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| This image depicts Facebook as the "master key" to democracy |
The author of the article, Martin Weigert, explains that Facebook plays a unintentional but key role in weakening the democratic values through things such as fake news, micro-targeting- and bots. So, he suggests that ALL you have to do it simply stop using Facebook.com and the Facebook app, you don't even have to stop using the other services it provides such at Instagram and Messenger. Seems easy enough doesn't it? Weigert explains that if we stop using the Facebook service we will be cause them to lose profit. With less people focusing a large portion of their time on this service, there will also be less desire for people to want to buy advertisement spots on Facebook. In the end, the main goal of quitting Facebook is to help weaken the business model.
This suggestion seems easy enough on paper, but how easy do you think it will actually be to quit Facebook? The service allows you with a way to connect and keep up-to-date with your friends and family. It also has other features that would be hard to let go of. On a serious note, after natural disasters, it gives people an option to "Mark them selves safe" on Facebook, so that people can know you are ok and have less worry when there might be no other way to reach you. There is also less serious options such as Facebook groups and Facebook events that are easy ways to stay connected and plan events.
- Questions to Ponder after reading this post I have to questions for you:
- Do you think quitting Facebook would be hard or easy?
- Do you believe that quitting Facebook could help our democracy?
Honestly I believe quitting facebook would be incredibly difficult. I'm speaking from a personal P.O.V. so while I am a little biased, I can honestly say I'm always on it. I don't use it for news in regards to mass media, but I keep in touch with friends and family through it. I believe facebook could help our democracy by ending the spread of "fake news" and encourage people to utilize credible sources.
ReplyDeleteHi Heather,
ReplyDeleteI think quitting Facebook, personally would be easy. But, I could see for a lot of people it would be difficult due to many reasons. Also, in a way I could see it would help our democracy because Facebook generates a lot of groupthink, but correlation does not mean causation.
Enjoyed the post.
While Weigart seems to be thinking in the correct direction, he may have taken it too far. Facebook's involvement in the political arena is incredibly complex, and I really don't think the solution to the harm it has helped perpetuate is quite as black and white as just getting everyone to quit the social networking site. Certainly, Facebook has become a prominent and somewhat unexpected player on the political stage; being the primary news source for billions of people around the world gives you that kind of power. And where there is a mass audience of billions of people looking for information, there will always be those who try to exploit that population with their own message. But then again, Facebook has also proved to be a wonderful channel for democracy insofar as it has connected people and enabled them to organize; we saw this, for example, with the Arab Spring and the Women's March on Washington. If you get rid of it, you lose a lot of good. Facebook, like the Internet as a whole, is a neutral entity. It's what you do with it that determines the fate of the democracy. I do think it needs to start taking its role as a news source more seriously, and part of this means taking steps to curb the flow of false information, but I also think it is the responsibility of the public to learn to recognize this illegitimate information.
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