How Facebook is Serfing You: Why I’ve Decided to #DeleteFacebook

Serfdom was a condition under which a serf was bound to the land they worked and more specifically, to the will of his or her lord. It was a common practice primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe but it seems, however, that the practice continues today – just in a different form.

The meteoric rise of Facebook’s influence and its more recent data infringements should be a warning, not just to regulators but to anyone who uses Facebook - or rather, who is being USED by Facebook. It’s 2.2 billion users have become ‘serfs’ that Facebook can legally use to influence the world in the name of advertising revenue.

History repeating itself

Don’t get me wrong. Megalomaniacal corporations ‘serfing’ the populas for their own profit is not a new thing. The British East India company got away with it in India for nearly four hundred years – using its influence and private army of 260,000 to generate incredible profits at the expense of the local population. They notoriously lorded over the deaths of 10 million Bengali’s in the late 18th century with little accountability.

The difference now is that Facebook is still barely a teenage business (just 14 years old this year) and understandably not equipped to cope with the enormous potential for its platform to be misused in the name of widespread mind control and data espionage.

I am not saying Facebook is evil by any stretch of the imagination. All corporations have a profit motive – it’s in their constitution. Typically, this motivation isn’t a problem because the business adds value to society and its ability to influence is usually restricted to its domain expertise. Now, we’re entering unchartered territory.

On the question of value, Facebook’s ability to connect people around world with their ‘friends’ is arguably noble. The issue, however, is the narcissism it breeds and feeds on and the resulting depression and wasted productivity that comes with spending an average users 50 minutes a day plugged in.

On the question of limitation of influence – Well, it seems like that horse has already bolted with the platform being the channel of choice for Russian propagandists to conduct a staggering campaign to influence the US election.

Where do we go from here?

I’m an avid fan of the British sci-fi drama Black Mirror that hypothesises about the potential consequences of our growing reliance on technology. One of the least violent but most disturbing episodes is “Nosedive”, which follows the disintegrating life of a user of a Facebook-esque platform. The world she lives in is directly shaped by a social media scoring system, with every interaction providing an opportunity to improve or fall in life’s rankings. I challenge anyone to watch this episode without feeling a hint of inevitability of where our world may be headed if we continue our obsession with being “likeable”.

Elon Musk threw his hat into the ring on the subject the other week by expressing his outrage at Facebook’s data breach and influence and removing his companies’ Facebook pages. I am doing the same.

While I applaud the recent news that Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to testify before the United States Congress about its business practices, I would like to remind him that the US public is not the only victim of this breach. Facebook and other major technology companies must investigate and share other violations of its users’ data by third parties.

Facebook says it values being open, inclusive, transparent, and trustworthy. It’s time for them to prove it before the serfs decide to revolt.