To go on Facebook, or not to go on Facebook

If you don’t have an account on Facebook, then it may be difficult to understand how millions of people continue to stay on a social media platform that has let their private data be pilfered.

As one of those deluded millions, the reason why Facebook is so addictive, in my humble opinion, is that it gives people a way to connect with others while still enabling you to brag incessantly.

Even the most modest among us cannot resist posting pics of themselves at the highest points in our lives. That’s because the Facebook feed forces your friends to look at your posts, check the obligatory “Like” and thus provide you with that ego boost you crave.

Now it appears that our egos might be the end of democracy. In recent weeks, we learned that Facebook data was mined to help influence voters during the 2016 American election. This is probably how America ended up with a president who is to leadership as a racist, ignorant, misogynistic fish is to a bike.

Data from Facebook accounts was taken and sold to Cambridge Analytica, a data organization run by Bond villains. There’s secret footage of Cambridge employees describing the means by which they will help you win an election

— for instance, by planting women in the path of your opponent with hopes of catching him/ her in a compromising position. Apparently no one involved has heard of the #metoo movement or basic human decency.

OK, so Cambridge Analytica, a company I know nothing about, has my data — what’s the big deal? Children’s Place has my data and so far they’ve only used it to send me text messages about “AMAZING SALES!” So what can the harm be? It appears that Cambridge Octopussy used that data to tailor campaigns — Brexit, Trump, various banana republic dictators — directly to you and to your friends.

Misinformation and propaganda have been rampant in every age — it’s not like

Fox News and other players invented it. (The only thing Fox News has invented is the most committed ass-kissing known to man and throwing to a random country music musician during a news show.) But using this technology, fake news can be directed at the voters accurately.

They tested phrases and fake stories for maximum scare factor. For certain stories they might target your high strung great-aunt — on Facebook, she would see more pictures of immigrants “swamping ” the country than you would, and lose her mind accordingly. The techniques applied have been described as “psychological warfare.”

So with this threat to democracy, what is our responsibility as users of social media? Some people I know have left Facebook. I’ve wanted to email them to let them know they will not be forgotten, but I’ve already misplaced their email addresses. Now they’re out there in the universe, existing but not existing — those poor, poor social media Schrodinger’s cats.

From an Indigenous perspective, Facebook has been an incredible tool for restoring community connections across vast geography and for organizing Indigenous peoples around common causes.

Without Facebook, I will lose this connection to First Nations people, and that scares me.

So then, what is a principled neechee to do? Some of us have suggested a return to the old ways — that being Myspace. Myspace was this quaint place where you could add friends, make blog posts and put pictures up. It wasn’t as dynamic as Facebook, but it did have Tom. Tom welcomed you when you joined — with a personal email — and then he would remain one of your friends forever.

Are any of you friends with Mark Zuckerberg ? Not that anyone would want to be friends with that jackass. He was literally sued by his friends; that was the first clue that Facebook was never about friendship.

Myspace Tom cared about us. And we just left him high and dry.

But perhaps it isn’t too late. Maybe if we hurry, Tom will welcome us once again back to a simpler time.