I started a thread on my Facebook page the other day to grab the attention of anyone I’ve still not made alternative links with. I said I’ve had enough of being messed about by social media. After a few exchanges and various emails, it was clear that most of my friends thought I should swap WordPress for Substack and keep social media accounts just to get articles out there.

I could see the sense in what they were saying but as a solution, it didn’t quite answer what I was feeling. I knew I hadn’t finished the thinking because I was having trouble explaining why I wanted to dump the Facebook account.

Protector of Propaganda

The most immediate trigger for my feeling was this notice from FB…

…which, in the inimitable style of social media-botty work, left me completely clueless as to what they were talking about (you try looking through your news feed and identifying the post which isn’t there any more). I hit the button to request a review but, rather than giving me a box to explain why I was objecting, it gave me a list of bad excuses for posting pornography to choose from (naturally, I hadn’t posted any.)

This article from Skwawkbox gave me the clue I needed…

… Skwawkbox had shared a post about an Israeli propaganda video that had been exposed as a piece of amateur misdirection, and I had posted either the Skwawkbox article or the video that demonstrated what they’d done (I can’t remember which). Skwawkbox’s own article had been taken down, and the writer’s account limited, exactly as mine had, and another friend said it had happened to her.

That though, wasn’t what took me to the end of my tether. It was that immediately after that, a Facebook ‘suggested for you’ link turned up on my feed, inviting me to watch the latest version of Israel’s propaganda film.

Shortly afterwards, I got a sponsored link showing a clean, tidy nurse in a well-lit hospital saying they needed help because they had just suffered a direct hit by a missile. The vid switched very briefly to a dark, debris-strewn hospital ward then a blast-hole in a wall, then back to the pristine nurse saying ‘it’s been a terrible day and it’s going to be a terrible night.’ But the nurse and the hospital weren’t from Gaza. The text of the ad was as follows…

Don’t get me wrong – I know there have been some rocket strikes in Tel Aviv and I understand that a lot of Israeli people are very frightened but my goodness, we all know where help is urgently needed right now – and most of us know a mash-up video when we see one.

This wasn’t a co-incidence either, was it?

BBC Balance is Bol…

You know how that goes – the ‘BBC Balance’ technique. Always counter two minutes of truth telling with a pile of nonsense presented as ‘the other side’, as if our only options are a scanty thing that’s true or a pile of horse-shit. For example, when I was campaigning on the left as a Labour Party officer, I was forever getting centrist and right-wing propaganda ads in my feed. When I was busy with the women’s rights campaign, I had a daily barrage of Stonewall and Mermaids ads. In recent weeks the desperate plight of the people of Palestine has been my major campaign topic, and so the ads in my feed have been all about poor, unfortunate, brave, wonderful Israel.

People don’t suddenly change track because an opposite view is presented, and anyway I have never lacked sympathy for either trans people or Israelis who are trapped in an apartheid situation, so the vast amounts of money that went into those counter-campaigns must have had some other aim – perhaps trying to make people like me think we’re on the margins, that our view isn’t ‘normal’? Whatever. It’s annoying and over time, it gets you down. I almost preferred it when I wasn’t on any hot political campaigns and just got loads of underwear and make-up ads.

It’s worth remembering that when you place a Facebook ad, they present a lovely little message saying ‘leave it to us, we’ll work out who to show your ad to based on your page activity’. It’s also worth remembering that the appearances that annoyed me during that Skwawkbox story were not all sponsored ads. There were direct choices by Facebook, trying to lead me and people who use my page away from dissenting views on what’s happening in Palestine.

Underwear ads

I used to get annoyed when my page got littered with make-up and underwear ads. I suppose that was because I’m listed as female, and type the word ‘woman’ quite a lot. You see ads more often if you pause over them when scrolling which is unfair, as one of the common reasons for pausing when scrolling is because you’re thinking, for example, ‘bloody hell look, another effing underwear ad!’

Discord, doubt and division

I chose the title of this piece because I think what the people of this country most urgently need is to find our common ground, in order to push back against an abominably bad government and a dysfunctional political system. That’s why the manufacture of discord, doubt and division is the main goal of our enemies. The mainstream media are the voice of those enemies. In the case of Facebook, we don’t have to guess. Zuckerberg’s company had a leak a few years back.

A team had put together a report demonstrating that because the prime action of algorithms is to keep people on site, they will note what people pause on or comment on, and show them more of that -– and because people pause or comment when they see something they disagree with or something that frightens them, that leads to rows. Rows create big, long threads, typed fast and furious, threads which attract the attention of the algorithms – vicious circle. People who aren’t visibly involved in any political battles just get the usual stream of capitalist ‘you aren’t good enough’, ‘you need this’ stuff.

Bearing in mind that people are more likely to go where ‘doomscrolling’ leads them if they’re already bored or tired, deliberately leading them into disputes and/or feelings of inadequacy is pretty damned destructive.

The leaked report actually advised Zuckerberg that they should stop what they were doing because they were at least in part responsible for the bad feeling and polarization we’re seeing in politics, as well as other well-documented problems in our society.

Zuckerberg reputedly sent the report back with a note ‘don’t show me anything like this again.’

Which is why I suddenly find I have a heck of a lot to say about how all this happened, and have written a series on the topic to post over the next few days. I’ll put links here below, so if you have a very large coffee mug and a lot of biscuits, you’ll be able to read them all at once (I’m not sure that’s wise, but…!)

For now, there are two things I really want to underline.

First, there’s a whole list of topics to come, and my friends and family have different views on some of them, but we don’t often fight. We argue and debate, when we’re in the mood — but we stay united. I daresay you and your real life associates do the same. I doubt many people have exactly the same feelings about everything and I’m sure most of us have ways of dealing with that, so why do we so consistently fall out over them on social media? It has to be manufactured. I present this series as a test, to see if we’ve survived all that social media.

Second, if you spend time in conversations on social media, please think of me and try to step in as a peacemaker when you see good people led to fall out over this or that — we need to keep reminding ourselves that social media is designed to do that — it’s leading us by the nose, and we should not comply.

I’ll add live links below as I finish and check the articles. I’d like to know — How much do you mind if I disagree with you on one or more of them? Could you manage to post your “yes but”s in the comments? Could I manage to comment on the comments in a way that helps us both learn more about other people’s views, or would it all descend into “how dare you”s and blockings, pile-ons and unfollowings? Let’s see. First, here’s what happened to me last week on TwitX …

Click here to read Twits, Cops and Sisters

Click here to read From Assange to AI

Click here to read From Blairites to Sex-Workers

I haven’t finished the other two yet, but will add links when I do…

From Russell Brand to the Sycamore Gap

From Stonewall to the Bethlehem Wall

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Cheers,

Kay

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