Ron: If Facebook was a friend, we would have ditched them a while ago

If Facebook were my friend in real life, I probably would have stopped hanging out with them a long time ago. You see I try to weed out people that I can’t trust.

Most of the time, I have a one strike and you’re out policy on talking behind my back. In real life, I will quickly lose interest in that kind of friendship.

But in the digital world, it’s harder to cut off because it’s always there to add perceived value to “the relationship.”

“Remember that great time you had?”

“Look at this amazing photo.”

“Isn’t this story interesting? I thought you’d like it.”

“Oh my god, how cute is this puppy?”

“Did you know that your frenemy in High School is totally fat now?”

Facebook actually caters to the petty junior high student in all of us. Meanwhile, they are constantly farming information about us and talking behind our back. Selling our interests to the highest bidder. We are nothing more than targeted advertising to them.

Oh, Ron likes to travel, woodworking, and Apple computers — who can we sell this information to?

Not to mention the corrosive echo chamber that most of us live in online. Constantly feeding our misconceptions and prejudices with stories that only reinforce the worst parts of our nature.

It’s been a tough year for the social network, and the more we learn about how they operate, the more people are turned off by it. Zuckerberg and his pals are feeling the heat not just from Washington DC, but from most of Europe as well. The complete lack of concern for massive amount of misinformation on the site should cause all of us concern. Even after learning about election interference, racist and xenophobic groups using its service for evil, and a general culture of bad information, very little has been done to change things.

Yet the upside of seeing how your niece’s soccer game went is apparently too great to resist. And so here I am, a social media hypocrite trying to appeal to my own common sense even though I know I’ll log in today and we will broadcast this very commentary on Facebook live.

As the great poet Alanis Morissette once sang, “Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?”

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“What Are We Talking About Here” can be heard every weekday at 4:50 p.m. and 6:50 p.m. on the Ron & Don Show on KIRO Radio 97.3 FM.