By DAVID A. CHAUVIN //
On Oct. 4, we were transported back to 2004 – a time before Facebook.
Facebook’s entire platform was offline: No Facebook. No Instagram. No WhatsApp. Three pillars of modern communications and society’s digital experience – indeed, the definition of “Internet” for millions of people – were completely inaccessible.
Suddenly, we were all 11-year-old David Chauvins on a road trip to Gettysburg, mourning a Game Boy with dead batteries. Of course, as a kid, this just meant historical-trivia car games with my parents; Monday’s outage sent shockwaves through business and media, throughout the entire world.
What’s truly remarkable about this outage – and what may get lost in the shuffle – was the context in which it occurred. Days before the blackout, The Wall Street Journal published leaked internal Facebook documents shining a bright light on some disturbing Pentagon Papers-esque information. Whistleblower Frances Haugen appeared on “60 Minutes” the night before with a damning, and buzzworthy, condemnation of Facebook’s practices.
It was not the ideal time, to say the least, for Facebook’s empire to go dark.
Virtually since the beginning of Facebook, there have been uncomfortable, unanswered questions about compromised privacy, the dangers of “screentime” and the impact of its increasing footprint of misinformation and extremism. After the fallout of the 2016 election and the scourge of misinformation on the platform, Facebook executives have regularly been called to testify in front of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, always assuring the public that the platform is regulated and safe and a force for good. The Wall Street Journal’s reporting disproved all of that.
David Chauvin: Time to Face(book) the facts.
As a marketer, I found two revelations most startling and relevant. The first is that Facebook knew Instagram is toxic for teens, and doubled down on it anyway.
According to WSJ, Facebook conducted detailed research that concluded Instagram was developed to be purposefully addictive and aggressively promote sexualized content and “people’s best moments,” which directly accelerates depression and negative body issues in teens, particularly teenage girls. The documents showed that, in an attention economy, keeping users engrossed on the platform was more important than the real-world consequences.
The second is that Facebook facilitated the spread of sensationalism, polarity and rage on its platform: Amid a decrease in users liking and directly interacting with content, the company changed its algorithms to better connect users through a curated newsfeed.
While this may have been intended to build stronger connections and make advertising more effective, the consequence was that creators needed to be more extreme in their content to stand out among an increasingly homogenous mist. The algorithm change even went a step further by emphasizing the visibility of the most extreme content to help encourage likes and shares – a cycle that has led to vitriolic discourse, split families and encouraged violence in the streets.
Even knowing all of this, I’m still going to share this article on both my personal Facebook page and my company’s Facebook page. It may be hypocritical to be ethically opposed to the way a company operates internally while using it to promote my professional life. But such is the world we live in – beholden to digital monoliths.
Wrong message: Social media’s obsession with body image is psychologically damaging, and Facebook admits it — at least, secretly.
Facebook is infrastructure. Facebook is essential to keeping up with old classmates and an essential tool for municipalities, schools, brands and nonprofit organizations looking to connect with their constituencies. Facebook is at the center of everything, and public entities need to be where their consumers are.
That’s why public board meetings are held on Facebook Live and schools make sure to post their COVID response plans and updates there, so everyone can see they’re being “transparent.” Facebook is so ubiquitous that if you don’t post, you’re not “engaging in the conversation” – unacceptable for anyone in the communications business.
Which brings us back to the Oct. 4 outage. While comical on the surface, it left hundreds of millions of people stranded. There were not only digital consequences, but widespread, real-world consequences: People lost vital connections to their families; companies lost money; and, sad but true, social media addicts lost access to their drug, without any warning or a safety net.
That type of reliance on one company – a company exposed to be utterly lacking scruples – is terrifying.
Now that all of Facebook is back online, the most important thing we can do is not ignore the information we now have. It’s time to acknowledge the impact Facebook has on our society.
David A. Chauvin is executive vice president of ZE Creative Communications.
