Do You Have a Moral Duty to Leave Facebook?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
We live in a world where it is very difficult to limit our personal commerce to avoid indirect support for activities and people we may find repugnant. I am reminded of the Biblical parable of 'Render Unto Caesar'. While I applaud those who stand on principle, I do not condemn those (most of us) who find it necessary to separate personal from political.
We have a moral duty to not do or support so many things, but we still do because of other people, social conditioning, believing that there's no better way, etc. Making binary decisions in life is not easy most of the time.
On Facebook, my belief is that people ought to quit it on moral grounds, but there are no comprehensive equivalents to its features on facebook.com for them to move to. There are plenty of alternatives for WhatsApp and FB Messenger that are far, far better than those. Instagram could also be replaced with some adjustment. But the Facebook timeline, news feed, groups, pages, events, etc., are not easy to replace with a single alternative.
I can't wait for the day when quitting becomes easy because alternatives are far better and easier to use.
Quitting Facebook benefits you, selfishly and immediately; end of story.
I would not like the idea of FB to fail (connect the world) but would like its current business model to fail (selling private information to highest bidder).
They don't. This is completely against their business model (which is - from the perspective of the target, aka you and me - the same business model google has). They don't sell your information, they want all your information to sell advertisers the ability to target and tailor their ads to you (and convince advertisers to give them more data so they can target more efficiently).
I don't understand why and how this trope keeps getting repeated, particularly among tech people.
Just the fact they are collecting the data is bad (and incentivizing other business to throw their data in their databases), there is no reason for spewing FUD about what their business model is, or even touching how good/bad they are (or were years ago) at preventing that data from leaving their servers.
You are free to do whatever however moral duty does exist.
Facebook is a genuinely evil company with genuinely evil people doing genuinely evil things to manipulate the world in negative ways, and I want nothing to do with them. They've been immoral/unethical from the start.
They manipulate their users, cause genuine harm to people, the world, and democracy, and should not be rewarded with continued use of their services.
Edit: Because people have been downvoting/flagging my comments, I'm no longer allowed to reply to people and continue the discussion.
“For me at least, Facebook would have crossed a moral red line if it had, for example, 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. But the evidence indicates that Facebook did not intend for those things to occur on its platform.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/03/facebook-role-rohingy...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-cambr...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke...
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-...
Some of these are direct actions by the company. Some are unintended consequences. And this isn't even getting into the personal harm and unhealthy behavior that comes from use of Facebook and similar manipulative social media.
Yeah, that's what I don't understand about the current outrage at Facebook. IMHO they are far ethically better today than they were say 6-10 years ago. I just don't understand the outrage today if its ok to do what they did several years ago. I mean, I left Facebook in 2011 due to their ethical issues.
I doubt they report that in their quarterly calls with shareholders though.
Secondly, HN tends toward the far progressive end of the cultural spectrum (with libertarian streaks). And in the shocked and confused search for explanations, as to how a boorish game show host could win a Presidential election, Facebook has emerged as a prominent scapegoat.
Lastly, but not least, HN's demographics seem to skew young, while FB's demographics are clearly trending older. The more that trend continues, the more FB will be seen representing a tribal "other".
I think there's very serious concerns to a society which seems to consume most of it's media as curated by AI and their online friends as opposed to say, a newspaper editor.
Especially when it seems like, half the time, people don't even read the articles and just get outraged by the headline which they assume to be true.
And the whole, people being in bubbles with their own viewpoint cannot be a positive.
Be careful - AIs may be wrong and manipulated and with authors with agendas, and newspaper editors can be wrong and manipulated and have agendas. There are countless example of newspapers being wrong and creating a narrative in the past (ex: look at "manufacturing consent" book) to either support the government or cover their (or the government) mistakes, or just plainly hide facts. And with media concentration, this is just going to get worse and worse :)
Or look at what the reaction by the NYT (or WaPo, or media in general) was to the massive social media presence and access of the Obama campaign [1] compared to what their reaction were after Trump won and they needed a scapegoat to somewhat make sense of it even after some voices called (on TV) for a moment of reflection about the dangers of them "being cheerleaders" [2].
Always remember "engagement" is a metric very important for newspapers too - their business model is selling ads, exactly like facebook does!
I never said anyone should put their full faith in newspapers.
But they're certainly better edited than the Facebook feed.
There's also a pile-on effect once a topic gets enough traction, and multiple outlets start publishing hit pieces in the hopes of gaining a few extra eyeballs.
Finally, government investigations into companies tend to create negative buzz, and since that's been happening with FB, that's probably generating some additional interest.
See also: Tesla.
Those providing the content are free to revoke their consent as well, and many do when ads fail to render.
It is not theft to refuse to consent.
Doesn't mean that won't change, but their current policy states it isn't happening now.
Secret messages can't be harvested, but aren't portable between devices.
If you are deciding to "leave Facebook" as protest to the fact that:
Facebook has played a significant role in undermining democratic values around the world
then that means you need to leave Messenger, Instagram, Whatsapp, tbh, Facebook (product), Oculus and every other Facebook owned property.
I don't see how people aren't making this connection.
If you want to leave FB on moral principals, then dropping all of their products is the only thing that would be impactful. Otherwise you're just shifting where you give them revenue.
Signal and iMessage are my favorites personally.
SMS doesn't require an app that requests invasive access to information.
Underlying the logic is a premise: that because Facebook is used by some to spread propaganda and promote hate, it is (at least in part) to blame for the illiberal trajectory of some Western democracies. For many, it is more simplistic: there is a belief that Facebook is to blame for our election outcome. Of course, it is extremely difficult to know how much "to blame" Facebook as opposed to traditional media, and conclusive facts will be impossible to obtain. Both lines of reasoning, it should be noted, neglect the possibility that the election was determined by the will of people under a non-democratic system via the electoral college.
To me, the question is whether or not Facebook is a unique actor in this capacity. Does Facebook do something substantially different from other social media platforms or content providers that particularly undermines democratic values? I don't believe it does: Twitter spreads conspiracy theories, Snapchat is used for bullying and harassment, Google has comparable troves of data for sale to advertisers. While it has certainly had some public relations snafus, on the whole, as a platform it isn't that unique.
Facebook is an ad company. You don't have to use it if you don't want to. And even if they target you with ads, who cares? After decades of people saying "I don't notice the ads on web sites" all of a sudden web ads have the ability to take down countries? Don't dress it up as a "moral" issue, and plus, whose morality is the one judging this?
If you pick at every single company, you can find things that give you a "moral duty" to leave. How far will they go? Love video games? It encourages violence and gambling, you have a moral duty to leave. Do you have moral duty to not use Amazon anymore because they don't treat their workers the way the NYT wants them to be treated? Love muscle cars? It kills the environment with pollution, you have a moral duty to leave. Love cooking? Why aren't you feeding the homeless instead, you have a moral duty to do that instead of wasting money on fancy food.
I'm not telling people that they have a moral obligation to do or think anything. I gave my opinion that I lost respect in Steve Yegge, because he was being a hypocrite. I didn't say "People should no longer respect Steve Yegge because he's a hypocrite". There's a profound difference between the two.