To reduce world harm, we need to move away from Meta’s suite of social apps. Facebook and Messenger are so integrated into so many people’s lives it almost feels like table stakes for existing in modern society. I quit Twitter before it became X and it was fairly easy. Even then, the idea of fully walking away from Meta seemed daunting so I just minimized my use of it.
Meta seems to hold the keys for the only solutions for key parts of modern society.
Facebook, even if it’s viewed by kids as a boomer thing, is still the number one source for meet ups, the main way to find people you’ve lost contact with, the #1 source of sharing photos. On Orcas it is the main way people buy and sell used items and share news. The majority of Americans above a certain age get their news from Facebook and other social media.
The problem is it’s doing loads of harm. We already know Meta is fueling conspiracy theories, increasing depression, and promoting consumerism. It’s products are shown to increase teen suicide. It’s proven to have fueled genocide in Myanmar. The company is even laying the groundwork to do so again in the United States.
And Meta knows the damage its doing, it’s just not profitable to care.
This is a pattern played out over and over again in an economic growth driven society:
• Tobacco companies knew about the risks of smoking and addiction decades before the public did anything about them
• Oil and gas companies knew about climate change decades before the public
• Insurance companies fully understand the harm being caused by denial of care, even if our political system does nothing about it
• And the social media companies know how harmful their products are today
The common thread between these industries is our growth economy pushes incentives to keep growing, regardless of the external cost to society. It’s actually pretty simple:
The more people who smoke, in spite of the cancer, the bigger the business of William Morris. The fuel Exxon Mobile extracts from the Earth is what fuels both the burning of the Earth as well as the increase in its stock. The more techniques United Health Care has to deny coverage, the greater the executive bonuses, the more health care they deny.
These patterns are all driven from the need to grow economics, without limits as to their effects on people. We can see these linkages happening clearly in the above examples, and social media is exactly the same.
Meta knows all the harm they’re causing, but they continue to do it because of an inherent need to amass more power and wealth regardless of the consequences to humanity. It’s built into the very economic structure of public companies. It’s baked into the valley ethos, myths and religion of silicon valley. Disrupt. Embrace hyper scale. Innnovate. Go viral. Move fast and break the world.
It’s time we move to technologies that are built with different values, ones that serve making a better, more peaceful and equitable society.
