How Can I Keep Using Facebook After Reading The Facebook Files?
I recently launched my own business doing something I’ve done professionally for fifteen years, crafting marketing copy.
Of course, over those fifteen years more and more of that copy has been created for the purposes of posting or buying ads on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram.
Last Monday, I kicked off my week composing a blog post for my fledgling audience about the importance of social media marketing for small businesses. I felt like I was doing something good to support those children-, family-, and women-focused small businesses that I care so much about.
Then… I spent the rest of the week spiraling down into the Wall Street Journal investigative team’s heartbreakingly thorough report: The Facebook Files.
As I read more and more and listened to podcast after podcast, I sank into a deep hole of what-the-F-do-I-do-now-ness.
Like most of us, I’ve known for years about the misinformation being spread on Facebook, the ineptitude or unwillingness to fact-check, the role Facebook has played in swaying political opinion and even election results.
I’ve had friends leave the platform in protest. I’ve taken breaks here and there myself, but I’ve never left. There are a few reasons.
One, in a modern world where my cousins and relatives are spread all over the country, some even in other countries, this if how we stay connected.
Two, this is how I stay professionally connected as well. As a small business myself, I honestly don’t see a path toward success today that doesn’t include using Facebook and Instagram.
But the third reason is the real toxic truth. An overwhelming sense of powerlessness about the whole thing. It’s something WSJ reporter Jeff Horowitz states really well:
“The decisions they make and the priorities they have is something that affects everybody even if you don’t use the platform. And so even if you aren’t on Facebook ever, you’re still living in Facebook’s world.”
It’s been Facebook’s world for a while. And I felt like there was nothing I could do about that. But then, I heard the Facebook Files, and I realized that, whether or not what I did mattered, I had to so something. Something, just so I could sleep at night.
The report documents how Facebook’s policies of whitelisting allowed a public figure to show revenge porn of a woman who had accused him of rape. Because he was deemed too popular to censor, tens of millions of his fans saw this woman’s naked body without her consent before the post was taken down.
As a survivor of sexual assault, I can’t live with that.
The second part of the report details how Facebook and Instagram executives sat on research proving that Instagram was emotionally damaging to teenagers and particularly toxic for girls, exacerbating many young women’s struggles with eating disorders, anxiety and depression. While keeping this research away from public view, the company has been making plans to develop a similar platform designed for kids.
As a parent, I can’t live with that.
CEO Mark Benioff once compared it to the cigarette industry, espousing the opinion that social media is so toxic to children, and is targeting children so heavily, that the government needs to step in the same way they did with cigarette advertising.
Having been lured by Camel Joe into a twenty-year battle with tobacco addiction, I can’t not do anything about this.
By the time the report gets to how Facebook ignored the extensive use of its platform for human trafficking, I’m sick to my stomach. I want to rip down the post I’d published on my blog about social media marketing for small business.
But the problem is, I still stand by it. We are living in a world where the place to connect with potential customers and clients, especially for a small business, is on social media.
So, I’m back to what-the-F-do-I-do-about-this?
Well, there are some things I CAN do. The main thing is, I can make use of this world Mark Zuckerberg has created without giving him a dime.
1. I will not buy Facebook ads. (And SBOs, please know there’s absolutely no reason to. You can attract plenty of clients in your community without them.)
2. I will not write FB ad copy for my clients.
3. I will no longer click on FB ads of any kind.
But there’s more that I can do to also refuse the culture Facebook is creating with their practices.
4. I will not engage in vitriolic debate with anyone on social media.
The WSJ report outlines how Facebook’s leadership basically decided at some point that hate is good for business. I won’t participate in that.
5. I will post love and support.
I will pledge to use my business page one day a week to post free information on mental wellness and self-care.
I’m not naïve.
I know these are simple actions that Mark Z. will never know or care about. I know it may be a fraction of a drop in a globe-encompassing bucket.
But I also know I can’t keep walking through Facebook’s world without acknowledging the small part I play in it and doing the very least I can do to change it.
Join me and in our own little way, we can take Facebook back.
#TakeFacebookBack