In defence of Facebook

It’s become common currency to kick Facebook – it’s old hat, it’s advertising is terrible, it treats its users with contempt. But the blue F remains the king of social networks. Ed Owen explains why.

Just a few years ago, Facebook was ‘cool’. They even made a film about it that made the founder look like a weasly weirdo, but that was clearly sour grapes, and didn’t seem to stop people using what was, and I argue still is, the ultimate social network.

Today, people say Facebook is a mess. Not a week goes by when there is some new reason to hate Facebook, its privacy policy, its advertising strategy, its bloody logo. Even the word ‘cool’ is uncool.

But I take a different view. Facebook is wonderful, and, in fact it’s fair to say that Facebook is today the premier social network in much the same way that McDonald’s is the world’s premier restaurant. Now some may argue that McDonald’s is not even a restaurant, and those things it sells are hardly food. To that I say simply: whatevs.

I have had the great pleasure of using Facebook since the early days when it was a more ramshackle and quirky enterprise. I remember ‘poking’ someone. Which was amazing. And I remember trying (and failing) to send people messages. Oh, the fun. The infuriation! Today, we have a system that does actually work pretty well, and that made it perfect to do something the users had been screaming out for: advertising.

Yes advertising.

Now I can’t speak for you, but I think Facebook’s advertising is superb. I’m targeted with two specific types of ad: dating and body-building. The fact I’m in a relationship and have kids, and would rather eat shit off a corpse than ever go to a gym, means the advertising isn’t really advertising at all.

The advertising is so completely tangential to my interests it should probably come under a new category of managed irrelevance or something. And I expect the same is true for everyone. So no advertising then. Facebook remains pure-ish.

But I hear there is some new annoyance. People who use Facebook have been victims in some hocus-pocus brainwashing experiment to alter their mood. And without their consent too. Like a nerdy version of The Parallax View but without the great 1970s music.

I have little sympathy with these moaners. No. I mean didn’t they read the 7,543 pages of terms and conditions that set out in 8-point pixels that they sign away their life and liberty to Facebook? They didn’t? Well that’s their watch-out. Surely a contract that nobody reads and nobody even understands without a lawyer present would be cast-iron in court. People should know this.

I am curious though – how should a person react to a barrage of cat pictures, listicles and body-building ads (that I didn’t see in the first place) other than with sheer joy?

Of course one of the great pleasures of using Facebook is to find out more about yourself. I often see (one might say am bombarded by) little quizzes that ask questions like, “Which member of the Al-Qaeda top brass are YOU?”, or curious little pieces of editorial that shout things “222 Reasons Elton John’s ‘Passengers’ is Better Than Iggy Pop’s ‘The Passenger’. Wanna Get On!!!”. The results are never less than thought-provoking.

I found out recently that Facebook’s motto was ‘Move Fast and Break Things’, which I think sounds rather irresponsible. So imagine my delight when I heard that Facebook had decided to change this to the snappier, catchier and far more sensible, “Move Fast with Stable Infrastructure”, which is exactly what you want from a company, for their top brass to wear loafers and listen to Coldplay.

Working as a journalist, I have occasionally tried to speak to people from Facebook. One very senior person I accosted at a seminar told me in no uncertain terms to use Facebook to contact him. His account was dormant. Now that was funny.

So let’s just cut to the meat of it all. We love Facebook. We love how you need to drink a litre of coffee just to deal with its privacy settings. We love all those tempting friend invitations from parts of the Balkans I have never been to, and most of all we love our Facebook friends. Even if we don’t like their politics, their holidays, or have never even met them at all.

But why won’t they talk to me?

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