The Church of Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg may be feeling a wee bit guilty.  He’s had six months to reflect on how Facebook, his own brainchild, disseminated enough false information to swing an election and betray all the liberal values his heart holds dear.  So he would like to redeem that wrong by making Facebook more of a force for good, to bring people together instead of driving them apart.  Like a church, you know—or a little-league team.

That’s the reason Zuckerberg has been touring the U.S., stopping in every state.  Political observers can’t help observing how much time he’s spent in Iowa, but maybe he likes the corn.  His stated goal is to spread the gospel of community-through-Facebook across the land and eventually the world.  That was the theme of the first-ever Facebook Communities Summit, held in Chicago late last month.  Group administrators were invited to attend free of charge in order to network, share ideas and feedback, and hear from Facebook executives, including Zuckerberg himself, “about new products we’re building to help admins grow and manage their groups.”  The founder elaborated on this vision in the Thursday-night keynote speech: “People are basically good.  Everyone genuinely wants to help other people.” With that principle in mind, Facebook intends to make it easier for good folks to join other good folks for good purposes online.

The church, he said , used to meet that need and supply that sense of purpose.  But with the decline in church participation, as well as in other local organizations like sports leagues, community spirit has taken a hit.  “We started a project to see if we could get better at suggesting groups that will be meaningful to you. We started building artificial intelligence to do this. And it works. In the first 6 months, we helped 50% more people join meaningful communities.”

Good for him. The executive board seems to be grappling with some of the implications of balancing free speech and social responsibility—see the Hard Questions they’ve posed.  I’m going to assume Zuckerberg is completely sincere about these means and ends . . .

But surely he must recognize that the internet, and social media in particular, is one reason local communities began to fall apart in the first place.  Or if not a cause, at least a facilitator.  Where else can you stream a movie, watch a football game without commercials, join a whole platoon of World of Warcraft gamers, and order a comfy couch (with free shipping) to serve as your base of operations?  The internet allows us to live our entire lives inside our four walls if that’s what we want.  It takes effort to pull yourself off the couch and go to church or a little-league game, still more to volunteer to teach Sunday School or coach a team.  With so many family bonds broken already, more and more people see less and less reason to bind themselves.

Here are a few Hard Questions for Mark Zuckerberg:

• If people are basically good, and everyone genuinely wants to help other people, why is there so much meanness and nastiness on Facebook?
• If meaningful communities are formed around common interests alone, what’s to keep them from becoming echo chambers where everyone has the same opinion and dissent is not encouraged?
• Also, if common interest is the glue, what happens when group members lose interest?
• What is a “meaningful community,” anyway?  Are there any guidelines in place?  Will Facebook reserve the right to disallow any communities it thinks are not meaningful?

Facebook now has over two billion users, and I am one.  I’ve joined a few groups and I’ve found links to interesting articles and I’ve enjoyed seeing pictures of weddings and grandkids.  But I never confused it with community, because true community is not based on convenience, or even interest.  The strongest communities, it turns out, are not voluntary: family, church, military, nation.  You don’t choose them; they choose you.  The glue is shared responsibility, and that can only be face to face.  Not Facebook.