Stephen Downes

I quit Facebook back in 2017 and thus have been spared its excesses since then. But many people have returned during the pandemic for fear, as Harold Jarche says, of missing out. Facebook is where the community is these days, and if you want to keep up with your family or your town, you join and check in regularly. But I wonder whether people are really getting any value out of it. "We are now dependent on a global corporation — that uses our data to manipulate us — as our main form of communication," says Jarche. "It is as if we live in a company-owned town, and buy all of our goods from the company store, using a party telephone line that the bosses listen in on." I think I'll stay off Facebook.