We messed up. This should never have happened and we will take strides to make sure it never happens again. During The Facebook Dilemma, Mark Zuckerberg never said that and he probably never will. It was the one comment that none of the executives of Facebook will ever made. This is what stuck with me throughout the film. At no point did Mark Zuckerberg take any sort of responsibility for the failures of Facebook. If you are to take credit for the good of a company you must also own the failures.
One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from a Naval Academy kicker in 1991. Ryan Bucchianeri was a freshman kicker at Navy who missed a 18 yard field goal, in the Army-Navy Game. During the press conference after the game, reporters offered possible explanations for the miss from the wet field, to the rest of the play. Bucchianeri only responded with “No excuse, sir.” If an 18 year old kid can respond that way, we should expect that out of the most powerful men and women in the world. Yet Mark Zuckerberg and FaceBook refused to answer to what they had done. They looked for excuses and tried their hardest to diminish the results of their actions.
Of course, the lack of responsibility is only part of the long list of events in The Facebook Dilemma that angered me. The lack of responsibility on facebooks part is extremely important in the role of Facebook in the rise of bigotry not only in our country but across the world. Although I did not know the extent of facebook’s role in Myanmar until I watched the film, I does not surprise me. While facebook does do great things, the absolutist view of Freedom of Speech that they propagate: allows racism, violence, and bigotry to grow unsupervised. We have seen these effects closer to home than Myanmar. Look at Charlottesville. Charlottesville is only a few hours away from me. The “Unite the Right” rally was promoted on Facebook and used to propagate hate in a town that I applied to for college. FaceBook needs to be proactive not reactive. Maybe, if they’d removed the post a few days earlier Heather Heyer would still be alive.
So what can we do about this? We are constantly told these terrible crimes and awful actions of these media companies but what can we do. We have a number of courses that we can take. The simple answer is to boycott facebook. If we don’t use facebook, then they can’t profit of us unless they change their actions. However if you are not ready to give up your facebook (which is true for me as well), we have other things. Use Adblock when using facebook, petition your congressman to make new regulations on facebook, do anything. Most importantly, be an active consumer. Although FaceBook may seem free to the outside, just remember they are trying to make money of off you and unfortunately hatred and bigotry sells. And that is a problem which I can not solve in a 500 word blog. I’d need at least 1000 words to solve racism.
Song of the Day is back. Because of the focus I placed on being responsible, I have chosen a song about that. “The Acceptance-Responsible” by Cloud Cult, is a song that I think everyone should listen to. And yes that includes Mark Zuckerberg.
Bloggers of the World Unite 