Saturday, March 16, 2019

How to solve the problems of social media like Facebook?

I think this question [originally posed for Ask Slashdot] was actually triggered by the New Zealand massacre. One aspect of the tragedy is that the monster chose Facebook as his primary broadcast media for his butchery, deliberately hoping to start a trend of murder. I think that makes Facebook an accessory to the crime, but we can't kill Facebook, can we? And would it matter anyway? If not Facebook, then some other website...

I hope you have a better solution and will share it here, but here is the best one I've been able to come up with: FFF (Five For Facebook).

Starting immediately, my objective is to limit my contact with Facebook to five minutes per day. FFF. I'm going to check to see if anyone is trying to contact me via Facebook, and if so and if I'm willing to be contacted, then I'll tell that person what channel to use. I will NOT write or even link on Facebook, but only use Facebook as a pager. Period.

I think FFF is the right thing for me, but extending it under Kant's Categorical Imperative, I think widespread adoption of FFF would also hit Facebook where it lives. Engagement time DOWN.

Still hoping for your better suggestions, but I'll go ahead and raise three implementation concerns as secondary questions:

(1) What is the best way to mark my Facebook account as an FFF limited communications channel?

(2) What are the best alternative channels to use? Perhaps a scratch email address is the simplest? I don't want to be handing out my real email address just because someone claims to be an old friend.

(3) What about legitimate groups that insist on announcing their public events on Facebook? Any way to handle them within FFF or just better to sanction such groups, too?

One more time: I really want to hear your better idea or improvements to the FFF idea. I for one don't need any more horror stories about how bad Facebook is.