The Many Faces Of Facebook

MY GIRLFRIEND WANTED ME to see her Facebook page, so I suggested that she bring it over to the house. That aint the way it works, she said. Deflated, I got a page, and still have it, although its blank, will likely remain blank. I have only a dozen friends listed, folks I have known fifty years. I have ambivalent feelings about Facebook in particular and social media in general. Its a great way to communicate and to stay in touch people, to blurt one's thoughts, and to share pictures of one's pretty house, pretty children, pretty dogs. Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon are monopolies, which used to be illegal, according to the Sherman anti-trust Act of 1890 and the Clayton anti-trust Act of 1914, but these are seldom enforced in this ear in which big business buys it ways out of enforcement by purchasing office for neo-liberal free market politicians. Social media has kidnapped journalism, and it feeds every consumer only and exactly what she wants to absorb. Social media dispenses and spreads news, insulate us all in our personal ideological bubbles, keeping divergent thinking at bay, far away. Social media ruins our minds, but only if we allow it, which we do. Eighty five percent of all online advertising revenue goes to Facebook and Google, which thrive off the mountains of personal information about us the user which they sell to corporations. When one joins Facebook, one is not a customer; big corporations are the customers, we are the voluntary merchandise. For me, that's a problem, a downside. Facebook is a media company which refuses to call itself that because if it did, it would have to hire many actual people as curators, and would be also be legally liable for its advertising, a prospect deplorable to the company. Because of the four horsemen of the apocalypse named above, we no longer trust the media. Mainstream traditional media is actually highly reliable and accurate, but it our bubbles of anger we perceive it to be fake, and our president fuels this perception by calling anything critical of himself "fake news". The internet and electronic screens are addictive. Drug abuse must be dealt with head on.