WHY I LEFT FACEBOOK AND WHY YOU SHOULD TOO (Published here but still in production)

Carole Cadwallader

Last year I read an amazing piece of investigative journalism in 'The Observer' written and researched by Carole Cadwallader  (https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla)  The extensive article detailed the ways in which the billionaire Peter Thiel had funded the Brexit movement in using Cambridge Analytica to harvest millions of facebook users data to micro-target mailshots during the American Presidential election and the brexit referendum in the UK as well as possibly interfering in the Kenyan Presidential and subsequent possible interference in the election of the monstrous Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philipines.

Charmath Palihapitiya

I have long been concerned about the relationship between Facebook and it's users where the user IS the product and while recognising the social glue it allows between 'friends', I am also disturbed by its apparently cynical manipulation and  its business model.

Yet another former Facebook executive has come out and expressed his guilt and concern over the role he had in developing the hugely popular social media giant, Facebook.

Chamath Palihapitiya, the vice-president for user growth at Facebook prior to leaving the company in 2011, said, “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we created are destroying how society works. . . . No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.”

These remarks were made at a Stanford Business School event in November, but were recently published by tech website The Verge earlier this week.

“This is not about Russian ads, this is a global problem. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other.”

Interestingly, Palihapitiya is not the first former Facebook president to come out and expose the truth behind this corporation. Sean Parker also said in a press conference that he was “something of a conscientious objector” to using social media. These words were echoed by Palihapitiya, who says he is now hoping to use the money he made during his time at Facebook to do good in the world.

When a former president of such a massive corporation has such strong words to say about their employer, I would say it’s certainly worth considering. He is passionate about not using Facebook himself or even letting his kids use it, so there must be a good reason.  

He called on his audience to “soul-search” in regards to their own relationship to social media, saying, “Your behaviors, you don’t realize it, but you are being programmed. It was unintentional, but now you gotta decide how much you’re willing to give up, how much of your intellectual independence.”

What a powerful statement. I think many of us are aware by now of how addictive Facebook can be, but the idea that, with its pernicious algorithms it can influence our voting behaviour and thoughts and actions and harvest our data for the ends of shadowy billionaires and alt right think tanks is like dark science fiction turned into reality.

All together now-Aaaah Ti-mo-thy-Mor-ton (repeat)

Slow Reading Slow Gaming

This is really slow reading-the first word of The picture of Dorian Gray!  I choose the first sentence because I am not from Hegel land.

What am I reading?  Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim.  What is the first sentence of the book?
We begin with a quote from Novalis thus:

'It is certain my Conviction gains infinitely
The moment another soul will believe in it.'

The first sentence then:

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.

This slow reading is quite amazing!  Is Conrad describing a man or an Exocet missile.  Imagine such a being approaching you, getting closer and closer.  You feel that this time out in the world it appears you may be assaulted for no reason by this crazy bull of a man, when he stops suddenly and enquires of you the time of day.
This is our first immediate encounter with our flawed hero, carrying the burden of one act of cowardice.

They called him Tuan Jim: as one might say-Lord Jim.

My reason for reading Conrad presently is in order to fully absorb Maya Jasanoff's extraordinary text about issues of globalisation arising from at least three of his books- ('The Dawn Watch  Joseph Conrad in a Global World.  William Collins 2017)  These being 'Nostromo', 'Lord Jim' and, of course, 'Heart of darkness.'  Maya's thesis is that Conrad predicted the phenomenon of globalisation, terrorism and the colonial exploitation that has left enduring psychic destruction in its wake thus accurately navigating us to our present sea of dillemmas and discombobulations in the first quarter of the Twenty First Century CE.
Having just finished 'Nostromo' described as Conrad's big book,  I can vouch that it explores the issues of the poisonous creep of greed, the issues of exploitation, the mannerisms of the colonisers and the furious passionately bonkers politics of South America.  Additionally, in the character of Nostromo himself we have a studied representation of a manly hero, a true free spirit shackled only by the obsession with his own honour.  Very much in the way that, in the Illiad, Achilles takes the matter of his own warlike legend as a matter of simple fact.  Either heroic short-lived warrior or long lived and contented family man dying slowly into his eighties-an equally simple choice. 

Some words from the heart about Grenfell by Stormzy recently noted in Croydon on my morning commute

Anna Campbell Kurdish fighter from Lewes- RIP

Anna Campbell  Fearless Freedom Fighter and Lewesian from Sussex

WORKERS OF ALL LANDS UNITE