Why I'm still on Facebook, even though it's dividing and inciting America for profit

After watching Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen accuse her former employer Sunday night of putting profits over public safety, I went to my computer and clicked on the site. I was prepared to be filled with righteous rage. And there, at the top of my feed, was the shocking news that an old friend’s wife had died. 

As I read his gorgeous tribute to her, and the few words that conveyed the heartbreak of her final months, I teared up. And realized I would not have known about any of this except for Facebook.

For years I have been angry at Facebook and its pathetic efforts to police anger, unrest and potentially lethal misinformation on its platforms, but I haven’t quit it. How else would I keep up with my cousins, nieces and their families – the graduations, the jobs, the triumphs and travels and birthdays, the comedy (“Lederhosen? Seriously?” I asked one cousin of her new profile picture) and the tragedy (the death of a cousin who waited too long to seek care).

My elementary school classmates and my high school English teacher are on Facebook. So are the reporters and operatives I met during decades on the national politics circuit, and the friends who share their adventures and appreciate hearing about mine.

So is my faraway older child, which helps me keep tabs on his life and career. (The younger one won’t go near Facebook and stalks Twitter without posting a word. Quite the journey from junior high school, when he joined Myspace and described himself as divorced.)

Algorithms that reinforce anger

Social media started out for me as a professional requirement. In 2009, at an online startup, we were instructed to join Facebook and Twitter and amass as many “friends” and followers as we could. The goal was to brand both ourselves and our new website. The site shut down 10 years ago, but I’m still on Facebook and Twitter.

I confessed privately to a friend in the congressional wonk world recently that I loved the community I had found on Twitter. He felt the same. I have similar warm feelings about my little corner of Facebook. I work hard to avoid the dark, enraged, falsehood-fueled side of social media. But I know these are the parts that others seek out and thrive on, and that sometimes are used to plan dangerous real-world actions like the U.S. Capitol attack.

How did we get here? Algorithms and profits. Singer-songwriter Vienna Teng captured it perfectly in her "Hymn of Acxiom." The stunning harmonies are as comforting as a religious hymn – until you focus on the seductive lyrics and think about how they relate to Facebook, Amazon and Google:

Leave your life open. You don't have to hide.
Someone is gathering every crumb you drop, these
(mindless decisions and) moments you long forgot.
Keep them all.

Let our formulas find your soul.

Resistance to online giants is futile

I was puzzled recently when an Amazon Prime truck approached my house, and quite relieved when it stopped next door. As the driver walked back toward her truck, I said to her from my porch, “I thought that you were coming to deliver the bacon I was thinking about ordering. That now Amazon could read my mind.” We both thought that was funny.

And yet.

These companies have inserted themselves into our lives and done their jobs so well that resistance seems futile. Amazon can deliver a king bed overnight (no joke, my son is living proof). It can send you four 72-strip packages of the exact brand of bacon you want – the kind that has been missing for weeks from shelves in the entire metropolitan Washington area.

Last month it sold me a book at a brick-and-mortar Amazon store at a deep discount my local independent bookstore could not possibly match and stay in business. It already produces, buys and streams content, and now, with an Amazon-MGM merger on the table, some fear it will monopolize the film industry. 

Teng’s hymn ends with these words:

Now we possess you. You'll own that in time.
Now we will build you an endlessly upward world,
(reach in your pocket), embrace you for all you're worth.

Is that wrong?
Isn't this what you want?
Amen.

It’s what the online giants want – to make money. It’s what we want, to find our tribes. But what happens when online communities want to taint elections, threaten political figures and block peaceful transfers of power?

What happens when people die in real riots planned online and of real COVID after reading vaccine lies online? Or online content drives teen girls to starve themselves and feel suicidal?

Facebook is a private company. It can decide what's appropriate for its own platforms. Yet it's clear from Haugen's trove of evidence that hate, violence and incitement are rampant on Facebook and pose huge dangers to the world. 

Only Congress, courts and other authorities can force a crackdown. It’s past time for them to draw clear boundaries – and leave the rest of us in peace to catch up on vacation news and share the latest about our kids.

Jill Lawrence is a columnist for USA TODAY and author of "The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock." Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence