#deletefacebook
Investors with billions of dollars wrapped up in the galactic scale of the most expansive social network in the obscure wispy arms of the Milky Way, are attempting to rationalize the recent series of corporate mishaps rivaling a quantum singularity, using the phrase, “No press is bad press.” With Stephen Hawking now possibly inhabiting another dimension, the rules of the game are no longer made to be changed on a whim, and the sobering reality resounding throughout the tech community, is that the end is near for Mark Zuckerberg and his pet rivaling the economic influence of an entire series of developing nations. And within the context of this metaphor, Mr. Zuckerberg is certainly not lobbying for Airbus and Boeing to supply regional jetliners.
While the pending legal consequences are sure to be devastating, the immediate fallout to the unregulated data mining efforts of user accounts, has been the mass desertion of businesses and individuals to other reaches of the virtual world. The latest death blow to the corporation, was the very public announcement made by Elon Musk, in deleting Tesla and SpaceX from the F*&%book community. Ironically, the news of Musk’s decision made the “Trending News” feed of the genetically enhanced social network, currently recovering from elephantiasis. “How do like them algorithms?”
As the molten scorching hellfires of oblivion are firmly on the radar for Zuckerberg and colleagues, and with clearance to land, the company still trudges through the raw tide flats of hypocrisy, in an attempt to enforce the incomprehensible mess of ambiguous community guidelines and standards. While the public perception is forever tarnished on a global scale and the public relations carnage will eventually reach the entire spectrum of intelligent entities listening across light years of the universe, the community moderators are performing at an optimal level in fostering a grating and unfulfilling environment for the end user. In a scenario that demands filing under the category of, “You just can’t make this stuff up,” the social network police articulated the following masterpiece, which epitomizes why the empire endures a state of epic implosion.
The tragic shooting incident at the school in Maryland obviously triggered the usual emotionally charged dialogue from all sides on the social networking front. On the F*&%book page of a firearms organization, a user posted comments that were just a bit over the top, which included the language ““going around and putting bullets in their heads”. Usually, brazenly insane and violent commentary is automatically flagged and deleted by the legions of software bots. In this case, the system may or may not have failed, as human intervention and prevarication from the social network, were a probable variable in a flawed equation. When the comment somehow defied the laws digital laws of physics and was allowed to exist, the group administrator did the right thing and directly contacted the social network mods, and received a very surprising and disturbing response.
Apparently, authoring a post that includes the context of assassination by firearm, adheres to the “community standards” of the platform, but discussing and sharing the nuts and bolts of guns is akin to an online sin. There are about ten thousand things wrong with this interpretation and application of policy. Fortunately, the polarizing comment was later manually deleted.
It is no state CIA grade secret that F*&%book has literally put the clamps on the entire firearms industry in recent months by severely limiting, through those blasted algorithms, the interaction between individuals, businesses and organizations and followers. Users making innocuous comments pertaining to guns are routinely reprimanded and in some cases banned entirely from posting on certain subjects. The witch hunt is not just constrained to the concepts of guns and ammo, as conservative groups and news sites have also witnessed a downturn in influence and reach. While the company claims that is all about advertising revenue, it cannot escape from its checkered past of forcefully targeting and staunching the flow of conservative content, in echoing the bias and belief system of Zuckerberg.
While, the deleting, flagging and banning has produced an unprecedented level of frustration and angst and culminating in a mass exodus, the underlying message of the moderator’s failed response, is a caustic indication of the rash of enabling sweeping through the digital world, and leaking out into society. The individual who produced the asinine comment, was given a complete reprieve from F*&%book, as the comment was virtually ignored. Within this “no harm, no foul” interpretation of online justice, the offending user was simply allowed to intrude on the shared values of a reasonable group of individuals, and faced absolutely zero consequences for their actions. The nightmare of the social network attempting to engineer society has arrived. This alarming trend is spreading like a virulent pandemic, and threatens the very basis for liberty, as the crucial concept of accountability is being forced into suspended animation and replaced by the tenuous and disingenuous ideology of hoisting participation trophies, mass-produced in the coal infused factories of Ulaanbaatar, which obscure the arid plains once ruled by Genghis Khan, and the blood stains of countless dissidents. “If it makes you feel good, do it! And get a hug.”
As the experiment of the first generation of the social network revolution nears an abrupt halt, there exists only a single known inevitability, that the ride is only going to get crazier and uglier, while we cling to our values and humanity.