What is Facebook for?

Seventeen years have passed since Mark Zuckerberg, along with other students at Harvard University, launched the social network Facebook on 4 February 2004. More than three lustrums to change human relations through the internet.

Searching for and finding friends and family. Writing messages, chatting, congratulating birthdays, recounting personal joys and dramas... The Facebook wall as that great forum where human beings met.

But Facebook is no longer what it once was. It is now Facebook Inc, a conglomerate of computer services that includes other social networks such as WhatsApp. A multinational capable of overthrowing governments, altering elections, ruining lives and promoting fake news. You no longer find a distant cousin lost on the other side of the world. Along the way, the relative gets lost in a tangle of ads, games, privacy policies and abandoned profiles that make him or her give up at the second click.

Life at Facebook has become complicated. Behind the big F that everyone recognises there is a web of big data that ended in the big Cambridge Analytica scandal. The company was accused of having obtained the personal information of millions of Facebook users against the social network's usage policies and of having used that data to create political ads. Zuckerberg had to sit before the US Senate and undergo a tough grilling that will go down in history for his dialogue with Senator Durbin:

"Mr Zuckerberg, would you be comfortable sharing the name of the hotel you stayed at last night?" asked Dick Durbin.
"Mm, no!" replied Zuckerberg, after a long pause and a smile.

"I think that's possibly what this is all about: the right to privacy," Durbin replied.

The Americans acknowledged that Europe had done a much better job of protecting its citizens' data with the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These rules make apps sweat as they try to get information from their users, because now they need explicit acknowledgement that their age, region, tastes, searches... can be used for commercial purposes for the benefit of the company that lets you use their app.

Assuming that there is anyone left on Facebook doing the same as 17 years ago, now they have to submit to a consumerist environment, to posts that hide advertising to the consumer's liking, links to rustic websites that live off clicks based on showing memes or have to see poor quality photos that are still uploaded by the over 50s who still live there. It's unbearable to be on Facebook. Game apps that were a hit 10 years ago are still annoying in a corner, because someone has forgotten to buy animals for the farm. There's an echo in interest groups because they're evicted.

The Marketplace tries to sell you a used bike saddle or a rustic shed in a village in Valencia. Does anyone buy anything on Facebook? Events, Messenger, Friend Lists, Weather, Emotional Health, Facebook Pay, live video, emergency response, Oculus, Memories, and even COVID tips... All this Facebook wants to be. An entertainment machine that stresses and bores.

There is still the professional part. Companies continue to open profiles on Facebook, because it is better to be there than not to be there. In case someone passes by their virtual shop window and buys something. It is the best thing that has been put in place in recent years. A business can have a presence on Facebook, even if it doesn't have a physical space. Shop, photos, ads, offers, online shopping... The idea is good, but it can never be exploited. The network of knowledge that the business owner must have leads him to make a decision: study for months how Business and the ad manager work so as not to throw away the money he thinks he is investing in advertising; hire a company to do the job and assume that he is doing it well; or upload photos of his products and beg the customer that, if they want something, it is better to call or send a WhatsApp to manage the sale.

Facebook is not giving up. It sets up courses and learning programmes to teach users how to use its tools. Videos, talks, documents (in English), accreditation diplomas against payment of 90 euros... hours of class that would validate a degree to convince you that it is better to pay if you want them to show your ads. If you pay, they see more of you. If you don't pay, you go to the wall... of regrets.

The media have given up being on Facebook. They may post a couple of news items a day for the sake of being present. Zuckerberg did not want his invention to be politically biased, but he is able to select politically incorrect news and reduce the publication reach to near zero so that it is not seen. Facebook has its own ideology. Today they maintain a veto on Donald Trump's profile.

Also the media have to get a PhD in how to upload news to Facebook. Permissions, documents, articles of incorporation, embed codes on their websites... A never-ending protocol in which they must declare whether the medium publishes about politics and in what tone. The digital dictatorship of the 21st century. If they don't like it, they justify their response in endless rules that the medium fails to comply with.

Facebook survives on Instagram. Another of Zuckerberg's big acquisitions when he realised that the new generations lived off images. In 2012 he paid 1 billion to give oxygen to his ageing social network. People accept that what they post on Instagram is replicated on Facebook. This makes the wall even more ridiculous, because it fills it with tacky photos and videos with a bunch of hashtags at the bottom that contribute nothing to the environment.

Customer neglect

Customer service is worthy of study. There is no direct telephone number. A switchboard where you can get in touch with a person who will attend to you personally. And yet companies have understood that customer service must be a priority and direct. Facebook doesn't care. It enables its Messenger so that the user can talk to an operator who has a lot of standard resources to answer without saying anything. But there is no shortage of simple things like "take care of yourself", "protect your loved ones" or "stay at home" in times of coronavirus. They do not resolve any doubts and attribute everything to a series of ghost departments that make the decisions. If your company's website suffers an attack and replicates advertising, Facebook won't let the url appear in your posts. If you call to fix it, they send you a policy and tell you that you are in breach of one of those points, but they don't tell you which one. That makes it impossible for you to fix the problem to their liking and return your website to Facebook. Generic answers to particular problems make anyone despair.

Maybe Facebook should use Facebook to find itself.