Tag Archives: Facebook

9 Reasons Why You Should Delete Facebook

9 Reasons Why You Should Delete Facebook

This is a moment of reckoning for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s relentless pursuit of social media dominance. There is a widespread call for accountability that could change the conversation around digital privacy, but it will ultimately rely on enough of us moving away from the platform to ensure that lasting changes are made.

Following on from my ongoing series on World War Privacy, it should come as no surprise that Future Conscience fully supports the #DeleteFacebook movement. The time has come to take our privacy and online agency into our own hands and push back against those who wish to turn us into faceless products to be bought and sold to the highest bidder.

Detaching from something that has played such a central role in your life is a difficult thing to do, but if you prize values such as freedom, accountability, consent and dignity then there are many reasons you should make the transition and not look back.

Here are nine clear reasons why you should #DeleteFacebook:

1) Cambridge Analytica, Russian bot farms and ‘Fake News’

Facebook has become one of the primary platforms for the weaponisation of social media for the purposes of political propaganda. This isn’t just a ‘Russia problem’ but extends across a vast array of shadowy political agendas that seek to subvert the democratic process through whatever means available.

In just the past year we have seen clear evidence of this occurring through the spreading of fake news items designed to instill division; phony activist groups and pages that harvest data and fraudulently collect donations; and political profiling that delivers customised propaganda directly to users. There are also strong indications that the business model Facebook adheres to was in large part responsible for enabling disinformation to flourish during the Brexit vote that will see the exit of the UK from the European Union.

This has become so much a part of the core operations of Facebook that their very own Head of Security has publicly indicated that he will be resigning in response to how it is being handled internally by the company. This was followed recently by news that the founder of WhatsApp will also be resigning over systemic privacy concerns.

2) Non-consensual experiments on users

Although they are denying knowledge of how user data was misused by the likes of Cambridge Analytica (the “we had no idea, honest!” defense), Facebook themselves have callously undermined the dignity of their users on multiple occasions through psychological experimentation. It’s worth letting that sink in…

Facebook have conducted psychological experiments on users without consent.

These experiments go beyond what is acceptable under the guise of ‘market research’ and instead have directly targeted people’s emotions in both positive and negative ways. By conducting such manipulation, it is reasonable to conclude that Facebook have directly contributed to the levels of depression and mental health problems suffered by some of their users. That is a truly shocking fact and you should delete your Facebook account in protest of such unethical and potentially dangerous pursuits.

3) Zuckerberg thinks you’re a ‘dumb f*ck’

“Yeah so if you ever need any info about anyone at Harvard…just ask…I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, [Social Security Numbers]. People just submitted it. I don’t know why. They trust me. Dumb f*cks.” – Mark Zuckerberg, 2004

4) Most of your Facebook ‘friends’ don’t really care about you

This one might be hard to hear, but the hundreds of relationships you think are being maintained are (for the most part) little more than voyeuristic windows into other people’s lives that you have no intention of ever reconnecting with. It can be satisfying and interesting to watch how people you met decade/s ago are now living their lives – but it’s quite clear that these are ‘friendships’ in only the most shallow of terms.

Numerous studies have shown that your connections on Facebook can’t be relied upon for anything substantial, let alone difficult. They also don’t have the same positive impact on your health as face-to-face friendships do.

5) Facebook is grooming your addiction

Most of us experience the reality of smartphone/internet addiction to varying degrees. Social media platforms take that growing societal problem and actively aim to feed the addiction – they are the ultimate enablers and proud of it. Facebook are grooming you to be addicted to their platform so that they can monetise you as a product.

We’ve recently seen a backlash from ex-Facebook employees, who are warning us of the corrupting nature of social media and the highly-resourced efforts that go into keeping us addicted. Do you want to keep supporting an organisation who thinks so poorly of you that they are willing to openly exploit you?

6) Government surveillance

The seemingly endless lengths that governments will go to ruthlessly invade citizen privacy is well known. What is perhaps a bit less widely understood, though, is the extent to which companies such as Facebook have worked closely with intelligence agencies to provide access and legal frameworks for surveillance operations.

A successful response to overreaching government surveillance requires us to change our behaviours and seek out new, secure ways of conducting communications online.  That begins with deleting your Facebook account and finding other ways to keep in touch with your friends, family and colleagues.

7) Censorship will be the new normal

In response to the accusations of facilitating fake news and Russian propaganda, Facebook are, like many tech companies, planning on taking the responsibility of censoring their users into their own hands. This is in line with many governments also taking aim at fake news with various kinds of censorship regimes.

Unfortunately, this will almost certainly mean that a vast array of people with outspoken political views or those deemed political threats by world powers; or anything else against ‘community standards’ will be caught in the AI censorship net and/or outright attacked by those in power through abuse of reporting systems.

8) Evasive testimony

If the above evidence doesn’t convince you, then the manner in which Zuckerberg (and by extension, his advisors and executives at Facebook) conducted himself before Congress should be the final nail in the coffin.

To begin with, Zuckerberg has so far refused calls to testify before the UK parliamentary committee looking into these issues – a point that has annoyed MPs in the UK to the extent they are now threatening a formal summons.  Beyond this arrogant snub, we now have clear indications that Facebook is essentially operating a monopoly; that the evasive claims of Cambridge Analytica being a rogue actor are almost certainly false; and, perhaps most tellingly, that Facebook maintain personalised datasets as ‘shadow profiles’ of people who do not even have accounts.

9) Dating app

After all that has come to light and the many privacy grievances that continue to stack up against Facebook, what was their response?  Dating profiles.  It’s the kind of tone-deaf moment that’s hard to believe – but they want you to now trust them with your most intimate experiences and preferences. Because there’s no reason to think that might be a bad idea now, is there?

Hopefully these nine reasons will be enough for you to take the step of deleting your Facebook account.  It might seem like a difficult thing to do, but if we are to respond to the grave injustices being perpetrated against us then it is certainly the right thing to do.

It’s time to #DeleteFacebook and start encouraging others you know to do the same. For website admins, this also means removing the Facebook like/share buttons that allow the company to track your users without consent.  Enough is enough.

Header Image by Shop Catalog, Flickr, Creative Commons

Discussion: Does social media negatively impact spirituality?

Rose and Lily (image by CresySusy, Flickr, CC)I wanted to try a slightly different angle with this post and create a call-out for discussion surrounding a particular topic. Before I begin however, I think it’s important to highlight the wonderful work that continues to be done by WikiLeaks (yes, their servers are down at the moment due to incredibly high levels of traffic) in providing a space for whistleblowers to find a voice.

The recent publication of over 90,000 documents pertaining to the war in Afghanistan needs to be commended as many times as possible. Obviously digesting all of this material can be quite a daunting prospect, so I would direct you to the analysis done by the New York Times as one of the best mainstream media examinations of the leak.

With that important announcement dealt with, let’s get onto the question at hand: does social media negatively impact spirituality?

Let me get the initial response that we all have out of the way – ‘It depends how you use it. It’s only a tool.‘  I agree with this sentiment entirely, but for the sake of promoting discussion let’s forget about that point for a moment and presume it a given. What I wanted to look into, specifically, is whether social media in its various forms (and most particularly manifestations such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn that rely on individual digital identities) helps to promote aspects of our being that tend to have a negative impact on spiritual progression. Even more specifically – does social media feed our egos beyond all else?

Now, I’m expecting a number of you to bring up different ideas around just what spiritual progression, and spirituality, actually means – and I’d really like to promote such a response as it’s obviously one half of the question being raised here.  For me, a large component of spiritual progression revolves around the dissolution of individual ego and striving to seek success purely for personal gain.

Alfons Mucha - 1896 - SalammbôAs one progresses spiritually, there seems to be an almost universal tendency to see that progress as being done for the greater good of all rather than merely the individual. You are no longer seeking enlightenment (or however it is phrased) for personal glory or gain; you are doing so in order to play your role in the uplifting reintegration of the entire universe. A feat that, ultimately, means that you as an individual ceases to have any relevance; or even existence.

From this perspective, we can still come to either conclusion in regards to social media. In some regards, it enables us to better empathise with those within our network – understanding to a far greater degree the intricacies that their lives involve and therefore being exposed to some of the many different and varied ways of expressing the human condition.

If we enter into it with the right frame of mind, these tools can certainly provide us with a small glimpse into a form of consciousness that is wider than merely our own. The peer group becomes a microcosmic expression of the macrocosmic collective consciousness, and we might in some small way learn to immerse ourselves within it.

On the other hand, there is almost no better set of tools for the negative influence that our ego is capable of than those provided by social media. Here we have an exponentially increased ability to portray ourselves as kings of our own universes – mavericks, femme fatales, social influencers, political powerhouses, erudite authors and every other form of social category that might be desirable/hip/independent/better-than-you.

In fact, what I have tended to observe is that those who are more spiritually aware (notice I don’t use the word ‘progressed’) tend to also be those who use social media in an ego-aggrandising manner…and before you start, yes I myself am guilty of this crime and am not just passing judgement from my tower of perfected serenity. Observing this behaviour in myself is actually what led me to start seeing it in others in my social media networks, and once you start really looking for it it’s amazing just what you will see. In moments of intense spiritual focus, it can actually be quite a depressing and even terrifying experience.

estupid ego (image by !unite, Flickr, CC)I wrote a post related to this exploration, entitled ‘Crafting a Digital Identity‘, which was when I first started becoming self-aware of this tendency within my own behaviour and began to see it clearly in others as well. From what I can gather reading around the subject, I don’t think it’s something that is purely a coincidence formed out of the rag-tag group of peers that I seem to have assembled online.

The individually inflated ego is one of the true identifiers of the human condition and one that will always latch onto any available tool and outlet in order to enhance its influence. Social media quite often, ironically, leads us to become more inward looking and self-obsessed.

So, if spiritual progression finds much of its utility from the productive dissolution of this egotistical behaviour than surely social media must be seen as a highly negative and spiritually destructive influence at its worst; and at the very least a dangerous set of tools that we must be ever vigilant of if we hope to use them positively.

So what do you think? There are plenty more areas I could cover with this, but I wanted to leave them for the time being to see whether or not this experiment in creating a topic discussion here on Future Conscience might be fruitful. So please do comment, and at length if you feel up to it. I’m very interested to see where you might take this…

Is social media a negative influence on our spirituality? Or do the connections and information we gain allow us to rise above the less savoury aspects and overall find great value? What are the pros, what are the cons?  If we become a social media driven society, which at this point in time looks like quite a likely conclusion, then what impact will that have on our ability to be humble…to connect with things greater than ourselves and our own forged image?

Or is this post just another example of somebody waxing-lyrical and posting it on Facebook in order to appear ‘deep’?

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