I have not been on Facebook more than a few times in the last two years. Oddly enough, my queue looks just like it always does, my friends posting the same things they always did. I’m sure I missed a few important updates, and I do miss it. The reason I don’t use SM anymore is that I decided the negative impacts of the platform far outweigh the positive. Yes, it’s nice to feel connected to friends and family, many of whom live in different cities now. If that’s all there was to it I would not hesitate to use it.

But the last couple of weeks have shown the dangers of allowing anybody and everybody a free platform to speak, to plan, to organize violent attacks on anyone. That is what we have allowed the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s empire, Twitter, et al to do. They post it all up there and say, it’s not my fault if somebody gets killed. It is their fault and if we weren’t so besotted with our love of technology those who have allowed this behavior would face consequences, and I don’t mean just a few millions out of their multiple billion dollar bank accounts. That’s just a tax write-off for them.

Government can try to step in and hopefully it will. Until users like you and I stop using the service, the tech giants will just try to side step any rules that might be imposed. While they may still be speaking their mantras, helping people connect, and free information, they long ago fell in love with the billions of dollars they were able to get for selling us to advertisers. That kind of money is like heroin, once they taste it they can’t give it up willingly.

I remember the internet before the tech giants took over. Google was truly a great service. Facebook would be a nice platform as well if it were severely limited in scope. It’s a gossip column, that’s all it ever was or ever will be, yet people think it’s substantive and real. People get news feeds from Facebook. That’s like asking the devil to deliver messages from God. I just don’t know what people are thinking. Maybe they’re not.