Facebook is Not a Necessity
But I’m missing out on career resources because of it’s user-base chokehold
For once I feel a smidgen of hope after listening to the congressional antitrust hearings yesterday, specifically the grilling of Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. It’s just a smidgen, though. Money talks, and man does Facebook have a lot of it. The whirlwind thrill may have peaked already, however, the conglomerate, threaded throughout every part of the world with more than 2.6 billion monthly active users, will probably walk away with a mere slap on the wrist. Whatever multi-million-dollar settlement that might hint at a mea culpa, quietly folded into obscurity by the rapid pace of the news cycle.
But some of us can’t let it slide. We won’t allow a company led by people who have never had to deal with real accountability, simply offer a lop-sided smile and a light shrug, saunter off and continue business as usual. Our numbers are small but we are growing. Even while facing exclusion from critical resources that some Facebook groups offer, we are not backing down.
Still, and much to my absolute frustration, I sat staring at a nondescript error prompt on Facebook’s website the other day as I tried to register a business account. My alma mater announced that a new group for science writing students and alum was available on Facebook. I had cancelled my personal Facebook account two years ago, back then resigned to accepting the loss of access to important science writing groups, but it’s so much harder to turn away today when everything in the world is upside down. I did not want to reactivate my existing account to use a platform that has devastated our democracy and thrives on the spread of misinformation. And yet I felt I had no other options. In the end, I reasoned that an account exclusive to my writing, free from the low-effort friends and family interactions, and instead dedicated to journalism and writing, was a compromise I could stomach. As long as I didn’t think on it too much.
Try as I might, though, I kept getting the same unhelpful error, prompting me to try again later. It turns out, the cryptic message is because Facebook somehow knows that I already have an existing account even though I’m using an unassociated email address. How it knows that information, well let’s just say the company wouldn’t want people to dive too deep into the level of data scraping it performs based on browser, device, and location information for starters, hence the obscure error. Regardless of how the system recognizes me as a former user, Facebook’s policy is “the real you or forget it” and that’s why it won’t let me register a second account. After listening to the hearings yesterday though, in a weird way, I’m thankful for the policy. It was this exclusionary barrier that kept me from sliding back into conforming at the expense of my principals.
By choosing not to support Facebook, I’m locked out of the valuable resources of my alma mater and other science writing groups. The platform is selected because it’s simple to use and a substantial number of people, especially in media and journalism, are on it already. However, by taking a stand, I’m kept from accessing critical information for my career. I actively choose not to be swayed by the path of least resistance because I do not view Facebook as a necessity like phones or electricity; it should not hold such a status in our society, not in its current unregulated, monopolistic iteration at least.
At the end of the day, it appears that I’m the one missing out the most because it’s hard to research and find leads when you’re stuck in quarantine, but I’m coming to terms with this reality. The network I’m building will eventually pay off in the long run, and it will work independent of a platform that threatens our societal framework.
Originally published at https://taralcampbell.com on July 30, 2020.
