Sure– I Use Facebook, As A Platform To Promote My Business Interests, But Not At The Expense Of My Privacy

From the Editor—

When I’m asked in the future why Saline Journal doesn’t support a larger footprint on Facebook, I think I’ll simply point them to the report we did following Detective Jeremy Stempien’s “Scam Presentation” last week. [1,2]

The Internet browsers on every device I use all have website bookmarking features, along with the option of sychronizing among them. Some I subscribe to so that I’m sent eMail updates when new content is posted. And on rare occasions, I’ve been known to add their rich site summary (RSS) feeds to my reader of choice. [3,4]

But in no case do I ever register through the “convenience” of signing in with my Facebook, Google, Twitter, or other social media account. Does it take more effort to create an account by hand, come up with a password and keep track of it? Indeed it does. And, by extension, more effort for those nefarious sorts intent on hacking into them from the outside. [5]

Those predisposed toward all eggs in one basket inclinations might also do well to remember that it was barely over two months ago that Facebook reported that “an attack on its computer network had exposed the personal information of nearly 50 million users.” This is particulary important because the central value proposition of this social media goliath is as consolidated repository of freely disclosed personal data. [6,7]

User convenience is simply a means to this end. Sean Parker, former President of Facebook, candidly framed the core interest of the space at an event in Philadelphia just over a year ago now.

The thought process was: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ he said …. To achieve this goal, Facebook’s architects exploited a ‘vulnerability in human psychology,’ explained Parker, who resigned from the company in 2005. Whenever someone likes or comments on a post or photograph, he said, ‘we … give you a little dopamine hit.’ [8]

It’s the creation of a pseudo-community that actually undermines real community. Ironically, appearing to be benovolently doing just the opposite with increasing use of it. [9,10]

Didn’t take much of that for me to decide I should create obstacles to my own social media participation. The only app of this kind on my iPhone is for Twitter, and that’s the only medium to which I post directly from the field. Login for Saline Journal on Instagram is setup on my iCloud Keychain for ease of access when I want to post — but that’s because I know my persnickety nature as a photographer serves as its own obstacle to impulse posts there. For Facebook, I actually have to look up my password in order to access it. [11,12]

Marketers must be thankful that I’m in the minority on this. I saw number last week indicating that active monthly users on Facebook are up 10% for the third quarter of 2018 versus the year prior, to the tune of 2.27 billion. As if that didn’t make things easy enough for zero-thought media buys, there are apps to allow publishers to automatically post updates to their Facebook Pages. [13]

As a marketer, I share links to Saline Journal stories on our Facebook Page every so often, if for no other reason than not to be left out. Our content doesn’t really lend itself to casual clicks or something one reads somewhere along the endless stream of, well, everything. It also serves as an encouragement for readers to take approaches that more directly connect with our content going forward.

I’ve found that it’s safer that way.

Reference

1. “Saline Police Department To Host Fraud Expert For ‘Scam Presentation’ At United Church Of Christ On November 29” Dell Deaton (November 21, 2018) Saline Journal.
2. “‘If You Only Remember One Thing From My Presentation Tonight, Remember This,’ Detective Jeremy Stempien, Regarding Scams” (November 30, 2018) Saline Journal.
3. “Subscribe” Saline Journal.
4. “RSS Feed Link” Saline Journal.
5. “The Password Manager Special: Passwords, Two Factor Authentication, and Securing Your Life Online!” TekThing (May 19, 2016) YouTube.
6. “Facebook Security Breach Exposes Accounts of 50 Million Users” Mike Isaac and Sheera Frenkel (September 28, 2018) The New York Times.
7. “Facebook-Cambridge Analytica: A timeline of the data hijacking scandal” Sam Meredith (April 10, 2018) CNBC.
8. “Has dopamine got us hooked on tech?” Simon Parkin (March 4, 2018) The Guardian.
9. “US psychologists claim social media ‘increases loneliness’” (March 6, 2017) BBC.
10. “The Psychology of a Like: How Social Media is Really Affecting Your Brain” Catriona Harvey-Jenner (July 25, 2017) Cosmopolitan.
11. “Set up iCloud Keychain” Apple.
12. “salinejournal” Instagram.
13. “The Top 20 Valuable Facebook Statistics – Updated November 2018” (November 28, 2018) Zephoria Digital Marketing.