The Facebook Dilemma is a two part documentary from Frontline. Here is a description of the documentary from their website:
The promise of Facebook was to create a more open and connected world. But from the company’s failure to protect millions of users’ data, to the proliferation of “fake news” and disinformation, mounting crises have raised the question: Is Facebook more harmful than helpful? This major, two-night event investigates a series of warnings to Facebook as the company grew from Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room to a global empire. With dozens of original interviews and rare footage, The Facebook Dilemma examines the powerful social media platform’s impact on privacy and democracy in the U.S. and around the world.
Overall, it was a pretty good documentary. They weren't lying about the original interviews and rare footage. It reveals insights into company culture — why Facebook is the way it is now and how they got there.
Yesterday I talked about why I created a new Facebook account. Today I'm listing down some guidelines for myself, concerning the use of my new Facebook account. My main goal here is to be able to manage a Facebook account while still minimizing distractions and keeping my attention intact. I didn't go through my #DigitalMinimalism journey just to throw everything away with a new Facebook account. I'm incorporating lessons I've learned from my year away from Facebook. So here goes.
There were two major events recently that made me reconsider creating a new Facebook account. First is watching the PBS Frontline documentary, The Facebook Dilemma. While it didn't change my views on the dangers of Facebook and social media, at the end of Part Two of that documentary, there is this striking quote from Zeynep Tufekci:
They're not going to do this as long as they're doing so well financially and there's no regulatory oversight. And consumer backlash doesn't really work because I can't leave Facebook, all my friends and family around the world are there. You might not like the company. You might not like its privacy policies. You might not like the way its algorithm works. You might not like its business model. But what are you going to do?
I feel trapped in the same way. All my family and friends are on Facebook. None of them maintain personal websites or blogs like I do. It's not that FOMO got to me, but more of the fact that they can't seem to reach me after I've deactivated my Facebook account. It doesn't help that all my really close friends, my “barkada” as we call it in my native tongue, they all live in a different continent than me. So, I don't have the luxury of hanging out with them on weekends to maintain our friendship. Had I had that option, I'm positive I could have gone on without a Facebook account.
I felt like I was showing off. Showing off what i had, showing off my life. And since my Facebook account was private, the only people who were seeing my posts were my friends. So I was basically showing off to my friends.
Update: I ended up creating a new Facebook account, here's why.
It didn’t feel that way in the beginning though. I thought sharing photos about my car, my gadgets, my road trips/vacations, my son, was one of the best ways to utilize Facebook. Somehow I forgot that the point was to connect with other people. But what else is there to do after you’ve added them as a friend, have browsed through their profile and liked/commented on their posts? Anyways, of course I was rewarded with some likes here and there, which simply made me want to do it more. It was not until I noticed other people doing the same thing that I started to question what I was doing.
This is for the techie ones out there who want to delete their Facebook posts, but keep their account active. Probably helps to be familiar with using automated UI testing tools/scripts like Selenium. I for one don't know how to use Selenium, but I can do Coded UI.
Anyway, check out the link below. The readme page should have all the info you need to do this.
It made me a judgemental jerk. Why? I don't know. Maybe I didn't agree with their post? Maybe I felt belittled by their post? Maybe I felt jealous because of their post? There could be a bunch of different reasons why, but either way I think it goes back to the content I saw on my news feed. In my previous post I talked about how I was trying to rein in the content that showed up on my news feed. Well another reason for wanting to do that, was because the content that was shared on my news feed unconsciously made me judge the people that shared them. And I didn't want to be like that.
Update: I ended up creating a new Facebook account, here's why.
I couldn't control the news feed. It wasn't for lack of trying too. During the months leading up to the day when I deactivated my account, I put in a lot of effort to try to control my news feed. Here are some of the things I tried:
