Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, the whole empire

Facebook is evil. I don’t say that lightly. I say evil because Facebook has killed people in my country, and adapted in a way that will kill more people in America.

Let me explain. In 2018, racist hatred was whipped up on Facebook and Instagram, leading to pogroms that killed three people and terrorized countless Muslims. To fight this scourge Sri Lanka briefly shut all Facebook properties down.

Facebook has apologized (which they can shove) and made some changes, which make the problem worse. Facebook’s bright idea was to create two classes of speech. Here is Facebook’s Nick Clegg explaining it:

I want to be really clear today — we do not submit speech by politicians to our independent fact-checkers, and we generally allow it on the platform even when it would otherwise breach our normal content rules.

This is many things. I would call it a bribe. This is no different from sliding a cop a carton of stolen cigarettes to look the other way. In exchange for blocking regulation of his company, Mark Zuckerberg is giving politicians, especially right-wing, racist politicians, a VIP pass to incite hate and violence on his platform.

Hell, if you’re a VIP customer like Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg himself will go on Fox News and defend you (and attack his competitors).

Here’s the little weasel weaseling. He’s referring to Twitter fact-checking Donald Trump’s personal account like any other user.

I think in general, private companies probably shouldn’t be in the position of doing that. And we’ve been pretty clear on our policy that we think that it wouldn’t be right for us to do fact checks for politicians and that people should be able to hear what politicians say. There is plenty of scrutiny already about politicians speech and that’s what a lot of the media does. So that handles that quite well.

And this is where he just lies.

At Facebook, we have tried to distinguish ourselves as being really strong in favor of giving people a voice and free expression and I certainly think our policies have distinguished us from some of the other tech companies in terms of being stronger on free expression and giving people a voice than a lot of other out there.

This is a lie. Facebook has the same moderation as other platforms for users. They just bribe politicians with no checks at all. In fact, he’s getting up here on Fox News to defend Trump for spreading misleading lies about voter fraud. The effect here is to suppress voting by mail and expose more people to death by Coronavirus in November.

Mark Zuckerberg is just completely out of his depth here. He’s technically brilliant and obviously good at business, but he has no political skill for what is an increasingly political role. He should have really stayed in college for the job he has now. His moral view of the universe wouldn’t survive a first-year philosophy class yet here he is, a master of the universe. He needs to resign and be an owner, not an operator.

Zuckerberg is a case of what I call malcompetence, malicious incompetence. He has risen to the level of his incompetence, and unfortunately, this has consequences for the world.

At this point, I’d rather smoke a cigarette dipped in crude oil than use any Facebook product.

So I quit.

And I Quit

Like quitting fossil fuels or tobaccos, it’s not easy. The namesake product is lame and sucks, that’s easy, but through acquisitions, FACEBOOK has needled its way into every part of life. The real social network is now WhatsApp, something once designed with ethics (not by Zuckerberg) but which he has bought and continues to corrupt.

I quit Facebook and nobody cared. Then I quit Instagram, but I was never there. When I quit WhatsApp, however, that was a problem. The night I deactivated my account my aunt called me, thinking that the family group had offended me. The next morning Amma called and scolded me, like ‘how will we share family news now’. If a product has your family doing rebuttals, that’s sticky.

But still, I quit. Right now I couldn’t go back if I tried.

This is the simplest way to quit everything. I fell in the pool and bricked my ancient iPhone. Then I just didn’t replace it. I got a dumbphone which lets me function, but I can’t run WhatsApp or anything else. So I’m free. It’s liberating. It’s a lot like being dead.

When you’re dead it’s all calm for you, all the pandemonium is on the other side. People have been contacting me and thinking I’m rude or offended, but I don’t know. I’m just dead. When you deactivate it leaves all the groups you’re in, undoubtedly causing some consternation, but I don’t care. I’m dead.

In the meantime, of course, I’m alive. I don’t check the news or get into SOMEONE IS WRONG rages, because I can’t. If I’m bored somewhere I can’t just scroll to kill time. Instead, I have to think of who I want to call, and call them.

I’m actually more in touch with people I want to be, but that’s not the point. I’m not saying that messaging apps are bad. I’m just saying that this company is. And in life, wherever possible, try not to fuck with evil companies. In many cases, this isn’t possible, but for me it is. So I left.

And that’s the main thing I get out of quitting. I get to say a big fuck you to Mark Zuckerberg and his evil-ass company, with no reservations. I’m not part of his product, I’m not him any money. I think you should still criticize him as a user, but it’s glorious when you’re not. So fuck Zuck, fuck FACEBOOK, and every evil product that they’ve slimed on. Facebook is evil and I quit. They’ll get no more eyeball from me.