Are we all just keeping Facebook on the assuption that it connects us to people?
When Facebook started getting traction among Filipino college students, all it had were pictures of travel, food, angsty adolescent rants – typical slice of life posts about your friends that made every item interesting. Little did everyone know that less than a decade later, the platform will be home to misinformation, hate, conspiracies and the eventual slow death of democracies.
By 2015, I knew it was time to bail out of the platform. But how can I, when I thought I could use the platform to counter the lies spread by malicious users. And so, I tried to talk it out with users out of my network. I eventually took in some verbal violence from people who don’t even know me, and a doxing that happened thanks to a former boss who did not share my beliefs.
To no avail, the peddlers of fake information prevailed, my industry languished as I predicted, and from there I was on the final straw. But I couldn’t leave Facebook – friends and family were still on the platform, and I was afraid of letting go of the connections. I deactivated my account and stuck to Meta’s (then Facebook) messenger platform and kept my head low, after all engaging with the platform was pure poison at this point.
But then I joined Project SPARTA last year and I had to make a presentation for a data storytelling class. I took interest in my personal data Facebook has kept and mined for years. Hey, no need to survey people and worry how to not misuse their data – I’ll use mine. So I reactivated, downloaded my data, cringed as I parsed through data, and made silly Excel charts.
I did not mind that I lost so much time on the platform. The pages pushed to engage me were part of my interests after all. But exploration of that data made me go back to my real questions: Is it still worth it to sit around all this noise? Am I still engaging with friends? Are we all just keeping Facebook on the assuption that it connects us to people?
After that coursework, I deleted my Facebook profile.No regrets at all.
Photo by Roman Martyniuk on Unsplash