This is an interesting post by Bob Lefsetz that gets to the heart of the facebook/all of social media problem:
“On Saturday, Mr. Rosen said in the blog post that among Facebook’s American users, vaccine hesitancy had declined by 50 percent since April and vaccine acceptance had increased by 10 to 15 percentage points, or to over 80 percent from 70 percent.” –NYT
How would they know? I didn’t get an e-mail asking my status. No, they sifted through the data, that they collected, while you thought you were connecting with friends. How myopic can you be? Never mind inaccurate.
It’s funny how Facebook and the rest of these tech companies kiss the ass of China, do whatever authoritarians want them to, but when it comes to the United States they believe they’re safe, impenetrable, bigger than the government. Administrations come and go, but Facebook remains.
Misinformation. It’s why people are not getting vaccinated. I know not because I read about it, but because my inbox is full of people e-mailing me false reports. All you have to do is Google to find out these bloviators and their opinions have been debunked. But if you get a vaccine you’re acceding to the power of the government, whereas if you believe some bozo anti-vax philosophy you’re in control. Let me ask you, do you want to be in control of the airplane? How come expertise is meaningless in today’s society?
As for all those computer science students, you know, the STEM people, maybe they needed to take humanities courses, because last time I checked our brains aren’t digital, nor is sex, nor are most of our feelings and decisions. Facebook is like a rogue dictatorship run by someone only barely better educated than Kim Jong-un. And Zuckerberg’s mentors? All data and finance people. And just like Trump thinks he’s entitled to still be president, Zuckerberg believes Facebook has a god-given right to exist. Hell, Apple allows users to turn off tracking and Zuckerberg throws a conniption fit. As if he’s entitled to hoover up our data. Wasn’t he prepared for this? Isn’t being a techie being worried about disruption?
As for disruption, Facebook missed the memo that you’ve got to pay creators and give them a chance for an audience. You can start from zero on TikTok and the platform will seed your video to those not following you to give you a chance. But not on Facebook, which cultivates your feed using black-box algorithms. Do you want to know why our country is divided? WE DON’T SEE THE SAME NEWS! Whether it be on Facebook or Google. It’s like a bad remake of “2001,” the computers are in control, soulless, and in this case only interested in making a buck, and power, of course. The truth is Facebook is in the middle of getting disrupted, it was asleep at the wheel. And Zuckerberg cozied up to Trump but not Biden. But Zuck makes all that money on Trump/right-wing stories, ever see the list of the most shared posts on Facebook? THEY’RE ALL RIGHT-WING! I mean each and every one of them, well, eight out of ten, the others are cat videos and other innocuous trifles.
And now Zuckerberg is telling us he’s not the problem, but the solution. It’s “1984” but in real life. Researchers ask interviewees why they won’t get the shot and they all say because of what they read on Facebook, I’m not making this up, read the studies, but now Facebook says exactly the opposite?
The first rule of thumb?
Never ever respond. And if someone does, in internet land, they find out the joke is on them. Because the silent majority is no longer silent, they’ve all got keyboards, and they let others know how they feel, and suddenly you’re in the crosshairs. Funny how a social media company doesn’t know how you act on social media. Facebook should have said they’ll have a meeting with the government, kick the ball down the road, wait for the story to fade away, which it always seems to do in the fast-paced world of today. But now this is a story…
And the Delta variant is in the news every damn day. Because infections are going up, as are deaths. Furthermore, essentially one hundred percent of the infections are in people who have refused the shot, who are unvaccinated. It’s become Russian Roulette. I gotta ask you punk, do you feel lucky?
There’s more that is uncharacteristically optimistic for him and I take that with a grain of salt to be honest. He thinks people will eventually wake up to the danger and that may be the case. But by that time we will have lost a whole lot more people for no good reason. And he thinks Biden has turned this into a “street fight” which is just beginning and I’m not sure how that tracks.
But the rant about Facebook is right on. It’s a pernicious influence and I have no idea how a free society can do anything about it. People want to be lied to. And people like Zuckerberg love making billions giving them what they want.