Tag Archives: social media

Ethics of the Attention Economy

Found this article, Ethics of the Attention Economy: The Problem of Social Media Addiction, via Cal Newport’s post, A Modest Proposal: Deweaponizing Network Effects. It’s a great read – I mean, you know – if academic papers on business, ethics, the internet and social media are your kind of thing. I can dig it.

“In this section, we argued that addicting users to social media is impermissible because it involves unjustifiably harming them in a way that is demeaning and objectionably exploitative. We argued that addicting users to social media harms them in ways that violate their rights and that these harms are not justified given that whatever benefits social media may provide, they can be realized without addiction. Second, the way in which social media companies have users contribute to making the platforms themselves more addictive, we argued, is particularly perverse because it involves a demeaning insult. Furthermore, addicting users is a morally objectionable form of exploitation that is especially troubling because the pervasiveness and legitimate role the internet plays in our lives create for some users an inescapable vulnerability to such exploitation.”

– Vikram Bhargava and Manuel Velasquez

My Time on the Internet

Just a few days ago I deleted my last remaining social media account – well almost, more on that later* – leaving this blog/website as pretty much the defacto ‘source of me’ on the internet. That got me thinking back to how long I’ve been ‘on the internet’ so I tried to put together a little timeline. It’s been an interesting exercise. It’s by no means 100% accurate. I’ve used a number of sources including this blog itself, The Internet Wayback Machine, emails and my scattered memory. I think it’s pretty close though. I dare say the folks at places like Facebook, Google and Twitter could probably give me some ridiculously accurate stats.

1994ish – Opened my first and only AOL account.

1996 – Registered lyh.com and built a website for a house of people I lived with. Registered and built personal website thebukitzone.com.

2000 – Apple launches MobileMe which would eventually become iCloud/Apple ID. I started an account then and still have it.

2005 – Opened my first Gmail account [Gmail launched 2004]. It was Invite only then. I think I got an invite from a buddy. This was my first Gmail address. Moved my personal website at thebukitzone.com from HTML to WordPress.

2006 – Twitter – Launched this year, I opened an account, was the first ‘social media’ account I ever had.

2007 – Opened first Flickr account [Flickr launched 2004]. FriendFeed launched. I had an account, never really used it. In 2009 it was bought by Facebook.

2007 – Opened first Facebook account. [Facebook launched 2004]

2008 – Opened a Plurk account. Closed the same year. Switched to another Gmail address, my second one.

2009 – Registered kentfackenthall.com which basically replaced thebukitzone.com

2009 – Opened a LinkedIn account. [LinkedIn launched 2003]

2011 – Opened GoodReads, Instagram [Instagram launched 2010] and Tumblr accounts. Google+ launches. I was on right away and stayed pretty much till they shuttered it in 2019. Closed Twitter account.

2012 – Closed my LinkedIn and Tumblr accounts. Opened a Strava account.

2013 – Registered and built website at bikecommutercabal.com. After a few years transferred ownership to another. Ran Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Twitter accounts for Bike Commuter Cabal.

2014 – Left WordPress as my blog platform for Blogger for a hot minute (maybe a month) quickly returned.

2015 – Opened Ello and Ride with GPS accounts. Closed Strava and first Flickr accounts.

2016 – For most of the year, shuttered my website and redirected my domain to my Google+ profile. Opened Medium and Behance accounts.

2017 – Opened second Flickr account. Opened a Mastodon account. Lasted a week.

2018 – Closed Facebook account. Kept Facebook Messenger. Closed Ello, GoodReads, Medium and Behance accounts.

2019 – Closed Facebook Messenger. Registered and built website at correctiveactionbicycleclub.com. Opened Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts for the Corrective Action Bicycle Club.

2020 – *Created a new Facebook account for work only. Not public, no friends, no posting. Strictly to manage client accounts/pages/advertising. Closed second Flickr account and personal Instagram account. Switched from Gmail as main email provider/app to my own domain mail and Apple Mail. Brought correctiveactionbicycleclub.com under umbrella of this domain, then eventually offline. Closed CABC Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts.

Random takeaways

  • 24+ years on the internets
  • 15+ different social media platforms
  • 15 years hacking and whacking on WordPress
  • ~600 blog posts (I’ve deleted some for various reasons)
  • Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were platforms where I had multiple accounts at the same time, i.e. personal and a club

What a long, strange trip it’s been. I think I’m done with social media now. I say ‘think’ because the reality is that I still have the Facebook account for work and I could see a possible argument for having others if my job came to require it. I’m doing my best to avoid that however. I can see very well that I’m going in the opposite direction with this compared to most of humanity. I have to admit that I’m kind of looking forward to ‘going retro’ here and just getting back to writing blog posts again. I’ve been reading through old ones and they make me chuckle. In a lot of cases, past me was an idiot.

Good v. Evil

Went for a bike ride. Posted a few words on Instagram about it:

Went for a bike ride with @spoke_n_words today. I can’t tell you everything we talked about – Instagram limits us to 2200 characters. I just used up 115. We talked about how that is part of the struggle today. That there’s so much to be said, and little place to say it anymore. And people have little time or patience to listen. We talked about my constant struggle to be on this platform and in this space when it seems to be hypocritical. If one is trying to spread positive mojo but resorts to using an inherently flawed or nefarious tool, ethically, is that a win? If you shouldn’t shop on Amazon because of their corporate practices – should you be reading and posting on Instagram in light of theirs – and by ‘theirs’ we all know I mean ‘Facebook’s’? Is it ok to use a bad platform for good? Is that even ethically possible? If you’re using the platform, are you not tacitly endorsing the business model? In light of what’s going down these days, does it make any sense to use tools ultimately designed to addict us with no concern for the outcome, by entities that only care about ad revenue? Can you institute change from within? Can you use the tools of your oppressors to facilitate revolution? I don’t know. I know I struggle with using this no matter how much warm fuzzy bike content I can pump out. There is a MUCH larger conversation that we need to have today, and it can’t – and shouldn’t – be had here. If you do one thing today, think about that – don’t blindly use these tools. Think. We also rode bikes, got dirty, drank coffee, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fought off pheasant and in general had the best time we possibly could conceive of having within those moments. And I took this one picture that really won’t convey that at all, but if you’re like me, one of the reasons I AM still on this platform is because very often, I’ll crack open this app and see something someone else has posted that will instantly remind me that I need to put the phone down and be somewhere else. That’s the revolution.

Know the Workings of Your Own Mind

In a recent New Yorker article Yuval Harari commented on the prospect of the possible nefarious uses of AI by governments, corporations or others to intrude on personal freedoms.

“Harari argues that, though there’s no sure prophylactic against such future intrusions, people who are alert to the workings of their minds will be better able to protect themselves. Harari recently told a Ukrainian reporter, “Freedom depends to a large extent on how much you know yourself, and you need to know yourself better than, say, the government or the corporations that try to manipulate you.” In this context, to think clearly—to snorkel in the pool, back and forth—is a form of social action.”

Makes sense to me. Not hard to do, just sit down (perhaps on a cushion) and shut up.

Facebook Lets You See All the Data Collected on You

Facebook has launched a new tool to let you see all the data that’s been collected on you both on – and interestingly enough – off the platform.

Facebook knows what you’re doing on other sites and in real life. This tool lets you see what it knows about you.

I haven’t had a personal Facebook account in over a year but I have an empty one that I use to manage Facebook Pages for my company and clients. The data I found there was interesting. I can only imagine what would be there for a regular/heavy user.

My stats showed many of the websites I’d visited via the browser I use at work – roughly 151 data sources, dating all the way back to June of 2019. At that point it simply said I’d reached ‘the end of my available activity’.

One of the interesting things I saw using the tool, you can further drill down and see what advertisers targeted ads at you and if you were specifically on their contact lists.

“Addiction is actually the point.”

It would seem more people are getting it. Via Cal Newport’s blog post, Senator Hawley on Social Media: “addiction is actually the point.”

“Social media only works as a business model if it consumes users’ time and attention day after day after day. It needs to replace the various activities we did perfectly well without social media, for the entire known history of the human race with itself. It needs to replace those activities with time spent on social media. So that addiction is actually the point.”

-Josh Hawley, Missouri Senator (emphasis mine)

And another great one – I’m stealing these directly from Cal’s post, but they’re too good to pass up. Cal’s original post is short and well worth the click-through to read.

“This is what some of our brightest minds have been doing with their time for years now. Designing these platforms, designing apps that integrate with them. I mean, what else might they have been doing?”

-Josh Hawley, (emphasis again, mine)

It’s refreshing to hear a politician – any politician – talking in such a frank manner. Video of full speech available on the Senator’s website, and is totally worth your time.

Scholarship By Metrics

Interesting article by Justin E.H. Smith on How Social Media Imperils Scholarship. It’s a long article, but well worth reading. A few highlights:

Eventually, those who do research simply out of love of knowledge might find it preferable to present their findings anonymously and gratuitously as Wikipedia editors rather than as members of the afflicted and moribund tribe of academics. Social media is hastening the arrival of that day.

The same click-swipe-and-rate economy has left everyone involved in cultural production dazed and stumbling. Journalism, art, literature, and entertainment have been engulfed by a tsunami of metrics. And dare we mention love, friendship, and political community? These, too, have been absorbed by the mania of metrics coupled with so-called gamification — a treacherous imitation of play. 

I have not yet heard of tenure committees taking into consideration information about a candidate’s followings on Academia.edu or the other sites, as they attempt to take the measure of his career success. But it will happen sooner or later. And sooner or later tenure candidates in Ohio will be PayPaling click factories in China to help them inflate their numbers artificially. And after that has gone on for some time, candidates will be required to submit, along with their dossiers, proof that the information has been run through some trusted anti-­click-factory certification software, and the metrics have been shown to be authentic. And eventually a way will be discovered to game the certification process, too, and so on, and at each stage academics will be drawn even further away from their ostensible object of study, Old Turkic inscriptions or Elizabethan verse, the thing they once imagined, in graduate school, was worthy of a lifetime of loving dedication.

The old world is crumbling. Pre-internet institutions are struggling to make their presence felt however they can. Even the pope has taken to tweeting, in what may be variously interpreted as a hip renovation of his dilapidated old temple, or as a desperate bid to stay relevant in a world that equates an absence of online metrics, of clicks and likes and follows, with nonexistence itself. It is no surprise that in this strange new world, academics are behaving no differently than the Pontifex, or exposure-craving politicians, or SoundCloud rappers, or aspiring team players projecting their can-do attitudes on LinkedIn.

Facebook D Day

I think today may be the day that my Facebook account dies. I say I think, because I’m not really sure. I think Facebook wants it that way. When you go to delete your account, they say it will take effect within 14 days, but it may be sooner – or maybe later? My past experiences tell me that when you think it’s gone – and try logging in to check – miraculously, it’s still there and it ‘reactivates’ you so you would need to go through the whole process and waiting period again.

By my calculations, today would be Day 14, but I’m not going to attempt to login to check, I’ve been suckered before.

Cruising my Feedly today I came across this article, relevant to my Facebook usage – or former Facebook usage.

How to Use Social Media Wisely and Mindfully

One particularly relevant excerpt in my case:

“We can also become more mindful and curious about social media’s effects on our minds and hearts, weighing the good and bad. We should ask ourselves how social media makes us feel and behave, and decide whether we need to limit our exposure to social media altogether (by logging out or deactivating our accounts) or simply modify our social media environment. Some people I’ve spoken with find ways of cleaning up their newsfeeds—from hiding everyone but their closest friends to “liking” only reputable news, information, and entertainment sources.”

Over the past several years (yes, it’s been that long) I’ve experimented with various levels/methods of monitoring social media use. Logging out of some accounts for extended periods and attempting to curate more specifically the people/organizations I follow among others.

Overwhelmingly I found that certain platforms bug me more than others. Facebook was the number one offender, so I decided to dump it. Twitter was second, and I had pretty much stopped using it, so it went as well.

I was back and forth with Instagram, but I find that I still enjoy it in a unique way, and overall, it doesn’t impact my moods and outlook the way my Facebook experience did (negatively), so I’ve kept it. For now.

After abandoning Google+ for awhile when I gave up ALL social media for a stint, I’ve gone back to it. Although it’s lost a lot of the specifics of the platform that made it unique from the early days – anyone who’s followed me for an extended period of time know’s I championed it early on – I still find that there’s something about it that allows for more interesting and less frustrating engagement. That said, I’ve still cut way back on the number of people I’m following and become more selective. In addition, I’ve also decided not to follow any Pages (brands, companies, organizations) and stick to (supposedly) real people. I find this helps keep the noise down.

Full disclosure – I still have a Facebook account with a fake name that I use for work. As it stands I’m responsible for managing some client Pages as well as overseeing ad and social media campaigns so I still needed a way to be on the platform. My ‘fake account’ doesn’t follow anyone though and I don’t post anything with it.

So perhaps I am off the Facebook. I don’t know. Maybe you can never really leave.

Fack’s Facebook Facts 3

“Facebook is not thriving for me.”

Dave Winer, considered the father of blogging, podcasting and RSS, thinks Facebook may be dying. At least for him anyway.

I don’t know that I would disagree. It certainly lost it’s lustre for me.

Ages 25 to 34, at 29.7% of users, is the most common age demographic. (Source:Emarketer 2012)

I wonder if those users will hang around as they age. I also wonder if Facebook can continue to grow it’s user base at the rate it currently is:

Five new profiles are created every second. (Source: ALLFacebook 2012)

My own experience tells me probably not. My two oldest kids (14 and 16) have absolutely zero interest in Facebook. The oldest calls it “weird, confusing.”

I wonder if the changes being talked about currently or some others in the future will do anything to entice more users from the demographics that aren’t currently strong. Or perhaps Facebook is an ‘acquired taste,’ something that only appeals to people once a certain ‘maturity’ level is reached.

Fack’s Facebook Facts 2

Mashable: Facebook Admits to as Many as 270 Million Fake/Clone Accounts

“The social network upped its estimate of the portion of fake accounts from 2 to 3 percent and the number of duplicates from 6 to 10 percent, Business Insider first reported.

That means that as many as 270 million of the platform’s 2.1-billion-strong user base could be fraudulent or duplicated — a population verging on the size of the United States.”

Pretty sure by the time I’d decided to bail I’d received Friend Requests from at least 1/3 of these. Some of ’em were hot, too.