If you like your numbers big and scary, consider that Facebook reports it has taken down almost 1.3 billion fake accounts in the past six months and removed 21 million "pieces of adult nudity or porn" and 2.5 million instances of "hate speech."
Facebook has 2.19 billion users around the globe, nearing half the current world population of 7.6 billion (according to the most recent United Nations estimate). Does that mean slightly more than half of them are launching fake accounts? Or that a 10th of them have nothing better to do than post pix of their naughty bits? Or that there are 2.5 million ways to say "You suck (I don't)"?
I’m fully aware that somewhere in Russia there are rooms full of Putiniski nerds doing little more than cranking out fake accounts as they prepare to "influence" the next round of elections in the U.S. (and elsewhere). But 2.6 billion a year? How can you have more fake accounts than real users? Yet another Facebook numerical mystery.
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I think Facebook would be doing the world a great service if it opened up a parallel Facebook World Porn site so that users have a place to exercise their impulses to post naked pictures (and the rest of us could find them all in one place.)
Not that the Internet is not already drowning in porn, but it would be fascinating to see what pictures posters think their followers would see and say, "Very cool!" I mean what if someone came up with some entirely new Tantric position that would help everyone in the world have an orgasm in 90 seconds, and Facebook just routinely eradicated it? Better to err on the side of caution, I say.
Just think of what a different world it would be if you could see those Snapchat photos your kids have been sending to each other for the past half decade. Might give a whole new meaning to "Can you come downstairs for a minute, please?"
One of the profound downsides of Internet anonymity is that it has empowered a lame-brained segment of the populace to lash out and try to hurt the feelings of those with whom they disagree, or who have different skin colors or world views. Before the web, if you uttered such bile, you would probably get your ass kicked in short order. Too bad that’s not still the case.
Now, Facebook didn't corner the market on hate speech — it just sold ad space for it. But clearly it has throw-weight — otherwise, people wouldn't try 5 million times a year to insult others. I suppose if you have an oversized ego (or undersized IQ), you get some perverse pleasure out of trying to make your opinion known in a way that insults others.
Still, it might help if the rest of us didn't take the bait and feel it was our moral imperative to set the haters straight.
As painful as it may be to just let hate speech sit as perhaps a final word, I think if you simply let the oxygen out of the room with your absence, hate might just die a faster, uncelebrated death.
Here’s an even better idea. Stay the hell off Facebook, and sleep better at night.
An entertaining but hard punching five-star read. Kudos to George Simpson!
After watching so many law and order type shows, I understand there already sites where people can show off their clotheless bodies...(eeewww) and other stuff, too. It's like shouting fire in a crowded theatre. Some people may think that illegal, fbeast. Now what about those CPM's ?
“2.5 million instances of "hate speech."
... says WHO exactly? Or is Facebook to be the sole, highly secretive censor of what is allowed? THAT is real election meddling.