International 
 

International

Facebook Face Offs

People are Facebooked as it is the most potent scientific marvel that can come quite handy in indoctrinating the citizenry.

By Imran Jan | April 2021

facebook-faceoff

The major threats facing humanity include the threat of nuclear war, climate change, and the erosion of democracy around the world. We have witnessed the ugly face of democracy in the form of ultra-right nationalist tendencies marching across the United States, parts of Europe, and India.

The tech companies that erupted after the dot com bubble mainly claimed to give freedom and power to individual voices. Computers and the internet became essential tools in the hands of billions of people to be connected, defying enormous distances. YouTube allowed people the ability to broadcast themselves, cutting through the various layers of production. Social media companies, especially Facebook and Twitter, claimed to allow people the ability to raise their voices and be connected to each other. Their efforts of democratizing the world in reality stand in stark contrast to exactly that.

There are more sources of information, yet less informed people. There are more voices, yet less congruence and convergence on issues. People are connected more and more easily, yetthey are more and chronically divided. There are more avenues of information, yet more and more people lean toward conspiracy theories instead of the truth. Perhaps all this misinformation is not despite the social platform. Truth be told, misinformation rules because of these social media platforms. Something must be wrong or we fail or refuse to see it at our own peril.

The Myanmar military exploited the Facebook platform to instill hatred for the Rohingya Muslims in the minds of the citizens. People posing as regular music fans highlighted Islam as the enemy of Buddhism. Many talked about fictitious stories of Muslim men raping Buddhist women. The result was genocidal violence and mass displacement of innocent Rohingya Muslims, who were homeless and defenceless in their own country. Facebook very conveniently looked the other way when its platform was used for the justification of the genocide. Two year later, Facebook was again instrumental in genocidal violence perpetrated against Muslims inside Ethiopia and then in Sri Lanka.

betty-white

It is not like citizens of a country are drugged in order to create feelings of hatred against certain people who usually happen to be their fellow citizens. Instead, they are Facebooked, which is the most potent scientific marvel that can come quite handy in indoctrinating the citizenry. The United States saw the election of Donald Trump in 2016, largely due to the massive propaganda campaign unleashed by the Russians using none other than Facebook. The fingerprints of Facebook are somehow found where violence, mass murder and democratic erosion happen.

This writer would love to hear the role of Facebook in fighting climate change or world hunger or something similar. Connecting people through harmony wouldn’t be bad if Facebook might one day decide to venture out into that novelty. Until then, Facebook can help you find and hunt “enemies you may know”. It can also give “enemy suggestions”. This is not unreal. I see it every time I open my Facebook.

Contrary to the claims and the touted founding of Facebook for making friends online, the social media tool has become the go-to platform for making and hunting enemies.

I straddle two countries and two cultures: the United States and Pakistan. My Facebook friends list includes people from Peshawar and Lahore whose display pictures are their bearded faces wearing a cap depicting their Islamic piety and there are other American friends from Houston and New York with pictures showing them drinking beer on a beach. The two might see each other as “people you may know” but in the indoctrinated world the two already despise each other based on what they have been taught about each other. They are very much “enemies you may know” because they are potential enemies. Should they befriend each other on Facebook, they would most likely get into a bad argument about every aspect of life.

Contrary to the claims and the touted founding of Facebook for making friends online, the social media tool has become the go-to platform for making and hunting enemies. Even down to the individual level, some of our fiercest arguments are with friends or rather Facebook friends, which are not really friends. Instead of connecting people, Facebook distances them from each other.

Lo and behold, the founder and the only founding CEO of an iconic tech company, Bezos and others have departed from their role as CEOs of therespective companies they founded. Mark Zuckerburg, who co-founded Facebook,is enjoying the billionaire lifestyle while his war machinery is moving unabated. The working philosophy of Facebook has not been the democratization of the world and connecting people but rather “Move Fast and Break Things.” Facebook has certainly moved fast and broken many things, including the democratic norms of the very country where it was founded.

The live footage of the New Zealand mosqu massacre by an Australian terrorist left people horrified and Facebook only announced that it would place some restrictions on the live video feature. Sure, after the feature did actually “break things” as Zuckerburg had envisioned. Even that symbolic move was timed with the Paris meeting between New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emanuel Macron. Too little too late; turns out, his little algorithms are too dear to Zuckerburg than some Muslim lives or any lives lost in violence fueled and fired on Facebook.

Zahran Hashim, the mastermind of the Sri Lankan terrorist attack, openly issued the call for the killing of non-Muslims on Facebook. Zahran radicalized the two wealthy brothers Ilham Ibrahim and Inshaf Ibrahim and convinced them to leave their luxurious lives and beautiful families and kill innocent people and be killed in the action. That radicalization happened on Facebook.

It is hard to Google search any recent terrorist attack and not find Facebook associated with it somehow. In that way, Facebook has joined the ranks of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and QAnon. When ISIS, Al Qaeda, QAnon or some other ultra right terrorist group commits acts of terror, their sleeping partner would always be Facebook, unless we realize it is time to close the book of Facebook.

Read More