The first person to know about our country’s renewed problems
with racism turned out to be Facebook’s algorithm.
Right after the election, I re-entered
the Facebook waters after largely ignoring it for the bulk of the 2016
campaign. I instantly realized what a tremendous mistake that had been. The
Trump voters came out of the woodwork that week and I should have seen it
coming. Their feeds and their posts were stacked deep with anti-Hillary
propaganda, anti-Obama sentiments and an easily deduced resentment of minorities
and women.
At first, I blamed myself. If only I had been there through
2016, I could have shown extended family and former classmates they were being
led astray. That the posts they were sharing were totally inaccurate. That the
comments they were sharing were racist. That Donald Trump was lying to them.
However, it wouldn’t have mattered. As has been noted by many
in the past nine months – Trump
voters have been conned and will not listen to reason. They believe that
their truth is the indisputable truth and those sharing “facts” are instead
sharing “fake news” and damn it’s a terrible time to be alive.
The problem with the Facebook ad platform – or the beauty of
it, depending on your point of view – is that it brings ads directly to you. Beyond
serving them up based on your specific interests, it allows others to share
that advertising directly with you as a virtual word of mouth.
Think of the Mom test. If my Mom sends me a stupid ad, I’m
going to watch it. Even if it’s incredibly stupid and I have no interest in the
ad, I will watch it since my Mom watched it.
Well if my Mom was a horrible racist, she would have spent
2016 sending me anti-Hillary memes that I would never have seen myself.
That’s why the reported $100,000 figure that Russian
interests spent on fake political advertising is so scary, because that
$100,000 can turn into millions upon millions of views if the ad goes “viral”
and what goes viral during campaign season?
Not only were these horrible Hillary memes getting shared,
but they were getting shared personally
from one to another. The “word of mouth” aspect gave them credibility. Instead
of saying, “I saw this Trump ad on Facebook,” it becomes, “Uncle Rico showed me
this about Hillary,” and so on and so forth. The lies spread like viruses and
the whole country becomes infected.
I had been fed up with Facebook for years, but I kept my
account active through 2016 even if I rarely visited. Following the election, I
determined that I
needed to stay on, if only to
contradict the people in my network that, to my dismay, had revealed themselves
as racist Trump voters.
I learned very, very quickly that racist Trump voters do not
like being told they are racist Trump voters. As a great rapper once said,
“The hard-headed always gotta feel it to believe it.” My words weren’t going to
convince them that they were just the latest to be conned by Trump. They’ll be
convinced themselves through his actions. And if they don’t get convinced, then
they weren’t conned – they were outright racists.
The steady stream of Facebook news related to their ads over
the past few weeks finally caused me to throw in the towel. Despite any good
intentions I may have had about confronting racists on Zuckerberg’s platform,
there is too much work to be done at Facebook for me to support them any
longer.
I deleted my Facebook account. I strongly urge you to do so
as well.
The problem for Facebook is the same facing many Silicon
Valley companies who have no idea how to control the technology they have
created. It’s like when a bot is sent off to Twitter to learn how to be human
and become
a racist piece of trash within hours.
Our robot friends cannot see through the hate that has
bubbled up throughout our country. There is money to be made by mining the hate
that lives in the underbelly of our country. It’s always been there. It was only
Facebook that figure out how to pinpoint exactly where that underbelly was
located.
The reaction from Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg following the
election helped my breakup. How could they not see what was going on? How could
Zuckerberg not understand what was taking place? Why did it take a personal
appeal from Obama to figure it out?
Facebook has a long, long road to traverse before I return.
Handing over approximately 3,000 Russian-funded ads is a good start. But it is
just the start.
I hope I return to Facebook someday because it means
Facebook will have fixed its problems. I am not holding my breath.
Follow me on Twitter
Comments
Post a Comment