👍 Facebook – to delete, or not to delete?

There’s always the chance that #deleteFacebook will simply serve to deflect criticism away from the dominant ethos of surveillance capitalism by redirecting it at Facebook. Thus, people rage against Facebook instead of the ideology that Facebook shares with many other companies. It’s easy to imagine Google trying to capitalize on the current mayhem at Facebook by using the current frustration as an opportunity to relaunch Google+ (they could create tools that make it easy to import an old Facebook account). But that would just be trading one surveillance capitalism platform for another. And though there are certainly hardcore privacy and crypto advocates who will point to various “secure” services or “really private” alternatives it seems that many such arguments are only a bit better than “no suggestion at all” – especially as (at least as of yet) there still isn’t a genuine alternative to Facebook on offer. Though #deleteFacebook may appear ready to take a bite out of Facebook, it risks being a technological solution that defangs the push for broader systemic change and critique.