Putting Money Where Pixel Is

​There is absolutely no reason for anyone of conscience not to delete their Facebook account immediately. Not to mention march in the streets in the millions demanding that it get the Ma Bell treatment. No one man, company, or platform (it's not a platform, it's a publisher and needs to be treated like any other publisher responsible for its content) should be allowed to control 70% of social media activity, and therefore a dangerous majority of communal intellectual, cultural, and political thought. In fact, Facebook should immediately be torn apart and forced to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Its algorithms should be completely transparent and closely studied for their insidious effects, especially on children. As the crush of advertising (remember only 8 years ago when there was absolutely none in your feed?) makes it almost unusable, and the data harvesting continues, and we all conveniently ignore the fact that, despite endless editorials about ignored rust belt towns, the reason Trump was elected was manipulated Facebook analytics, for some reason we hang on. Especially because Zuckerberg didn't do it for any particular ideology, which in some ways would have been marginally more forgivable, but for cash. And now THIS. But of course we all already knew THIS, and every single permutation of it. The truth is that it's just too convenient a way to stay in touch in an isolated world. And, pathetically, as much as I try to be an ethical person, I'm staying for now. Up here in the far corner of the country, where I spend most of my day alone in an office, these pixel-interactions are genuinely meaningful, if mostly meaningless on the surface. I am a chimp and I need to remain in relative proximity to other chimps, or wither. Also, I am weak.
However, I've been thinking in general about deleting my account since 2016, and have been very seriously considering it over the last year. For now it would be nice to have some conversations that were less cynical commentary or expressions of anger, no matter how warranted, and more toward organized action about what an exodus en masse might look like. Then leaving might mean something. And I would be 100% in.