Category: The Way Home

Facebook

This is my thinking: Facebook, like everything apart from Wikipedia, is supported by advertising. Getting your eyes on as much targeted content as possible. Same as most media. But – as Mark Z keeps insisting – FB is a tech company, not media. Doesn’t produce content per se, just acts as a conduit. So where other media companies bind themselves to some kind of editorial standards (not always high standards), FB sees no need for this. 

OK: that’s enough to leave right there. It’s just disingenuous. FB has more reach than just about any other company, allowing it to accrue monumental advertising revenue, and yet it sidesteps the obvious responsibility it wields.

Next thing: I think FB makes you feel angry. And envious. And shit. That struck a chord, right? I think Facebook’s algorithms have worked out that insecure, upset, worried people click more and stay longer. So they serve you up content designed to engender these emotions. It’s making the world feel bad about itself. Another reason.

Third, connected to the above. A consequence of this manipulation is the rise of echo chambers – but I’m not sure most folks really understand the metaphor. I think most people think an echo chamber is somewhere that echoes a lot. But the point is that the echo chamber reflects your voice back at you millions of times. That’s the point. You shout, then the same words come back at you in thousands of waves; they’re warped and distorted but it’s still your voice even if you don’t recognise it anymore. That is posting on FB.

Here’s what I want: Facebook as a social Wikipedia. Open-source, non-profit, transparent. Wikipedia could be a bloated, advertising-driven monster making Jimmy Wales millions a minute. It’s not.

So until that happens: Fuck Facebook.

Interfering

I think every teacher fights to control the urge to interfere. Sitting on the train, the conductor’s phone rang (apparently his better half was called – he had downloaded a humorous ring-tone featuring a klaxon and a voice repeating ‘Warning: It’s the wife!’). As he conducted the conversation at maximum volume I didn’t feel guilty about eavesdropping (it would in any case have been impossible not to), and listened as he reprimanded his daughter who, it emerged, had punched another girl at school. He then spoke to his wife about what to do with their little girl. It was a touching conversation between two clearly loving parents who were doing their best to do the right thing despite the fact that the father figure was on a late shift marshalling people on and off trains in Docklands. And, as always, I had to resist the urge to tell him how impressed I was that he was supporting the efforts of teachers to help his daughter. Absolutely none of my business, quite obviously. And yet you still feel the connection because you have had countless phone calls with parents in exactly the same situation about daughters with exactly the same problems. Teaching connects you with everyone, either directly or indirectly, because wherever they are, kids need their parents and teachers to work together. And when you see this collaboration happening, you know that somewhere a teacher cares enough to make the call and hopefully set in motion a chain of events which might eventually go some way to setting things right. And that matters.