Automation and artificial intelligence are going to have a big impact in all kinds of worlds. These technologies are new and real and they are coming soon. Facebook is deeply interested in these trends. We don’t know where this is going, we don’t know what the social costs and consequences will be, we don’t know what will be the next area of life to be hollowed out, the next business model to be destroyed, the next company to go the way of Polaroid or the next business to go the way of journalism or the next set of tools and techniques to become available to the people who used Facebook to manipulate the elections of 2016. We just don’t know what’s next, but we know it’s likely to be consequential, and that a big part will be played by the world’s biggest social network. On the evidence of Facebook’s actions so far, it’s impossible to face this prospect without unease.
Fantastic excerpt to click through and read. I highly encourage it. The dominance of Facebook is nothing like Microsoft, Google or Apple’s dominance over the last 3 decades. Facebook’s dominance is in the data it has about everything we do. It follows us around the web as we ingest content and if a data network starts to encroach on its dominance, it acquires them. It’s entirely possible that we could completely interact with AI versions of our friends who are just like our friends in every way because it has every data point to know how they’ll react to specific news and events. Every new Facebook feature is more invasive than the last but unlike a band-air, Facebook slowly creeps in to our lives more each day. It’s a gradual invasion.
I hate that I’ve missed so much of what’s going on in real-life by refusing to participating in Facebook. Events, marketplace, live video, current events, life-events of my friends and family, trends and new music. I am isolated on an island without Facebook but all I can do is hold out and hope the inevitability of a mass exodus from Facebook is more than just my hope. IRL is online now. Active online communities I used to participate in are now on Facebook groups, blogs are now Facebook posts, YouTubers are moving to Facebook, photographers I followed on Flickr are on Facebook and Instagram and breaking news happens there now. I hate it but I’m doubling down and continuing to resist.