Facebook: Accentuate the Positive!

I'm a satisfied Facebook user. Five reasons: 1. News feed. I curate my own news feed sourced by online subscriptions and posts from Facebook Friends. I'm reading from a multiplicity of sources which was never possible for me pre-Facebook days. 2. Diary. I post my own book reviews, images and narratives of travels, family events, and philosophical essays. 3. Networking. I remain in touch with people I've known all over the world on a level never conceivable before social media. On Facebook, I have eight hundred Friends and one hundred eleven followers. 4. Broadcast platform. I share essays I write and articles I have read, enjoying interactive dialogue with friends and followers on topics of interest. I also appreciate the targeted ads tailored to my preferences I get from Facebook... makes shopping much easier and highlights items of great interest of which I might not have otherwise been aware. 5. Music video service.

Facebook (Meta) is receiving bad publicity these days. A poor earnings report a couple of days ago precipitated a 25% fall in Meta's stock price. I read another report that Mark Zuckerberg had all but abandoned paying attention to his Facebook and Instagram bread and butter businesses while he concentrates on bringing to fruition a virtual reality offering, Meta, the future of which, is unclear.

Many conservatives who make political related posts on Facebook, are angry at content moderation (fact check and algorithm) decisions made by Facebook. For conservatives, Facebook's de-platforming of President Trump is an appalling act tantamount to a tech oligarch, censorship, coup. Yet, criticism of Facebook also comes from liberals who say that Facebook's algorithms exacerbate violent extremism... read: their conservative opponents get too much play on Facebook.

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro regularly gets more daily shares on Facebook than any other pundit, liberal or conservative. Conservative broadcaster Dan Bongino is number two in Facebook shares. So, what better way to get Shapiro and Bongino off Facebook than to accuse them of making extremist assertions. It is somewhat amusing that liberals lauded Obama's use of social media, including Facebook, in Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential elections. It wasn't until Trump also successfully used Facebook in his own 2016 campaign that liberals started complaining about Facebook's conservative bias.

Zuckerberg seems to be between a rock and a hard place. He has both liberals and conservatives coming at him. But for his de-platforming Trump, notwithstanding the fact checker and algorithm nuisances, I think Zuckerberg has done a pretty good job in protecting conservative thought (free speech) circulating on Facebook, particularly when you consider the rabid liberalism which pervades Silicon Valley and Facebook employees.

Washington meddling, either anti-trust, or regulations restraining so-called extremist speech, represent less of a problem for Facebook than the slowdown in new customer growth and the rise of new competitors like Tik Tok. Facebook, quite apart from Zuckerberg's focus on Meta, should go back to basics and better promote its benefits like the ones I have cited above.