Here's a story from the BBC, about how Facebook intended to crack down on celebrity ad scams. You'll know the sort of thing if you've spent any time on social media recently - oh, here's Joe Rogan, or Elon Musk, filmed in what looks like a podcast interview, talking about how they can make fortunes playing some sort of hokey app, or whatever. It's an AI voice-changing scam.
Well, I saw the same ads you did, knew it was all BS, and just thought I'd ignore it, as I was able to discern right, from wrong. But after a few weeks, I then thought - well, why the hell not? And decided to report some of them. It's not the sort of thing I normally do, because - who's got time for that, eh?
But - let's try.
I reported half a dozen instances. Same ad, the one with Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. Very recognisable fake, 100% a scam. Reported it as a scam. "Celebrity impersonation". ticked all the boxes, as far as Facebook's complaint procedure goes. So far, so good. I sit back and wait. And today, I got half a dozen messages back from Facebook. They didn't remove the ads.
If something so blatant, so egregious won't even pass their censors, you have to ask yourself, if this is not a simple case of their automated scam protection systems failing - is it something more egregious? Because, to me, it looks like they know what's happening, and they'll make a show of pretending as if they care, but they don't. they don't give a shit about you, or me, or anything.
I'm starting to think that we're facing the death spiral of social media. Despite its huge influence (and initially, its massive potential), this wave of misinformation, distortion, lies and bullshit just can't continue. We need to return to a sense of our own independence, online. Our own domains, our own blogs, our own voices. We need to regain our personal digital sovereignty, and we need to do it before SM can wreak any more havoc.
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I'm worried that the hope that it won't all be as bad as it seems right now will cause the crushing realisation that it actually is that bad be all the more worse, should it come to that. Still a load of people on Facebook I want to keep contact with, still a load of people I want to keep contact with on Instagram too, and I hate the underlying platform politics on both and the systems that favour moulding a population to accept a worse life for everyone except the few at the very top. And I also hate that my middle-age white maleness protects me from so much of it all. Insta's latest censorship of left-wing terms as of today will be the next one of their "unfortunate mistakes by the algorithm" but it feels with each new one we're getting closer to the point where they don't even pretend it's accidental any longer. All very depressing.
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