The platform is pure evil. It spies on people, and ignores extremists and political terrorists (like Trump’s January 6^th “supporters”) in order to drive “engagement”.

Over time, it’s been getting worse. It’s certainly no wonder why young people are abandoning it.

They may not be primarily concerned with the spying or the manipulation.

If it’s true that they are just going to other Facebook platforms like Instagram, WhatApp, as well as the non-FB Snapchat, which is actually worse in some ways, then they aren’t learning the important lessons.

But, all things being aside for the moment, since Facebook was invaded by “Your Parents” and they started posting a bunch of racist crap, “We hate Biden!”, and “Gee, don’t you miss Trump even though he nearly destroyed our entire country and did the majority of that in just his last 9 months!”, their userbase on Facebook itself has been plummeting.

The remaining users are left going down a rabbit hole of increasing insanity as increasingly the only thing left are a bunch of self-important, entitled baby boomers, who are obviously going through their second childhood (I mean, when the police have to come out because you knocked someone’s teeth out over a “mask dispute”….), and don’t understand shit about science. (Vaccine “hesistancy”. AKA, I don’t know how this works, so instead of learning about how it works, I’ll decide to be ignorant and afraid instead!”)

All other things aside, and there are plenty of other things, do we really want to share a platform with right-wing terrorists and trolls who support Trump and are dumb enough to not only break the law, but take pictures of themselves doing it, admit everything on CNN, and then upload the evidence to Facebook?

Both of my parents voted for Trump and they were very “Hah! In your face!” about it, but they’re very weak now and don’t want to discuss the fact that he lost to Joe Biden, of all people. Even though Biden spent a lot of his Senate career doing things that they would have approved of had they actually paid any attention to it. He was behind the 1994 Crime Bill and he’s still fighting in court to deport asylum seekers under Trump’s made up “Title 42” nonsense.

CBP and ICE are as bad as they ever were under Trump. Why, just a few weeks ago, they were photographed on horseback whipping black people from Haiti at the border.

So not much has changed. To hear mom and dad, you’d think that Biden will turn us into a Communist country, even though the facts don’t support this either. It was Trump that signed the biggest corporate welfare bill ever (the CARES Act) and mollified the anger of those whom he caused to become unemployed with rent moratoriums, the illegal CDC eviction ban, and “extended unemployment checks”. Biden let the unemployment program expire, the eviction ban is gone, and the CARES Act and “American Rescue Plan” money turned into state slush funds for bread and circuses and new prisons.

But they won’t pay attention. Facebook has radicalized and mentally perverted and corrupted them both to the point of no return. We should feel sorry for both of them, and those like them.

Of course some, like my parents, were already sort of like this, but Facebook made them worse. It put them in a bubble and let them speak with people who were even more fit for a lunatic asylum than either of them were, and they started getting crazier and crazier ideas in their heads.

In an episode of Babylon 5, when the Narn (who have been oppressed by the Centauri) wanted revenge, G’Kar has to shout “No! They are a DYING PEOPLE! We should just let them pass.”

I suppose the same can be said of our parents, the boomers, at this point. They can’t be reasoned with. They live in an alternate reality with “alternative facts”, and they are very much on the way out. It’s up to us to salvage what we can when they’re no longer as much of a force. ⬆