Published: Sunday, April 1st, 2018 @ 2:21 am
By: Stan Deatherage   ( More Entries )

    Publisher's note: This editorial appears here courtesy of Beaufort County NOW.

And yet hordes of people flock to Facebook for the connectivity, supplied by the World Wide Web, to friends - some real, some imagined - but all easily accessible by a platform that many consider free, moreover, many do not understand.

    First and foremost dear people connected by the internet, nothing in life is free, certainly not Facebook. While some folks awake each morning to scurry to type their latest musings on Mark Zuckerberg's online platform, these folks are actually building out his website, Facebook, for free. In other words, you Facebook users are indispensable to his plan, yet he sells your private information /data collection by Facebook to others, like Cambridge Analytica, while using that same data to promote certain people and issues, especially their advertisements over others on that same Facebook user's timeline that they built for Mr. Zuckerberg.

    Confused yet? I kind of am, but that thing that I am certain of is that I, and many others, have been conned into building our Mr. Zuckerberg's website, and all I get in return is a poor placement in this monolithic memory bank of controlled and sold data. There are so many ways to stay in contact with others on the internet, yet Facebook is the solid choice by many people seeking connection with others. It is the way of this world, where humans often act like cattle waiting for the stampede. Meandering about in some sameness of presumed purpose.

    'So, Like me, Friend me; do it now while I still possess a modicum of concentration, or just ... let me drift here aimlessly. Aimlessly until I receive the the stimulation of approval ... so like me ... Please?'

    What a sad, sorry world we have made for ourselves if we can only see ourselves through the eyes of others; the personal gratification of being Liked on Facebook; a popularity contest far from high school past or present, where we exist in a plane of equilibrium on Mark Zuckerberg's platform, where all of you, and, sadly me, build out his website; a site originating from his desire to categorize certain young woman's attributes relative to barnyard animals while he was a college boy.

    And now, we find that some of our personal information is being sold to the highest bidder; that Facebook sells its ad space for the Fake News, the entrapment ads leading nowhere real, and we all continue to build out Zuckerberg's website, by employing his dumbed-down content management system, where you are given a whiff of control, but, you control nothing - not the content you create, not even your own personal data.

    Wake up people! Isn't it time to cut the virtual umbilical cord? Nothing is free in this world, but, with a bit of work, you can still free your mind; instant gratification of "Like me" on Facebook is not the answer.