I was at lunch with some friends for work, and I casually remarked that Facebook was fucking evil, and they asked if I had an account. I think that the idea that you can unplug from the mothership of the data economy in any meaningful way and organize your life with the people around you is a joke. I might not freelance anymore, but it is still essential to use Facebook and Twitter to share out this work and anything else I want to do.

Vanity self-promotion aside, Facebook events are central to events both public and personal these days. I wouldn't mind a shared Google calendar. But I'm not adding it to everyone I know's phone, so we can get the sharing set up correctly. For small venues trying to share out upcoming shows, it's just as unlikely that they can get enough people subscribed through any other platform. The insidious part about Facebook is that it does serve some utility in exchange for the complete psychological workup they use to sell you ads.

The most invasive of Facebook data policies were already in practice by traditional marketers in financial and retail. Those practices are improved by the data demography and tracking that Google and Facebook have created, but it isn't as if these are all new. They've created more accurate profiles because they get to peer over your shoulder for almost your entire life. The most significant difference is that we know that these profiles exist.

Facebook's real evil is tweaking the news feed to record psychological data as part of a study without getting consent from users. It's gobbling up every smaller network that could challenge them to ensure that no matter what you do, online, you're likely doing it with Facebook.

Worming its way to being vital for anyone to get viewers to their work is far less ethical than your advertising profile. I mean, their ad tech people did enable landlords and employers to filter ad buys based on age and race, so they aren't off the hook altogether. However, you can sum up their worst sin in a single sentence. Their evil comes from treating users as an afterthought.

"Using Facebook" by leakhenakhat is licensed under CC CC0 1.0