I think it’s amazing in a good way that Facebook recently decided to terminate the accounts of some of its more incendiary users: Alex Jones, Louis Farrakhan, and several others (who I’ve never heard of). The reasoning: hate speech. These users have defaced and debased a platform where people come for civic and social engagement. The company made a bold move, finally, and I feel like it is finding its spine after years of wishy washy hedging about its policies. They’ve bumped the loudmouth drunks from the bar, told the swearing sailors to shape up or ship out. As big as Facebook is, maybe it is finally growing up.
My liberal, knee-jerk reaction: never limit speech. Shouldn’t even the jerkiest amongst us be allowed to posit his or her radical thoughts? I mean, isn’t navigating a thicket of ideas the best way to polish your own views? Isn’t free speech a cornerstone of American democracy? Sure, sure. Yet in my gut, I’m cheering. My grandfather used to say of certain people, “He talks a lot, but he doesn’t say anything.” I’m sick of being the polite, responsible one who has to make nice while the hateful loudmouths of the world drone on and on. I don’t want them in my feed or my head.
The truth is, since Trump won in 2016 and the news broke about all the crap that Russia posted on FB and other social media, I lost interest in visiting sites like Facebook. As fun as it had been to see high school friends after years of absence and find out about their meals, after 2016, I lost my appetite. We were played. Although I voted for Hilary Clinton, it was with eroded enthusiasm because of the daily, inescapable bombardment of negativity.
As a teacher, I am often reminded of the words of Maya Angelou that my wife shared many years ago during a low ebb in my career: "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Words to live by, I'd say. After 2016, Facebook made me feel duped and dirty.
It wasn’t totally on Russia and Trump and other nefarious and sneaky political action groups, though. I was overwhelmed by sites like FB anyway. The overload of pictures and links kind of freaked me out anyway. It's too much to ever digest; I could never “finish” a Facebook session like a book or film, and I noticed feeling anxious, jealous, judgmental, and pissy after even a few minutes of scrolling. Maybe that’s more on me than on the platform — I don’t know. But I’m sorry I didn’t like your post if it happened over the last three years. I've been absent. Maybe now I’ll migrate back so we can catch up for real.
People who traffic in conspiracy theories, make fact-free accusations, scapegoat, slander, and slur, they should create their own social media platforms. Maybe they have. And perhaps our government should create an NPR/PBS-type platform on which all voices could be heard, but in a more curatorial way than what Facebook manages. But as for commercial enterprises like Facebook, they have every right to ban users who deface what often is a miraculously effective means of human connection.
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