This Is What Facebook Is For
The last few weeks have been bloody and unsettled domestically and around the world. And while we’re again grieving a major attack in France, that violence nor what is happening here at home are at all unique and in fact representative of an all too common pattern of experience for much of the world. This violence is not new, and neither are the inequalities and injustices that are driving it.
Like everyone else, I’m struggling with how to talk about this because every statement seems insufficient, too narrow, not enough in so many ways. But we must begin, so here we go. There are many dimensions to the current crisis in the United States — from economic inequality to implicit institutional racism to explicit racism to violence to gun policy to terrorism to law enforcement to intelligence. Essential to each of these is a conversation about the role the media and technology play in telling these stories and bringing into the light the shadowed inequities that have surrounded us for years.
I’ve heard many people questioning Facebook this week after their Facebook Live platform was used to broadcast the death of Philando Castile ranging from theories of content moderation to genuine questions of whether this could possibly be what Facebook was designed for. But I would offer that if the purpose of Facebook is to make relationships with each other at a distance more vibrant, more visceral, and more valuable, to make it possible to see and share humanity more clearly across greater distances of geography, class, race, or ideology, then this is exactly what Facebook is for.
And when it reveals something essential and profound that disrupts our general daily life and interrupts the sterile landscape of targeted ads with something painful and real — then we don’t dare turn away. It is painful and disturbing, and there are real moral, ethical, and legal challenges to this kind of content — questions around decency, agency, and responsibility that need to be asked and wrestled with. But that we are willing to look at life as it really is for our fellow humans is the first step to real acknowledgement. And then we must act, that we must find a path in our own lives and communities to make room to listen and to change because what is needed is not just some obscure policy change to police procedures or gun safety somewhere in the system but a fundamental shift in all of us and how we see and acknowledge the daily suffering of our neighbors.
In Dallas this week, President Obama talked about the need for open hearts, and President Bush reminded us of our tendency to judge other by their worst examples and ourselves by our best intentions. If we’re willing to take a more honest look and to hold on to a more nuanced understanding of these complex and painful truths, then these are exactly the stories we need to see. And if Facebook can make that easier or more accessible, then I hope that’s exactly what they believe it is for.
Originally posted on Timshel.com
