and Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) to further encrypt your e-mail.
The practices of Facebook, Google and a thousand others, especially if you use cloud services, is an obscenity calling for laws preventing forced downloads of tracking bugs on your Personal Computer/smartphone along with laws barring lists of the tv programs you watch from being sold on. (For those who don’t know: there is no room even on fiber optics, to pump 500 channels to your cable box. You call up a channel number, and what’s ever on is piped to your home - with a record kept that you, on the bedroom set, watched whatever on HBO West from 2:45 am until the movie ended, then switched off.
Yes, even companies that charge you for service keep and sell your personal data.
Because enough traces let them put together a list that can tell what you eat,your taste in books, movies, hobbies, Significant Others, friends, outlook on life, etc. and design ads just on issues important to you.
I hope NYT allows me 2nd postw/protection
8
For a variety of reasons (from both the "self-regarding perspective" and "one's duties to others" buckets, to use Dr. Liao's categories), I don't use Facebook. I don't judge others who do, but I do appreciate it when others don't assume that I am or should be on it.
I would like to encourage Facebook users, especially organizations, to provide the public with alternative ways for to find out about events, RSVP, etc. other than having to do all that through Facebook. (Many do provide alternatives, of course, but it is not universal; I wish it were.)
Also:
Right now, my dilemma is not about whether to use Facebook (again, that ship has sailed) but about whether to pull out of retirement mutual funds that invest in it. I wonder if any of the socially responsible investment funds include screens that effectively block Facebook and other firms who present similar ethical problems.
6
Wow, there's a lot of self congratulatory self righteousness here. I assume that all of these folks who have deemed it to be morally bankrupt to stay in touch with family and friends via the Facebook platform are also judging themselves and others for traveling around by car and plane. It is of course morally wrong to destroy the planet. Oh, and they all eat only organically raised foods (and never animals). And buy all their clothes used. And use only renewable sources for electricity.
Facebook is just another among a legion of corporations that exists to make money and pretends to have higher aspirations. It's called capitalism and it's very hard to live in this world and not participate. We all make choices every day about our engagement with this system and we need to leave the moral lecturing out of it.
3
I was required to get a couple of FB accounts for work. I don't put anything on them and I rarely look at them. Amazingly enough I still know what is going on and friends/family/colleagues still talk to me.
7
Sharing or reacting to items on Facebook is tantamount to an endorsement. Internet communication (or even email) does not allow for nuance. It is easily misunderstood.
Theoretically, one could stay on Facebook, but not share or react to items, except when this act of sharing has a very clear meaning. But that would be very difficult because there is no room for clarification. This would require a lot of discipline.
Otherwise, by sharing and reacting, one creates a cascade of misinterpretation, either antagonistic or not. This is similar to the way that a poorly written email is easily shared and becomes junk mail.
1
It's unfortunate that this essay fails to consider the positive social impact the platform also fosters (from psycho-social support between individuals to lessening authoritarian rule in Iran and elsewhere). The negative impacts are real but the reasoning is only half-considered.
Any consideration of resistance is also absent. If people of conscience exit we have a large and powerful platform even more susceptible to the worst abuses.
3
All of this angst over Facebook is being stoked by the mainstream press because they hate it for its role as a news source, thus weakening the power of their chosen narratives and fear it because it may cause them to be even more irrelevant. That they are even so desperate to compare using it to not paying taxes, something that we have a legal obligation to fulfill, speaks volumes. Unless a I missed an act of Congress to use Facebook or something, it remains a voluntary activity that can be quite "fruitful" (I found a job on it). Don't like it? Don't use it. But, don't try to guilt trip other people who do with phony moral arguments.
5
I would leave Facebook, however, for me it’s my only remaining connection to people who have shifted to the political right. for me dialogue is really my only concrete tool for grappling the deeper motivations behind this.
2
Years back I decided to open a FB account and started filling out the information on the website. I was becoming increasingly suspicious as I went along at how much info FB was asking from me, far more than I was comfortable providing.
I decided not to proceed and was even more alarmed to learn there was no way for me to delete what I had already entered.
"But the evidence indicates that Facebook did not intend for those things to occur on its platform."
Irrelevant. Intent is not the issue in here; foreseeability is. Could FB foresee its information being used this way?
Of course!
Shut it down now. No, that is not a violation of any part of the Constitution nor is it a threat to future free speech. Free speech existed pre-FB and it will do so post FB.
7
The problem is that neither option is good. In a Utopia, Facebook would happily curtail some customers because they are spreading damaging, murderous, intentions. But because making more money than all the Gods on Olympus is the standard today, that won't work. Regulation has it's own problems: who gets to regulate and who regulates the regulators. Never mind the broader implications of the First Amendment. The solution lies not in regulation, but in breaking up companies that have become monopolies.
2
I have never had a facebook account and live in the 21st century just fine.
10
@CAR I don't have a cell phone, or drive a car. but facebook, it is going to be hard for me to quit..I want to ..I think it is the right thing to do..But I have lived around the world, and many old friends are only on facebook..Maybe not that many...I am going to do it!!
1
Do you have a moral duty not to subscribe and pay for Fox News to propagandize America? If you are a moderate, progressive or independent, I say yes.
If you have Fox Noise on your cable or satellite subscription tier, then you are paying every month to have Fox blast rightwing propaganda to the nation. And, likely as not, 60 to 90% of Trump voters use Fox as a primary news source.
The way it works is this: every time you pay your bill, a small portion of the payment is sent to Fox. If one million subscribers insist that they don't want Fox any more, it can be changed completely, most likely moving away from right wing propaganda to straight, honest reporting of news.
Write to your cable or satellite provider and tell them you want a tier without Fox. If you can't get the other programs you want without Fox, then tell them to subtract the money they send to Fox from your monthly bill.
This is a moral obligation. Fox is polluting the political dialog in America not by taking forthright, honest stands on issues but by using the nightly commentators who have only one message: vote Republican, vote Republican, vote Republican. The news during the daytime hours is slanted toward this, too.
Why should you be paying to have Fox Noise propagandize against your interests every day of the year? Why do you pay for this? It can be stopped. It can be changed. You and others who agree can do so just by opting out.
5
People shouldn't use a tool that gets more out of them than they get out of it. For too long, the actual cost of free social media - giving companies ownership of our personal data - wasn't known. Now that we are cognizant of our collective privacy losses, social media and mainstream media companies should take advantage of consumers' newfound irritation and concern, and create new revenue models that respect data privacy and minimize or eliminate advertising. I, for one, would pay 2x my current NYT subscription fee to get rid of ads that are now so intrusive that they click through to websites when I'm just scrolling to read articles - especially because those accidental clicks then produce more ads from that company later on!
4
Here's a simple idea for some hot shot kids looking for a cool business. Set up a cool site that has killer usability. Say that for nothing you will transport all family/friend data the sign-up wants from his or her FB account. The business gets login info for the customer and will invite the family members and friends the user specifies and then delete the FB account. For free. That would do it for me. The only reason I click on FB is if someone I value posts something. Otherwise I'm gone.
2
I find it inexplicable why the author did not mention the lack of a robust response by senior management at Facebook when first notified by the company’s own security chief that Putin’s Russia was using its platform, in various ways, to actively interfere with our electoral politics. This was fully reported in an in-depth piece in this very paper. Surely, this was the “moral red line” that Dr. Liao awaits Facebook to cross in the future, and a bit of old information.
5
France is currently in the throes of massive street violence at the hands of a vigilante proto-terrorist group known as 'Les Gilets Jaunes' or Yellow Jackets in English. A rag-tag band of anarchists without a head, they programme their 'protests' across the country via Facebook.
Two dead, hundreds injured. Widespread property damage in Paris, highway tollgates and radars destroyed. I consider Facebook to be a guilty party to what is a rising threat to public order in France. Unfortunately most French people are too riveted by the sensationalism of it all instead of trying to control Facebook's users in their efforts to spread more nihilism in France. Thank you, Facebook -- for nothing.
6
I don't have an opinion on morals -
- but you owe it to your own sanity and mental health to cut social media use and try to engage in real life interactions instead.
4
I am proud to be a former FB user. Makes much more sense to speak to folks on a face-to-face basis. FB is bad for society.
6
Some say there are no citizen journalists. By similar logic, it could be said that there are no citizen philosophers, including those with strong ethical perspectives. Fact is we all have philosophies and ethics and according to mine most of this op-ed is irrelevant and out of touch. Do I have a moral obligation to disengage from hundreds of friends, family members and followers because facebook is having problems regulating itself and doing the right
thing and telling the truth at an executive level (in other words, the MO of most companies) facing some of the most ambiguous challenges around free speech? Not from my vantage point in a third floor apartment. But I believe in free speech (not hate speech) so people who live in ivory towers in the outer reaches of Irrelevance should have an equal right to their say too. But not in the NY Times I would humbly submit. That’s my philosophy, which, along with a token, will get me on the subway. Fortunately for the author it gets him esteem and a job. Good work if u can get it and get it into the New York Times. Touche.
1
When we see how money trumps morals it is easy to give into despair.
We have a man in the whitehouse who cannot think unless there is a money calculation involved.
I like to think that what makes a human being better than animals is that humans have a moral compass.
Too many times, however, morality is viewed as a weakness. If another person is missing a five dollar bill and we picked it up then many will say that the intelligent thing to do is to keep it and shutup. Only a fool admits finding a five dollar bill.
This brings us to Zuckerberg. His fear of taking the high road for its effect on Facebook's bottom line is cause for Trump's presidency. Just how much money and power does one man need before it is too much. I don't know but our country seems to be run by men who can never have too much.
Should anybody say that it is the right of any person to make as much money as they can I say that is wrong thinking. It is wrong when the man in question has created a business that does more harm than good. There is a line between greed and right thinking.
Greed is simply the expression of our acquisitive nature. If a dog can be better exemplar of morality then maybe a person's greed requires questioning.
1
I have never been on Facebook. I will never be on Facebook. It is a money making firm whose only "business" is to sell the data of its users. Facebook is not your friend.
7
People used to be getting by just fine before instant access to unlimited cat and baby pictures. I think we'll be alright without the FB junk.
3
A "moral duty"? What's that? FB is all about me me me and me. Letting go of it means losing all that carefully cultivated elaborate brand of my fake self. And all those likes.
But I do love your innocent philosophical expectation. Never change.
The primary duty I feel is to calmly point out the inaccuracy of whatever right-wing propaganda a friend or relative has posted. This has had the effect of a few old friends "de-friending" me but we had grown apart in recent years anyway. C'est la vie. On the other hand, it seems to have decreased the amount of propaganda reposted by some folks I know. I doubt I've swayed their opinions but hopefully they will at least do a few seconds of research before blindly reposting such nonsense in the future.
4
Still the leader for social organizing ... meetings, rallies, protests, marches. Really, really hard to drop if you are into action.
And are there many people who don't know what any given activist promotes?
Not many secrets out there.
2
I left FB after 11 years, being fed up with all the political drama, fake news the lack of security et-al.
Primarily though, I left because I finally came to the realization that I was just a pawn to FB's advertising schemes.
As a bonus, I no longer need to hear everything about my FB friends lives as well!
2
Yes we should have a moral duty to leave that corrupt business. It was unforgivable for them in 2016 destroying our Democracy . Selling polarizing political ads from Russia and China. Zuckerberg should get jail time as he is still acting up a recent NY times article said so his visit to congress was a joke. Lock him up ,lock him up. We also need to stop voting for the culture of corruption GOP for supporting Saudis Crown Prince and coal use which is destroying our environment daily.
1
Although I have limited using Facebook this past year, the thought of leaving it is probably not feasible for the moment, but this op-ed does provide food for thought. My issue is with Mark Zukerberg's cavalier and arrogant attitude masked in his "connecting the world" hype. Facebook has done some good. A case in point is the recent Camp Fire in our area, where Facebook has provided a useful platform for community outreach. That said, we do need to remain vigilant, and to take CEO's to task when they blatantly stonewall any meaningful discourse or action that ensures that such social media platforms are indeed safe places to communicate rather than enabling darker voices to operate in cyberspace.
1
the government should regulate Facebook for what it is: a news organization. Facebook should remove its newsfeed, plain and simple.
1
As a moral philosopher Liao does rather more to excuse Facebook than to condemn its culpability in unleashing great harm. What's lacking is not the subjunctive "should" of morality, but the power of the law to impose an unequivocal "shall" upon derelict individuals and corporations.
In terms of libel law, Facebook knew or should have known:
* That the Russians were influencing the American electorate.
* That the Rohingya were being mercilessly demonized leading to a predicted genocide.
* That Filipino dictator Rodrigo Duterte was using Facebook to defend his thousands of extrajudicial murders and defame political opponents.
* That Facebook itself was targeting liberal philanthropist George Soros.
The development phase of the internet is long past. Technology companies have now seized sufficient power to challenge any nation state, and to undermine democracies, including our own. Corporations as well as individuals on the internet must be held accountable.
There is no question that Facebook has thrived financially by libel––the knowing republication of falsehoods––and has lied to Congress about doing so. It's past time that they and all others online faced the same standard applied to print publishers in cases like SHARON V. TIME MAGAZINE.
The ruse that they are "only a utility" not a publisher has been proved tragically wrong at the cost of many lives, destabilizing Western alliances, and undermining democracy throughout the world.
4
I left Facebook about five years ago when I realized I rarely went there and didn't have time to constantly post pictures of myself. Well, I found posting pictures of myself kind of weird, really. But it's the way things are now. Totally narcissistic. Anyway, left Facebook but then went back because I was told I had to have a "platform." Another opinion piece in this paper today is about this need to have a "platform." Honestly, it all makes me sick. Why do I need to have a platform? Did Jane Austen, Kafka, Dorothy Parker, to name just a few, have a "platform?" Ridiculous. But I was told just last night that if I want to sell my book, I better have a "platform." Can't anything stand on its own merits these days without having to prove a hundred thousand people "liked" your blog comment? I have no problem leaving Facebook at all since I've done it once already.
234
I left Facebook right after the 2016 election. I hated that Facebook had turned into a weapon. FB’s denial and evasion since then have disgusted me.
41
@Anne: So, now I'm curious: what is the title of your book, what is it about...? Maybe your comment here will be just the "platform" you need for your book!
32
Another sanctimonious op-ed from an academic who wants us to recognize the importance of his field, in this case, philosophy.
People need to make their own moral choices. If you preach your own moral certainties to others, you are engaging in the same objectionable acts as Facebook.
A better question is: What regulations should we require so that Facebook and other internet firms do not misuse the information they gather?
And why are some forms of information simply not gathered at all?
People should have a right to their own data. We've solved all sorts of technical problems with the internet. Why can't we solve that one?
The internet should make useful information freely available. It IS possible. Scientists can communicate with each other at the speed of light. If I want to send the results of an experiment to Sao Paulo, I just hit send. And it appears at its destination instantaneously.
But say you have a medical problem. You have a retinal scan that was taken in Peoria. But now you're visiting Eugene, Oregon. Do you think you can get a copy of that retinal scan? Probably not. You will get endless red tape and what gets sent will likely be the written report about the scan, not the scan itself. After a delay of several weeks.
The internet could be doing all sorts of good that doesn't get done. Why? Because every entity wants to exact a toll. And because firms like Facebook emphasize advertising instead of more useful activities.
3
I've never been on FB.
I wonder how many people I don't know very well flew in business class with champagne in hand to destinations I don't really care about.
Hopefully the world will keep spinning.
Sigh...
1
By this argument, I may also have a duty to leave the country. How can I justify benefiting via my taxes a nation that supports despots and destroys the environment? This was Thoreau’s argument in his essay, “Civil Disobedience” (not the original title), which inspired Gandhi and MLK. Thoreau argued that paying taxes made Americans complicit in both slavery and the imperialist, Mexican-American War.
I do not have any intention of leaving Facebook, the vehicle through which I communicate with my far-flung family. It is dishonest for this author to characterize Facebook participation as sharing pet photos. Many people worldwide rely on Facebook to keep current with family and friends, including family and friends who live overseas. My husband and I use Facebook for business purposes, as do millions of other Americans. Facebook is an institution, like it or not.
Regulating Facebook is a better route to the ends that the author advocates, just as political action is the better route (than immigrating to NZ, for example) to good government policy. Zuckerberg knows he is in trouble.
Our obligation is not moral, but rather political. As citizens of a democracy who which to preserve democratic values, we need to let our representatives in Congress know that we condemn hate speech and hacking, and want legislation proposed and passed to ensure that Facebook and other social media platforms do not become the sites of hate speech and voter manipulation.
5
I deleted my FB account right after the 2016 election. I'd become concerned about Cambridge Analytica by that point due to some earlier little news blurbs and seeing on their website how they collect the most detailed bits of information about our psychological makeup and so forth for political purposes. I found it totally creepy and too Orwellian for my tastes.
Sadly I have lost touch with so many people who I enjoyed connecting with on there, but life has gone on. I wish I could have a platform to follow public figures I admire, friends and so forth, in what I feel is a safe environment. To me FB is not actually safe due to not being regulated to protect the user.
My elderly mother's entire life revolves around Facebook, where she passively consumes whatever is put in front of her. Unfortunately she's not just watching her relatives and acquaintances on there, her world view relies on the bubbled false information world that has been built for her in the platform.
It will be interesting to see what comes of Parliament seizing FB's internal papers, that were not allowed to be shared or made public in the US. What will they find?
3
Pragmatically, I have kept open two Facebook sites, but find these are not first points of call.
1
I left Facebook and don’t regret it. Sure, I don’t see news from my “friends” and at the same time, were they truly my friends?
I haven’t seen most of them in decades and didn’t care. The friends I care about are people I actually meet for coffee, dinner, movies, and such so I don’t need Facebook to stay in contact.
I now don’t waste time parsing through ads and enriching people who don’t have my best interests or the best interests of our country, the world in mind while they deflect criticism using devious tactics.
Yes - the internet is a great tool for many things but I don’t want to be an enabler if it’s more dubious strategies and the trade-off has value for me - not them.
2
Thanks for this, especially all the comments. After reading, I went and deleted my Facebook account. I had already been minimal with it, and justified staying so I could be in touch with groups related to social justice, arts, etc. But after reading the comments, I thought about the question of moral compromise (and it’s shifting red line) and how it's mirrored everywhere in this country: For example, Trump supporters who put up with his tweets and shameful behavior to get a conservative Supreme Court, something they care about. Of course I’m the good guy in my personal narrative, and think that the things I care about and the things I’m willing to compromise for are somehow more socially just, or ethical, or something like that, but at the end of the day, it’s not that different, though it may be smaller in scope. Thanks for strengthening my moral compass.
6
I have never had a Facebook account, but my wife does. We have many mutual friends who she keeps up with over the app. But we are often stunned at how seemingly normal -- even lovable friends -- feel no inhibition at unloading political vitriol that they never would in personal conversations. In some cases, we've even decided to reduce or stop contact with these "friends" who have revealed a bit too much truth about themselves. Can't people keep it to cute puppies, travel selfies, and bragging about their children?
7
Facebook has become an instrumental platform for citizens of the world to share information instantaneously. Deleting your account is akin to burying your head in the ground.
Being able to decipher the noise from the important is an individual’s responsibility and should not be moderated by external powers.
Most importantly, the executives at Facebook - through instruments like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative- have done, and continue to do, remarkable work for the good society.
My liberal brethren should find a new cause, like calling to end gerrymandering in the Midwest or the electoral college system, if they’d like to accomplish real change.
6
During the recent fires in northern CA fb was a great help in staying connected to family members and friends in immediate danger. It was also the vehicle that helped Lincoln CA mobilize itself to create countless Thanksgiving feasts for Camp fire evacuees.And there is much more.
However, there is a point beyond red lines that if crossed I too would sign off.
1
Last week, as I was viewing the usual content on my Facebook account, I found myself feeling intensely lonely and close to tears. I realized that while I had access to the words, pictures, and message posts from my children and grandchildren, everything was so impersonal! There were few messages from someone I loved to just me--as had been the norm when sending emails, or a physical letter, or a phone call that allowed direct conversation.
On Facebook I was now "friends" with my ex-husband (who was also posting to our children and grandchildren, thus the connection), and with my ex-son-in-law, a "family" I found myself re-involved with-- regardless of decades of not having that type of relationship between us on a personal level. Because we were linked through children and grandchildren it seemed impolite to exclude these two men from my "friends" list.
I also realized that so much of what I was viewing or reading posted by my children and grandchildren was directed to a wider "audience"--as though we had all become public figures or performers, rather than private individuals...we had an obligation to share our fantasies, our thoughts, our opinions, our writings, our photos, our philosophy, our politics..
That's when I had the urge to burst into tears: we had lost our privacy, instead trading it for a sense of ego-based importance that to me was just an illusion.
I've left Facebook because I don't want to support false ways of communicating. And, I want to be myself.
21
@CateYou have said it perfectly. I left Facebook years ago when I realized I was spending time looking up people who had no interest in getting in touch with me on a personal level,. I haven't missed it one bit and I'm very happy talking or getting together with people I know and who want to know me.
6
@Cate
You can always "unhide" people. I've done that and it works wonders.
I have left Facebook a long time ago. We need an alternate social media platform which is managed like Wikileaks, a not for profit which can be sustained by donations and not by selling your personal information to the highest bidder.
7
Sorry, I'd rather not read this whole posting because I already know my response. I rarely use it, and like some other people commenting here, it has been handy to keep in touch with various people who have meaningful things to post. My take on the problem with Facebook is some of the people who use it. For one reason or other, they would seem not to be critical thinkers, especially targeted and having been promoted by subversive sources. It's another way of saying lazy and gullible, as well as immature (either legitimate--the young people--or not). After getting fooled just once by going to a provocative posting, I caught on to the scams. Maybe the morality point here would be to enhance the public education system by supporting and promoting it with financing evidence-based effective programs (diversity sensitive and including critical thinking exercises).
5
Recently, the last name of a man on my FB's 'People You May Know' was the maiden name of a girl I knew in high school (50+ years ago, so no other connections). I checked his Friends list, and they were cousins. She and I have never been FB friends and she removed her maiden name from her FB profile 4+ years ago. Maybe once a year we briefly chat through Messenger. And this is what they call privacy?
1
We have a moral duty to make Facebook behave, and the only effective way to do this is to put it out of business as a profit-oriented entity. It needs to be run by people with the geeky mentality of librarians or grade school teachers, who are into providing a public service, and who take joy in helping people connect rather than in making money from helping people connect.
As long as it is run for the benefit of shareholders, it will be an amoral money machine like other corporations. Because of its power, every interest group will try to use it to advance their interests, and it must be able to see and thwart these attempts. Even uncorruptible heroes exist for the benefit of those who tell their stories; those who win the right to tell Superman's story do things that Superman would never be involved with.
Any moral Facebook-type entity must live with and successfully guard against becoming another Facebook; the struggle will be constant and never wholly successful.
Quitting Facebook removes a person who sees through Facebook, thereby strengthening its illusion for those who remain. Quitting Facebook is similar to not voting because elections and politics are so dishonest; you will still have to live in an environment molded by those who do vote, and that environment will be more toxic because you had no influence on its shaping. The belief that individual purity is enough is a libertarian corruption of the reality that we are all connected.
2
I stopped using Facebook nearly a year ago for some of the reasons you articulated in your opinion piece. However, I still occasionally use Facebook Messanger because I don't want to abandon a useful way to communicate with my Facebook friends. But I still feel somewhat guilty for not making a clean break from a company that I sincerely believe has lost its way.
4
Sorry, but staying on FB is questionable ethically, just as shopping at Walmart or Amazon is too given how they exploit and abuse the workers throughout their supply chains. When your participation helps companies that exploit, abuse, or in other ways seriously harm our collective well-being profit and thrive, you are ethically compromised. The reality is that FB is highly addictive, like many harmful things. It's difficult to get the courage to leave. But seriously, an ethics professor is still on the fence about this? Come on.
4
Where do you make the cut? How do you decide? Almost everything you buy or consume involves some sort of exploitation. Not just today, it’s always been so. And who do you believe? A news story about Company X exploiting its workers could actually be a deeply slanted piece of shade thrown by a PR firm for Company Y. And a feel good piece about how wonderful it is to work at Company Y is almost assuredly the work of the same PR firm. Reputation has never equaled reality. As a result, to have scrupulously clean hands in this world is exceedingly difficult. That’s why ethics professors ponder these issues. They are really, really hard.
3
Interesting all of the handwringing amongst the Boomer to Gen Z crowd about whether or not they can or *should* delete their Facebook account.
Neither of my teenagers nor my college-aged nieces and nephews are on FB at all. I don't suspect they ever will be. And they are more engaged in social media than anyone.
The only thing keeping FB alive is the misconception among the middle-aged and up that it serves an indispensable need in their lives. Ask anyone under 25 how they survive without FB and still manage to be connected to the outside world and they'd probably just laugh...
7
but they do use other social sites, and those sites aren't any better, just not in the news.
8
Your headline regarding Facebook, "The platform has been used to disrupt elections, disseminate propaganda and promote hate," could be applied to almost any media outlet be it television, radio, print or online. Show me newspaper headlines from 1861(United States during Civil War) or 1939 (Germany) and i will show you hate, propaganda and an attempt to influence elections and thought. Should media have not covered Charlottesville or Saigon, sharing images that changed how people thought?
As someone who uses Facebook very successfully to promote two non-profits that I manage, I find there is no better platform for mass communication and for increasing awareness of what we do. People should read multiple outlets for their news and take everything with a grain of salt. If there's a disaster, turn on CNN; if you want to raise money to help those who suffered from the disaster, turn to Facebook to post a GoFundMe page.
I have a moral duty to communicate with my followers; Twitter doesn't cut it.
6
@Eleanor McC You're making a mistake equating "television, radio, print, or online" with Facebook. "TV" isn't a company, it's a technology. Facebook is one, single company. It makes money every time you use it. Every post, every click, every app pick up, it makes money from you. "Print" isn't a conglomerate that makes half a cent just because you walked past a book, stopped, then walked back and read the spine. "Radio" isn't a company that makes money because you picked up your nephew's walkie-talkie and spoke to him on it. But Facebook is a single company that does all of those things.
if you have a "moral duty" to communicate with your followers using a proprietary platform and not, say, email or letters, then maybe you should rethink your business model.
4
If you have not already left Facebook, you are immoral.
I never joined Facebook because I did not want to sell my soul and buying preferances (probably redundant...).
I do not see how any person who believes in protecting democracy in the United States would continue to belong to Facebook. Is there no other way to stay in touch with people you really care about and who care about you? Then join something benign - like a book club, Sierra Club hikes, cat lovers of America.
8
But there are so many things I do that are immoral. I drink bottled water, I drive a car and it is not electric, it’s not even a hybrid, I don’t compost, I don’t even always recycle, I spend too much money and eat too much sugar, I don’t always buy organic, I buy things made in China, I buy from Amazon, I buy from the internet, I don’t get enough sleep, I take too long in the shower... The list is endless. Where is Facebook in all this? Immoral is a word that gets thrown around so loosely it has lost its meaning. The real reason for deleting one’s Facebook account is that is strategic. It starves the beast and that may be good for our country. Immoral? Pffffffft.
1
Oh please give me a break. Do you really believe duty is a strong ethic in the American psyche? WIFM is the predominant characteristic in this country, and as long as people perceive that the balance sheet is in their favor by engaging in a behaviour, they won't even givea moment's pause to ponder their duty.
5
I closed my account down after 5 years and 400 (so called) friends...I had given up too much personal information i.e., real last name, where I worked, where I was from, where I lived, what books I had read, etc......Then FB started asking me for a phone number, over and over. I was wasting too much time arguing with people I did not know and will never know and do not want to know....I closed it down completely...Then Cambridge Analytica scandal (Mercers influence on the election) ...so glad I got out!
7
It would be interesting to see if the NY Times itself leaves Facebook (search: content partnership facebook ny times 2015).
13
My Dad used to always say when we were growing up that if one didn't stand for something, they would stand for anything. And that being an actual walk the talk ethical person would not be easy.
In recent months more and more of my family members and friends have stopped using Facebook. And I am on that path now as well. When profits and becoming the biggest social network becomes a companies priority we have a problem.
Not only has Facebook grown to fast and to big, to the point they can NOT prevent the evils that occur, like actually allowing elections to be messed with, but recently a young girl was sold online LIVE and Facebook didn't even know t had occurred until she had been sold!
The least the United States should do is crack down HARD like the EU and various other counties are doing. Zuckerberg and Sandberg have made their tens of billions of dollars. And innocent people have paid the real price. Loss of freedom or even death.
6
I think the real harm in using Facebook is using it to obtain news. Until the 2016 election I had no idea so many people used the platform to get news feeds. I get news through the source. Why is that so hard? Using the Facebook news feeds makes one a guinea pig subject to manipulation.
9
A lot of people commenting about regulating Facebook here. But tell me, who does the regulating and to what end? When we generally talk about regulation in this country we're talking regulation by politicians. Do we want to trust, say the Trump administration, to regulate social media? I agree that social media seems to be spinning out of control, yet I think that is just a reflection of a society that is divided and confused about who we are now and what the future should look like.
6
@Gaff: Your comment is spot-on and should be a NYT Pick...
3
Excuse me for preferring conscious regulation by elected representatives to the vagaries of the Holy Market.
I like to compare the rise of the internet and social networks to the development and dissemination of the printing press in sixteenth century Europe. The printing press fueled the Protestant Reformation and the accompanying religious wars that devastated Europe by facilitating literacy and greater access to the ideas of religious nonconformists. Today social networks on the internet have encouraged the rise of religious extremism all over the world. Facebook and Twitter have been manipulated by rogue state actors such as the Russian government in an attempt to weaken and divide Western nations. In Myanmar the military leadership used Facebook to drive "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohinga Muslim minority. Are these just temporary glitches on the way to a more connected globe, or are they signs of the coming apocalypse? It all depends on how we, the users of Facebook and the management of Facebook, respond to these challenges. Do we embrace the trend towards extreme polarization or do we resist it? Do we insist on accountability at the top or do we just let ourselves become passive consumers, hypnotized by the latest apps? We appear to be embarking on a great collective experiment and no one knows the eventual outcome.
6
As a philosopher (meaning you, the author of this op-ed), I find it odd that you don't question more the exculpatory power of "intentions".
Certainly, there are philosophers and ethical theories for whom intentions are very important in moral evaluation. But others have questioned their significance.
Is it really so exculpatory to say Facebook didn't "intend" to disseminate hate speech? Or that it didn't intend for its information to be used by Cambridge Analytica?
If I give a gun to a child, and that child kills someone, I could say I didn't "intend" for the child to kill someone. Am I off the hook?
Surely the cases are different, you might say. The question is how different?
8
I think if people thought more about how they were actually benefiting from Facebook they would be more inclined to sever ties with it. The biggest defense in keeping it has been that it helps people to stay connected to friends and family...but does it really?
Their broadcasts offer impressions of their ideal vacations, gifted children’s accomplishments, trips to the gym, favorite causes and recipes. We hear nothing about the trials and tribulations that coincide with being a person in the world. Those are the things that feel too personal to give a group shout out to. But it’s those very things that affect our humanity and connect us more than anything else in the world.
Are we truly connecting when we’re only giving and getting a highly filtered version of life? Without that one-on-one interaction where there is an exchange of individualized thoughts and feelings, can we really claim that a connection is being made? Aren’t our connections to people just being outsourced to Facebook? I’ve felt this was the case from the beginning when a family member made a major announcement on Facebook, that would have previously come by way of a phone call and a personal exchange of joy. It came with a tremendous sense of loss.
No longer willing to play a pawn in Facebook’s greedy games and with there being no legitimate reason to stay, I pulled the plug several months ago and found I’ve lost nothing. Phone calls and emails keep me connected to the those that matter most to me.
11
Before reacting too quickly, it's important to weigh the impact a diminished Facebook would have on many businesses and societal activities. Love it or hate it, it has become something of a social public utility, the platform upon which millions of people rely for their livelihoods and life connections.
Pressure must be continuously applied to Facebook's management to improve the service and correct its deficiencies, just as one would do with any utility, public or private. But to simply advocate its destruction because of its shortcomings is short sighted.
2
How old is Facebook? How old is it’s alleged ubiquitousness?
Now ask: How did billions of human beings and their businesses survive and thrive a mere 10-20 years ago?
Answer: Very well, thank you.
3
I propose not using Facebook one day per week until certain changes are made. If that doesn’t work add a day etc. Kind of like the 10 plagues except their will only be 7, at which point everyone will have left FB.
4
I left Facebook once I realized that they were accepting money in order to help a foreign adversary attack my country. I don't want to help financially support any company that engages in practices like that. I don't want to be a moneymaker for a company that also makes money by helping governments suppress free speech, commit genocide, cheat in elections, or attack Western nations.
I'm surprised at how many city, state, and government services run on Facebook. Why? That's working directly against the social good. By forcing people onto Facebook, it legitimizes a platform that has been used to coordinate attacks, disseminate misinformation, and create a new platform for modern warfare.
Some people feel like it's too inconvenient for them to leave. I guess it is a bit of a bother. But everybody has a chance in their life to make a choice between what is right and what is easy. What do you choose?
13
Facebook supplanted MySpace. The time is ripe for some smart millenial to offer a socially conscious alternative. People want to go toward something, not just leave.
8
A potential conflict of interest should be acknowledged. NYU receives quite a bit of funding from facebook. Some of the core AI researchers at facebook come from NYU. Could this be why you've decided not (yet) to leave?
It is the leadership of Facebook that has the primary moral duty to act.
There are simple technical solutions to the Facebook problem.
In real, physical human society the reach of any one voice is limited by the opinion that others hold of your statements.
If an acquaintance makes incorrect, outrageous or dangerous statements, you personally are unlikely to repeat them.
On Facebook, the material posted by a person should be visible to all members of their group of friends.
However, the ability for a post to be disseminated beyond the group of friends and go viral should be limited by a budget of page views.
Material posted by people with many followers (eg celebrities, politicians), posted on behalf of organisations, or posted by members of large groups should be moderated before it is allowed to reach a mass audience.
Material posted by news organisations, political interest groups and politicians should be fact checked.
There will be a cost to these controls and it should be borne by those wishing to benefit from the use of Facebook and by Facebook itself.
Since Facebook is about people, bots should be banned.
If Facebook leadership continues to fail to act then it should feel the full force of legislation and a user boycott.
PS
In respect of Twitter, similar controls are possible.
2
Mr. Liao makes a great case for leaving Facebook, then he resolutely decides to . . . stay on Facebook!? That ending sent me for a loop. I gave up on Facebook for all the reasons Mr. Liao cites and because I noticed friends and family who weren't on Facebook didn't live lesser lives. I kind of miss the pictures of kids and pets, but I don't miss the ubiquitous rudeness, negativity, and politics. And I don't miss the feeling of my personal life being exposed to the world, sometimes without my consent or knowledge. Instead of Facebook, I spend time outdoors or actually communicating with friends and family in person or on the phone. Come on, Mr. Liao, join the enlightened side.
10
I use facebook to talk to my elderly parents. It is one of the few digital platforms they use. I don't use it much beyond that, and I have noticed that most of my friends use other social networking sites at this point. It's becoming the Fox News of social networking in terms of older users sticking with it, and I think part of their unwillingness to crack down on disinformation is that such stories are like catnip for older users. I think Mark Zuckerberg knows his userbase is aging and becoming more conservative, and doesn't want to upset future revenue.
2
@Kenneth
This comment seems painfully ageist to me. Do you have facts/statistics to back it up, or just your sample size of two?
1
there are several better apps to use when you want to directly talk to someone...
@Ines Kraft - I think there is something to what Kenneth is saying. Most people I know in my age range (30s) don’t post on FB anymore, save for a handful of parents who constantly document their kids’ lives. (I had no idea that parents of small children had such vast swaths of free time.) Who are the people who do post regularly and with abandon? Older people, some of whom, but not all, tend to lean towards the conservative side of the aisle - at least the ones on my FB feed do. FB is rapidly becoming, in addition to an outpost of fake news and an echo chamber of general nastiness, a platform for older people who often don’t exercise concern or caution regarding the links and information they share, and close behind them are narcissistic parents of small children who seem to have no interest in life beyond what their offspring are doing and how they can document it. Besides these two groups, everyone I know uses other platforms as their primary social media tool. Some may still have FB accounts, and those that do are very careful in how they use them.
Do You Have a Moral Duty ...
Oh, so high minded, preaching ETC.
This level of arrogance is insufferable.
5
@R. R. - It’s not arrogance, it’s advice, and you don’t have to take it.
However, I’d wager that if anything and anyone in this scenario could and should be accused of arrogance, it’s Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.
1
As opposed to what? Donald Trump?
By the way, ever notice how citizens are spozed to act and think in a Jeffersonian democracy? Might want to look it up; quite illuminating.
1
If Liao knows anything about Western philosophy, he will know that the Stoics of Grecian and Roman antiquity considered that evil was its own punishment. So let millions of people be duped by Fakebook. What could be more fitting?
4
Leaving Facebook is like saying that you are going off the grid or going to stop using cell phones. Apparently the three reasons outlined in the article is not enough reason for the author to leave Facebook. Seems I could have just read the last paragraph and saved myself some time.
2
It's not the same thing.. I have never been in Facebook and I would say at least half of my 40 friends are there not either, or if they have a profile they don't really use it.
It's not that simple to quit. My daughter's dance school communicates solely through its FB page, so as of now I have no alternate way to receive important and timely messages from the school. It's quite frustrating.
3
@jeito
Maybe send the school administrators and owners copies of articles about abuses and dangers of FB, or let them read many of these comments. And ask or demand that they provide you the information another way. There is zero reasonable excuse for them not emailing you the information or just hitting one or two keystrokes and printing out their Facebook posts and getting them to you and calling or texting or emailing if and when it is urgent. If there is another school, try it out and if it works, bring your child and your money there. And make sure the school is t violating child online privacy laws.
4
I suggest demanding proper means of communications from the person(s) in charge.
1
Well done! One doesn't often hear from a philospher to provide context.
1
I’ve never been on FB and never will be. Never trusted them. I manage to keep up with current events without them knowing every move I make.
5
“But the evidence indicates that Facebook did not intend for those things to occur on its platform.”
That's a pretty low standard, even in law. They have been negligent, from day one.
“Second, by being on Facebook one serves as a data point for Facebook’s social media experiment, even if one encounters none of Facebook’s experimental manipulations. In doing so, one could be helping Facebook to refine its algorithms so that it can better single out specific individuals for certain purposes, some of which could be as nefarious as those of Cambridge Analytica. “
Forget the qualifiers; this “social media experiment” is by definition nefarious. You ARE helping Facebook define its algorithms, and the information IS being used.
6
There are two key points here. Facebook became a cesspool of misinformation during the 2016 election. Peoples' feeds were flooded with misinformation and lies even if they didn't click on an article (so technically they might not be counted as having read a fake story) they saw they headlines every time they checked their feed. This daily barrage of untruths surely changed millions of peoples perceptions and feed into the they're all the same so stay home mentality. Without facebook the exposure to lies would've been a fraction of what it was and its more than likely we'd have a different president. So take every positive thing facebook ever did in its history and put it up against that.
Second thing, so many people have dropped Facebook for instagram - guess who owns instagram?
At the very least - Facebook needs to be forced to spinoff instagram and whatsapp immediately. This hasn't been done for a while so not sure the time frame but the new congress needs to get on breaking them up in January.
2
It is disappointing that so many commenters missed the point of the article. Then again, I should not be surprised, given that the author himself seems to have missed his own point: that no matter WHAT you use Facebook for, and no matter how infrequently you use it, just by being an active member, you are part of the problem.
4
Yes, protecting our own privacy is like protecting your health--leave Facebook and then also:
1. Use DuckDuckGo for search
2. Get a VPN connection and use it.
3. Use Safari and Mozilla and swear off the Google and Bing unless absolutely necessary.
4. Get rid of all social media--LinkedIn may be an exception for business relationships but don't make it a platform for anything else.
5. Support and access fact accountable journalism, shun propaganda platforms no matter how titillating the story.
11
After a number of articles and the Frontline story about Facebook, I seriously considered closing my account. I announced this to my friends who talked me out of it.
However -- my group of friends is fairly small, there is no hate speech among these friends, and the ads I get I immediately delete, so I get few ads. I enjoy looking at posts in groups I'm interested in (none political).
For me as I believe for many it is a good way to stay in touch with the people we actually know and care about and since it's the digital age there is a certain pleasure in communicating this way, so despite the immoral owners of the site, I am not terribly worried about my posts or my friends.
It will be good if Facebook can be regulated particularly in areas where it has caused national and international problems viz privacy and worse, and crossed the line, but I believe many facebook users are not involved in any of this and don't have such empty lives that they have to surf all the time to feel their lives are complete.
1
To my mind, this discussion (like others on this topic) reinforces the need for a digital bill of rights.
I deleted FB in the wake of Cambridge Analytica and its many other morally-questionable business practices. It was a satisfying decision and one that I have yet to regret. I expect to stay away until government regulates FB.
1
I left Facebook because of 1. the moral reasons in this article, and 2. I realized, in frightening ways, that I didn't know my hundreds of "friends."
One posted a horrifying but legal story that involved weapons, road rage, and her child (I'd known her online since 2006).
Another friend had recently resigned from a high-profile job after an internal investigation showed sexual misconduct, but due to an NDA there was little more information. I'd always liked this person (in real life), though hadn't seen him in decades.
Who are these hundreds of people who see photos of my child, places I go, where I live and work?
I deactivated my account the day after the weapons story. It was the final impetus to leave the propaganda-peddling, amoral Facebook.
9
What we need is a Wikipedia approach to a global "agora". A place where people -- through donations, subscriptions, and/or ads provided with their explicit permission, based on clear parameters -- can post what they wish (bearing in mind national legal restrictions, of course, like hate speech). And all this without their data being harnessed to be sold or used for unwanted and useless ads.
Should we quit cars because they're used in connection with crimes?
1
@ TD
Yes, if the cars can and are (somewhat regularly!) hacked so that the owner/driver becomes part of the crime, including as its victim. Yes, if the car is programmed to allow data about its use and user to be used in committing genocide or stalking and hunting down innocents (for example, if cars GPS data were routinely sent to international terror groups or made available to data brokers who then sell it to terrorist groups). Yes if the car’s programming forces drivers to drive themselves and all others in or associate with the car to a re-education facility or only along roads with billboards promoting only one political party or person. Etc. Etc.
3
I have a Facebook account but I seldom use it.
Unike some of my friends, I feel no need to announce to the world what I am doing.
I would not miss Facebook, if it was not there.
If Facebook is going to be there, it has an obligation to be totally ethical about what is posted on it and who has access to other peopl's accounts.
2
I do not want to be on Facebook any longer. I asked them to take me off. They didn't.
I will try again. Wish me luck.
5
You can either deactivate (account will still be there) or delete (gone permanently) it yourself. They will not do it for you.
7
@Rose
I followed the directions on their site for deleting myself permanently. Nothing happened.
Can you tell me what I need to do now? Would appreciate any help you can give me.
I haven’t used Facebook for almost 3 years now. At the point where junk ‘news’, clickbait, and ads had mostly supplanted my friends’ posts, I saw no point in it anymore.
Facebook has gone the same way as MySpace - people just don’t have a replacement yet so they keep using it.
2
If any other Fortune 500 corporation hired a public relations firm that used anti-Semitic tropes to promote the corporation, the CEO would’ve been fired the next day. It wouldn’t have mattered whether the CEO knew or not; the buck stops at the top desk.
But there are some places where you get away with that stuff. Like the White House and the Republican Party, for starters.
Then there’s Facebook, which unlike the White House didn’t do it in the open. Sorry, Prof. Liao. We do have a moral obligation. I got rid of my account and wish the rest of the country would. Now we know that if you criticize Facebook publicly, they send people after you. Orwell wouldn’t be surprised. If I were Prof. Liao, I’d keep my eyes open — and he shouldn’t be surprised either.
4
Using Facebook is like volunteering to be a linebacker in the NFL for free. You know it's going to damage you and it only makes millionaires richer.
Enjoy discovering a new cat photo and what a acquaintance had for supper.
7
Facebook is a delivery system, not a content originator. Any moral duty issues lie with the originators and the recipients of the messages delivered.
If the KKK uses the USPS to deliver their rants or invitations, is the USPS to blame or the KKK? If the Unibomber used UPS to deliver his bombs, is he or the UPS responsible for those deaths? If I receive robocalls for political organizations I disagree with, or for products I have no interest in purchasing, is AT&T to blame for this?
People sending these types of messages have a moral duty to stop (not that they will). People acting on these messages have a moral duty to consider their actions in view of both the reliability of anonymous messages and their own moral sense before acting.
Facebook, being a large, visible target is easy to blame. People on either end of the pipeline are not as easily visualized, nor are individual people as satisfying a target as a large corporation that has made its founder rich. None the less, it is the message originators and recipients who should be blamed, not the messenger.
2
Power corrupts especially when combined with greed. Facebook is totally corrupt despite all their feeble apologies. They helped elected Trump with Russian and GOP social media smear tactics. They made tens of millions in the process. Why should they stop if users don't "teach them a lesson" by doing their moral duty and dropping their accounts?
5
How about a syllogism?
If Facebook is bad, you must delete.
Facebook undermines democracy by simultaneously promoting a surveillance state and also mob rule.
Undermining democracy is bad.
Therefore Facebook is bad.
Conclusion: You must delete Facebook.
6
I don't believe that the intent behind FB's actions matter. FB was used to subvert democracy and foster genocide and the man behind the curtain seems to have done little to prevent those perversion. Just as intent is irrelevant with racism and sexism/misogyny, it's irrelevant here.
4
"That a girl could be sold for marriage on the world’s biggest social networking site in this day and age is beyond belief."
George Otim, country director for Plan International South Sudan.
Apparently, Face Book has just been used to auction off a child bride in South Sudan. It took FB 15 days to remove the post about the auction, but by then the damage had been done and the child sold into marriage. Until FB can find a way to stop posts that cause irreparable harm, whether they be racist, illegal, political trickery or spreading lies and hate, they should take some time off to figure out how to do that. There is a limit to the number of times people should just accept apologies and promises that they will do better next time. They have caused terrible harm to the world, our country and our democracy .
5
I read Facebook’s “privacy policy” in 2012 and closed my account. No regrets.
7
"The fact that those things did occur, however, means that Facebook needs to be much more proactive in fixing such problems."
Proactive doing 'what'? Proactively fixing what might be imaginary problems? That's just another word for censorship. One can justify censoring anything under that guise.
After all, cat pictures are a prime example of how the personality rights of those poor creatures is being exploited for the benefit of human amusement.
Think that's ridiculous? Then just read up on the photographer who was sued and financially ruined by the animal rights people for putting a camera into the jungle and then publicizing the pictures the chimps took that were playing with it. PETA took him to court and won inasmuch as they financially ruined the photographer through his legal costs.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/12/550417823/-animal-rights-advocates-photographer-compromise-over-ownership-of-monkey-selfie
In the end the writer thoroughly disappoints by choosing to stay on what is ultimately a tired fad that has only deteriorated into a thing that now deceives the culture at large.
He should have shown some courage and independence and concluded the piece by saying “I’m out.”
6
Yes.
1. Facebook is profiting from the worst of humanity. Extremists are building teams in Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea AND the United States turning Facebook into a cesspool of misinformation.
2. Did you sign up for notices for job postings? Are you not getting any notices? But somehow your young, white male neighbor is getting notices for jobs you are qualified for? That's because the data social media companies sell and exploit is being used to discriminate against you.
3. Are you not getting notices for certain events? Discount offers for travel, dinning, etc? Our famous high tech data scientists pulling down 6 and 7 figure salaries have figured out how to exclude you from the living. All that schooling, and this is what they do with it!
The list goes on. Facebook and their monopolistic brethren are being driven to make big profits every quarter. They'll happily sell you, your family and your country to do it.
It's time for Facebook to lean out.
5
I think I missed what compels you to stay on?
6
Nobody has a "moral duty to leave facebook," any more than American citizens had a moral duty to individually fight Hitler or the USSR.
The US Congress, however, has a moral profound duty to serve the urgent interests of the citizens, economy and especially the children, of the USA by investigating, blocking, restricting, prosecuting the dangerous, damaging, dishonest and utterly unscrupulous Facebook scam, to the fullest extent of anti-trust, national security, child abuse and racketeering laws. And the US Congress has been massively derelict by shirking, evading and denying that duty, to its lasting shame.
Interesting comparison of Facebook to Hitler and to the USSR (Soviet Union. Do people still know what that refers to?)
I left Facebook a few months after the 2016 election, and leaving contributed a great deal to improving my mental health and well-being. If Zuckerberg and Sheryl want to make money, they can do it without sharing my data with strangers to help put monsters into power.
6
Why is this issue still being discussed? Zuckerberg has no moral core. Revenue from selling ads to users and increasing user number is the only thought on his mind. When did he know about the user data abuse by Cambridge Analytica? 2013? 2015? When and why did he inform users? 2018 because nY Times published the story.
Get off of Facebook and do not spend your time wondering if you should. Facebook will not change its ways unless users quit logging in. It is really that simple. No users no Facebook.
10
That is exactly why I left Facebook early this year, Facebook executives knew for some years about the Cambridge Analytica scandal and they did nothing until forced. Jana is exactly right, unless we all leave Facebook in large numbers Facebook executives will do nothing different. Also, Congress needs to implement privacy laws similar to the ones in Europe that at least inform users as to what personal data they are allowing to be used.
3
Facebook is in an impossible situation. But it can't be their job to police the internet. People have a moral responsibility to regulate what they think is true.
Here in Minneapolis this was brought home in a recent story about a vigilante group called "Natives Against Heroin (NAH)" According to allegations by Minneapolis Police, this group used Facebook to spread disinformation for the purpose of furthering a protection racket at a homeless camp. According to Lynden (19 NOV 2018): "Police got the warrant after Cross posted a video to Facebook, showing members of NAH tearing down the tent of a suspected heroin dealer. Police sources tell Fox 9 it was an orchestrated show, and that Cross is allowing other dealers he controls to stay."
Cite:
Lynden, Tom. Minneapolis homeless encampment organizer under investigation for dealing heroin at camp. KMSP-TV, 19 NOV 2018. From: http://www.fox9.com/news/minneapolis-homeless-encampment-organizer-under-investigation-for-dealing-heroin-at-camp
Facebook has been chipping away at democracy for a long time while looking the other way and taking the rubles. Facebook users are complicit in this ongoing dumpster fire.
3
A philosopher brought up an important ethical question. That is something we need more of.
But then he wimped out, perhaps aware that he would be laughed at for his impracticality.
Ethics needs a stronger voice.
They may ignore you at first, or laugh at you, but you will make a greater contribution to the discussion. And eventually they may realize you were right. (Shades of the famous Ghandi quote...)
That, taking a strong clear stand, is what we should expect of philosophers.
5
Trust a philosopher to worry about whether Facebook "meant" to cause harm, rather than whether it "merely" does so and will continue. Sounds to me like a convenient quibble to let her stay.
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
4
I have never given myself a birthday present but this year I did by deleting my FB account. It was the BEST present ever. So that I don't get sucked into aimless arguments with people who aren't even my FB friends. So that I don't gag on photos of foods. So that I don't feel sad for the person with 3000+ contacts who only gets a handful of birthday wishes on his/her wall. So that I don't waste my time.
Have you ever noticed that there is no phone number or contact email for FB on its website? Isn't it ironic that the company whose mission is to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” doesn't want you to connect with it whatsoever much less bring you closer to any sense of community?!?
There was life before FB and there is life after. Trust me.
7
Good luck. The most regular users I know are ladies my age or older sharing pics of their grandchildren or (ironically), my own teenage students, who cannot disengage from Facebook (or from Instagram for that matter) no matter what. No one is leaving Facebook behind and those of us yammering about its dangers are viewed as annoying luddites or fearmongers. I'm just glad I never started because like smoking, it appears that avoiding it altogether is the easiest way to "quit" this pernicious habit.
3
I had never found Facebook to be of much value so I quit a year ago. Since then Facebook has waged a campaign to get me back in the fold. They send me "friend" requests every day. (I have a very strong feeling that people are being paid to do this.) Why? Because if I were to open one of these messages my Facebook page would automatically be live again. Even though I have cancelled my membership Facebook doesn't delete it entirely. It is still there, ready to go again.
3
No, I am not complicit, I didn't even know Facebook was a news source for some until the 2016 election and I am still puzzled about that. However, when I retire next year from being a professional communicator, involving Facebook page administration, my usage will decline precipitously. The Facebook beast is way out of control.
1
I like Facebook. It has enabled me to reconnect with people I knew going back 50+ years; to stay involved with relatives and friends who live thousands of miles away; and to share my political and public policy views with all of them! What's more, as others have noted, it's an excellent aggregator and filter (yes!) of stuff I might like to read on the internet by "following" authors, pundits, politicians and groups I like.
That said, Zuckerberg has a lot of serious messes to clean up -- and he should get cracking.
4
"Facebook has played a significant role in undermining democratic values around the world."
That has not been established. Yes, it has some role. It is not established that it was "significant" nor even discussed what "significant" means.
It has not been shown to have been an active role at all, but rather passive as a platform used by others. And that is clearly the choice of those others, of some but not all users, not Facebook.
"and for many users, Facebook has become a large echo chamber, where people merely seek out information that reinforces their views"
Not for all users. That is called "freedom." Freedom can be abused, but providing freedom is not itself an abuse.
Is freedom of communication bad now? The USSR locked out copy machines to limit communication. Should we be locking down communication like they did? That is careless of freedom and human potential, a delusion. It is not the path.
Imagine that instead of a moral decision about Facebook usage, we were talking about the mercy of God. The images and reactions to Mr. Trump and Mr. Zuckerberg would be very different from what they are now.
Put aside a debate about God. Earlier generations included morality and sin in their daily conversations, philosophers debated the existence of evil, its evidence or absence--its presence in Mississippi--today, its grip on Trump's heart like eagle talons locked in free-fall except he won't release.
God-fearing people know to love your neighbors and respect your workers, to realize there are gifts to share.
God-fearing people built courage and trust.
Today, we witness what qualifies as a regime in moral decline. Its sell-out neo-colonialism has two sets of moral rules, man's rules and God's. Trump and his team's lust to sacrifice brown children is almost demonic. Its intensity not seen in a Western democracy since the 1930s, appearing in Eastern Europe countries even later.
Right now, we face the starvation death of 80,000 children in Yemen, due to a partially US funded blockade by Saudi Arabia. Sharing in the blame and suffering deaths of children is not redemptive.
1
Addition to alcohol has severely harmed several members of my extended family. But I still have an occasional beer or a glass of wine. I draw a parallel with Facebook. Like alcohol, Facebook is responsible for causing horrible outcomes. But nonetheless, I enjoy staying in touch with family and friends via Facebook.
I’ve been on Facebook for almost ten years and my three grown children, as well as high school and college friends, are on it too. But I’m spending less time on it these days because I’ve grown tired of the predictability of the posts—Trump rage, the futility of political exchanges, mind-numbing dog and cat pics and videos, mindless memes substituting for deep thinking or wisdom even if some of them are funny, and the details of friends’ lives I don’t even know and much less care about. But I won’t deactivate my account because it has become a scrapbook of my life. There’s a lot of good and fun I’ve shared over the years and I’ve received a great deal of encouragement and support, like little notes and letters of a previous era, that I’ll always be grateful for. It’s ultimately what you make of it, and it’s everyone’s responsibility to ration its use and to be a positive, civil contributor in this public space. I’ll take the real world, though, over the virtual one anytime.
When I check Facebook every few days, it’s a bit like a ghost town, most of my friends’ posts are days old, they are lower quality, and less and less relevant.
Facebook has utility, but decreasingly as social media; it’s like a connector, a public announcement email group, a utility. I don’t question the ethics of the electric or gas or google or Comcast, as I fully expect they work as I want them to, and hopefully they’re not too corrupt.
Maybe if you lived in California or Boston suburbs, where the gas and electric companies are at fault for devastating fires (explosions and wildfires), you’d think and feel a bit different about how trusting you are of those companies’ morals and ethics and dubious set of values.
2
"The platform has been used to disrupt elections, disseminate propaganda and promote hate."
Dr. Liao is confused.
He is speaking not of Facebook, but of MSM and especially TV networks. It is MSM and TV networks in particular that have disrupted elections, disseminated propaganda, ....
Thanks to Facebook, a Presidential candidate who received mostly small donations and who had a budget of about half of the "billionaire supported" candidate was able to win.
The billionaire class learned that Facebook gave power to the little guy (and gal) and that makes them very, very angry. They wanted to use their massive dollars to buy TV time and outspend the candidate of the people.
It was the billionaire's candidate, Clinton, that accepted $675,000 for 3 talks from Goldman.
It was the "little guys" candidate that spoke out against Carrier sending 2000 Indiana jobs to Mexico. That spoke out against Disney replacing 250 American Tech workers with Indian imports through H1-B Visa abuse.
"Billionaire supported" candidate Clinton was silent to both counts because by and large the billionaires are against the little guy as was Clinton.
Dr. Liao should be pleased that Facebook served as a tool that didn't let money buy an election. The use of Facebook demonstrated that billionaire funds can't buy elections. Why would any liberal object to that?
2
Kind of a wimp-out there at the end. Even without moral red lines, if the overwhelming preponderance of effect is negative, or even certain individual effects are too negative, it's time to act.
Compared to exiting completely, a good choice may be to remain signed up but essentially never to use FB, waiting to see if it gets its act together, or for that rare communication with a long-lost somebody-or-other.
2
Facebook has a moral duty to guarantee that bots don't create likes, that the users are real.
Facebook serves the purpose of helping us stay connected with out of town family.
You can show Facebook what your interests are and sway opinion towards truth.
We also have to remember that Facebook is free, so if we are not the paying customer who is?
I use FB to find homes for animals.
I don't use FB for my political education.
Should I deactivate?
Very glad I dumped Facebook over the summer. If we all did it then Mr. Zuckerberg would be forced to adapt and produce a better product. Americans need to get passionate about democracy and what they are losing before it`s too late.
5
I became a Facebook user for a short time about ten years ago when I found there was an alumni page for my old college. I used Facebook to get in touch with some people I'd been out of touch with for thirty-some years. That was fun, and a bit gratifying.
Over the next couple of months, however, I became concerned at my total lack of privacy, so I shut my page down and haven't ever opened it up again, in spite of Facebook's pleas to do so. I am quite happy not being part of this whole sordid mess.
4
Anyone still on FaceBook has no reason to ever complain when they learn that their data has been used against them. And, given what we already know, if people don't think the day is coming when all that freely given data will have the power to wreck your life -- refuse you jobs and healthcare, even refuse you visas and social security benefits -- then I guess you'll have deserved it.
Is all that worth it just to read a few newspapers that you can read elsewhere, or keep in touch with a few friends when there other many other methods?
6
Indeed! One need only look at how China is now “rating” its citizens. Frightening!
1
The ethical premise of Facebook is questionable.
Beyond letting people indulge in seemingly harmless narcissistic and exibitionistic pleasures (snapshots of themselves, their cats, their children, their friends and vacations) I don’t even see a utilitarian benefit to begin with.
The damage that Facebook caused and continues to cause is well-documented by now.
It is a company led by a Peter Pan mask and a porcelain doll covering a self-serving phony.
Facebook does not merit a philosopher’s time. Get out of it and let the horrible company go the way of many other fake facade entities like Enron.
7
There are so many people who use Facebook other than for political reasons, receiving news, or anything else associated with subversive agendas. Almost exclusively I go on Facebook for my art groups - watercolor, encaustic, instruction, photography - and receive great pleasure from that.
I DO follow Robert Reich who has been a grounding force in this political whirlwind but that's about it. I like my friends' photos of cats and grandchildren, and even share a joke or two. However, I don't live on FB and if I want to take part in political "discussions," I go to my anonymous account on Twitter.
Unfortunately, if it were my duty to opt out of everything that is corrupt, amoral, spews propaganda, and goes against my opinion of what is right, I'd have to opt out of life itself.
2
I stopped using Facebook in 2015 or 2016, logging on only periodically to pick up a message, but never posting anything.
I thought about deleting my account for a long time but wanted to be able to log in and keep tabs with what information Facebook *might* be collecting. Plus, I didn't trust them to actually delete my data, instead just hiding it so it wasn't visible.
But their association and cover up with "The Definers" and other Republican tools did it for me.
Facebook is a monumental waste of time, and specifically designed to be so. It's designed to feed FOMO and social anxiety, not foster closer relationships. Ditch it. You won't miss it.
2
Should we leave Facebook or the internet, because we find misinformation there? Should I quite the USPS because I got a hand written letter from a Nigerian Prince back in the
80's? Should we withdraw to a dessert mountain top in southern Nevada, because the Gubermint is collection data on us? I hate to tell you all, but our quaint notion of personal privacy has be a hoax for over 40 years. As soon as we started to use credit cards the banks and companies have been tracking us. I believe the only way we stand a chance of safety or privacy is Caveat Emptor.
2
Early on in Facebook's history I had serious reservation about its social value when teenagers were reportedly inflicting serious harm on themselves when they weren't "liked", and when the platform was being used as a vicious tool for harassment. The implications of this behavior spreading among people worldwide disturbed me greatly. I decided not to enroll. When it was later revealed that Facebook was collecting and selling the personal data of its users my decision was further reinforced. Unfortunately, human beings have not evolved enough past their propensity to harm each other to use this technology for the greater good. As with other technologies like atomic energy, all we've managed to do is create weapons of mass destruction and generate piles of radioactive waste that remain lethal for centuries.
2
If I left FB, how would I know if someone who knows one of my cousin's friends managed to fly to Europe in business class with champagne?
I mean really!
4
On the other hand, there are those of us who are using Facebook to improve democracy, at least in the U.S. I personally launched a page proposing a constitutional amendment. And I have found like-minded people with whom I'm currently working to influence the incoming Congress to reform its rules. For now, I'm staying and steering clear of nonsense.
1
How about we solve the moral issue of healthcare for all US citizens and then we can apply our morals to Facebook?
Let’s prioritize.
2
This focuses on Facebook but it is the largest of many social media platforms. Are people also quitting Instagram, what’s App, Twitter. LinkedIn etc etc ? Any of them can spread false statements and motivate consumerism. I have a friend who only uses emails to send links — if I like something he sends me I may post it on FB or Twitter. He probably thinks his emails only go to his friends. I figure no one reads my posts except my friends even if they are public. I’m interested in my friends’ concerns but mostly not persuaded. That’s what socializing is.
2
Twitter has its own can of toxic worms when it comes to allowing others to commit crimes and other moral or ethical offenses. NYT might investigate and write about that, too.
1
Leave Facebook or just lurk? After the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, I drastically reduced my FB posting to the degree that I'm mostly lurking now. Many of my friends have done the same. At the same time, I see an increase in ads in my FB newsfeed, including many that reflect my online searching a terminal disease. Then the other day I saw that a sweet young thing had invested heavily in promoting herself on FB as a style leader. I posted a few comments telling her that I wanted to be just like her and no one had more class than she. The poor thing wrote back thanking me, thinking I was serious. Made me feel a little ashamed of myself.
2
I leave Facebook frequently.
I stop interacting with it. I don't read my Newsfeed. I stop posting Public. I stop posting to my Friends. I frequent only one Group.
I guess I am in the Control. I use Facebook. Maybe it uses me.
Unlike Survivors of Abusive Relationships--I am and know many, many others--I don't feel the need to chuck the baby with the bathwater. When survivors of abusive relationships escape, and they begin to recover, they have a desperate need to divest of all the positive trappings of the relationship, as if to prove that not only did the bad things never happen, but the good things never existed either.
I don't feel that way.
I can accept both the good and the bad about Facebook. Facebook is a horrifying thing. It's done terrible things to our economy, to Democracy, to our psyche, to our relationships. Much of it, we've done to ourselves, if we really want to be honest, by allowing the worst lunatics to run the asylum, both at the helm of Facebook and in the trenches of our lives, but neither here nor there.
I don't feel the need to delete my Facebook account. When I don't want to use it. I don't. When I do, I do. It's nice to be able to look over the Memories of the days when I was Active. I've found pictures of my children when they were young, pies I made for Thanksgiving, kittens & puppies I raised, days gone by. Those things are good. I'm also reminded that Facebook is what I make it.
I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
1
As a survivor, I am dumbstruck at your callus and inaccurate portrayal of how and why survivors behave, and take umbrage at your misappropriation of our experiences (you admit you are not one of us) to argue your point.
Furthermore, people have carelessly publicly posted photographs on Facebook of a survivor or her children, without their knowing it, and thereby allowed an abuser to locate and further abuse them.
They, and you, should use a regular (and fully private, non-hackable) photo album if you want to go back and look at pictures of your family outings and the like. I do, including those that remind me of past relationships. I didn’t toss the baby down the drain with the bath water, and I wish you hadn’t essentially thrown abuse survivors down the drain in your (paid?) attempt to defend and promote Facebook.
1
I am planning to leave Facebook, but I requested my info download first. It's been one week already and they still are "working on" it. Has there been an influx of requests and are they just stalling to prevent us from leaving?
1
I never felt the urge to participate in the folly that is Facebook. Not in the slightest. Steered clear of it entirely.
Do I maintain a sense of superiority about that? Oh you bet I do.
4
I am left wondering what the author's "moral red line" is, given this newspaper's recent in-depth investigation into Facebook's activities covering up when it knew about breaches, how it directed public relations firms against competitors, the selling of users information, news "experiments,"and even its "prep sessions" for appearances on Capitol Hill.
I think if an individual needs to "prep" to answer questions about their own company, we're likely looking at someone with serious maturity and/or character issues.
Why did we ever think Mark Zuckerberg - clearly, an IT genius - was mature or experienced enough to be at the top of a company handling the personal information of billions of users?
I began writing about the possible practical, privacy, psychological, and emotional hazards of Facebook more than 7 years ago...and people thought I was crazy.
If you stand outside the box, the limited value of Facebook - and the unlimited possible perils - are clear.
At the heart of the issue isn't our use of Facebook...it's our acquiescence to "following" false leaders, fake news, faux genius, and the almighty dollar.
2
People can and will misuse ANYTHING.
2
Yes. I left Facebook three years ago, and my life has been much more rewarding since then. Quit Facebook.
5
Simple: quit. And Instagram too.
It's better for you: No more keeping up with the Jones's.
And exactly what list of Facebook ignominious actions need listing: Like today's story that the British Parliament is finding it necessary to seize their documents?
Talk with a friend, write a letter, walk the dog, read a newspaper,...
2
Facebook did not charge its users to join. I never joined, because I know there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Facebook has been using its members' profiles for nefarious purposes. The Times "Tech Fix" column of April 11, 2018, "I Downloaded the Information That Facebook Has on Me. Yikes," gave us the gory details about what Facebook has been doing with the info it has on its users. Yikes, indeed!
Facebook, as we know, also unwittingly permitted others, such as Russian government, to use its platform to manipulate its users with impunity. An American company giving the country's adversaries a platform to damage America. Imagine that!
In spite of all that, not only Facebook still exists, but other companies, including the Times, are also allowing Facebook user credentials to be used to log in to their own websites. So, it's not just Facebook users who should ask the question the author posed, but companies that use Facebook to conduct their business should as well.
3
I deleted my account several months ago. I felt Zuckerberg was acting like an irresponsible kid. I refuse to subsidize his behavior any longer. Unfortunately, my voice is of no particular value in this debate. I'm in my late 70's, a Vietnam veteran.But I'm also a retired public school educator. Every vote counts!
4
I was reluctant but failed to understand exactly why. Certain seeing and sharing family and friends in the sharing of thought and photos is gratifying, but I wondered at what price?
Now we know how it's we who have been manipulated by evil means, The result is this living abomination of human corruption, attacking our values and influencing the young and feeble minded.
The price is near fatal for well being of life on the planet. All for profit and fame!
2
Don't be afraid, you can bail on Facebook and your life will not be blighted. I've never been on Facebook, other than a little dabbling years back, quickly abandoned. I've always been leery of that thing, probably because I work in digital marketing and understand how abusive it can be. You don't need Facebook to maintain friendships and anyone you can't just pick up a phone and call is an acquaintance, not a friend.
3
FB is a cyber toy on par with a "bobble head," a goofy looking character comprised of cheap plastic. Stick it on the dash of your car and laugh at it..
OR.. You can really delve deep and over analyze the significance of a cheap piece of plastic- think hard enough you may be able to pull some significance from its' existence.
I think that's what we are doing with FB now-- Use it to send simple messages and innocuous pictures to family and friends- laugh and move on ...
But using FB as a tool to express political opinions, hate, fear and all the other bad stuff then we are better off doing what we did prior to FB and the internet.. which was take pictures with a camera, have them developed at the drugstore, send them in a card or a letter to family and friends.
3
Good question in the title ... and this is one of the easiest "ethical" questions ever. YES... BY ALL MEANS - fortunately, however evil FB has proved itself to be, the only thing that REALLY exists as a dis-association dis-incentive is habit and - really - a kind of addiction, one which seems totally built-in (and not accidentally) into smartphones themselves. Actually, without exaggeration ... and without being (too) superior, they're 10x smarter than most of their users!
Both the author and many commenters before me have pointed out the many, many ways FB has been a bad citizen - and that's putting it mildly. But they are recidivists, too, and that really can only be explained by the greed on which that particular company was built.
The recent PBS documentary exposed Ms S and Mr Z for the liars and hypocrites that they are. It is so, so, very clear that Mark altogether lacks what used to be called a "moral compass," and Sheryl is a smart person who knows that even if it's "not the money" for the Zucks at this point, the only time you'll hear him say that "mistakes were made" is if he's got cookie crumbs (from what he's pilfered) worse than the worst dandruff all over a navy blue hoodie.
Obviously, he procured the very best financial and legal advice along the way, and he'll really only go if and when the company truly crashes and burns ... or when (maybe, this is more likely) one of his kids is gutsy enough to ask questions like "Daddy, how can you live with yourself?"
3
It is a free country. Do what you want. Any article that starts with the question about moral duty is suspect in these times. For me, Facebook is entertaining and helpful albeit within parameters that I set. It is a tool just be careful about getting played. Like any media source it is probably time for some regulation whether they like it or not.
1
The Times has Facebook page. Shouldn’t you be looking inward first?
1
Never joined, never used, never needed, never got addicted — more and more thankful every day.
5
All the wrongs Dr. Liao attributes to Facebook can also be said about newspapers and television.
1
Knowing what I now know about Facebook, what I know about the owner's lies and repeated apologies, what I know about the financial structure of the business (ie: how they make their money), in good conscience, I cannot support their business. Doing so will not sit well with my conscience. Not one penny of my money goes to Zuckerberg and company.
It is flagrantly clear that Facebook used and duped its members, with devastating effect. They did not anticipate or guard against the serious failures that now plague us, and they did everything they could to spin their failures in a positive light simply to hang on to the numbers, the money.
When a company puts money ahead of its customers' well being, the only power a customer has is with their wallets and their support. My consumer motto is this: If you wrong me, you LOSE me. That really is the only way to teach these greedy, phony, careless people a lesson.
3
Interesting rationalization, but you wrongly create complexity where simpler reason suffices. I'll accept that you don't create, read, or share harmful material on facebook. But why do you continue subscribing to a service that allows such things? Would you pay for a newspaper that regularly published false stories or promoted racism or bigotry? That is exactly what you do when you allow Facebook to sell your eyeballs: you are a subscriber. Facebook won't become a responsible publisher until users leave in sufficient numbers to harm its pocketbook.
3
Thank you, John in Ann Arbor. Your comments are exactly why I did deactivate my FB account. Additionally, I felt tracked, and forced to bypass so many unnecessary ads that reading articles was like running an obstacle course.
Penny- Done with FB!
1
Under 25's are increasingly moving to YouTube, Reddit, and Discord. Those sites are far, far worse in terms of promoting extremist viewpoints than Facebook is. Should we be telling our GenZers to get off those platforms too? The reality is that if Facebook goes, other platforms will pop up to fill the void.
1
Sir,
The motto of Facebook is ( perhaps was) "Move fast and break things. To me this underscores Mr Zuckerberg's total refusal to acknowledge his part in the thousand of deaths caused by his company. From High School students driven to suicide by thoughtless postings to thousands of immigrants killed with the advantages possible by Facebook's connection to computers. This is a tool that can be used to slay millions. You can stay or leave Facebook as you wish but at least let's mention some of the damage wrought by this man.
4
One of the key concepts here is the collective action. I might seriously consider joining a collective resignation from Facebook, as being more meaningful than just dropping out on my own. It would be like the difference between joining a demonstration, and just going and standing in the park for a couple of hours. I'm not sure about that analogy, but that's what I'm coming up with from reading the article.
Mr Liao,
I was stunned to read your last paragraph. After making a sound case for the moral imperative to leave Facebook you started to equivocate and then in the end you outright abdicate moral principle. You had me fooled sir, with the straightforward and direct logic for the case being made. And then you abdicate. Others less practiced at the marriage of logic and ethics at least have their myopia to fall back on. But you see it. You understand it. And somehow you fail. If folks like you fail, well, you are familiar with the math and what it takes to inspire others to apply morality to their lives.
Please reconsider and write a retraction condemning your own hesitence in living up to what you KNOW is the right thing to do.
3
Facebook is a kind of soup that some people have spat into for purely nefarious intent. Using the Utilitarian principles of duty, clearly, unless the risk the self is mortal, then abstaining from Facebook isn't breaking that moral/ethical boundary. However, in terms of duty to others, to use Facebook, knowing that, like a soup, it is a contaminated medium allows others to pretend the dangers are minimal when in fact, they are not. Therefore, as a duty to others, I would (if I were a Facebook subscriber) delete (not just deactivate) my account. That way I show others that I deeply care for them. To do otherwise is to encourage others to eat the spit of others.
2
Facebook is a tool of communication. As such it can be used for good or ill. The NY Times was deeply involved in spreading the lies and distortions that led to the Iraq War, one of the most destructive foreign policy decisions in American history. But here I am reading The NYTimes, though I am circumspect about everything I read here, as one should be with all media. Facebook has connected me with friends all over the world who provide me with a much needed alternative to mainstream media. And that brings me to another point. Are these many NYTimes articles and opinion pieces urging readers to leave Facebook completely disinterested? I don't think so.
My mom used to tell me that you are who your friends are, so if you don't like your image change friends. I started contemplating leaving FB when I read about Joel Kaplan's happy celebratory party for Bret Kavanaugh's SCOTUS confirmation. Do I want to be seen putting money in the pockets of this man, I asked.
Turns out I needn't have worried because one day as I was logging in I was ordered by FB to remove a meme about the current squatters in the White House that had been the backdrop on my home page for more that a year. I declined the offer and deleted my account.
My mom also taught me by example that you are nothing without your principles. I do miss the good people who were my friends from afar, but principles, you know?
1
I dropped the Facebook app from my iPhone, which cut 90% of my use. I still have it on my desktop, but only because I use it for business. And I should add that Facebook performs less and less well for business as the years go by. I am actively testing alternatives.
1
I unhooked months ago, but haven’t yet deleted my account. I know I am missing certain cool things, like groups that I won’t find anywhere else. I’m unplugged from the social movements that I would be participating in, like marches and environmental actions. But all the garbage and nastiness that I couldn’t handle just got to be too much. I had one last terrible encounter with a Republican, on my own page!, and shut it down. I will not be bullied, and Facebook is a prime arena for bullies.
I loved it when it first came out, as a way of keeping in touch with my far-flung friends and family. I was actually in college (again.. new career) when it first opened up to other college students. Remember that? The good old days, really. But just like our political system when business interests became more important than people, FB sold out.
So done.
1
After about a decade on the platform, I logged off my account early this year. Though I have deactivated my account in the past several times, this time it's for good.
I'll be the first to admit that that leap felt big and consequential. Like kicking a smoking habit, the first week was difficult. But as time has worn on (and more and more bad news about the company makes the front page of this and countless other media organizations) the better I feel about the choice.
What it really comes down to for me is that *I haven't missed anything*. Nothing of any meaning has happened on the FB that I needed to experience. And in addition, I feel heaps better knowing that Zuck's app isn't on my phone telling the company where I am and what I am doing.
1
"For now I’m going to stay on Facebook. " Written like a true American who wants to have his cake and eat it too. If you don't think Facebook has crossed the moral red line yet, you never will.
6
The moral dity lies with Zuckerberg, but he seems without
integrity or morality. Greed runs the country now, and he is an example but by no means the only one...Bezos..et al.. These gazillionaires wiho have no responsibility other than to themselves may very well see their dreams become nightmares.
I saw an addictive from the start, grown people behaving like teenagers in plain sight was a warning, and therefore may [will?]
have the seeds of its own destruction.
2
I gave up Facebook in April. My life is so much better now.
Stopped posting to Facebook one year ago. I kept it for Messenger. Yesterday I deleted Facebook entirely. I have left The Matrix! I also quit watching cable news (and all cable TV long ago - thank you, PBS) and I only read news on weekends. I don’t have to know “everything” or know it right away. Life is good.
2
Is the red line really between intent and effect? A person is dead whether by a first-degree murder
or by manslaughter—killing without malice aforethought. Each carries its commensurate penalty,
and many would and should conclude that Facebook's arrogant lack of self-regulation has invited their
malfeasance. Their lack of regard for the common good, even while claiming to have gifted their users
with a sense of community, should most certainly result in a loss of business. How else to get through
to them that they cannot spin their way out of the damage they have caused?
2
The question raised by this op-ed is not simply whether FB intended "for those things to occur on its platform" and thereby crossed "certain moral 'red lines.'" For such moral culpability can also be based on FB's willful blindness. In other words, FB did not need to possess "full knowledge that [Cambridge Analytic] would use the data subversively to influence a democratic election," or that it was assisting "the dissemination of hate speech in Myanmar" on order to have crossed moral red lines. If FB reasonably could and therefore have known its platform was being misused in these ways, but closed its eyes to such misuse for financial or political reasons, FB "enter[ed] the realm of outright wickedness."
I left FB for reasons other than its moral culpability in the spreading of hate and fake news, and its service as Russia's "useful idiot" in the 2016 election. I could not stomach the constant displays of narcissism, including my own.
4
Trust me: There's life after Facebook, people.
4
Does not matter which yard-stick you use the answer to the question is- Yes. Those who need eloborate explanations are simply looking for cop outs.
2
Never joined . So happy about that.
1
Left Facebook long time ago and now everyhting on social media or online news, magazines wtv it is I use fake id's, so far I've got around 40 of them. Best way to stay safe online.
I still remember how Obana was celebrated because he used Facebook to win elections in 2008 and 2012....
How quickly things change.
MZ should have resigned after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. FB has been spying on their clientel’s personalities, race, gender, interests, ambitions to exploit people as targets of manipulative commercials. He and his platform have become a danger to democracy.
2
"For now I’m going to stay on Facebook. But if new information suggests that Facebook has crossed a moral red line, we will all have an obligation to opt out."
This is so tame. Are you kidding me?!
Everyone was aghast at Cambridge Analytica. Those same people are "liberal" people who were so upset at Trump getting elected. And yet...they still use Facebook. Guess what? Real politics, real change, it's not about convenience. It's about praxis. Wake up. *eye roll*
2
Facebook is not special and should not be put on some moral pedestal. It’s users are probably some of the most easily manipulated people on the planet. Many will read this article or watch the recent PBS story about Facebook and delete the app (like my wife did yesterday.). The damage has already been done. If you did not have morals to realize Facebook was evil prior to downloading it, then you certainly don’t have the brains to realize that deleting will solve the moral void in your life.
1
@Pilot
Sorry,there is no act of morality,no act of virtue deleting FB.None. No moral points are scored. Its a simple act of not doing. Thats it. Its, not mugging people. Not stealing. Not cheating. As those are not even inherent acts of moral point scoring either.
I have not deleted my account but I have made a huge effort to ignore it all together. Generally I would post up truthful articles from reputable news sources like the NYT and WaPo, only to have them ridiculed by right wing so called friends who I have not seen since high school, nor do I care to see them. I have pared down my list of friends considerably. I find it difficult to watch Uber Christians who cheer on an amoral buffoon who breaks all their commandments on a daily and sometimes hourly basis, spreading lies and demonizing Clinton, Pelosi and immigrants.
I like to see pics of my grandkids so I will only look to see posts from my son in law or daughter that involves their pictures.
Mark Zuckerberg makes me sick. And do not care to put any money in his pockets ever again. I never click on ads anyway, too many scams and viruses.
4
Never joined. I thought it dopey, and still do...most social media.
But please, can we stop this Virtue attachment nonsense. Especially this!
If you quit FB, quit, and shut up about it. Quit, because they failed to protect your data. Quit because well...you really dont need to paste your life online. Quit because - You dont have that many "friends", nor do you need the illusion to live a semi-happy, semi-fulfilling life.
But dont crow about it. Don't attach some virtue or rebel meme to it. And don't go on other social media and praise your break-up with FB!
There's no morality in play by breaking up with a totally non-needed - nonexistent (nothing you have online exists in a real way) thing like FB. None!
No more then not buying a product with palm oil (see NYT piece) is virtuous. You're just not buying something, that you likely didn't need anyway. Should the product stop using palm oil...you don't gain virtue or protestor points either.
FB lied to all of its users. It was NEVER about you, or your photos, or sharing your life. It was never an altruistic endeavor. It was and always will be - unless they are severely altered - a data gathering enterprise for marketing products and social and political POVs to you.
The immorality, unethical behaviors were all on their side.
By not using FB there is no morality, ethics point scoring. No, you merely stop supporting what was a lie. Like unrequited love.
This Generation must stop seeking virtue in stuff like this.
5
Look up all the
companies that
have your information
by checking your
privacy settings.
You have the option
of deleting them.
Nevertheless, this
amusing little “toy”
we use does have
frightening power.
1
I got on Facebook because it was the only way I could keep in touch with some people. Among them are high school and college friends from back in the day and former coworkers. However, I do take advantage of the "unfollow" feature--on their feed they will still show you as being a friend but you won't see their posts. Since everyone went insane over politics on both sides in 2016, that feature has come in very handy. More often than not, when I look at Facebook I think of the immortal words of George Carlin: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." Sounds about right.
All we have to do is regulate a predatory capitalistic system that exploits the gullible. There, problem solved.
2
Do I have a moral duty to leave Facebook? Like everything, the answer is a double edged sword. The last couple years or so have certainly been stress filled and there is no doubt I have posted some things that were't skillful. But then life is always a little bit messy because that is the way that we learn...from cleaning up messes that is. Of course, this takes a commitment to some level of standards. Nihilism and anarchy are extremes, yet both in moderation possess the capacity for good. So, everything in balance with time, place, position and degree. The question is, what does that mean to each and every individual? What do you want? Keeping in mind that there is a collective aspect to the mess as well.
1
yes you do have a moral duty to leave Facebook. Plus you'll have your dignity and privacy back. Plus there won't be random people from your past contacting you, looking for a connection or your brother's address. Why did you join in the first place?
2
Facebook has cleverly allied itself with many other organizations, thereby gaining for itself “hooks” that bind people to it. Whether it’s the Times or PBS or political groups of every type, Facebook wants USERS and it wants to edge people out of groups - unless they’ve joined Facebook.
I’ve never joined.
I realize by not doing so, I’ve been closed out of certain activities. But it bothers me tremendously that the Times and PBS, for example, began a “book group” - which cannot be accessed from either the Times or PBS - but ONLY via Facebook.
To me this is a type of manipulation or a “shake down” - and it bothers me enough to say, Fahgeddaboudit!
Quit the Facebook addiction. Insist that the Times or PBS or whomever shun it as well. You may lose out for a while, but down the road, you’ll thank yourself. And so will we!
2
I 100% agree that NYT and PBS (more so PBS, which is not-for-profit and viewer-supported and as nonprofit receives government funding in tax breaks) should not require customers/viewers to use any platform other than their (NYT, PBS, etc) platform to participate. If I go to a NYT event at a brick and mortar cafe or theatre, I’m not required to give away and allow the sale and other release of tons of personal information and to allow thousands of marketers and “influencers” to sit and speak to me as I sit at my table or theatre seat and enter and exit the building. At least not yet.
1
The United States Post Service is used to distribute letter bombs, drugs, hate mail, etc - at least you can't directly be physically injured using Facebook like you can using the USPS.
1
No moral duty to leave Facebook.
But it would be a good idea to unfriend Republicans.
A company whose founding principle for it's existence was to check out girls for suitability as dates, always stuck in my craw.How shallow and demeaning but not surprising for a college boy who wasn't exactly the cream of the crop himself.That it turned into a propaganda spewing, destroyer of social discourse, waste of time for hapless voyeurs is hardly surprising.Save yourselves from brain damage and get out while you still have a shred of decency.
2
The only way to force Facebook to clean up their act and stop being a well-paid Big Lie propaganda machine is for users to cancel their accounts until Facebook becomes a social medium, not an anti-social goldmine for Zuckerberg and his pals that has helped elect Trump and fuel religious wars around the globe. Their right wing Vice President and lobbyist Joel Kaplan - a big buddy of the ultra-right jurist Brett Kavanaugh has helped to organized highly offensive smear campaigns against Facebook critics like Color of Change and George Soros.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-20/groups-targeted-by-facebook-smear-campaign-fire-back-at-company
1
Every good citizen of any democratic country should reject facebook on the face.
Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are traitors to our country. And they know it.
FB has been both a financial and political coup.
Shut. It. Down.
2
I sometimes feel as if I have a moral duty to unsubscribe from the New York Times, because the newspaper regularly publishes hateful columns. But I continue to subscribe because I find much of its nonpolitical content interesting and useful. In short, I accept the dual nature of the paper. I once had a Facebook account. I lasted a little more than two weeks. The reason I deleted my account was that I found little of interest on the site.
Any app that was originally developed by a bunch of Harvard “boys” to rank their female peers — see “The Social Network” — doesn’t deserve anyone’s support.
1
Being on Facebook may benefit the person using it or at least not cause the user harm but by being on it you are enriching a man with the morals of a slug.
2
My 83 year old mother uses Facebook, I don't have an account. I do help her with hers because she doesn't know how to use it the right way and has no idea what she's doing on it. Luckily she has only about 80 friends on it which are relatives we haven't seen in years. She likes looking at the pictures they post mostly as well as playing games. If I see something on that that's a possible scam or sketchy I block it. I also make sure that her privacy settings are set so that people who aren't her friends can't see what's on her page.
My mother was recently scammed by a random person who called her on her phone pretending to be a grandchild in distress. Senior citizens are vulnerable to these scams. The phone scam involved getting her to drive to a big box store to buy $1,000 in gift cards and giving out the numbers over the phone to the scammer. We have to monitor what our elderly parents are doing at all times, unfortunately. I'm wondering how long it will be before these types of scams will show up on FB.
1
Glad to see that you are helping your mother but as an 81 year old who is quite savvy please recognize that there are many seniors who are technology sound
Just who is the author trying to convince?
1
Why does everything have to become a deep, philosophical, moral issue? I use Facebook to keep in contact with friends and family. I'm not going to give that up just because some other users might have shadier uses for it. Sorry if that doesn't meet someone else's "purity" standards.
3
Because of Facebook's many years of scandal and consistent habit of maximizing company income and lie about problems rather than remedy them or stop their unconscionable treatment of users, I have felt a duty never to have anything to do with Facebook. My recollection is that the issues began with users' private data not being protected from hacking, but the subsequent issues mentioned have almost left this in the shade.
344
I'd be delighted to leave Facebook, but every political group I belong to and every political commentator I follow (Robert Reich and etc.) use it to communicate and organize. Give me an alternative that delivers the same grassroots connections and I'll convert in an instant. In the meantime, the best I can do is be glad that I'm using Facebook, which is owned by immoral leaders, to organize against and resist other immoral leaders.
447
@Emma Ess - I too follow Robert Reich, and likely many of the same political entities you do - via email.
I joined FB long ago, for about a week when it first launched and became everyone's new toy. I found it a huge waste of time, had zero interest in "friending, liking, following" etc., total strangers. And the thing that really bugged me was how very difficult FB made it to get off and get out. I don't do social media at all, and try to keep a low profile on the web in general and don't feel the least bit left out or uninformed.
138
@Emma Ess
Give me? Power isn't given; it's taken. That's an old political maxim that bears contemplating.
Good luck with your grassroots quest, but may I suggest that one builds from the grassroots, otherwise one's foundation tends to be just pre-packaged astroturf (eg, FB).
I'm sure you're busy, but I'll bet there are plenty others who share your wishes, so seek them out and build together.
27
@Emma Ess Twitter
6
I think Mr. Liao is being too generous here.
Facebook has shown us time and time again that their only intention is to make money, not create a good product which protects and puts its customers first.
Their only regret is that they have been caught and that's crossing the red line.
If Facebook is to survive it must be regulated.
705
@lechrist. And if Facebook is to change for the better, they have to be shown that their failure to do so will negatively impact their bottom line.
25
@lechrist I agree. The people who build and run companies like facebook are arrogant and intentional in what they do, and like our president hold those they use to enrich themselves in a certain contempt.
18
@lechrist: You repeated an oft-repeated falsity. You, and the users of FB, are not its customers. You are its product. They sell YOU to advertisers and companies.
To them, you are just "human behavioral data".
They are now somewhat able to predict the average user's (trump voters') behaviors, and in a few years they will master how to manipulate us, to make us buy what their advertisers are selling. They already manipulate us through psychological engineering - it is why FB is so addictive.
47
Facebook maintains it's a platform for people to stay in touch with each other. The problem seems to be that, in fact, it's a business committed to maximizing profit for its shareholder and that apparently takes priority over everything else. I think we have an obligation to stop contributing to this profit machine. Nuff said.
I quit nearly a year ago and am much happier for having done so. People can do what they want but it is somewhat troubling that the lines of what is and isn’t ethically and morally acceptable keep being moved to accommodate what I think is little more than vanity and egocentrism.
576
Well said @Dennis! I also quit Facebook more than 2 years ago and have found better use of my time. It has been quite a relief not following what rest of the world is doing.
39
@Dennis Ditto, left almost 9 months ago, deleted my account completely. Never saw much value in it anyway.
I prefer real time in-person interactions with people I know and love to voyeuristic digital experiences with those I don't know well beyond some tangential connection that may be decades old and was never much to begin with.
19
No.
Facebook did not influence anything anywhere. FB was used, the same way any means of communication can be used. If not FB, it will be something else. The problem is Breitbart, Cambridge Analytica, and the lies disseminated. It’s basically a first amendment catch 22. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Democrats lost the election. A scapegoat is needed. Shoot the messenger. No thanks. Count me out.
Mr. Liao's arguments are well reasoned, but his thesis implies that we have only two strategic choices regarding Facebook: Stay or Leave. If enough people stay, the Facebook status quo is maintained; if enough people leave, Facebook goes broke and goes away. Simple.
But there's a third choice: Pressure Facebook to reform. Over the short term, this strategy means quitting Facebook, with the explicit goal of forcing it to become, and to move ahead as, a morally responsible company. It also means pressuring politicians to take reform-minded actions against Facebook. Without hard-nosed protest that hits its bottom line, Facebook won't change and government won't force it to change: The economic status quo is simply too good. To the extent that intentions matter in ethics, leaving Facebook as punishment for past sins vs. leaving Facebook to prevent its future sins are two different actions.
Americans and their government have a long and successful history of not throwing private-sector babies out with private-sector bathwater. Many of these solutions go by familiar acronyms, e.g., FAA, NTSB, FCC, and FDA. They're also embodied in the familiar phrase "having your cake and eating it too." We should hope for nothing less for Facebook and for corporate social-media in general.
2
I deleted my FB account last year after I got tired of continually deactivating it. It was the best thing I ever did as it released me from the social media death grip. It wasn't only FB's fault, it was my fault too. Since deleting FB I have also deleted Twitter and LinkedIn, even though I rarely used them. It was just easier to delete them all...I don't miss FB one bit. However, I'm not ready to give Pinterest up yet!
1
I am responding to Jeff Hunter, who mentions his 85 year old mother, for whom Facebook may have positive outcomes.
I beg to disagree. I am close in age to his mother and I have chosen not to have a Facebook account. Yes, I then do not see the many postings of family pictures and daily events. Rather I choose to stay connected through texts and phone calls to a niece in Australia..Our 25 minute phone conversation on Thanksgiving morning was priceless to me; we connected and shared and just "hung out" together for awhile.
From what I hear, Facebook can be a real time-waster. I prefer to spend my time meeting my friends in person--sharing meals, going to movies, planning holiday gatherings of my high school classmates (this year we celebrate our 62nd graduation year) and enjoying the intimacy of phone conversations and getting together. Yes, I use technology to enhance my world but I will not let it replace the warmth of dinner and a movie!!
3
The great value of FB is being able to maintain contact with far flung friends and relatives, especially distant cousins. Calls are great but even calls are more fun and less awkward when you have been able to see a little of what is going on with kids of cousins etc. I have some fourth cousins I reconnected with on FB and that led to phone calls and then visits. They live hundreds of miles away so movies were never an option. That said, it is good to either keep your FB circle small or set up a group that is just close friends and family. Class parents are on my wider FB page but pictures of my children etc only get posted to a much much smaller group.
Morality aside, ask yourself if you feel better without FB. To do that you need to stop looking at it, and for myself I have reduced use to a half dozen posts a year. And damn right I feel better.
It’s not the perfidy of Zuckerberg or Sandberg that I worry about. The majority of the rich in this country are morally bankrupt and offer nothing to recommend to my life. But the technology we use and the addictions to technology are worrisome. That is reason enough to dump social media.
1
Never have been and probably never will be a user of Facebook. That's just me. Everything I know about it I read in the papers. Although, expect for Sunday, the papers I read are transmitted to me electronically and I am now interacting with the paper electronically. I am sure many regular Facebook users finds that method of interacting with the world, quaint.
How much time does the average Facebook user spend on the platform annually? Whatever the number of hours are, that is time a quaint old man like me has to interact with the world in many different ways. Facebook can't give back the time it takes out of your life. However, for people who have no other choices to acquire and send information, it must seem indispensable.
What to do? Facebook clean up your act. Make your platform an electronic place for people to go where they can feel safe and there are reasonable boundaries about how people use it. That is not the job of the user. Facebook, you need to opt in on something like this or you may find yourself opted out.
1
In your discussion of leaving or staying with Facebook you missed an important point. That is that every act we do has underlying effects that continue into the future. Thus when we shoplift we move closer to becoming frequent shoplifters and possible arrest. When we contribute to a worthy cause we establish a habit within ourselves to contribute again. In your case if you leave facebook all the people that converse with you will realize it and it may have a large consequence.
1
I left Facebook a few days ago when I learned all the cool kids were deleting it. I saw an article that 44% of 18-29 yr olds deleted the app from their phone. I'm 62 but it gave me a chance to be cool again. I only got on it for my business and to keep up with my younger generation relatives. I closed the business over a year ago and haven't checked in more than once or twice since. I keep up with the younger ones the old fashioned way. I talk with their parents, send them b-day cards, and text from time to time.
2
the author states " we should not place the responsibility to uphold democratic values entirely on Facebook" How about, removing the word "entirely" from the sentence! Its seems to me the the current caricarture of FB users is limited to those wishing to undermine democracy and those sharing their pet and family vacation photos. Neither of these camps characterize my interactions with FB. Forgotten is the enormous amount of local activism that relies on FB as well as many good causes that have used the platform successfully. FB has become a monster of sorts, for those wishing to spread harm, but that is the nature of the world today - we need to be diligent, we need to push back, we need to encourage someone to provide more trustworthy alternatives to FB, but FB is not the source of oiur problems, nor was it the first vehichle used to attempt to influence elections from abroad, as our own government about that.
2
I never joined Facebook because I had privacy concerns. People gave me a hard time for years about how silly I was to be worried about my privacy. They still do, but not so much.
I have missed the ability to connect and share pictures and anecdotes with friends and family. However, after hearing about hurtful things that people are willing to say to each other on Facebook messages and the type of manipulation that was used on Facebook to influence our elections and cause world crises, I do not regret my choice for one minute.
7
Right on, sister! My experience, too. I’ve even lost some friends to Facebook. We were friends prior to Facebook’s existence, but once they got sucked into its vortex, it became their main way to stay “in touch” with people in their lives — and if you weren’t on Facebook, they stopped keeping you in their lives. Invitations to their gatherings: all via Facebook, updated on their lives: all via Facebook, how to reach them in a timely manner: all via Facebook. Sad, but in a world where some once-attentive friends spend lots of time “curating” their online presence (a largely solitary act) rather than spending time actually with the people in their lives, then maybe they’re not such great friends after all. And I know that my information (unless others are sharing it on Facebook without my consent) is not being used to enrich a company that in a grandiose and almost maniacal manner insists on the great goodness of digitally-mediated “connection” while denying how their product actually functions to disconnect people or to connect them in truly damaging and dangerous ways — like Myanmar, attacks on Indian girls and women, and even gang warfare and domestic violence here in America. Not to mention their history of highly questionable secretive manipulation of users’ feed in the name of psychological research when no meaningful and certainly no accepted standard of fully informed consent was solicited or received from those users (remember the depression impact study?).
1
I left facebook in 2016 and have never looked back. Since then, it's become crystal clear that Zuckerberg, Sanders and the lot of them have traded moral conscience for money. There are so many other ways to communicate with loved ones, friends, colleagues, acquaintances that don't involve subjecting one's self to an onslaught of propaganda and creepy, algorithm-created "friend requests" from people I don't know. Bottom line - my life is richer and more connected since leaving facebook.
Memo to Zuckerberg: The money you've earned from facebook which supports your family's foundation is dark and has caused great harm. Giving it away to worthy causes does not clean it up. Ask yourself, is this the legacy you want to leave your children?
9
Facebook has knowingly and intentionally hid information about it’s platform’s use from regulators and consumers. It actively worked to do harm to it’s detractors. I don’t know what moral reasoning the professor is using but it is clear to me we have a duty to decide if we want to support these activities or not. Not a hard choice for me. I left early this year and encourage everyone else to do the same.
6
Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of social media--it's more like antisocial media, are causing a change in peoples' modes of thinking in addition to wasting their time. I live in a big city, and I can tell you for a fact that hordes of young people are being turned into complete zombies by texting, often while walking directly into other peoples' paths. Their neural pathways are being redirected, and for what: so they can be inundated with advertising. This is creating static in their heads and preventing them from thinking rationally or conducting a rhetorically sound discourse. Never mind the moral aspect, this is wholesale destruction of our capacities to interact as families and friends.
4
I left FB about two months ago for the exact reasons in this article and its an absolut relief. It' a very easy way to react and actually do something.
I thought it would take some time to get used to not using FB and not get all the FB-info, but after a few weeks I more or less stopped thinking about it.
5
I joined Facebook for one reason only. For a while, the New York Times wouldn't let you make comments online if you didn't have a Facebook account. I didn't like it, but I did it so I could comment. Never understood what was up with that. Eventually, the NYT dropped that requirement. I still have my Facebook account but never use it.
When it's free, you're the product. If you do not like that, then leave Facebook. They don't care about you, just your marketing trail. If you don't mind being tracked, disseminated and followed, and then being tracked and followed on the internet, in Facebook and on many other websites, then stay.
While complete privacy is not guaranteed on the internet, I'd rather opt "in" on what can be used than constantly trying to find how to opt "out", and then not even being completely free.
So if I cannot opt "in" to a site then I don't go to that site. I win, they lose. And if I go to a site, even if I opt 'in", I clear my history after every foray on the internet. Websites lie. Keeps the tracking at bay.
1
When civic organizations, NGOs and even government agencies direct people to their Facebook page, and for many such organizations Facebook is their only publicized point of contact, it becomes difficult for people simply to choose not use Facebook. Those organizations, by themselves choosing to use and even rely on Facebook to disseminate information to and provide services (such as signing up for a program) via Facebook and maybe exclusively that way, they are essentially forcing innocent others to releasing personal data to FB, a for-profit, largely unregulated corporation, or to forego participating in the organizations, receiving information from or about the organizations, and getting the benefits of same from the organizations. This is all the more problematic when the organizations provide public benefits.
1
Don't all of Dr. Liao's arguments apply to using fossil fuels as well? Don't we have a moral obligation to give them up too, given the dire warnings of climate scientists? What about those members still a part of the Catholic Church?
I quit Facebook years ago, and I highly recommend it. (I am happier, calmer, and the time I save can now be used for posting comments here!) But suggesting that leaving Facebook might be a moral obligation is problematic. I recognize the benefits of social media for others, even if I myself think that the problems associated with it far outweigh the benefits.
7
Everyone has a moral duty to see that the GOP, Trump and McConnell, Pence, in particular, are removed from office. This is everyone's moral duty, but sadly, those that support Trump, have no morals and that is the problem.
2
For all of the reasons mentioned by the author, the only conclusion that one can draw is to opt out. To me, whether or not Facebook "knew" of the abuses in Myanmar, the sale of data to influence a critical election, (thereby undermining our democracy), and the spread of white supremacy, does not matter one whit when evaluating ethics. If one wishes to argue that "not knowing" that ones actions will cause others harm absolves the actor from blame, then how can one continue to hold Facebook harmless when evidence comes to light that the company did indeed know that about these negative outcomes after the fact but chose to deny and obfuscate. We know that Ms. Sandburg also forcefully criticized a security employee for telling truth to power, with the result she received a drubbing from her Board. Clearly she and Mr. Zuckerberg could not be trusted to act on this information, leaving this staff member with only the choice to inform the Board. Where is the author's red line? What exactly does FB have to do before we recognize that this line has been crossed? For now, the only ethical choice is to bid adieu.
6
Of course all Facebook users share some of the blame for supporting Mark Zuckerberg's alliance with Donald Trump and Vlad Putin. And many of those same users are being hurt by this alliance.
However, a large percentage of people are addicted to social media, whose main purpose is to convert civilized societies back into tribal societies (think Afghanistan) for the benefit of the rich and powerful. It's like telling heroin addicts it's their fault that the Chapo Guzmáns of the world are getting rich. An addicted person can't get this message.
There is no one more lonely than the person with a 1000 Fakebook "friends."
8
Dr. Liao obliquely exonerates Facebook by saying they *would have* crossed a moral red line IF they had "intentionally sold the data of its users to Cambridge Analytica with the full knowledge that company would use the data subversively to influence a democratic election. Likewise, Facebook would have crossed a red line if it had intentionally assisted in the dissemination of hate speech in Myanmar."
The thing is: Dr. Liao doesn't KNOW that Facebook acted unintentionally (he asserts that there is undisclosed "evidence" to that effect); it's just that he can't say they DID act intentionally. There's a difference . . . a big one.
4
I have never had a FB account because I thought it was a terrible idea when it first appeared on the scene. At that time, most FB content consisted of insipid photos of families and pets, daily announcements of users' plans to go buy groceries or rotate their tires, and bragging about vacations and new furniture for their homes. I stay in touch with people all over the world via email and really can't fathom why anyone would be interested in the drivel on FB or take the risk of FB data harvesting. Lord only knows what really goes on with email, but I sense that it is more secure than FB.
4
I joined Facebook thinking I could create a personal social network, as advertised. In reality, they used my data to create their own sub rosa social network, linking me to people, behaviors, corporations, and beliefs I had no public or private interest in or direct connection to. How can we be assured that Facebook won’t use their vast data and influence to collaborate with political parties and corporations to further their own goals? How do we know they haven’t already?
4
I have not yet read the entire opinion on Facebook, but I have paused to say that there is good from spending time on Facebook: I can keep in touch, however superficially, with friends and family members, some of whom have indeed left or never been on. I've learned a lot of things; been amused and wowed by videos of everything including cats and dogs, but not exclusively ... so unless there are worse revelations to come, I'm staying.
4
It's good for balance that you made that comment. However, as a non FB user I have to ask if you couldn't get those benefits from a far far simpler and less intrusive service.
I feel that the best comparison to Facebook is global warming; everyone acts in their own self interest and no one feels that their individual behavior could influence such a mind numbingly huge global issue. That said, I am a Facebook user - as others I enjoy keeping up with far flung family and friends. I’m conflicted like so many other commentators - I’ve removed the app from my phone and have worked to restrict my activity to weekends.
3
@Joe Klopfenstein, Are you sure you successfully removed your FB phone app? They have ways of holding on to your device and data. Do an intentional, full expulsion. Internally, they are so far embedded into your phone it is almost near to impossible to expunge. Finding a full 'off button' from FB is difficult to do just topically. By design.
Judging from many of these comments, Americans will somehow find a way to rationalize the priority of their convenience and entertainment over doing the right thing. The success of Facebook is due to the same forces that have brought us Type 2 diabetes, obesity, opiate addiction and Trump.
9
@Fred, Right up there with driving gas guzzling SUV's.
This remains much ado about nothing, and the hand wringing here comes to no conclusion. Everyone certainly understands the risks of FB, and nobody is forcing people to read the ads, or to accept uncritically whatever is posted. It is also clear there are those who benefit from its free service and are happy with the trade-off. For those who want to see regulation, no doubt they feel the same way about Fox News, and that opens up a far more dangerous door to censorship.
1
The politicians aren’t going to regulate Facebook, only the market can. I deleted my account, but it was an easy decision for me, I never really cared to much of others options or likes. Facebook needs to pay a price.
6
I’m on Facebook primarily because it helps me stay connected with old friends from many eras of my life. Because of Facebook, an old friend and her grandchildren from a Native American community where I taught in the 1970s are now actively in my life, and I’m able to follow the lives of their friends, family, and community. I also participate actively in a number of political and social discussions and learn about cultural events in my city. Leaving Facebook would have no effect on its bad practices.
6
According to your own good points, you should’ve left FB already. I left it almost exactly a year ago, I don’t regret it or miss it.
There’s so much out there to be changed, I’m just one person... but the way I see it is this: as small as my individual contribution is, I will make sure I will always be on the side supporting the agents of change for the betterment of all and remove myself from the ones that contribute to the situation we are in right now. Be it with a vote, a membership or removing myself from supporting anybody who doesn’t follow that intention. FB played a big part on the elections here and elsewhere, aiding and abiding disruptive and divisive forces. Their first instinct was to deny and the second one to deceit. They won’t have me in their data bounty, I won’t be used by them.
17
So perhaps Facebook can respond by publishing significantly more messages that support what is considered social behavior rather than anti-social behavior. Encouraging people to feel a part of society rather than railng against it and leading to isolation and perhaps verbal and physical violence.
Messaging stories about how many people face similar challenges to help them become more inclusive.
A story about African Americans on the bus at 5:30 am everyday on the way to their minimum wage jobs struggling to support family paired with the white rural agricultural worker also receiving a minimum wage and both receiving food stamps. Ending with statistics like 75% of SNAP receipients are or have recently worked.
Facebook is not going away anytime soon - so it should fix itself. Facebook (That’s you Mark Zuckerberg) has a moral responsibility to publish public service ads to counter hate speech and misinformation. A very large responsibility which it seems to be ignoring.
2
Dear Dr. Liao,
Your moral red line might not the same as everyone else's. Ditch Facebook or don't - it's your decision. But I doubt your life will fall apart without Facebook.
3
Moral duty shmoral duty. Just delete your account and you will be better off and much happier.
6
Give me an alternative and I’ll gladly go.
1
I deactivated my FB account earlier this year as an act of political protest when the news broke about FB's mismanagement of the Russian interference in the election. I just deleted the account yesterday after the latest news revealing FB's attempts to deflect blame instead of taking responsibility and action. Zuckerberg and Sandberg are a disgrace.
15
Violating privacy is Facebook's business model.
7
Those who are spreading hate, false information and insane, inane conspiracies are not about to opt out of Facebook. Perhaps Facebook should only be available to those who use it for malign, vicious, harmful reasons. The rest of us can return to Snail Mail, the Bell Telephone and in-person social exchanges. Let's meet for a drink at Sardi's.
2
The answer to this question is a resounding no. First, even if the social media is somehow a morally dubious enterprise (the notion with which I disagree), so what? Driving a car, eating cheese and having kids are all morally problematic actions but I am not going to stop doing any of them, and neither are you. I need the social media for all kinds of things, including professional ties and self-promotion. I’ll fight for my right to access information and be visible to others. Second, how can a vehicle for free speech be intrinsically immoral? Is the author going to adjudicate what speech is “good”? That’s a far more dangerous slippery slope than any nonsense disseminated by Russian bots. And finally, I’ll just end with a quote from Oscar Wilde: “The rage at realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in the mirror”. Facebook only shows you what you are.
5
@Mor
Having kids is not morally problematic, unless you’re against the propagation of the human race. Strange comment. FB is not a vehicle for free speech. It’s a vehicle all right, one for FB to deliver you and your valuable data to anyone who pays them. The recent examinations of FB practices demonstrates they don’t care who those people or entities are. They have a responsibility to control their site. It used to be in America corporations had as part of their corporate charter the responsibility to act in the public good, and could be dissolved for not acting in the public interest. That was removed early on in our republic, since the corporate class felt it interfered with their profits. Let’s bring it back. People before profits.
@History Buff Maybe you haven’t noticed but people all over the world are using Facebook. Are you going to dictate to people in, say, Bangladesh or Jordan of whose culture you know absolutely nothing, what is, or isn’t, in their interests? What paternalistic arrogance! But even in our own country, who appointed you the arbiter of public good? I am part of the public, and I don’t care if Facebook sells my information to advertisers. I am much more afraid of populist demagogues who try to control my thinking for “my own good”, than I am of greedy corporations.
I think that certain Facebook executives are responsible for nefarious behaviour, notably Sheryl Sandberg. Her saying that she hired a rightwing firm to go after George Soros because she believed him to be reponsible for an anti Facebook campaign is just disgusting. Firstly, if Soros was indeed responsible, he had an absolute right to spend his money on that. What, rich right wingers don't fund campaigns that serve THEIR interests??? Secondly, if he didn't do it, her actions are even more reprehensible.
Also, Facebook deserves to be targeted by anti Facebook campaigns, They have promoted hatefilled posting, have sold or released data to Cambridge analytica and incited hatred and genocide in Myanmar.
7
The red line is crossed when the CEO goes on CNN and lies through his teeth on Wednesday morning about the company’s campaign against George Soros only to have Sheryl Sandberg admit it Wednesday evening in a manner that seeks to bury that truth right before Thanksgiving when possibly fewer people would be paying attention.
They have total contempt for Facebook users whose money is all they’re interested in. What more do you need to know?
16
Facebook is inherently evil.
It feeds the loneliness the NYT reports is widespread in the United States; it is irresponsible in its privacy policies and protections; it has fed all of the left- and right-wing political extremes; and, it has morphed into a service with so many commercials that its use is irritating and feels blatantly manipulative.
6
I'm a moderate Republican. I have a digital subscription to the NYT's. Do I have a 'moral duty' to un-subscribe to the NYT's since I'm financing a social media outlet, aka a news source, since at times I disagree with their liberal perspective on topics like politics, public policy and lifestyle?
The above argument is as nonsensical as the one put forth by Dr. Liao regarding leaving Facebook.
When we start using 'moral duty' in how we assess our use of media, it starts down a slippery slope of judging and who set the standards for judging. What about violent video games? Internet porn? Affirmative black, gay or Christian lifestyle postings on Pinterest? Romance novels? Playing the lottery?
Sorry Dr. Liao, but your piece is just more of the liberal puritanism that has taken over on the left which is just as repressive and soul crushing as were the real Puritans back in the day.
Facebook is just another media outlet. A badly run, invasive and worthless one, IMO, which is why I'm not on. And, I think they'll eventually go the way of AOL, but time will tell. Until then, use it - or don't - at your own discretion.
Don't weigh your decision to be or not to be on Facebook as as if you're a modern day Martin Luther. It is not that big a deal.
2
Many years ago we tried to close a FB account. It was almost impossible and, in fact, the best we could do was to make the account "dormant"... even after repeated conversations via the POTS. Maybe FB has changed and allows users to actually delete the account, completely, but that's doubtful? So, good luck, if you decide to delete the account!
1
Delete your Facebook, and liberate yourself. I got rid on mine over a year ago and don't miss it one bit.
1
Americans: Let's BOYCOTT FB until it's leaders apologize to the World for their lack of moral and ethical judgment! Cowardice abounds!
2
Why is Facebook so important to people that they would compromise their values and make excuses for them? It’s the most bizarre rationalization imaginable. I don’t have a Facebook account and I’m pretty sure I’m not missing anything. Perhaps because I’ve never used it, I find these justifications astonishing. At best it’s is a convenience and, well, we all know what it is at it’s worst.
The next person to write an op-Ed like this should just admit it... they simply don’t care.
5
The ultimate rationalization of a bad decision.
4
Mr. Liao neatly demonstrates a philosopher’s ability to argue himself to the conclusion he wants. Lacking Mr. Liao’s rhetorical skills, I recently decided Facebook is a net negative in my life and for the world and therefore deleted (not ghosted) my account. Some wag once said, “Facebook is a platform on which people share intimate details with people they’d cross the road to avoid.” Who needs faux friendships?
3
If you are still on Facebook, you are no longer conflicted, you have decided that you can live with their behavior.
4
You'll never win against a multi-billion dollar company with the resources to give you (for free) a tool that is addictive by design in order to extract your data and habits for profit. The only regret I have in leaving Facebook is that I didn't do it sooner.
4
I give Facebook postings the same credibility as infomercials, they're about as believable, just like the merchandise they push: non stick pans, Flextape, and magic skin cream creams that halt aging. The more relevant question is did Social Media defeat HRC or did her campaign not focus on the issues facing middle America. Neither Russia nor Social Media deserves the right to take a victory lap for HRC's loss. If as an individual you give credence to the nonsense spewed on Facebook, than you have bigger problems.
3
"The United Nations has blamed Facebook for the dissemination of hate speech against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar that resulted in their ethnic cleansing."
'...That resulted in their ethnic cleansing' is a clause so problematic in its construction that I wonder if you understand language, power, and how they interact.
Instead of using succinct, accurate language to describe the murdering of thousands, you opt for the painfully propagandistic 'ethinic cleansing.' Additionally, instead of allowing 'murder' to be the correct and active verb, you bury the inhumanity of abject violence within a passive construction that diminishes the actors by making them witnesses that were acted upon.
2
@james, I agree that succinct and accurate language is desirable, possibly even mandatory. I am perplexed by why "that resulted in ethnic cleansing" is not exactly such language.
Ethnic cleansing doesn't refer to the deaths that you want Mr. Kristof to call "murder", it specifically and accurately refers to a calculated removal of an ethnic group from an area, a practice banned under international law. The construction is the accurate one to describe that Facebook was not a participant in that act, but that its behavior made it possible, or facilitated it.
Maybe if you had an accurate and succinct picture as to what happened in Myanmar, you wouldn't make the mistake of believing Mr. Kristof was being euphemistic when in fact he was alleging a very heinous crime.
1
If you think that Facebook has not crossed a moral red line you really should seriously exam your morals. If you discoverthat doing the right thing is more important to you than sharing cat videos or seeing what Aunt Sue had for dinner last night, then quit. As BadgerDad said below, it really is that simple.
4
Left months ago and don't miss it at all. To stay on is to be complicit. There are so many other, less morally challenged ways to waste time online, like reading and writing reader comments on FB stories.
4
I quit Facebook years ago and have never missed it. Who needs it?
It's the reason we have trump.
7
How? Facebook probably saved my life. It was how I knew to get out of Paradise immediately when the fire started. It is a source of information that looks me to the resources I need to get back on my feet after losing everything. It connects me to the diaspora.
In a few months I might get moral but for right now I’m staying. I’ve had ads from twelve separate lawyers about suing. PG&E. Reporting these ghouls does no good since the ads aren’t against Facebook’s loose policy. That stance may be the thing that finally drives me to quit. For now I’m stuck with the platform.
4
It's not a question of Sign In or Sign Out, but instead of how to use Facebook.
Yes, to share life events and find strength and solace in support groups.
No to liking, news feeds, friend blasts, signing in to other websites, and curating a persona.
Facebook is like junior high school for middle-aged people.
4
If the writer is going to start on it then he should not have written this. Self-declared hypocrisy.
1
Let’s be clear that we are everywhere surveilled, targeted for marketing, propagandized — including through our NYT subscriptions. Let’s be clear too that none of this is benign as a characteristic if human society. Surveillance is essentially totalitarian. Marketing and propaganda are mighty forces destroying the planet and our souls.
Is Facebook uniquely horrible or more potently horrible than all the rest of it? Hard to say. It has facilitated certain kinds of communication. Surely it makes sense to use every privacy measure it offers. I’ve valued how it allows me to promote and learn of community events such as concerts and political protests. I don’t click ads.
2
Liao came to the conclusion he wanted to hear himself say. Looks to me like he's addicted.
3
An excellent account of the personal and social harm wrought by Facebook, not balanced by any sufficient good. I was puzzled by Professor Liao's conclusion. I got it all except the therefore. It seemed to me a version of Augustine's plea: Lord, make me virtuous, but not yet. It is the classic addict's plea.
Charles Fried
5
I left Facebook after noticing what time-waster it is and that it is a source of numberless half-baked opinions and self-marketing schemes. Life is too short to spend with the mob, even if the mob includes people that you know and like.
3
After a bit of hand wringing, the author essentially says only the bad actors sharing racist posts should quit facebook now. Good luck with that. The wait and see what the future holds sounds like asking for forgiveness later, when it’s too late.
Since when has a multi-national corporation self regulated for the public good? Never. They are like a factory that dumps waste in the local river until the population is poisoned. We say the factory is great for the tax base and look the other way. But eventually there is a superfund site left behind that someone else needs to clean up.
All the Zuckerberg apologizes and promises will get us nowhere. Just spend the next half day on the Times site searching this topic instead of facebook and tell us where you stand.
2
I use Facebook to connect with others across the globe who have the same rare disease, and I’m in groups for the toxic medications I am on periodically. Easy access to this information has made everything more bearable, not to mention easing the loneliness of two years of medically induced isolation.
2
I am very glad to see this article, and it's really about time. Like the banks that were too big to fail, and the insurers who covered them because the unthinkable would never happen--facebook's supreme motive was to grow larger and break rules. Completely amoral with the power to destroy democracy with no consequence. Just the same as the derivatives and swaps that crashed the world economy for gross selfishness. Get smart: their main product is you. Does it feel good to be sold, even if you don't think you are?
2
I have watched people, people I love, sit mindlessly at the computer scrolling through for hours, having arguments, getting angry, or just watching junk. It is not constructive and frankly a brain drain and giant waste of time.
2
I deleted my account. During the 2016 election I spent hours trying to refute disinformation and reveal hoaxes posted by friends. It was a waste of time. I choose not to participate in a platform that perpetrates hate, spreads lies and undermines democracy. I don’t miss it all.
10
Facebook must whither and die. Its season has passed.
6
I’m not going to delete my Facebook account, but I’m using it a lot less. Facebook has become so full of advertisements and memes and dumb things, it’s not really worth investing any time. Occasionally I take a quick spin through to see what people are up to, but it’s too carefully curated anyways.
Facebook and its business cousin LinkedIn are both platforms for relentless self promotion, which I find distasteful and too phony. I don’t need to take a grand stand on Facebook, it’s pointless and uncool.
2
I will not quit Facebook because other users are ill-equipped to manage what they find there. Facebook does need to correct the ease with which those things that are harmful can so readily occur, but as the author says, we should not place the responsibility to uphold democratic values entirely on Facebook. Doing so infantilizes all of us who use it. It is a tool which needs some safety features, but if you take your hairdryer into the bathtub whose fault is it that you get electrocuted?
2
Mr. Liao may soon decide to leave. The U.K. Parliament just seized a cache of Facebook internal papers. The Guardian reports, “The cache of documents is alleged to contain significant revelations about Facebook decisions on data and privacy controls that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal." (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers) It is claimed they include confidential emails between senior executives, and correspondence with Zuckerberg.” The reason that the Parliament took this extraordinary step was because Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MP’s questions. Hopefully, we will now find out much more about Facebook and its dealings.
3
If Marx were alive today.. he’d have said that Facebook, not religion, is the opium of the people... and he would probably have been correct in that assumption.
2
Having never been on Facebook, I have no worries about being complicit in the harms that this social platform is causing to our society. I like being an example to the otherwise mostly addicted people around me.
A millennial I know just received an email from Facebook, telling him about a post he made 11 (ELEVEN!!) years ago. He said it was very creepy. He was correct. Everybody on Facebook is being watched.
Facebook is just one of several bureaus of the new privatized corporate STASI.
When the Devil offers you something "for free", it's best to just walk away and remember TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)!
3
I left FB in 2017 and haven't missed it.
We have a moral duty to feed our hungry, house the homeless, and protect our planet. Quitting Facebook is not high on my list.
2
Is FB any different from "Talk Radio," Fox News, the National Enquirer? My experience is the natural tendency to respond to any thought in resonance with an individual's prejudice and spread it for crowd support, as is regularly done for any unsubstantiated opinion.
1
I left Facebook a long time ago. Oh, And I DON'T miss it one iota.
Mr. Zuckerberg appears aloof to any concern that his platform is being used to disseminate not just intolerance. It enables much worse: hatred, violence, genocide. Zuckerberg's disinterest can be likened to that of a colonial administrator in the 19th century: relishing the profits while disconnected entirely from the lives of those that generate them. Facebook is the perfect parasite: infectious and mortally destructive while nurturing millions of hosts whose feelings of self-worth depend upon it.
1
How ironic that a platform on which people can spread lies and hate by hiding behind made-up user names without identifying themselves is called Facebook. It's time to deface the book.
3
Yes, of course! In fact, serious thoughtful people had a moral duty never to get involved with Facebook in the first place. But how can you ask Facebook users, many of whom are addicted to social media to give up the platform that provides so much meaning to their lives? And besides, few of them have any morals with which to begin at all. Thank you.
1
Interesting how many people have to die to justify the fake news that Mr. CEO and Ms. Sandberg allowed to be on the platform. Facebook is full of the so called brightest people doing technology yet so much slips thru the cracks over and over again. All the public gets is a third grade response we will do better.
We are upset when Volkswagen
Lies about their cars they are paying fines. Yet little Facebook just gives one more lie after another. Thank goodness their political futures won’t happen any time soon. Any Democrat who takes donations from them will also be answering questions from the public why what is your intent . I wonder how many lies Facebook is promoting for the Mississippi race this week. Maybe lynching never took place at all. Lynching isn’t even real.
If you haven’t stopped using Facebook by now you never will.
It’s a poor workman who blames the tools. The talk about a need to abandon Facebook because it’s been used to bad ends by bad people makes as much sense as saying we need to abandon automobiles because some have driven drunk and killed people. The power of social media to unite, to communicate across boundaries and distances, to exchange goods and information independently, gives this tool tremendous positive potential. We should focus our energies on harvesting the positive potential while blunting the negative possibilities.
And part of the answer (sorry Mark) is sensible regulation. We need laws regulating commerce to prevent widespread fraud and theft. We need traffic laws to make our roads safe, and we probably need regulation to harness the power of social media and direct it toward social good, and away from social harm. The beauty of the spontaneity and freedom that marked the early days of social media were a compelling quality of this new medium. They were much like the freedom of thought in early childhood, unconstrained by logic or morality. But like the child, social media ultimately needs to grow up to function in the complexities of the real world. For the other powerful social utilities of the modern world, regulation means safety and dependability. For social media, it can provide a path away from the negative power of the tool, and toward the tremendous positive potential it offers.
1
I give this story a very emphatic eye roll.
2
FB is like any tech that grew too large to control, even by its creators. Some use it for good (subjective I realize), some use it for fun, some use it for mischief, and some have weaponized it. It is up to the individual to decide if they want to opt-in to the larger community of FB and be in some degree be complicit .
1
Absolutely- Facebook only cares for the bottom line. They are destroying our basic foundation for the lust of money. This is an evil empire which gives the power to the crooks inthe world. Shame on Facebook- you could play a major role to promote humanity. But your greed has no boundary. It is a travesty- people should quit using the evil empire now.
2
I left FB after it became clear the Cambridge Analytica scandal. What has emerged afterwards regarding FB confirms my good decision.
Been on Facebook the day it rolled out of campuses as a part of the New Media Department of a multinational ad agency I used to work for.
Quit Facebook the day I quit the industry. Cold turkey, never looked back, could’t be happier. These was way back when you can actually delete your account if you send a request and have the EQ not to log in within a prescribed period of time. Nowadays, I hear that you need to send a scanned copy of your passport or driver’s license if you want to deactivate your account. How creepy is that?
For me, it was easy because the business model was explained to us early on—how Facebook collects users’ data and sells them to corporations willing to pay for these, in marketing parlance, leads. So we have a bit of a peek in the liminal spaces between Facebook and its users, meaning the product being sold.
Nowadays, the industry term for social media marketing is “surveillance marketing.”
If that does not make you squirm, by all means Facebook away. Photos, family, travels, etc.
After all it’s free, right?
Right?
Nothing is "free", like Facebook pretends. It wasn't enough for Facebook to function on ads like many other websites, no, they had to see how they could exploit the personal data of a vast fraction of the population and price their ads because of the massive market.
When they opened, I joined for a month and then read their terms and conditions. I found that I lost personal rights to everything that I posted. I left, and rarely visit unless it is the only forum to find certain business or club activity schedules.
Facebook is too big. Virtually every business that gets too big and lacks competition becomes fat, sloppy, and corrupt. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." [Lord Acton, ca. 1900]. In the spirit of anti-trust laws and monopolies, Facebook needs to be cut back down to size. With competition, people could simply depart and join "the other" social media forum. Only the "other" doesn't exist.
1
This logic would require us to renounce printing as well, and even spoken language: people use them to say bad things too, with a much bigger parade of horrible outcomes than those that have resulted from bad things said on Facebook.
3
But the pendulum has swung, yet again. Facebook may have unwittingly contributed to giving voice to agents of xenophobia and intolerance, which helped Trump in 2016. However, we're seeing a swing in collective political beliefs now, with greater public support for single payer health care and gun regulations and safety. I happen to believe that Facebook has helped in forming these broader sentiments. People are no longer buying the "trickle down" hogwash and see the Republican tax scam for what it was, truly. Look at the midterm shift to Blue in the House. Cooler, smarter heads have prevailed, and they have used Facebook, where many no longer read a newspaper, to get their message out.
1
If individuals owned their data and, for instance, FB had to pay you for use, wouldn't a lot of these issues go away? When did we give away our digital souls/information (rhetorical of course).
If a company developed a monitored platform (AOL days) not unlike what China has developed. Wouldn't this be a viable option for folks who do not like the "open" option. Of course you would have to agree with the parameters of in/exclusion.
I am not "off" FB. I get no "information" on FB because they are not clean. You cannot correct for people who are too lazy to utilize multiple information sources with the goal of retaining a well informed view of the world.
"But if new information suggests that Facebook has crossed a moral red line..."
This writer reminds me of the kind of person who dares to draw a line in the sand but when it is crossed he draws a new line closer and double dares. No backbone or commitment to morality.
1
Everyone has their pitiful excuses and that's what they are excuses it IS a moral obligation to not use FB anymore and cheer our so called justice system to destroy Zuckerberg for what he's done to the world and is still doing with no end in sight unless WE stop giving him his power.
Never joined, same with Twitter and other social platforms. Still send photos attached to emails, and over 45 "paper" cards with notes for every holiday. I have lurked occasionally so I can say I "have" seen what FB is all about, and frankly after teaching high school for 35 years and listening to that nonsense all of the time in the background, I figured I had enough of gossip, food pictures, bragging, and self indulgence.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc are all ways to share information, real or false. So are the advertisements on television, radio or any other internet site. So are your friends and acquaintances.
We can all benefit from skepticism and caution, no matter the source.
4
Already dropped it and no longer use any social media. Don't miss it one bit.
Facebook is free speech willingly engaged in by willing individuals. There are no moral dimensions to it. Deal with it.
5
Dr. Liao: You built your red line case with the step-by-step precision of a moral philosopher. I Kant, therefore, understand how reached your conclusion to remain on FB.
1
Let me start by saying I don’t use Facebook.
Facebook is used for spreading hate speech and Mr. Liao is saying people should leave.
During the Arab Spring Facebook was the catalyst that enabled large swaths of the population to organize and meet in short notice. It was a tool used for democratic purposes. Nobody complained other than Arab dictators.
Where was Mr. Liao when Arab dictators were banning in their countries?
I've deleted my FB twice and come back twice. There are several reasons including keeping up with friends and family, group pages for my hobbies and group pages for my political bubble.
After the most recent revelations I decided I had to do something but deleting a third time didn't make sense given my history. So I decided on a 99% boycott that would limit me to one login per day to check on my hobby pages for updates and post one comment on a political group page I started. In that post is a link to a blog I started 10 years ago that used to be active until one by one folks drifted off to the FB opium den.
Today my FB post was a link to this opinion piece.
I do missing reading the comments and posts of my FB friends but the time I was spending on FB is now used for more productive things.
I have no idea what impact my action has on the grand scheme but I suspect if millions did the same the effect would make FB do what they need to do. It's not that FB lacks the financial and technical resources to clean up its act, it's FB lacks the moral and ethical imperative to do so.
1
I believe we have a moral and spiritual obligation to put down our smartphones.
3
Does one have a moral duty to leave Facebook? Interesting question. Does one have a moral duty to leave a conversation at a party in which hurtful lies are being peddled? Probably. Does one have a moral duty to leave the entire party? Not so sure.
6
I left fb years ago. I would log off feeling like I was missing something or that my life was not as "cool" as others. There are people from my past I would just as soon forget that wanted to be my "friend", HAH! And worst of all, for me, I could feel that subtle craving and clinging feeling setting in...
If I want to connect with our friends or family, no matter where they live, I can pick up the phone and call them or they can call me! It's a simple pleasure to hear their voice on the phone and get that real-time in the moment connection.
2
I am all for regulating Facebook to make it safer for people to share information, but users also have a responsibility to THINK about the material they post.
Most importantly, no one is forcing anyone to use Facebook. If you don't like it, stop using it. But stop shaming Facebook users who use the platform not only to stay in touch with friends and family, but to counteract the bigotry and hate that exist there.
I suggest Facebook haters spend their energy fighting for gun control and reigning in the madman who happens to be our president.
1
This philosophical approach begs the question - what is Facebook? I think it's a public communication platform like phones and should be regulated as such, broken up, if need be. Radio has been used to gin up genocide, should one not listen to radio? Don't get me wrong, as presently run, I hate Facebook, but use it for political organizing and arts related posts. Given its massive use, it's obviously more like a utlitiy than a private company.
2
I removed my personal data from FaceBook a year ago. I simply watched other's feeds. As things have progressively gotten worse (news stories about FaceBook's failure at reasonable removal of violent, racist and hateful speech), I went back to delete my account. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that some of my data appeared to have been "refreshed" - perhaps from backups?
So I wonder, did FaceBook repopulate enough of my data, to claim me in the number of FB users? We know that advertisers pay for the number of people by demographics and location. That was the final straw. I deleted my account.
I will not participate in helping a company grow that a) uses my data to make them money, b) that is/has contributed to fake news and spread violence...
Yes - I believe you do have a moral responsibility. I do not own cigarette or coal stock, and I will not provide support to a company that violates my personal values on a routine basis.
BTW Email and cloud drives are a lovely way to share photos with family and friends...
2
Everyone,
It is possible to have a wonderful life without Facebook.
1
Wow! What an indictment. And the worse may be that you are right. Could it be because, as we all are corruptible, the lack of regulation/supervision may allow to sell ourselves to the highest bidder? Facebook remains a powerful platform to do good if appropriate changes are instituted...or tremendous harm if left alone. And greed seems pre-eminent when license replaces freedom. So, what is it going to be?
What else can be done about Facebook? Enforcing antitrust or anti-monopoly laws and breaking up these giant companies might be a good start.
2
Let's get real. We have just as strong a moral duty to "leave" our mouths, pens, pencils, telephones, printing presses, videos...
There doesn't exist any medium that has not been used as a platform for hate and evil ... as well as for love and good.
The word platform is key. It is childish to scapegoat what is after all nothing more than a tool or instrument for our own moral failings.
Almost as childish is the idea that it took Russian trolls to disrupt our elections, disseminate propaganda and promote hate. We were doing all of that just fine by ourselves.
Ours has become an age of Puritan hysteria where we suppress speech in the name of stamping out hate. Or worse, where we insist that Facebook (for its own survival) becomes the arbiter of what speech we the people get to hear and what we don't hear.
201
@Ian Maitland
Very well said.
11
@Ian Maitland I don't think you, nor the author, understand just how much information Facebook accumulates from its users, and how that information has been sold without care of the outcome. Facebook gathers vast stores of information about your friends based upon what you share and tag and click, even when the friends have privacy settings locked down. That information is still sold because it was generated from your account. Don't get me started on the Facebook mobile app which has been found to read your text messages, records meta data about your phone calls, and of course track screentime and location so that Facebook truly knows where and when you are sleeping.
62
@Ian Maitland You should do like me, work in digital marketing and see for yourself that Facebook and their ilk are a different breed of cat from a printing press. There is far more power to manipulate people via digital media that know exactly who you are and can see your behavior.
PS my digital marketing job is aimed at getting people to use less energy and lessen their carbon footprint, not buy a bunch of crap they don't need, so don't make that face at me.
49
I left Facebook within hours of originally joining it a number of years ago, after immediately experiencing the stream of dreck that flows across it. Yes I sometimes miss out on cute family baby pictures, but the comfort of knowing I'm not aiding and abetting the evil and just quotidian sewage that Facebook enables is more than sufficient compensation. This piece held so much promise...until the inevitable cop-out at the end. It's that "for now I'll indulge my selfish desire to be on Facebook" instinct that keeps this monster rolling. For any two or three of the litany of reasons Mr. Liao rightly listed, and because Facebook cannot be excused simply because they are not actively promoting the worst of the content on the site, Mr. Liao and any other thinking, moral actor should walk away from it while there is still the chance to do so.
2
Facebook is emotionally problematic. It's a platform where people I hardly know turn to express blanket pessimism, panic, and sarcasm. I'm mostly deactivated but whenever I log on I feel almost bullied by other people's negative worldview, juxtaposed with photos of perfect vacations and announcements of personal achievements. The world needs depth and kindness and spontaneity, and we can give that to one another offline. Call that aunt. Email that colleague. Text that old friend.
1
The moral red line Facebook has crossed is the abdication of responsibility. It did this when it declared itself a “platform” and not a “publisher”. The editorial role is essential to the excercise of a free press, because it is, in the court of public opinion, the only real way to keep wannabe despots in check. Facebook needs to excercise editorial oversight as any Fourth Estate institution would. Only then would it’s management, community, and consumers escape from the moral paradox created by unfettered access to an under educated audience.
I use Facebook now for the same reason I joined in 2008; to stay in loose touch with friends and family, to promote the odd gig or article, and share funny photos. There is only my name on Facebook, no address, no phone number, no "where you went to school" or "Where you work."
It also keeps me connected with my beloved NYC, who so rudely threw me out by jacking the rents through the roof and out of reach of artists, musicians, plumbers, cops and cab drivers, but that's another story.
1
You have a moral duty not to join Facebook in the first place.
There is just nothing good about it on any level. It perpetuates insecurity, bulling and self-aggrandizement.
And apparently it's also a tool of election tampering and espionage.
I literally just deleted my account and then I found this article. You must have been reading my mind. I left Facebook for the very reasons you mention. I am done being a part of such a corrupt, unhealthy company. I have a moral duty not to support companies that foment hate and division. I encourage everyone to dump facebook. Use the phone, talk in person, email or use what's app (assuming that is a more benign format). We don't need facebook and it has played such a huge role in ruining our country, it doesn't deserve our alliegance. Trust me, you will feel free.
This is an excuse disguised as an indictment: "But the evidence indicates that Facebook did not intend for those things to occur on its platform." That's like arguing unless the gun lobby intended specific murders to happen it has no blood on its hands. FB has eagerly sold data and allowed the site to be used for hate speech, genocidal propaganda, and target marketing of unwitting populations. It may not intend those consequences, but it clearly doesn't mind them at all, and throws out more lies to further its ends, then lies about its lies. "Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, lobbying a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html
I concur with the writer, however in an age of stolen identities, what assurance is there that your Facebook identity won’t be co-opted to serve someone’s nefarious ends? I know this is a paranoia, but for now I’m staying on Facebook. I’m just being extra vigilant about my actions there and using it more like a newspaper than a communication service. And I’m allowing no new “friends.”
I liked Facebook because of NYT and Propublica posts!! I also liked it because it got me in touch with old friends. After a year of reading about their misbehaviuor and, now, their criminality, I deactivated my account. I just have to search the sites and it's ok if I don't find old friends. As far as I'm concerned, Zuckerberg and Sandberg are not very good people and I certainly don't want to be used by a couple of people who remind of tRump!
It is my opinion that we should leave facebook and I did. If we don't become part of the solution we are part of the problem. Our inaction sends a signal to corporations and CEO's who abuse our private information for financial gain to continue their actions. We hold the power to stop the foreign trolls, and the lies being spread but we have to take individual responsibility and action to see it realized.
That was a lot of mental gymnastics for a relatively minor decision, and it changed absolutely nothing. Despite everything, the author still could not bring himself to quit Facebook.
It sure sounds like rationalization for an addiction. The “red line” will never be crossed.
Folks, there’s life beyond Facebook. Get over it.
1
Deleted my account.
Made a new one with nothing on it (no friends, no photos, no timeline or feed) so I could manage my work accounts.
I use it for marketing at my job. USE is the operative verb.
I don’t let it use me and my personal information any longer.
My real friends know how to reach me.
1
I left Facebook. It was hard at first. But you wouldn’t believe how much time has been freed up. And that FOMO thing on my back has subsided. There are so many thoughts and experiences I have now that I realize that I would have “shared” about in the past and I am content to just keep it to myself. I mean, who cares that I played with my dog or cooked some asparagus, perfectly plated for the Facebook photo?
2
I deleted my page. At first the nervous tic was present, but now I wonder why I bothered. It is created to enlarge the user's ego. I looked at my own egotistical reasons to use FB, and thought I didn't need it. No regrets. Happier to look into eyes, not screens.
2
I was on FB for approximately 2 hours before I realized how worthless and dangerous this company is. I observed it's addictive nature, it's spread of misinformation, and the relentless advertising. It literally took an act of congress to cancel my membership, but I did. It's a worthless, meaningless platform. Like Sears, it too will some day vanish into the dustbin of all things digital.
1
Yes we are all guilty of promoting hate and propaganda by our use of Facebook. And of course we should all leave Facebook. It is frivolous at best, and pernicious at worst. Families and friends can create their own sites for sharing photos. The demise of dancing dog videos will be a side benefit of the demise of Facebook. And the downfall of Zuckerberg and Sandberg is yet another benefit.
1
Do you have a moral duty to leave Facebook? No. You might in fact have mental health reasons for doing so. But if you think that mass defections are going to cause the platform to clean up it's act, I doubt there will be mass defections, and I doubt defections will have any effect on Facebook policy. What I recommend doing is using Facebook against itself and other misbehavers. I and most of the 700-odd people I communicate with use Facebook to share and comment on political stories, and encourage each other to vote and work on voter turnout. Yes, one can be quite superficial on Facebook, but many of us are using it to engage meaningfully. If we turn out more voters on Facebook, we can send representatives to Congress and the Senate (and the White House) who can conduct meaningful oversight on Facebook and other Internet platforms, as well as other too big to fail-and-jail corporate entities. So, in the end, perhaps the moral thing to do is to stay on Facebook and use it to advance voting, and real government representation.
2
If word spreads that thoughtful and intelligent people don't use Facebook (except for sharing information of interest only to family), people may stop seeking information from that platform. Time for Facebook to face the music.
1
Facebook began as a site denigrating women (a "book of faces" where Harvard boys rated each girl as "pretty" or "ugly"). Its creator, Zuckerberg sought favor from his male peers and tried to punish those women for ostracizing his nerdiness. It "brought together" a band of boys who enjoyed objectifying girls. This was Facebook's founding moment.
After a decade nothing's changed. Today FB "clusters" disparate groups: of the ignorant, the informed, the creatives, the scientists, the religious wingnuts -- trapping each group in "news feeds".
Today it fastidiously mines every morsel of data from every user, using behavioral modeling and statistical algorithms. It's goal: to predict user behavior, then to manipulate users to do what its advertisers want.
FB is now a bane to societies.
FB lifts and amplifies ignorant voices; it weakens democracies by raising the stature of fake news as equivalent to informed disciplined responsible news. For decades people ignored white supremacists. Yet now racist/anti-Semitic voices are put next to legitimate voices, and this juxtaposition amplifies the ignorant voices with a sheen of legitimacy - to users who cannot distinguish. Published ignorant words are believed, even false or illegitimate ideas.
After a user reads a few fake stories, that user is "engaged" by being sent more similar "news". Over months they read only fake stories, becoming unable to discern nuances - and eventually disbelieving any real news.
Facebook "lobotomizes" us.
1
@IN So true, I had forgotten about it's raw beginnings.
we also have a moral duty to quit eating red meat and sell our SUVs.
3
This is a weak argument to justify Mr. Liao's desire to stay on FB. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg have gone to the dark side. Greed guides their business, not their oft-repeated mission to connect people. I am in the process of shutting my account down. I can call, text and email the people I most care about, and I can go directly to You Tube for my cute cat video fix.
I deleted my Facebook account a long time ago. Facebook makes it difficult to do by timing out during the required ‘your reason for deleting’. Persevere - it is worth it. This is my own personal protest to such shinanagins. I experienced a little withdrawal, but find it much more pleasant to interact with close friends.
Dr. Liao's article exemplifies the struggle one faces when confronted with one's own need to put self first. He fully understands that in continuing to use FB he is giving his approval to the immoral tactics that it uses in the name of maximizing profit. Targeting and trying to take down George Soros should be enough for any thinking and moral person to disengage and yet, not quite enough to inconvenience Dr. Liao's ability to show pics of his wonderful life to old acqaintances. He therefore twists his logic to suit his 'putting self first' philosophy that all American's struggle with. We are a selfish society and therefore, in the end, get the country we deserve.
1
The really interesting question locked up in some algorithm somewhere is whether in fact you really can "delete" your Facebook account. I wonder.
I lead a boring life and what I posted so far on Facebook is even more boring, like a picture of the jars we used this year for home canning. Anything on the internet seems to hang around forever. Does anyone really care? The old Usenet, internet's staring point, was wild and uncontrolled too, with fake statements dominating. Nothing has changed.
1
This is the “guns don’t kill people, people do” argument. The analogy here, that FB is like a gun, is intentional and accurate.
Guns can be used for different purposes, some of them benign, but they facilitate destruction of human life. FB too can be used for benign purposes but it also seems to facilitate persecution, addictive behavior and loss of life, as in Myanmar.
FB has intentionally designed the product for some of these uses and has actively resisted modifying its product to prevent it from being misused.
2
One of the most noxious, useless, aggravating areas of the internet are the comment sections many websites have for their articles. If they aren't moderated, they become Trolltopia, where the sick and demented can flame innocent users to their heart's content. It encourages the most despicable side of human nature.
Facebook is that same environment, writ large. The difference is one of scale. Comments sections are limited to readers of specific articles. Facebook is open to all your friends, family, business associates. People think it's a great place to post pictures of your grandkids or to weigh in on neighborhood or national issues. It can be that, but users don't understand the dangers that Facebook represents to them.
Facebook revenue comes from selling users' private data to third parties, ostensibly for marketing purposes. They gather that data through many sophisticated and algorithmic tracking and outright spying techniques which would make the CIA proud. Users think they can fence them out from their accounts by using their privacy controls. They can't. Facebook owns your account, and YOU.
Should you leave Facebook? Yes, in all available haste. But don't think that you can actually delete your account. You can't. Facebook keeps it around, and keeps every bit of your posts and other data for their own nefarious uses.
Facebook is as much of a danger to America as are the Russians who spread their disinformation through it in recent elections.
2
It is not possible for any organization committed to its own self interest to regulate itself.
Independent third party regulation is required to constrain self interest.
This is universally true in economics as in biology.
FB is not alone in its regulation problems, but it is clearly the single corporation most interested in denying these problems exist. The question to pose is not if social media should be used but how must it be regulated. An unregulated FB has, is and will be an existential threat to the Constitution of the United States.
I never joined because I saw no need to propagandize myself (see the Ruth Whippman aarticle in this same issue).
I suppose it has its commercial uses, but there is really no need for firms to get on Facebook when an ordinary internet poduction would do.
Funny: In Italy, the sarabinieri were able to locate and arrest a mafia leader because, on vacation in Morroco, he posted a photo of himself with identifiable an Morrocan background.
The answer is simple. Yes. Quit facebook. Now. You'll help make the world a little better in the process.
Yes, leave it. New concept actually talk to people.
1
For moral philosophy, this is pretty weak tea. Dr. Liao raises issues, none particularly compelling, for leaving Facebook. But, he will linger on the site because they have not yet "crossed a red line" convincing him to jump ship.
But, when Facebook "hired an opposition-research firm that attempted to discredit protesters by claiming that they were agents of the financier George Soros" he gives them a pass. This was a calculated, premeditated decision by Facebook's COO (with the approval, I suspect of the CEO) to introduce an element of anti-semitism to the mix of advertising, news reporting and spying already ensconced on the platform.
He ends with the comment "For now I’m going to stay on Facebook. But if new information suggests that Facebook has crossed a moral red line, we will all have an obligation to opt out."
Worthy of Caspar Milquetoast, not a moral philosopher.
1
I closed or deleted all my social media accounts immediately after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. I am not anybody's lab rat.
Facebook is a tool like firearms. "Guns don't kill people. People kill people". Likewise, Facebook doesn't kill democracy, spread hate, incite violence, etc. People... (fill in the blank).
Facebook and firearms are both dangerous and should be strictly limited and regulated.
1
It there is a "moral duty" around social media, then it is not the media's duty but the user's duty. If one doesn't like Social media, then they have the right if not the obligation to themselves not to use it. The responsibility to monitor content is solely on the user/reader's shoulders. But is is the modern way, or perhaps the age old way to blame others instead of ourselves.
Do you have a moral duty to leave Facebook? YES!
1
For me, Facebook has become a ghost town in the last 2 years. Most of the people I engaged with have deleted their accounts or drastically scaled back usage. Those who remain are mainly the politically hysterical and the pet-obsessed who share a half dozen pics of Fido a day. Despite my attempts to clean up my FB "data footprint," their algorithms still manipulate my feed so much that I see almost nothing of actual interest to me. My account is still there. I check it every few weeks for messages from friends who haven't realized yet that they need to text me, not message me. But in every way that matters, I've already left.
I think FB dangerously undermines our sense of community and obviously gives platforms to unsavory characters who explicitly aid in undermining our sense of community. Digital friends are no substitute for real people; so yes, we have a moral obligation to dump FB and move on to something much more wholesome.
I have, lately, been thinking of dropping out of Facebook. However, I would loose the continuity of family and friends and jokes, posted by family and friends. I do comment and post articles that I feel strongly about in the "repairing" of our country. Reading and hearing about current events, as they were called way back in high school, is very often unnerving. I do not want to be part of the problem, so I stay on. Putting my head in the sand will never be a good idea.
1
Facebook is not the only company that sells access and uses our data either overtly or covertly to manipulate our behavior. Every website we visit, every newspaper or magaine we read, every frequent shopper card we use and every credit and debit card we use collects, sells and manipulates data to influence our behavior, thoughts, beliefs and spending patterns. It is our individual choice whether to buy into or participate in their schemes. I personally minimize my Facebook usage, never click on any ad and remain wary of all these marketing messages, including the subliminal ones.
3
The ethical and moral concerns raised here are of course worthy of attention. One also needs to look at what the addiction to this terrible "social drug" is doing to the fabric of their individual lives. The time wasted may or may not be a bigger loss than the exposure of one's personal life, their "personal data" as we in the privacy industry call it; but when a person is sacrificing family and friend time and actual, physical interaction, that person has definitely crossed a moral line, one they must back over. Just from seeing the behavior of groups of people, or having shared in their stories of this addiction, I fear most anyone using Facebook is failing their personal and social duties to others. Think of this when you constantly reach for your phone "just to check" the app, or constantly text others over any trivial thing...consider, would I be sharing this if I didn't have this app, or this presumed "right" to constantly intrude on the lives of others? The answer is pretty obvious; whether people will acknowledge it may not be, but probably is as well...and that answer is not a good one. Facebook is an insidious, harmful and destructive detriment to the social and personal lives of everyone it touches; its criminal actions make that even worse. It must be seriously curbed, if not dismantled completely. For the 4th time in his life, Mr. Zuckerberg needs to answer for his actions.
@Aaron: Either you are a supported of the Free Speech section of the US Constitution or you oppose it. Facebook and other social media have the Constitutional right to exist. You can't censor social media and then object to yur views being censored.
@Jeff We do rightfully have laws against hate speech. For a reason.
Pamphlets have been used to spread hate and disrupt elections. Do people have a moral obligation to stop reading?
The internet has been used to spread hate and disrupt elections. Do people have a moral obligation to stop using the internet?
2
I left Facebook 2 years ago and have not looked back. The conspiracy theories were too much for me. Facebook didn’t appear to be policing anything that was being disemenated in mass on their site. This has been validated with the Cambridge Analytica story.
Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg are not looking out for your interests. You need to do that by getting off. Mr. Liao is wrong he should delete his account.
3
I think I will skip this professor’s class. His contention that hiring a Republican political hit squad to scapegoat George Soros is merely “troublesome” and not evil denies both the current and historic anti-semitic aspects of such an action as well as playing into a politically-motivated hateful and false narrative of a man who has used his wealth to improve the human condition in the world’s most desperate areas.
2
I am on Facebook forum as well as one forum that is on a private server. Both deal with antiques and they both provide a way to exchange information about different types of antiques. I am much more comfortable on the private forum as they restrict who can access it.
I don't do anything else on Facebook but this one Forum and wonder what that does for their bottom line. I do think that there would be a market for pay to join forum about different subjects where the users just want a somewhat secure way to chat. No ads, no data sharing just a platform to exchange information.
All that moral arguing and the author is still on Facebook. Sign of the times?
4
So the people who are using FB to spread hate should stop and quit, and everyone else should be vigilant. Pretty weak.
You are looking to others to make your preferred choice moral. You make the case that staying supports the bad, but you won’t accept responsibility for your role.
Your analysis leads to a conclusion you don’t want so you ignore the analysis.
Your choice is obvious. Quit.
1
After all the arguments made, the writer states, "For now I'm going to stay on Facebook." Which future moral red line do you need, exactly, after all of the previous lines already crossed? Rationalize much?
4
Facebook is acting in a manner entirely consistent with history of corporate behavior. What's truly surprising is that anyone is surprised by this.
The more important, unstated reality here is that Facebook is merely another form of consumerist addiction. Like all others it promises to fill emotional emptiness with something which is itself completely devoid of genuine value.
2
@richard: I disagree. Facebook is acting in a manner entirely consistent with the history of human behavior. Blame it on people not the legal construct of being a corporation. Absolutely no one was coerced by Facebook to become a member.
1
If Facebook is supposed to bring people together with friends and acquaintances, it fails miserably. It tends to reveal the true character of people we know. There is maybe some value in that but it is not always a positive experience. A person that you thought to have good taste might turn out to be a big supporter of Trump. A person that you considered to be quite intelligent might turn out to be a closet racist. The list goes on.
1
How is Facebook's hiring of an opposition-research firm with the goal of discrediting protesters by claiming that they were agents of the financier George Soros not crossing a moral red line? Stoking anti-Semitism in addition to spreading lies constitutes crossing a moral red line. What more is the author waiting for?
33
Sorry to say Mr. Liao is a bit behind the times. What Facebook knew and didn't know about Cambridge Analytica's operation is still under investigation, certainly in the UK, where parliament recently seized incriminating, internal documents that the company refused to turn over. You can read about it in the British newspaper The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers?CMP=share_btn_tw
The drastic move came after Mr. Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer questions to parliament. Expect more revelations to come about Facebook's callous peddling in people's private data...
6
When a right wing point is maneuvered on Facebook, it gets millions of "likes" that are not real, the same way Tucker Carlson is on of the top 100 authors of all time on Amazon, the Same way Bill O'Rieley is a famous "killing" author. Astroturf is easy to manipulate on these platforms. Facebook is artificial. Turn off your computer, pick up your 20h century phone, talk to people you love this weekend, across the country.
4
Chill. Have a coke. Whatever.
Facebook is the new public square. It's a first amendment issue now.
2
Shut it down. FB is horrible. Fun for little gossips who want to cry their woes away but has been used to really hurt others. For the most part it's stupid. But we really do not get to make new friends. I had over 100 'friends" and FB cut it out to about 12 or so. Now I have 12 friends I don't know. The problems is the main interest on this site. Two children fighting over their billions of dollars while others drool over it all. What good does that do? Zuckerberg is a very smart guy but wasting his time and same with the second in command.
Take the money and fun for before it collapses.
Because I never joined this corrupt crony capitalist corporate plutocrat oligarch welfare malign parasite platform I have no moral obligation to depart. I want Facebook to be busted up and regulated. I want Facebook and it's leaders criminally investigated and prosecuted if the evidence warrants.
7
@Blackmamba: Do you also want the Government to regulate the news media, what we can or cannot read in the newspaper, what we can and cannot see on TV or hear on the radio or what books we can and cannot read? I do use Facebook but I don't watch Fox News or subscribe to radical right-wing new sources. Should the Government have the right to censor all news sources, including the NYT?
1
Get out while the getting is good. No good can come from an addictive, nanny state platform used to magnify violence and control us all. You are the product. You are the soylent green.
5
I agree wholeheartedly and I think that kind of moral outrage could have changed things, in the sixties. However, during Thanksgiving this year I encountered more people on their phones then conversing with each other (7 at the dinner table), which shows that the addictive aspect of Facebook will be the tough row to hoe. But, by all means, get off the merry go round if it's making you sick to your stomach and when you're done, apply what worked to FOX news.
1
Facebook creeped me out right from the get-go but after reading Steve Brannon’s biography and learning that a social platform such as Facebook is critical to the implementation Bannon’s destructive world-view, Facebook came to represent a terrifying tool for anti-democratic forces such as white Nationalism and fascism.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg are entitled to their political views and FB users can wallow in their personal feedback loops but I’m not going near FB with a ten foot pole.
4
Short answer—yes.
3
Free your mind:
Delete your Facebook account.
4
I left Facebook two weeks before “the election” because I didn’t like the way it made me feel; I thought the platform was a time sump with diminishing returns. I’m also not a highly social person so Facebook didn’t push my buttons.
Quitting Facebook can have the same positive effect on ones life as quitting drugs, alcohol, porn or any other nefarious addiction. Just do it, own Facebook by quitting. They are nothing without us.
8
I deleted my account immediately when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. It only gets worse daily and the worst is most like yet to come. Basically, to put it in vulgar terms, I resented being pimped. FB knew darned well what was going on, there is no way they are that stupid or naive. But they are betting, and winning, that their consumer base is. Years ago we boycotted things like Russian and Japanese goods and brought two economies to the table regarding Whaling. Consumers need to wake up and appreciate their value, and use it appropriately for good. Staying on FB is enabling this mess pure and simple. What part of the political mess we are in is worth a few family photos that you could have emailed to a list?
1
Here is my dilema. Where would I get the video of the little bear cub struggling up the snow covered hill trying to join its mom ?
Just like ...how can I open my NY Times everyday fearful I will see full color photos of Trump ! Oh well, let me consider the options a little more, then I will decide.
Thinking a little more about this, this column is aimed precisely at people who do not use Facebook.
1. Not sure if a study has been done, but I'd reckon that active FB users (i.e., those who willingly click on ads, post personal details about themselves, would never stop to think about Cambridge Analytica, etc.) do not / not read the NYT, WPost, WSJ, or Financial Times. Many have never opened a newspaper.
2. These users are not interested in questioning habits from which they derive pleasure. FB is structured to appeal to the most basic psychological needs of the homo sapien: a warm, inviting place to be with friends, pop-ups with little flowers smiling at you, cute cat and dog videos, instant communication without having to get up and shower and dress and go out, and free to use to boot. Everything one needs to feel "welcome."
I'd like to see a slightly dumbed-down version of this op-ed run on FB... would be fascinating to see the responses.
3
When Facebook "crosses a line," huh? That's what they all say. It's the kind of thing addicts say, and I know that from my own ways... If you can say and know what you do about them and still stay, what the heck is the red line going to be?
1
I deleted mine a couple of years ago now, I used that time to learn to code just by following YouTube videos and now have a better job as a result, enjoy your cat videos guys
1
I guess the author can feel morally superior and absolved of any responsibility by posting this article, despite not sacrificing his facebook account. How about the rest of us, who know all the same things but don't have the pretense of authority due to being a philosophy professor?
Maybe, since Facebook and similar platforms do influence the real world and really are an important part of the communication web for many of us, the moral obligation is to use social media in a positive manner and engage in discussion and exchange of ideas in a direction that leads to a positive world. Social media isn’t going away, but used in moderation and appropriately it does have things to offer, but we are morally obligated to try to use it in a positive way.
2
Zuckerberg stole the Facebook idea and undervalued the company when the Winklevi won their case against him. The twins called Zuckerberg “an ugly vampire” and how right they were.
1
The “friends sharing personal stories and photos with friends” aspect of Facebook would be a 300 person company with perhaps $1 billion in revenues from charging each person $1 per year for using it.
All the rest is using people to make a buck, damage to the country be damned.
2
The most pleasant surprise since finally leaving FB (after a year of prevaricating) is that now occasionally I find myself at loose ends. Now and then I'll have finished work and/or chores and realise I have nothing immediate to do, so will pick up a book, go for a walk or just draw breath for a moment. For the past ten years FB has been the default activity that kicks in the second all else stops, preventing any real 'pause' in brain activity. I feel infinitely better for shaking the addiction, but being free of the relentless time-suck into the black hole of trivia has been an enormous, unexpected bonus.
Yes, I really miss some of the groups I was in, but have managed to keep up via email and websites - the communication is slower and more periodic but this too has felt like a relief rather than an inconvenience. Quitting can be done and I can't recommend it highly enough. I might even write a letter one of these days.
6
I flushed the toilet that is FB a long time ago. Not because of anything to do with morals, but because it was a time-wasting cesspool of vapidity. Don't miss anything about it, and yep, i get an awful lot more done now.
1
I never for a nanosecond considered joining evil Facebook or those other dastardly social media platforms. I never ever watch television, either, absolutely not. I never got one of those wretched smart phones. Indeed, I am superior and smarter than all those weak, pathetic masses.
1
I’m taking some poetic license and the liberty of paraphrasing from the 1977 movie Annie Hall wherein she paraphrased Groucho Marks 1967 quote, which by the way probably pre-dated Groucho by 61 years by John Galsworthy in The Forsyte Saga ....
“I don’t care to belong to any ad-supported social media organization that would have me as a member!”
You can quote me on that. :-)
BTW... it might be good for Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to read The Forsyte Saga, since it’s about new money, material possessions and greed. Oh the irony.
Or. maybe it’s that everything old is new again, and vice versa!
4
And go where? Home? "Free Speech Zones?"
1
Professor Liao, I enjoyed reading your well-thought-out piece.
I was also shocked that you are staying on FB for now... why are you staying? I don't get that at all.
And - what of Amazon?
2
The answer to your question is an UNEQUIVOCABLE “YES”.
But, you already know that.
3
Facebook is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of people and their relationships. It was created out of resentment (Zuckerbergs unpopularity at Harvard), and is fueled by envy, narcissism and insecurity, intentionally. Forget the political issues and the privacy issues, it's lowering the bar of what relationships mean and what they should be based on. Dignity has been replaced by popularity. It has dragged high school values into adulthood. That was the red line for me. Forget philosophy, it's psychology and spirituality that need to be considered in the moral travesty that is Facebook.
5
I choose not to participate with FB from the very onset. I value phone conversations with family and friends and I can e-mail photos. Also, to me it’s a waste of time connecting with people I don’t know... I barely have time for family and friends let alone strangers.
1
And what about WhatsApp, whose publicity people seem to have written the article in today NYT about its use in food culture in India?
I've left. They are a domestic enemy of the US doing untold harm. If only they would disappper!
2
Mr. Liao writes an article with a specific point of view, emails it to the New York Times, the NYT publishes it on its website, commenters comment (many advocating hateful and dangerous concepts such as government regulation of media and censorship), other commenters respond or not as is their wish, some commenters learn from the article or from other commenters and use that knowledge later for their own purposes, Mr. Liao learns from reading comments and uses that knowledge later for his own purposes.
Where is there any, let alone moral, meaningful difference between the NYT and Facebook? Or between any modern publication and Facebook? Or Twitter? Or Amazon book review pages?
“The platform has been used to disrupt elections, disseminate propaganda and promote hate. Regular users should ask if they are implicated in these failings.”
How is it possible for Mr. Liao to make this statement with a straight face and not apply it equally to just about any media, including the NYT and the WSJ, as examples?
----- 9:30 am Sun
7
@John Xavier III
There is something called an editor employed by both the NYT and the WSJ - there are also reporters who are responsible for what they write and the factual nature of what is printed. Are you seriously comparing the comment section of an article in the NYT to the factual content of the actual article as well as to the unregulated content of FB? A trip to the Newseum in DC will explain the differences between a free press and what we have learned are the downsides of communicating through a social media platform.
1
@John Xavier III
One meaningful difference between the NYT and Facebook is editorial review.
@Colleen and JMM
The existence of an editor makes the NYT etc. worse not better. So not only do you have a platform that can be used to "disrupt elections, disseminate propaganda and promote hate", as publications do on a daily basis, but now you've introduced bias, on the extreme of which lies censorship.
And journalists responsible for (am paraphrasing) truth? Please don't make me laugh. Most journalists today are political activists first, journalists a distant second. They are political activists because they knowingly and transparently advocate a political point of view, which they occasionally dress up in moral or journalistic garb.
I am not saying the NYT or WaPo or WSJ ought to be different than they are (though they could clearly be better, they have sunk low), including editors and whatever other biased observers and arbiters of virtue.
But please don't, along with the author, be sanctimonious about all of these people being any different or morally better than Facebook, or write that Facebook is the face of evil in a publication that about half the country thinks is the face of evil. They are not different. They are exactly the same, and, looked at objectively, Facebook is their competitor.
Do you have a copyright on your comments and insights here?
And that, I believe, closes the case.
2
"When testing the safety and efficacy of new drugs, subjects are randomly assigned either to an experimental group or a control group, and only subjects in the experimental group receive the new drug. Nevertheless, the subjects in the control group are essential to the experiment."
Most drug trials use a cross-over design these days. Subjects are assigned to two groups. One group first receives the placebo, then for a period of time receives no medication, then receives the trial medication. The other group first receives the trial medication, then for a period of time receives no medication, then receives the placebo. Sometimes there are four groups, with two different periods of time between the two periods on the medication or placebo.
Best design is a double blind placebo controlled study. What "most drug trials are using these days" does not mean that a cross over design will ever replace the gold standard of research design in terms of quality of data
Moral duty? Meh.
Serious disgust. Oh Yeah...
That's why we left.
2
Ridiculous. But I think YOU should leave Facebook, it's really bothering you. So much so, that you're twisting and trying to guilt people into doing what you need to do for yourself. Your method is not unlike what evangelicals have done to christianity. Get off now, before it's too late.
1
The media has already locked itself in with Facebook. Just look where you clicked to join this conversation and right beside it are links to Facebook and Twitter. Some of the online news comment sections are totally run by Facebook. One can't even sign on to the Huffington Post without signing on to Facebook where the comments get censored. Facebook censors any post with the word "Fascism". The biggest threat to our democracy and Facebook censors mention of it. I guess the very mention of Fascism is now taken to be hate speech.
2
If you want to stay on FB, check out www.socialfixer.com to get more control over your content.
I downloaded my data (wanted the photos) and deleted my facebook account two months ago. They did not make it easy, btw! It's also been a bit more challenging to stay in touch with some people. I'm emailing more. :)
That said, ZERO REGRETS. I have more time. The time I have is of better quality. I feel much happier, more content, day to day. I am buying less crap I don't need online. (!!!) I am spending more time with my family, pursuing hobbies I love, and building things that matter to me. I feel PRESENT and notice more beauty in the world around me.
Delete your social media. For yourself, for your friends, for your children, for your pets, for your LIFE. You don't get the time you wasted there back again, but you can start living better right now. DELETE.
5
One does not need a moral reason to leave FB.
1) 'technical' reason: there is no such thing as a secure server.
2) 'human nature' reason: FB treats members as objects to be exploited, personal data is collected and sold to anybody.
The 'moral' reasons to leave FB enumerated in this article simply adds more reasons to the pile of reasons to leave.
3
There is a remarkable device called The Telephone, which allows one to speak with and thereby stay informed about the lives of family and friends. Sadly, it does not transmit photographs, but there is also a system called The Postal Service, which permits one to send, for a nominal charge, real, not virtual, photographs to said family and friends. True, the photos do not arrive instantly, a drawback for those who require photographs of kittens immediately. These systems have existed successfully for more than 100 years, are easy to operate, inexpensive and can contribute to a calmer, less anxious lifestyle, offend no one and present no moral dilemma.
1
You worry about very global aspects of Facebook's effect on the world.
But what about the effect of watching your neighbors boast of expensive vacations they really can't afford?
What about seeing so many right-wing, racist, gun-loving views expressed so freely by neighbors that one feels afraid to disagree?
What about getting death threats when you dare to criticize Trump on public forums?
Dear sir, how can bioethics ignore all these threats to the human psyche while it worries over Cambridge Analytica?
You're staying on Facebook because you love all your likes and your Facefriends. This column is shallow and you're deep in the pool, friend.
1
I'd say this ed is worthy of sharing and retweeting.
1
With all due respect, the author should stick to bioethics. This argument sounds like a validation for his choice to keep his Facebook account and still look ethical. Doesn't hold water.
4
Mr. Liao may soon have his answer. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers
Facebook has crossed many of the so called "red lines" you described in your editorial. The creators and management of Is Facebook did this knowingly. The fact of the matter is they just don't care. Ethics are NOT their concern. They are data miners. They will sell your data to the highest bidders and they do not give one iota about who utilizes this data or what they use the data for. Depending on which research firm one researches, in the 2016 Presidential Election 40 - 60 % of American Voters used Facebook as their primary source of news and information. This is an alarming acknowledgement as Facebook has no interest in the promoting or protecting the accuracy of information that is cultivated and publicized on this social media tool. Facebook is destroying our nation's democracy and laughing all the way to the bank... or banking app... as it were. If Facebook is going to survive and improve their vision, Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg need to be removed from their positions of power. Their "strategic abuse of power and technological power aligns with the actions and rationalizations of Adolf Hitler. We live in perilous times. Facebook and it's younger evil twin Twitter are the opiates of the masses and it is destroying critical thinking.
2
Facebook, in its current incarnation, is likely a fad that will fade away as more of us sober up to it's consequences and social pressure against using the platform increases (think smoking in public or with a child in the car). Folks will still use Facebook but nowhere near the numbers of today. Clearly though, we have some work to do in training our philosophers in moral and ethical reasoning.
Like refined sugar, social media is dangerous in fulfilling a need in a pure artificial form that we are not well evolved to regulate. But if you think you should leave FB because it contains misinformation, the next logical step is to leave the internet entirely.
1
Ah...but Facebook did intentionally cross a red line when Zuckerberg and Sandberg themselves intentionally used Facebook to spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories as a way to defend Facebook.
And Facebook intentionally crossed a red line during the 2016 election when it had the information that it was being used to undermine the election and sat on that information.
You sir are a hypocrite, clearly addicted to Facebook and making excuses why you will stay on the platform. According to your own standards you should cancel your account.
2
YES.
1
I decided to cancel my personal FB account a year ago, but discovered that I could not keep my business account which I do need, without keeping my personal ("primary") account up and running. Does anyone know how this could be done? Thanks.
I had the same dilemma. To my knowledge there’s no way around this.
I left Facebook in March 2016 during the run-up to the election. My reasons were pretty simple. It tended to bring out my worst instincts and proved to be a time suck that interfered with my relationships and my productivity at work. Buh-bye.
My 85 year old mother was over for dinner last night. Almost every bit of her conversational contributions somehow tied back to Facebook. While I found this annoying at times, it’s obviously a vitally important social outlet for seniors. I suspect that the platform is the primary form of human contact for tens of millions of users around the world.
I do worry about my mom and other seniors being scammed. Two incidents involving fake news come to mind. “Don Knotts just died,” my mom said. “He died 10 years ago mom.” “But it says here that she just died,” she responded. Oy!
Similarly she reported Arnold Schwarzenegger had died one day last year. She was astounded to learn it wasn’t so. “Why would someone do that?” she asked.
If as a society we can find a way to non-intrusively regulate speech on Facebook, i would support that. Somehow I don’t think that’s possible tho. We seem to be stuck with this monster. Thankfully, I haven’t a single regret about leaving Facebook and deleting the content. If that gives one person the courage to follow my lead, this post will have been worthwhile.
229
@Jeff Hunter
You do realize that seniors managed to find active social engagement - of a higher quality - for millenia before the arrival of Facebook? Perhaps Facebook opened up new options for them they didn't have before, but the price they pay is exactly the one you highlight. My sainted Uncle Dan, one of the nicest and most decent men I've ever known, descended into the cesspool of lies, misinformation and hatred bred of the fear of "others" that inevitably came with his increasing dependence on Facebook for his social interactions in the years before he died. Just say "no!"
44
@Jeff Hunter
No,we're not stuck with FB.No more then we were stuck with the telegraph, or smoke signals...which I'm sure sent some crazy wrong messages. And some on purpose.
FB could be shut down tomorrow and the impact on real things would be practically not measurable. Would the space be filled the next day? Yes! But in its place would likely come a better managed, better understood product.
We're not stuck with anything...no more then the "too big to fail" sentiment should ever be paid any attention.
19
@Jeff Hunter
I am coming up on my two-year anniversary of leaving FB. No regrets whatsoever. Good riddance!
17
How does the saying go...If you aren't buying something, then YOU are the product.
FB collects and collates every bit of minutia of your life.
EVERY BIT!!! Where you go, what you buy, what you say...
Packaged and distributed to the highest bidder.
Info that you would not believe is available to whom ever.
You have no say, nor anyway to block or argue if wrong.
It is laughable that the NYT is running a nearby story on China and how repressive and authoritarian it is.
Yet we Westerners sold out our freedom for a supposed Patriot Act and Homeland security that gives us neither. Our Gov. allows FB and others to mine our lives and sell us out to propaganda and capitalism uber alles.
By the by...the cat meme's are the best!
4
Facebook can't win for losing. They have both sides of the aisle angry.
A Facebook employee, Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus, which was purchased by Facebook, was placed on leave and then fired from Facebook a few days after the Daily Beast reported that he donated $10,000 to a pro-Trump group called NimbleAmerica.
Just for donating to a pro-Trump PAC. Think about that. Facebook denies the connection, but it is clear to conservatives and to Luckey that the termination was directly related to the donation. It has all appearances of a conservative purge.
Facebook leans mostly left like all of the other giant techs* and small techs too, but insufficiently so, and thus the left will stop at nothing less than a complete left lean before they relent.
*e.g. - Conservatives like Diamond and Silk complain that their work is dropped or censured by You Tube. where is the Op Ed about that?
2
I used FB and Twitter for two years and joined at the urging of two friends who were very politically active on those platforms. A year ago I deleted them and have never regretted the decision. The toxicity and useless arguments and back and forth was exhausting. Want to send me a message, a cute picture of my new nephew or a link to some story I might be interested in, send me a text. I enjoy my ignorance of all things on social media and my anonymity.
2
Do you have a moral duty to unsubscribe from the New York Times? After Whitewater, Iraq, Her Emails.... Just today there is an article implying Democrats should chase rural white racist votes to win in the South...
So yes, you have a moral obligation to unsubscribe from the New York Times.
2
I deleted my FB account in 2016. I grew tired of seeing my friends consumed by radical Trump propaganda. FB can go to hell.
1
Why are you shooting the messenger? Isn’t it your friends who are the problem? Or maybe the problem is you for choosing such friends...
It’s a bit disturbing to see the outrage over FB as a vehicle for propaganda when millions of schoolchildren are taught from textbooks that subscribe to deliberately inaccurate and even harmful ideas. We must take the time to research, to project consequences, and then take action. In other words, think. The sad fact that much of the nation doesn’t have that skill isn’t FB’s fault.
We are all bought and sold daily. Much of FB’s advertising is the cyber equivalent of junk mail. Skip the junk you don’t want to read and do what you will with what’s left. If we must regulate social media, then we should go back to regulating the airwaves. Then, opinions had to be identified as opinions, and news was the best and most accurate information that competing news organizations could discover and verify.
What a load of sophistry. The author sounds like a German citizen in 1933 who votes for Hitler and the Nazis on the supposition that they haven’t fulfilled their promises yet. Taking that “wait and see attitude” proved catastrophic for millions of people.
You’re addicted, and your fear of missing out keeps you hooked. What an embarrassment to see someone trained to think critically take such a milquetoast position.
You already know better now. Why so weak?
7
Facebook owns Instagram, which is why Instagram is hardly recognizable anymore as it's own photo sharing platform. I never fell for the Facebook hell but I did delete my Instagram acct. I am just sick and tired of social media period. Don't want to use it or hear about it anymore. I prefer reading humans to timeline posts. People, please get a life.
1
The day the NYT posted how evil Zuck and Sandberg are, I just quietly left f. f is an evil force and should be squelched. But Americans are idiots who welcome overlords.
1
@Mogwai
that's a bit harsh to call people idiots yet you yourself were a party to the same platform. Hindsight is a nice thing, but you should have your eyes wide open to all the truths...