Should You Delete Your Facebook Account?

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Original Air Date: 
December 22, 2018

Your finger’s hovering over the "delete" button on your Facebook app. Your friends are abandoning Twitter. Every day brings fresh revelations of data breaches, privacy abuses, Russian spies, trolls. Is it time to hit “delete” on all of it?

But then again, we joined these platforms for a reason. In a more perfect world, what could these platforms be doing for us?

Mark's facebook ephemera
Sonic Sidebar

We shared our lives on Facebook, and in return, we got rampant privacy abuse. It might feel right to end our relationship, but as digital producer Mark Riechers discovered, that's more complicated than you might think.

Length: 
03:20
Girl with phone
Audio

Jaron Lanier — the visionary computer scientist who helped build the internet and invent virtual reality — thinks the solution to our Facebook problems is clear.

Length: 
11:48
happy people social-ing on phones
Audio

Ethan Zuckerman directs the Center for Civic Media at MIT. He argues that simply quitting these platforms isn't enough — we have to stick around and demand something better.

Length: 
10:00
internet of nonsense
Articles

Viral videos and memes are good for a laugh — but how often do you think about where they came from? Digital culture scholar Whitney Phillips says the internet is both playful and mean. And we’re not good at telling the difference.

Length: 
12:31
deray on Twitter
Sonic Sidebar

Maybe you can do without social media, if your life is already pretty comfortable. But you know what? Some people can't wait for something better to come along. They need social media today. Like organizer DeRay Mckesson.

Length: 
03:57
Data streams
Articles

Yuval Noah Harari is the big-thinking historian who warns that whoever owns the data owns the future. He told Steve Paulson that it’s become the most important resource in the world.

Length: 
12:42
flee or stay our social media platforms?
Articles

A pioneering computer scientist thinks we should delete our accounts, while an internet ethicist argues we should fix the system rather than abandon it entirely.

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Airdates
December 22, 2018
August 24, 2019
August 15, 2020
June 19, 2021
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Last modified: 
June 18, 2021