We have learned from the testimony of whistleblower Frances Haugen and from excellent insider reports from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and others that Facebook has intentionally fed on the worst of human nature to maximize its profits at the expense of user safety, both mental and physical.

We learned, for example, that Facebook (now called Meta) has deliberately weighted negative emotional responses (specifically, that little angry face emoji that you can use to react to posts) over positive responses when responding to posts. feed the company’s algorithm that determines which stories appear. in your food news.

This means that, by design, Facebook users see more content that interests them than content that inspires or informs them.

Ignoring recommendations from its own researchers and internal watchdogs, Facebook has failed to limit content that harms users’ mental health and self-esteem, especially for young girls.

It has also done much less than it claimed to control disinformation and bad actors on its platforms, particularly outside the United States and for Americans who do not speak English, the people most susceptible to disinformation. .

All the really bad things that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has to answer for and citizens around the world should be angry about.

But Facebook doesn’t deserve all the blame.

Maybe not even most.

We do.

You see, in trying to figure out how to interact with Facebook, the company has tried to force these platforms into pre-social categories where they don’t really belong.

Facebook, for example, is not a medium, and never really claimed to be (although it did everything it could to gobble up the ad revenue that funds real media while essentially stealing – or at least by allowing its users to steal – these media ‘content). Because it is not a medium, Facebook has no inherent responsibility for posting or curating factual or fair content (although that is the right thing to do).

While some have likened Facebook to a utility, neither is it. It is a website or application that uses the existing infrastructure of public services (internet data providers and smartphone) to host its services. While it is true that perhaps millions of Facebook users, especially outside the United States, have come to rely on Facebook-owned applications to communicate with each other, this is not necessarily the case. Any other business could use existing bandwidth to provide this service.

On the contrary, Facebook is most like a game, like the Golf Blitz app that my son got me hooked on some time ago.

Facebook is entertainment, and its inherent sole responsibility is to deliver what we want.

If Facebook were to disappear tomorrow, we could easily replace everything it does with other things. Do you want some news? Pick up a newspaper or visit a newspaper website. Want to share photos of your newborn baby? Type an email or write a letter. Want to reunite with your former college roommate? Google them up, call your school’s alumni association, or pick up a phone book.

This is an important distinction, because if we could replace Facebook so easily, it means that it has no power that we didn’t give it.

In short, Facebook acts the way it does because we let it – no, we tell it to act that way.

Facebook pushes misinformation because we want to read it. It pushes hurtful content because we click on it. It lets violent content filter because it fascinates us and encourages us. It gave this angry emoji extra weight because we kept posting it.

By all means, drag Zuckerberg to Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Kick him out of the business. Accuse the company of antitrust violations. Very well. No matter.

But we have to look deep inside and overcome our hunger for hate, our thirst for misinformation, our tendency to tap into our lowest instincts and spit out nastiness when we stand in front of this screen.

We need to talk to our children about seeing their innate, God-given worth no matter what they see on the screen.

Heck, we need to get back to basics to enjoy the company of others around us more often than we seek companionship through remote Internet connections.

Otherwise we could wipe Facebook and all its bad deeds from the face of the planet, but we will always find ourselves in the clutches of another irresponsible software company that finds out how to make money with our own self-destructive behavior.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-354-3112 or [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.