LOL Interwebz: Facebook Is Evil. Right?

Each week in LOL Interwebz, Luke T. Harrington explores the quirks and foibles of Internet culture from a Gospel perspective.

FACEBOOK IS EVIL!

(I know that, Luke! But why are they evil this week?)

For those who aren’t up on the latest reason we’re all supposed to hate Facebook, it recently came to light that they conducted an experiment—possibly on YOU. Possibly on YOUR LOVED ONES. Basically, they manipulated users’ newsfeeds to show either generally positive posts (“Best facial scrub EVAR!!! lololol,” etc.), mostly negative posts (“My cat just died lololol”), or mostly neutral posts (“I am currently posting this post on Facebook lololol”). Following this, they measured the users’ posts for negativity and positivity to see if their emotions could be influenced by their newsfeed. And they totally could! By about 0.1%! (That’s one-tenth of one percent, or an amount that’s technically-statistically-significant-but-only-just-barely.)

Are you getting this, sheeple? Facebook wants to MANIPULATE YOUR EMOTIONS.

Y’know, like Upworthy does. And like Fox News does. Or like Funny or Die does, or like every TV program you’ve ever watched, every song you’ve ever listened to, every commercial you’ve ever seen, and every loved one you’ve ever had.

And just like you do—whenever you’re trying to cheer people up, or hurt their feelings, or make them think, or sell them something, or just get them to shut up. Or, like, pretty much all the time.

But it’s totally FACEBOOK that’s EVIL, right? It’s not you. It’s definitely not me.

Look, guys. We go through this with ever single site and service on the Web. We all flock to it when it’s new, cool, and free; we hand over all our personal information; and then we get mad when it actually starts trying to make money. How DARE they add advertising. How DARE they try to charge for their services. How DARE they try to make use of our data. They should just offer everything for free, out of the goodness of their hearts! Because, clearly, we deserve it!

Everyone looking to make money off of us is evil. Walmart is evil. Apple is evil. Google is evil. Disney is evil. And hey, maybe they are. I’m not saying they’re not. Isn’t it weird, though, how easy it is to point your finger at something monolithic and faceless? Isn’t it possible that we enjoy calling corporations evil so much because it’s an excuse to ignore the evil in our own hearts?

We like decrying Facebook, because it’s easy to hate the big empires, but—as with Walmart—we’re the ones who built the empire, and we’re the ones who sustain it. We keep logging into Facebook, day after day, earning them more and more ad revenue. And let’s face it: we do it because they’re really good at manipulating our emotions. If visiting Facebook didn’t give us a quick emotional high, we wouldn’t do it. We can’t have it both ways, though. We can’t be junkies constantly seeking out that high while still decrying the dealer who’s dishing it out—just like we can’t hate Walmart’s questionable ethics while still gobbling up the cheap merchandise those ethics facilitate.

We hate the idea of being deliberately manipulated by our newsfeed, but who among us hasn’t deliberately posted something manipulative into that same feed? A bit of vaguebooking engineered to get some sympathy? Some political trolling designed to stir the pot? An exaggerated post about our awesome lives, custom-made to inspire jealousy?

Yeah, sure, Facebook is evil—but only because we’re all evil in the exact same way. We all seek to control the ones around us, and we all seek to make ourselves the center of their world. If Facebook amplifies this, it’s only because it’s big and it’s powerful. And if you want to change that, stop giving them that power.