At midnight, I kicked Facebook out

Yesterday I deleted my Facebook account for good Also lost forever were the pages that promoted my past books my website and a book Irsquove just finished writingI deleted 1106 supposed friends and some 11000odd posts starting with ldquoIrsquom homerdquo on September 13 2007 right up to my last message yesterday The massacre included 781 photographsmdashpoignant memories of my life my children my happinesses my sadnesses my celebrations my wit and wisdom my sarcastic rejoinders my tears and sympathies It was wrenchingFacebook murmured at every turn You donrsquot have to do this You can just deactivate your account take a break Sometimes all you need is sometime apartI succumbed and merely deactivated my account five days ago Then I panicked about the friends whorsquod wonder I reactivated the app from hell just to share my email and details with some selected friendsLast night disgusted with myself I decided to show some spine I wrote my last post At midnight today I delete my Facebook account Irsquom done being complicit in their evilI wonrsquot make this easy for you Your mother 84 is critically ill and hovering between life and death in the ICU You hear of a new drug that could save her but you learn that stem cells harvested from aborted foetuses were utilised during the production process Would you still use the medicine to save your motherThere are versions of this questionmdashIs it alright to let a really old person die who would have died anyway and instead give the bed to a strong young man of 32 Is it okay to look the other way while a few people die if someone tells you it will save thousandsAnd todayrsquos questionmdashis it okay for you to continue using Facebook knowing that it has directly spread lies misinformation chaos hate violence and death all over the world Including in your country IndiaYoursquore smiling indulgently at Gopinath You think hersquos overreacting to the Facebook whistleblowerrsquos revelations Well herersquos one taken from Facebookrsquos own internal documentsmdashldquoFacebook is aware that it is used to facilitate hate speech in the Middle East violent cartels in Mexico ethnic cleansing in Ethiopia extremist antiMuslim rhetoric in India and sex trafficking in Dubai It is also aware that its efforts to combat these things are insufficientrdquoAt least theyrsquore trying you comfort yourself forgiving Facebook its trespasses Herersquos more although 90 per cent of Facebookrsquos users are outside the US the platform devotes only 13 per cent of its time to moderating posts that instigate bloodlust if itrsquos outside the US Its users post in over 160 languages but Facebook is spectacularly useless at detecting hate and violence in languages other than English and a few European tonguesTwo years ago Bengali Muslims were being savaged on Assamese Facebook Posts labelling them pigs rapists and terrorists were shared tens of thousands of times But so sorry Facebookrsquos artificialintelligence systems doesnrsquot know Assamese a language spoken by 23 million people No not even todayFacebook sucks up to governments When the Hindunationalist T Raja Singh exhorted lakhs of FB followers to shoot Indiarsquos Rohingya Muslims Zuckerberg looked the other way Not a single post was taken down India is his largest and fastestgrowing marketAt least they commission independent researchers to tell them how to be better you sayUm no they donrsquot They actively prevent independent research from happening at all For years Facebook has blocked transparency research from ProPublica the Markup New York University AlgorithmWatch and others Theyrsquove mastered the art of looking pious and wellmeaning and building a better world but they slow down research delay sharing of documentsmdashand finally ignore the findingsFacebook survives because we enable it with our desperate hunger for anonymous applause and the attention and love of strangers Deleting Facebook will always feel like suicideBut my 1106 Facebook friends are no friends They share farting cat videos with me and click Like without reading my posts Facebook friendships are howls in the wildernessHerersquos a surprisemdashnothing happens when you delete Facebook Life goes on You even feel a little lighter The few friends who really matter to me have always known how to reach me They never needed an appLetrsquos never forget that Facebookrsquos founder was born with the morals and shallow soul of a frat boy He started Facebook for rating the sex appeal of girls in Harvard Hersquos getting rich now selling my private details to corporations while pretending to have a noble vision for the worldHersquos still a frat boy with the soul of a hyenaI pressed DeleteIf you want a link to my future columns send your email address to cygopigmailcomHere viewed from there C Y Gopinath in Bangkok throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai the city that raised him You can reach him at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper