GOOD NEWS:
FACEBOOK IS
IN DECLINE
The era of social media
is less than 30 years old, but the
world of information, politics,
and culture has been upended.
Suddenly, nations and users
alike are rebelling in the name of
culture, sovereignty, and truth.
Invited to pursue my studies in
economics at Stanford University
in California in 1985, I discovered
machines that were unknown in France;
computers equipped with word-process-
ing software and new means of global
communication, the Internet. The
digital adventure was just beginning
– the World Wide Web was yet to be
created by a British scientist in 1990, and
its use would only become widespread
in 1994. Facebook, which was to change
the world in the era of social media, did
not appear until 2004 – a new age, yet so
recent. Like every technological revolu-
tion since the invention of the loom, the
Internet destroyed whole sectors of the
economy. Millions of jobs disappeared
and more were created. The mathe-
matical balance is at an equilibrium, in
principle, or even positive. But what we
call progress is not only technological;
it is also social, cultural, and moral.
Just as new jobs push out old ones,
new values take the place of traditions.
Is progress in machines necessarily
progress in civilization? Skepticism has
always accompanied the cascade of
new technology since the dawn of the
Industrial Revolution. In the decade
after 1810, English weavers inspired
by the legendary character Ned Ludd
destroyed new spinning machines. The
canuts, the silk workers of Lyon, did the
same thing in 1831. Will the Internet
and social media soon meet the same
neo-Luddites and machine-destroy-
10 FRANCE-AMÉRIQUE OCTOBER 2022
languages and cultures, which are being
Americanized by social media through
the imperialism of the English language
and the omnipresence of U.S. trends
that the success of the Internet, Google,
Facebook, and Twitter marginalizes
any resistance. There are a few isolated
intellectuals who boast that they do not
own a computer; philosopher Alain
Finkielkraut even wrote a book on the
topic: Internet, l’inquiétante extase (“The
Internet, a Troubling Ecstasy”). But such
reactions remain on the fringes. My view
makes it impossible to understand the
world; critical thinking requires that,
before criticizing, we see what others
are seeing.
Another more serious line of attack
comes from governments. Dictators,
who know only how to forbid, censor
the web; the Chinese Communist
Party is the world champion in this
arena. Taking a more legitimate stance,
European governments are attempting
of monopolies such as Facebook, and
also compelling them to moderate their
users’ incitements to hatred. Here we
are touching on what is really at stake:
How can we save the Internet from
itself, and protect ourselves from its
most destructive aspects? Social media
destroys culture in the traditional sense;
rather than read, we surf online. Rather
than learn, we fall back on Wikipedia.
We no longer read newspapers, instead
replacing them with rumors spread
on social media. We no longer inform
ourselves; we prefer conspiracy theo-
ries that encourage Internet addicts to
believe that they know the secrets of the
world hidden from them by journalists.
knowledge and information, for the most
fragile masses, falsehood has become the
equivalent of truth, and the virtual is as
good as the real. Since everyone has a
platform, and everyone dreams
-
sism has replaced life in society.
This is why the decline of Facebook
strikes me as good news: four million
fewer users between September and
that Facebook still has between two
and three billion subscribers, for the
on Twitter, which seems to have rigged
its audience numbers to get the highest
object that those deserting Facebook
are going over to TikTok, which is not
an encouraging sign. But maybe there
are some, the most enlightened, who are
leaving Facebook in order to reconnect
with reality, with truth, with society. It so
happens that book sales are on the rise.
The lockdowns brought about by Covid
may have contributed to a rediscovery
of reading, but it is incontestable that the
taste for reading is making a comeback,
Similarly, readers are returning to good
newspapers – Le Monde and The New York
Times, to name but two. It is possible
that a certain number, a critical mass,
are returning to the path of reason,
without becoming Luddites.
I will conclude my diatribe with a story
about a mouse. English biologists have
announced, in the journal Nature, the
discovery of a gland in the brains of
mice that appears to arbitrate between
positive and negative sensations.
The human brain being close to the
mouse’s, this gland would enable us to
choose between good and bad, in all
domains. Medication acting on this
gland might be able to treat depression.
Let us hope that, as a consequence of
possible to distinguish between truth
and falsehood; such a discovery would
mark the end of the reign of social media
and other manipulations of reality.