“Move Fast and Break Things”
For the last few years, I have had a strange sense of pride for not being on Facebook. My mother had told me that I wasn’t allowed to make a Facebook account until I was 13. By that time, the platform had already started to move toward something that seemed like it was more for older people, and other platforms were more appealing. Fortunately or unfortunately, it has become clear that maybe I can’t live my life completely free of Facebook. I have recently been given the opportunity to aid in the social media management of an individual and the possession of Facebook and TikTok was a requirement. So, as of last week, I am officially a Facebook user.
I have a lot of feelings about Facebook. I had part of this documentary before, and revisiting it just made me feel worse about having to make an account. I know that every social network has its problems. But Facebook… well, as the Frontline documentary focused on, the privacy issues that Facebook has faced are stressful, to say the least. It doesn’t affect me because I didn’t have a Facebook account during that major controversy, but it does, because Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012, and I have been on Instagram since 2013.
So that brings me to the early motto of, “Move fast and break things.” In theory, I love this. Cause chaos. Do things. Be unafraid of consequences. But as a major organization, and even as an individual person, this is not an effective way to operate. Facebook obviously realized that, but not until they had moved fast and broken… a lot of things.
Technology moves quickly. Sometimes so quickly that we can’t keep up. And though “move fast” might be unavoidable, Zuckerberg’s early philosophy of “Apologize later,” can’t apply to tech giants. Imagine if every social network did what Facebook did. As made clear in part 1 of the documentary, it was not necessarily malicious. It was tech optimism. It was blind desire and progress.
Progress is not bad. Technology is not bad. But the ways that we use tech can be bad. Human beings are flawed, and they create flawed technologies. We see computers as perfect things, code and algorithms as sinister presences. But humans made them. Humans are behind everything, and humans make mistakes.
It is up to the consumer to recognize this. Human beings, just like them, create everything behind the technology they use every day. I think sometimes this is easy to forget. We expect these innovations to operate perfectly. We are used to having very little go wrong. But every once in awhile, we get reminders that our technology is ever-changing and that means errors. It isn’t often that these errors are the same scale as Facebook’s controversies. But they happen every day.
The tech we use is young- the consumer has a responsibility to remember that, too. The Age of Information is real and happening, but it’s still early. Humans are creating truly beautiful things every day. But this is infancy.
I think the struggles that Facebook has had show other platforms and tech companies what not to do. Somebody had to do that. And despite their issues, Facebook is still the #1 social media platform. Companies have to take more responsibility for the information they store. But the consumer has to take responsibility, too, for what they share and how they use technology.
Cover Photo: Pile of 3d facebook logos, originally uploaded by natanaelginting
Connected Correspondence 