AGONY
UNCLE
Q: The more I discover about
Facebook the less I like it
- from fake news, to perva-
sive user-tracking, the Cam-
bridge Analytica scandal
and targeting dodgy ads at
me, it seems like it is finding
ways to make money out
of keeping tabs on every-
thing that my friends or I do
online. I’ve tried setting up
accounts on different social-
media platforms like Mas-
todon and Diaspora, but no
matter how much I nag my
friends and family or make
the case for privacy they just
won’t leave Facebook (or Ins-
tagram or Whatsapp, which
Facebook also owns). It’s like
they’ve got a bad case of tech-
giant Stockholm syndrome.
Should I delete my Facebook
account and risk losing touch
with everyone or should I
just accept my lot as a data
point in a dystopian surveil-
lance capitalist future?
Mark, California
A: You’re not alone. Dilemmas
abound about our dependence
on this huge, sinister adver-
tising oligopoly called social
media. It colonizes free time
and commodifies social life.
There is evidence linking its
overuse with mental-health
problems. And yet: it’s quite
a useful way of chatting with
people and organizing events.
And so we stay.
they represent different ways
to change the world.
My instinct is to err with
the German philosopher
Adorno’s maxim: ‘The wrong
life cannot be lived rightly.’
We can make a difference, but
not through lifestyle changes
alone, since we live in such a
deeply compromised world.
We must upend the social,
economic and political order
that allows tech giants to get to
that position of power in the
first place. I’m thinking about
building political coalitions
to break them up, nationalize
them or – much like the BBC
in the UK – create publicly
funded alternatives.I admire your effort to try
ethical alternatives. But I’m
not surprised that the flock
hasn’t followed. It requires
effort to opt out of something
so hegemonic and universal
as Facebook or WhatsApp.
The problem links to a
general political and cultural
problem. Should we quit the
mainstream and escape to the
fringes or engage with society?
These two options are not
mutually exclusive – the Zone
to Defend (ZAD) commune
in France, for example, is a
microcosm of an alternative
life that has confronted the
state and halted the construc-
tion of an entire airport – butI think what we don’t like
about social media, beyond
the unsavoury data or elec-
toral practices that we can,
theoretically, regulate away, is
that it represents an impover-
ished form of life. Memes are
funny, don’t get me wrong. But
isn’t the desire to leave social
media a displaced desire for
a richer social existence? And
the root cause of that sense of
lack isn’t Facebook, but this
40-year neoliberal project that
we have been living under.
Social media isn’t stopping us
from inviting our neighbours
whose names we don’t know
round for dinner or finally
setting up that community-
run film festival. Used in the
right way, it might even help
facilitate it.
For now, try to use Face-
book without letting it use
you. Sparingly, critically.
Download your photos and
save them to a hard-drive.
Don’t tag yourself in photos.
Use a pseudonym. Slowly,
as we build a better world
through sustained political
action, as others have done
before, we might find that the
power of titans like that other
Mark in California simply
withers away. OEMAIL YOUR ETHICAL DILEMMAS TO
[email protected]Ethical and political dilemmas abound these days. Seems like
we’re all in need of a New Internationalist perspective.
Enter stage: Agony Uncle.
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019 81
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