Facebook, the asocial drug

The Autocracy App

Jacob Weisberg, NYRB, October 25, 2018

A review of two books on FACEBOOK and its criminal background:

Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy
by Siva Vaidhyanathan
Oxford University Press, 276 pp., $24.95

 

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
by Jaron Lanier
Henry Holt, 146 pp., $18.00

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Many years ago I subscribed "Driesch" to facebook. After a very short time I encountered the bad business policies, the fraud, the misuse of data, the destruction of discourse, the wrong appeals to "selfism" (self -expression as extrem self-manifestation as beginning of the cult of the shown self), so that I cancelled very soon membership, which, by the way, was pretty difficult. In our facebook account we didn't share private issues, only items concerning our publishing program or questions of literatur. But the environment does effect every item which is displaced and shown, and one becomes a collaborator with the ugly power, if one cooperates.

Today, many so called quality papers and magazines or corporate media recommend the viewer, listener or reader, to follow on facebook. I do not follow. It's the mind of the fellow traveller, the uncritical consumer and collaborator. Persons as well as institutions who observe the values of a free, emancipated society, shouldn't invite to participate in the destructive asocial media. It is a contradiction to their position and shows only that their goal to reach more people and to increase profit.

We have a well sorted library with books mainly in philosophy, literary criticism, social scienes and so on. Stuff, which the average reader doesn't read. We often hear, we should utilize facebook to gain more attention, to catch some readers. I decline. The pure orientation on masses according the general orientation on quantities doesn't satisfy our expectations concerning quality.