All is not sweet at old Mt. Sugar…
This article is about Facebook and is part one of two in a series on how authors can use social media. Please don’t blast me with your comments just yet: I’m not breaking my New Year’s resolution to avoid political op-eds (they take time to research I’d rather spend on fiction writing). This article is about Facebook and therefore about writing, at least for me. (OK, blast away with your comments after reading the article. That’s OK.)
Like many authors, I have a Facebook author page. You can “Like” it, but you can’t comment (comments are only accepted on this blog). It’s a nice complement to this website where I can announce articles in my blog, post comments about important books in my life (not mine—consider them mini-reviews), and let readers and writers know about my own books (including any sales I might have on Smashwords).
Facebook is a tool that’s there, so I use it. So should every author, unless s/he’s an old mare or stallion in the Big Five’s stable, writers like J. K. Rowling or Stephen King, ones they consider the “sure bets.” Facebook allows me more freedom than Twitter, which I refuse to use. I also post in my regular Facebook account, but you have to be a “friend” or a “friend of a friend” to see those posts. On Facebook these days, that doesn’t mean all my friends agree with me on everything, but, like true friends, we can agree to disagree and move on. I recommend this limited approach to Facebook for all authors.
Facebook’s business model expects me to use Facebook advertising (sorry, Mr. Zuckerberg, I don’t) and provide all my personal information so they can target me with ads from their other clients (I’ve turned as much of that off as I can). Maybe people sharing my tactics (or not using Facebook at all now) are killing Facebook because of their flawed business model, but it’s only flawed because it’s not regulated. For some reason, the government thinks Amazon, Facebook, Google, and other internet mammoths can regulate themselves, but that’s what they do with Wall Street in general.
Self-regulation anywhere in commerce and industry (and even government failures to enforce regulations) can lead to the three-legged stool of the good, the bad, and the ugly, with the latter sometimes becoming longer and toppling everything. Organizations like Cambridge Analytica can target you; Russia can target you; and Democrats and Republicans can target you. By offering Facebook your personal data, anyone can target you, whether you’d like them to do so or not.
I’m a writer who uses the internet a lot. I still prefer to keep my author page on Facebook as a simple extension of my website. I’m running a business—authors have to do that these days, even if they hire people to help them because it’s so time consuming (I’m sure Stephen King avoids the internet because he or his publisher hires people to do that, but I might be wrong). By the way, my website is a major expense (it might become more so if net neutrality is trashed—I can only pay so much “protection money” to internet service providers). Sure I can live without Facebook; I can even live without my website.
Too many people think they can’t live without the internet. I’ll admit that my life as a writer would be different without it—even though I value local contacts, the internet allows me to make many contacts seem local. When people say they can’t live without it, they’re really saying they use it a lot. But many have never experienced the simpler times before the internet, so they have an excuse. I’d still rather have Facebook get its act together and modify their business model to the extent that Mt. Sugar just becomes sweet and not sweet and sour.
Facebook makes a free contribution to my own business model. I’d hate to see it go. Cancelling our Facebook accounts isn’t the best solution. It’s a radical one, but there are enough positives about Facebook that it’s worth encouraging them to fix things. And things must be fixed!
For now, don’t hand out your personal information to the rest of the world. Revisit your privacy settings and make sure they do what you want them to do. If you have an android phone, don’t “share contacts.” Some software packages ask you to do that too. Choose caution. This is true for any social media site; every app you consider downloading, whether to your smart phone or laptop; every browser you use; and every piece of software that requires personal settings. In particular, never divulge financial information. There are too many trolls online just itching to get hold of your data, and even steal your identity, whether you use a computer or smart phone.
Mt. Sugar doesn’t own all the blame here. The trolls just use it as a tool too…for their nefarious purposes!
[Next week: Goodreads, LinkedIn, and all that….]
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The mystery/thriller novel The Midas Bomb is now on sale at Smashwords—first book offered in the “Great Spring Thaw Sale.”
In libris libertas!
