Mozilla: " We’re taking a break from Facebook"

Paul Boddie paul at boddie.org.uk
Fri Mar 23 13:02:23 UTC 2018


On Friday 23. March 2018 11.12.14 psutton wrote:
> 
> try and leave facebook and it nags you and you're made to feel guilty
> you have left.

Yes, one "farewell page" I have seen tries to make you feel like you're 
betraying your friends by abandoning them. To be fair, you really would be 
doing them a favour taking them with you.

Really, this kind of thing is part and parcel of the despicable psychological 
manipulation that Facebook and their kind employ. Despite former employees of 
Facebook and other companies publicly expressing their regret and disgust at 
their former employers and even at their own roles during their employment, 
many people still seem to find it hard to believe that they are being 
exploited and manipulated themselves.

But again, these are precisely the traits that those indulging in predatory 
behaviour rely upon to continue their activities: people don't want to be told 
that they have been tricked or are addicted to something. I am sure someone 
who has a background in this field can list hundreds of studies and papers on 
such topics.

Individuals might be "on Facebook" out of convenience, perhaps due to peer 
pressure. We should help them find alternatives, and that will have to be the 
subject of another message.

Organisations have more responsibility, however. Most of them are only using 
Facebook to promote themselves, FSFE included, and this merely enables the 
perpetrators of these misdeeds and crimes because it draws people in thinking 
that they can (and should) do all their online business via such sites, and 
that if the likes of FSFE use Facebook "then it can't be as bad as people 
say".

Quite why Mozilla didn't "take a break" from Facebook when the Snowden 
revelations surfaced is another matter, but it is easy to get conditioned to 
accept whatever the "new normal" happens to be, I suppose.

Paul



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