*FB IS BETTER THAN YOU*
Wow. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/07/18/swisher-zuckerberg This is why Gruber has his own website. So he can call the plays his way. Swisher can't say what she's thinking because she's trying to seem impartial, though even she has a hard time with this one.
Because Zuck is trying to substitute fb for the rest of the Internet for so many people, he intends to remain impartial to content, unless that content could get him arrested. So until it is a crime to willfully allow falsehoods, fb will not interfere with content. Therefore, I can infer from that if it was not a crime to encourage suicide, fb would not interfere with that either. Wow.
Fb is just another website, one that aggregates content, just like the newspaper of yore. Fb is NOT the whole damn portal. It conceptually took over from AOL for many of its users. But that was an coincidence, not a sign (or mandate) that fb is therefore a portal. It's still just a website. The Internet changed underneath Zuck, which gave websites more social power than ISPs. Because he believes that because fb is an all-important portal, it therefore must play the role of a "dumb pipe" to all content. Every portal is "dumb", or it is lousy at being a portal. Every website either creates or aggregates content, or both. But they all "curate", or they are lousy at being a website. Zuck's inflated ego can't accept the fact that fb will never be anything more than a website, albeit one of the most important in the world. But it is just a street, and not the whole city.
Considering the success of fb in spite of it being lousy at curating, I guess this means that fb has transcended the website genre and is in a new category, one where they write their own rules. Not curating bs is a stupid rule. But it's their walled garden. Inside, they curate for each person from a very un-curated collection of user-generated content (and content that fb is paid to contribute). I would say that fb is a "website" only in the sense that "a highway" can very loosely be called "a street". Fb is something new. Perhaps from their users' perspective, fb is better understood as The Matrix. Stay in contact with family and friends by submitting to "the fb way". Plug in and stay plugged in always - mobile devices are essential.
*YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE*
Fb has gamified the Internet. It's most loyal users are ceaselessly trying to win that game. But the House always wins in the end. This is crazy. The currency on fb's green felt table is literally "our attention". Fb is literally gambling with people's attention, and their advertisers are like the crooked mobsters who run the place, and fb owns the building. Normal people always lose if they stay too long, but "it's fun", in the same way that casinos can be fun.
Maybe I'm thinking too hard about this. Or maybe Zuck is running a business that manipulates (or controls?) what people think about, how often they think about it, and with whom they think about it. In their drive to give people only what they want, and thus give hungry content companies some very tasty quantifiable data and ad revenue, fb removed the very activity that formerly defined what people "wanted": their decision TO or NOT TO read/play/watch something.
FB HAS REMOVED THE CRITICAL THINKING FROM EVERY FORM AND STYLE OF COMMUNICATION THEY HAVE ABSORBED OR UTILIZED. The first step "had been" to use critical thinking to decide three things. Is something from a trusted source? Is it potentially valuable or useful? What attitude does friends/family/community have about this? Fb didn't force all news sources to seem potentially equal in trust; the nature of the inexpensive and open Internet did that. But fb abused their powerful position to sure take advantage of that situation.
"Attention" had become a currency, and fb positioned themselves early as a bank you could invest your "attention" in. They could have benevolently reinvested that currency in trusted known brands. Yet instead, they reinvested it in any brand that increased their customers' investment. Inadvertently, they intensified their customer loyalty by dismantling their customers' definition of truth. When a company's currency is "attention", the relevant ethics will be comparable to those of licensed psychotherapists, and certainly not to the ethics of Wall Street.
*ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL*
Small towns are pleasantly relaxed and are importantly supportive of their own, like an ideal extended family. But a "small-town mentality" is not a good thing (see Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"). It values local rumor and opinion over the thoughts of nationally-curated thinkers and scientists. It suggests that statements are only valuable if you have respect for, and preferably in-person knowledge of, the source. I'm in the Show-Me State, so I am familiar with the idea.
Fb amplified the thoughts/feelings/suspicions of friends/family up-to-and-beyond the brands of news-gathering organizations (who employ reporters), the brands of educational institutions (who employ scientists), and the brands of printed reference (such as encyclopedias and dictionaries). Prior to fb, what Uncle Horace thought about warts or immigration or God was not as culturally prominent as the statements made by the aforementioned brands. "The fb way" places his statements on equal footing with theirs.
Before fb, each of us made independent decisions about what to read/play/watch, bestowing value upon certain content, based on A SCALE OF HIGH-TO-LOW TRUST IN A BRAND. We had been outsourcing our "common sense" to aggregators such as reporters and scientists and encyclopedias, because few adults/children have a flawless bs detector. These days, that curated dividing line between ignorant people and knowledgeable people has become irreparably smudged and smeared. Now, all of that "common sense" stuff must be done "in-house", in our own brains. Unfortunately, "media literacy" is a relatively new skill that is rarely taught in school, in the home, or out in the local community.
Fb values content on A SCALE OF HIGH-TO-LOW WEB TRAFFIC. (High web traffic is awarded by having the most expensive ads attached to them.) And because most of those who share our culture have submitted to "the fb way", FB'S VALUES HAVE BECOME THE VALUES OF OUR CULTURE. Thus, as a culture, we have transitioned from one that evaluates truth on a scale of trust, to one that evaluates it on a scale of sensationalism.
*WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS THE TRUTH*
Whether you accept the fb way or not, whether you stay off of fb or not, "high popularity" has become the primary way most people elevate statements to importance. And most people's important statements can render any of your less-important statements as false, because important statements become "truth" over time.
Truth has always been the ability of a statement to gain a place in history by beating out all competing statements for "a seat at the table". But the sources of statements at the table "had been" respected folks curated by their respective cultures, and were typically wealthy urbanites.
Now there is no curation. Every statement by every person in every location has a shot at getting a seat. And in doing so, perhaps they are going to crowd out several much more verifiable and useful statements.
Imagine if all 20th-century tabloids (the cheapest magazines in the US grocery check-out lanes that most people ignore) swapped their readership numbers with the readership of all 20th-century newspapers. Imagine what that would have done to society. That is happening, and is a result of "the fb way". And Trump is now our president. Holy shit. Glad fb isn't too popular outside of the US. Hope it stays that way. Uh-oh. Never mind.