Facebook gets new corporate name, but societal carnage continues

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks it’s a big deal that he has rebranded the social media giant under a new corporate name. He says the name change to “Meta” helps focus the corporation’s future internet reach beyond just social media.

The last thing the nation needs is more Zuckerberg reach.

It would seem Facebook has done enough harm to culture as it is, without generating more technological chaos. Facebook began as a rather benign and techy place for people to dazzle each other with photos of puppies and parties. It was fun to pile up social media friends and “likes,” letting the technology drive a cultural bus that has wasted time, distracted people, and diminished the psychological states of users. The Facebook phenomenon is classic technological determinism. Because something is possible technologically, people believe they must use it. Cultural values then get shifted under the influence of the technology. Sadly, Americans have long suffered under the false notion that if something is technologically glitzy, it must necessarily be great.

The Facebook empire, which includes the photo-sharing service Instagram, has made the nation angrier and more polarized. It has inserted itself into — and taken sides in — political and ideological issues. It has affected the mental health of millions of people, especially the younger generation. Privacy has been compromised for millions of people who are valued only for their eyeballs and credit cards. Facebook is used by drug cartels, human-trafficking operations and extremists of all stripes. And what’s worse is that the company apparently knew of this havoc and just said “So what?”

The nation owes many thanks to the Facebook whistleblower for confirming what many analysts had already concluded was massive corporate negligence.

Perhaps nobody could have seen this monster developing in the early stages of the social media explosion. There was much mystery of what the effects might be for people who spent too much of their lives on social media platforms.

Then the evidence piled up, and it became clear that social media was degrading rather than enhancing culture. 

Facebook was clearly unprepared and apparently unwilling to manage the unfolding bedlam. The Facebook executives tried to referee the site, but content moderation practices have proven vague and obviously ineffective. 

There is no doubt that moderating a social media platform is trying to manage the unmanageable. Zuckerberg and his cronies should have pondered that as they created a public sphere that spiraled out of control, and then turned the refereeing over to unaccountable and detached keyboard geeks sitting in Silicon Valley basements — or to inhuman “algorithms” and artificial intelligence programs.

Now the nation and, indeed, the world have to deal with a huge cultural force that has diminished humanity and stoked societal division. Facebook and other social media outlets snookered people into thinking online life was a suitable replacement for genuine and rational human interaction.

These social media behemoths have become part of the “establishment,” and are not looking out for the interests of regular people. The financial empires created by these tech giants are clearly all about the money — and lots of it. Instead of social media giants genuinely empowering individuals, as they misled consumers to believe was the case, big tech is exploiting the masses for profit, power, and pushing of ideology.

It is too late for a do-over. The phenomenon is not going away. It would be nice, certainly, if people would use social media in moderation, or even swear off it entirely. Average Facebook users should ponder how and whether the site serves an essential function in their lives that couldn’t be more productively filled with other activities.

Think of the dent that could be put in Facebook’s cultural power if half (or more!) of all Americans just stopped going on the site, or at least, cut their usage in half. Facebook’s financial picture would be diminished, and the site would be less attractive for advertisers and investors. At the very least, Facebook users would be happier and more socially adjusted.

Facebook and the other social media manipulators grew like weeds into American culture and there wasn’t an effective herbicide in sight. American culture has been disrupted and bought by tech entrepreneurs with broken moral compasses. In short, we’ve been had.

It is high time Americans borrowed the line from the movie “Network,” where the disgusted anchorman tells viewers to go to their windows and shout, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

Jeffrey McCall is a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University. He has worked as a radio news director, a newspaper reporter and as a political media consultant. Follow him on Twitter @Prof_McCall.