Haje Jan Kamps is an author, freelance writer, journalist, photographer and publisher who lives in East Bay in Northern California and, since 2016, has spent more than a year as a writer for Heaven32. In a recent meeting with him on work and life during COVID-19, we ended up talking a little bit about Facebook, which is currently seeing record usage on its social networks, messaging and streaming platforms. direct and will likely continue to do so throughout this pandemic.
We asked Jan Kamps, who joined Facebook around 2006, when he expanded beyond his roots on college campuses to allow anyone over the age of 13 with an e-mail address. valid mail to join us, if we could share your thoughts as a snapshot. They represent only their views and opinions, but they highlight a broader struggle that many Facebook users around the world, currently isolated from friends and family, experience as their relationship with the giant of technology evolves and their power accordingly. is growing at a rapid rate.
Jan Kamps' comments have been slightly modified for their length and clarity.
I take Facebook breaks from time to time, because it's a little too much and sometimes I think they change the algorithm, so sometimes it gets really depressing, and I'm going to vote with the slider mouse and get out of there for a moment. And then I come back. And it's as if more friends are doing updates and so on.
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I want updates from the lives of my friends. I don't necessarily want the weight of the world on my shoulders. I made a conscious choice some time ago to stop reading the news just for me. And if you go through the back door via Facebook, I like that, look, I don't want that.
Just a little thumbnail this morning: I woke up, fell asleep a bit and went to Facebook, and there was a friend who was doing a live show because she decided to try to cheer people up a bit. She played her ukulele and only sang for 15 minutes. He had, like, 20 of his friends watching and he said, "I hope everyone has a good day." This did not happen before everyone had to isolate themselves.
Many groups have emerged, as well as some older groups which have been reactivated. In fact, I started one for him Institute of Human Consciousness, who has this concept of sharing in a large group, where basically people stand in front of a room of people and share something that is real, sincere and relevant. They had to cancel their workshops because he is not sure to do so at the moment. But it turns out that the digital version is juicy, beautiful and connected. And the large amount of feedback he gets on these actions: people intervene with words of support, words of encouragement, and that is not something that I have seen on Facebook for a long time.
My great understanding, which, I guess, is sort of an obvious understanding, is that this is just a tool, and we can choose what we use that tool for. And if we choose to make it a place to spread joy and share creative projects rather than just "Look at this cool sandwich that I made", I feel like it really is possible. And if I feel really good about seeing other people doing this, I might as well do it.
I have a love and hate relationship with Facebook. I closed before for weeks or even months. I am grateful for the internet and the information available, but I think basic source criticism is not something that is not taught in the United States. UU., Which means that when you read something on the Internet, you know if it is not real? In Norway, where I grew up, you were taught in a history class to criticize the source itself, to ask: is it a reliable source? Was it the kind of "winner writes history"? How to gather sources to get a good idea of what really happened? "
The fact that the fake news may have taken hold is terrifying to me. I was in a yoga class the other day, and the yoga teacher had this little spray bottle [to clean her mat] and she said, "There is essential oils Here you can use it in your hands on your carpet, on your face, you can even drink it as it is edible. "It's like," Look, if it's fucking edible, it won't do anything to a virus, "I mean, maybe. Some essential oils can help catch some viruses. I have no idea. But Lysol was invented for a reason.
People are bubbling and echoing by believing what they want to believe. I mean, the anti-vaxxer movement is an example. There is a lot of other stupid news, to the point that if I really want to know what's going on, I'm going to the BBC or maybe the New York Times or the Washington Post or whatever another big fan of journalism, because I know they have some sort of process to make sure that what is published is actu ally relatively reasonable, and even then, I make sure that I don't am not on the opinion pages. I don't want an opinion on COVID. I want the facts about ice cream to be checked.
This is the great challenge of the Internet. More information than ever. You can find the best information possible if you want. You can go to a medical magazine and read about the coronavirus. But there is a lot of 100% fully composed news and people still believe it. And I say, listen, everyone is collectively really stupid, or we just want to believe.
I don't really have an opinion on whether Facebook has a role to play there, if it is meant to monitor what is real and what is not. But the fact that it is so easy to share and disseminate disinformation does not help us in the event of a massive pandemic.