It’s more like: Let everyone in America copy anything off the internet and post it on their Facebook page. What could go wrong? How about everything? Facebook coupled with the still Wild West internet to the consummation of the ‘free to say whatever pops into our minds good or bad’ era. Because everyone says online whatever they want, as a nation and a people we are more divided, angry, anxious, suspicious, distrusting, extreme, and more gullible to any and all conspiracies floating around in cyberspace.
Facebook’s all-out effort to censor hate speech from the vast recesses of its social media pages is lost on me. They are not doing a good job, if they are doing anything at all other than having meetings about all the derogatory phrases and verbal intentions out there, weighing equally criticisms against men and women and cultural slights.
Every day I spot more than one racist, sexist, bigoted, angry comment against: Latin Americans seeking asylum and their children, blacks with or without deep American ancestral roots, Muslims, ‘libtards,’ and more recently elected congresswomen of any race or non Christian faith. Now, granted eight years of nonstop racial slurs were abundantly posted on Facebook throughout President Barack Obama’s terms in office. But I thought it would decrease exponentially with the election of yet another rich white man to the U.S. presidency. Nope. It’s as if Americans who relish free speech as hate speech were just warming up on social media prior to 2016.
Facebook, recently fined billions of dollars for lax efforts to protect users’ privacy—interestingly, tied to the 2016 election—can’t possibly censor its website. It is a massive politically charged machine, reaching billions of people the world over—practically every human being on the planet living right now. And Americans have the right to free speech and thought, so there.
Something about allowing people to freely and openly speak hate against everyone on the planet who is not white and Christian and recognizes the white male of the human species as God on earth is … frightening.
Paved with good intentions
Facebook was such a beautiful concept … so very long ago. It’s as if it’s been part of America for decades, yet it’s still a relatively new phenomenon in the span of modern times. Through Facebook and the internet, America has changed because Americans have changed. Facebook’s downfall was allowing users to post anything off the internet—any insulting image, rough language, comedic political or culturally bigoted statement, and outlandish unfounded claim. In playing loose with American constitutional rights of free speech and press, a Beast has been created not unlike Frankenstein’s monster. A giant dead body was jolted to life by electricity, and our society now lives in its shadow, proceeding with dismay and caution.
Tech experts recommend breaking up Facebook like the ‘Baby Bells,’ following the 1982 court mandate against the phone company’s monopoly. Facebook is gargantuan because of its billions of users who rely on it for social contacts and business. On the other hand, more people tore their lives off Facebook after federal investigations concluded the Russian government meddled in our U.S. elections specifically through the internet, social media and Facebook prominently. We put our lives on Facebook and for some also our opinions. We sparred politely and crudely for years. And now we know, thanks to Facebook, we can agree that no one can say or write or post a thing to change another’s worldview. The issues are so controversial and our opinions so deeply ingrained we can feel them.
Thanks Facebook. Thanks internet. Thanks U.S. Constitution. How we gonna live with all this freedom?
Facebook, the genie, cannot squeeze itself back into the bottle, to the days of unexpressed views perceived by the ruling society as nasty, mean and evil and by just as many as logical, the truth and just plain right under God’s heaven.
Any future change on Facebook is up to us. If Americans have learned anything from Facebook, it’s the fact that uncensored thoughts and feelings against massive groups of humanity—races, sexes, religions, creeds, colors and sexuality—spread like wildfire. And they destroy like fire, too, and cannot be easily contained. Prejudices that once were thought best kept to oneself, which were left pent up only because of social standards and a subtle code of ethics and common decency, have boiled and seethed for decades. They’ve always been part of America, the nation that guarantees its people at birth and when naturalized total freedom especially to think whatever we want.
Facebook is a mirror, a reflection of each and every one of us on it and reading it, revealing to millions of others what collectively Americans think and how we act, what we really are inside. Even if the social media giant disbands or ends its business reign, nothing will change … not for the millions who remain the objects of bigotry, ridicule, racism and sexism from the human venom contained in a single hateful thought, spoken and heard, written and read by many like-minded, allowed to infect another and another. The seeds of hate have always been abundant, blowing in the wind until landing on soil and taking firm root all over God’s green earth.