Why I will remain a friend of Facebook

HE CUT an awkward figure, did Mark Zuckerberg, in his big boy’s uniform of suit and tie, appearing in front of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees answering questions about Facebook. Zuckerberg and his creation are in trouble, it appears, with Facebook’s share price all over the shop. It seems they have been harvesting data from its users, of which I am one. A very active one, in fact. Will the latest revelations stop me or make me delete my account? They will not.

Facebook is a phenomenon that you either get or you do not and an awful lot of people do. In the fourth quarter of last year it had 2.2 billion active users – more than a quarter of the world’s population. Rightly or wrongly, Facebook creates a sense of community in that you can connect to someone at some point anywhere in the world.

It’s all totally false, of course because your “friends” on Facebook can be chums you’ve known for 35 years or people you’ve never actually met. (I have both.) Looking at other people’s profiles it is impossible to distinguish the two unless someone specifically makes the point that they are old friend or casual acquaintance. This means that your IRL – as we say “in real life” on Facebook – friend might make some totally innocuous remark, one of their friends who they have never met might provide an incendiary reply and you end up feeling furious.

The potential for misunderstanding is there. My hairdresser (we are Facebook friends) told me that he was tagged as being “with” a woman he had never met and the ensuing row with his wife could have led to divorce. There is no tone, no context. It is as easy to take offence as it is to log on and when you meet a previously unknown Facebook friend IRL it can be a shock.

And yet… it has been said that Facebook is the modern day equivalent of a religion and there is something in that. Whereas once we all felt bound together by our attendance at church or synagogue or wherever now we do not. Facebook, however, is a place where everybody knows your name.

Courtesy of Facebook, I am in touch with people I last saw decades ago during my American childhood. It keeps me up on people who have emigrated. Like everyone else, up to and including Mark Zuckerberg, I do not know where it will lead. But I do know that it, or an equivalent, is here to stay.