NetDynam 2.0

Adults have free will. Adults are autonomous. If you do not believe this you
are a whiner who likes to blame other people. If you admit that something or someone
is influencing you beyond physical force or a threat to your livlihood, you are
weak or perhaps crazy. This is why people hearing voices are considered crazy.
Not everyone hears what is there to begin with so if someone hears something differently big deal. It’s when they obey the voices or fall under their spell that they are no longer strong, competent, free adults. Please keep all this in mind.

What I’m about to tell you goes against the statements above: If you are on Facebook chances are very good that this nearly monopolistic social network is manipulating you, and even if you resist the manipulation you will feel its effects in the form of costs in time and energy.That feeling of something getting old fast is exhaustion you are spending in fighting something. Let’s give that something a name.

First, let’s remember that manipulation is not force. No one will make you do anything on Facebook that you absolutely don’t want to do and you are free to leave. No one will charge you money for not participating in certain activities. You will not be thrown out of groups usually though you may get unfriended, the unfriending will not spread across your entire network of friends. Facebook instead uses feed layout, bait and switch tactics, and social engineering to encourage you to accept third party applications which let unknown software developers view your profile. Facebook also uses feed layout and lack of user instruction to discourage you from finding and using alternatives to third party software.

Let’s start with my feed. I have blocked over two hundred third party applications on Facebook. Most of the games my friends play or quizzes they take can not send invitations to me. Still this is my feed.

In this image, real news as reported in the Atlantic and my friend’s African Safari sit side by side as if they are equally important. African Safari is a game. The issue with the banks is real. The pictures from the game are larger and more enticing than the message from the Atlantic.

In addition, this particular game, African Safari, is deceptive. If I go to its cause page, it says it donates money to Nothing but Nets (Undoubtedly it does this because if it doesn’t it is committing fraud.), and every ten dollars raised saves a child’s life. Stop! Read this last sentence about the ten dollars carefully. Nowhere does it say that each game donates ten dollars. It does not even say that each game donates one dollar or ten cents. Nowhere in fact does it say how much each game donates. Usually, what these click through games donate is on a par with typical rates for impression advertising anywhere to a few tenths of a cent to a whole penny. Hey they are donating money and eventually they get to ten dollars for each net, but it just takes a while, but that is another story. It takes some careful reading and research to get past the pretty picture and charity appeal.

Let’s have another look at my feed.

As you can see, real news from my friends sits side by side with news of a friend’s gaming exploits. The gaming exploits are larger and more prominent, but they are just a game, and one that I’ve blocked by the way. My friend with the raspberry has no farm in real life, yet her gaming exploits loom larger than my friends’ real news.

None of this has to be this way. Facebook could simply report that my friend with the fake farm is playing Farm Pals and not show any illustrations. It could place gaming news separately from my friends’ status reports, notes, and link postings. It could choose not to advertise games in the feed if you are not a subscriber or offer a way to block games from the feed. It does none of these things.

Now let’s have some more fun with the feed. Friends’ birthdays are real news. I think we can agree with that. If I want to find them. I have to scroll to the BOTTOM of my feed and look on the right. A birthday is far smaller than a piece of gaming news.

If I want to see what is happening with my groups which are a native Facebook application, no group news appears in my feed at all! To find groups, I have to find a small icon at the top or bottom of my Facebook page and click it to go past the feed. Then I have to select a group of which I am a member and enter it. That is a lot of clicking. Perhaps Facebook would rather have me playing games.

Now, let’s take a look at how games propagate themselves between friends. A friend invites you to play, often by giving you a gift. The gift comes as a confirmation request that includes a wheedling message such as: &qot;BLANK has just sent you a special flower. I picked it out just for you…" or "BLANK has sent you a gift. Don’t ignore it or she will think that you don’t want it." This is social engineering at its worst. Ignoring a friend is rude. Sending back a gift unopened which is the equivalent of blocking an application is rude. Learning to be rude is the price of free will, and it is a very high cost.

A third tactic Facebook uses to spread third party software is bait and switch. You see your friends exchanging gifts and maybe you have a few gifts yourself. If your friends give gifts you want to give them too. You go to check out the gifts and find…

You thought Facebook was free! Fortunately, and according to your feed, your friends all send free gifts. Resistance is costly. All those little dollar gifts are going to add up very fast.

Now, before you stop and tell me about all the free alternatives there are to third party software on Facebook, I’ll tell you about the ones I know. First, there are occasionally free gifts. I’ve given them.

Second there are messages, walls, and notes. You can send an e-card to yourself and then place the link to pick up the card in a friend’s profile as a safe way of sending greetings. You can also keep a photo album of clip art and place links to the images on your friends’ walls. These get a big fat billing in the feed as an added bonus.

The downside of all of these alternatives is that they take either patience (Free gifts are not available every day.) or else some savvy. It takes work to bounce that e-card into your own box and then copy the link and paste it. It takes work to set up the clip art folder and the extra window and copy and paste. Third party software does it all for you and you can use it on impulse. Resistance costs.

So what are the alternatives and what can any of us do. Adults after all are powerful and autonomous and no one pushes us around because we have free will. Of course, one can leave Facebook, but that means leaving your friends who may or may not follow you. Also everyone seems to be there and people will constantly nag you to return. There do exist other social networks with better software and less third party manipulation, but getting your friends to follow you to Ning, Eons, MySpace etc… is hard.

Blocking third party applications is of course an option, but one pays a terrible price for resisting a constant barrage of social engineering, being branded, ungrateful or a killjoy. I’ve experimented for various strategies for dealing with this problem. Usually, if I would accept the gift (There are some invitations I turn down flat for a variety of reasons), I visit the recipient’s wall, leave a thankyou message and either a bit of clip art or an inspirational quote and a link to the quote’s source. This hopefully shows that it is possible to liven up a wall without resorting to third party software. Sometimes I mention that my return gift requires no invitation or third party software. In this way, I lead by example.

If there is a prayer request in the gift I have blocked, I write to the giver and ask via private message for a text copy of what she prayed. If there is charity fraud involved, I usually also inform the giver by private message.
All this takes time, but I need to sleep at night, and resistance costs.

The one element of Facebook’s manipulation that I can’t escape is a feed full of third party software advertisement in the form of large news items like the illustrations in this blog. It took me a while to realize: "This is not real news. This is not important. What is important to me with Facebook is not often on my front page." Still I step past this constant barrage every day. I wish I did not have to do it, but until organizations to which I belong decide to leave Facebook along with most of my friends, I am stuck there. I’m a captive audience and I spend way too much energy preserving my small bit of free choice.