Oh Facebook ...

Ah ... Facebook! Love it or hate it. Maybe a bit of both? 

It’s had a rough time recently, what with the Cambridge Analytica hoo-ha and then Mark Zuckerberg’s reluctance to talk to politicians. And then some plonker suggesting that it didn’t really matter if a Facebook post prompted someone to take a life (their own or someone else’s) as long as they continued to connect more people.

Does all this matter? I suppose it depends on your perspective. I can’t say I enjoy pottering about on Facebook, but I have books to sell and it’s part of being a public person (and that’s essential to the whole marketing process, were told). But it’s a great way to keep up with friends who are now far away - I can’t see us picking up the phone as often as we cross Facebook paths. And, when I’m away, it’s how I keep in touch with everyone back home.

So useful. So innocuous. Except while I’m there I might like a post or two, click on a link that takes me somewhere unexpected - and instantly I’ve given away information about myself, my interests, my political leanings, to someone who might, months down the line, tease me with propaganda or advertising. 

Harmless? If we are kept informed about what they are doing, possibly. So if I get message that reads something along the lines of ‘we noticed you like that, have you thought about this ...’ the origin of their information is clear and I can accept or reject it, depending on my whims at the time. But they don’t do that - rather they weasel ideas into my timeline and I’ve no idea where they’ve come from.

Does it matter - yes it does. Local elections loom, and the propaganda machine will be gearing up to bombard us with guff in the last few days. So much guff that some undecideds will lose the will to think for themselves and vote like automata. So yes, it matters. Whoever wins, it matters. It matters because we live in a democracy that is predicated on voters thinking for themselves and not being manipulated by social media.

And if Facebook is doing it, I’ll be astonished it Twitter isn’t. And all those other platforms that we love and hate. 

To believe, or not to believe (and I’m not talking about God)

To believe, or not to believe - no I’m not talking about God.

But I am talking about the News - with a capital N because it seems to be shouted at us from all corners of social media at the moment. But how much is actually true?

Some, of course, is verifiable. If England, say (just supposing), were to win a football match 1-0 there can be no dispute about the score. But the meaning of that score depends on who you believe - they might have played wonderfully and only the referee deprived them of another five goals, or they might have been lucky to scrape a win. 

And there are many times when even the facts can’t speak for themselves. Those of in the UK know that the promise to put £350,000,000 a week into the NHS after we leave the EU was a lie - but that didn’t stop politicians quoting it. This last week, some health service workers have been promised what looks, at first sight, like a generous pay rise. But when you work out their loss of real income over the last ten years this comes nowhere near making up for it.

Ideas ... facts ... the two become jumbled on social media. I’ve seen demands that supermarkets stop using single-use plastic - all very laudable, given the rubbish in our seas (verifiable) but without reminding us that significantly more energy is used to make glass bottles than plastic. I’ve seen a petition that demands the government does not sign a trade deal with the US as it will jeopardise the NHS - but without any evidence that is the case. Instinct tells me that such a deal is a Bad Idea, but that isn’t enough - I want to be presented with enough information to make an informed decision and not just sound-bites and petitions.

Does it matter? I think it does. In this instant-information world few of us have the time or inclination to research anything with enough vigour to develop informed opinions. We are dependent on the media to keep us informed - but the media simply feeds us snippets of largely unverifiable facts and great tracts of opinion. 

Which means politicians can talk about listening to the electorate safe in the knowledge that we have no idea what is true and what isn’t.

When private lives become public.

I don't suppose many of you have been that bothered about Ben Stokes being involved in a brawl in Bristol last week. Young men having a bit more to drink than is sensible and then throwing their fists around is hardly original. And, given the nuclear stand-off between America and North Korea, or the plight of the Rohinja Muslims, it hardly warrants any attention at all.

Maybe that's why the newspapers have been full of it - something insignificant to get agitated about to divert attention away from what really matters.

For those who don't know, or don't care, who Ben Stokes is - he's a member of the English cricket team. And the timing of his misadventure is critical as they will shortly be touring Australia and playing for the Ashes. Which (and I say this as a cricket obsessive) is just one of many entertainments around this winter but will not make a dent on world progress.

Yet that hasn't stopped the papers and cricket pundits from throwing opinions around. Even though all they have to go on is grainy CCTV footage and a brief police report, that has been enough to demand retribution that extends far beyond anything the court may or may not impose.

For - to be clear - this is in the hands of the police. Is it their job (not the press or social media) to establish the facts and to decide, with the CPS, whether to press charges. If they do, it is for the courts to impose a sanction. That is their job. 

And once that is all done and dusted, then the matter, surely, is closed. 

But we live in an age when everyone, it seems, is entitled not only to have an opinion but also to throw it around to make sure everyone hears. That CCTV footage is all over the Internet - without any evidence of what preceded it, or what came next. But that hasn't stopped demands for the most punitive measures to be taken against Stokes’s career as a cricketer. Anything the legal system may or may not ask of him is nothing compared with the humiliation insisted on by some the papers and cricketing bigwigs.

Ben Stokes is not alone. He is just one of hundreds of public figures who do foolish things when they are young. And the newspapers exploit them all to sell thousands of copies. Misinformation breeds online. The result of all that is private lives becoming public property. 

I can't begin to imagine where I'd be now if all the stupid things I did when I was young became public property. And you? Or maybe you were saintly.