#DeleteFacebook

Yes, I'm still on Facebook despite the kerfuffle in the news about the role Facebook data may have played in Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ's efforts to sway elections.

I'm having a hard time believing anything I said or did affected Brexit, Trump's election, or even Trudeau's election.

I'm just not able to get upset that fb shared what I said and/or did or their site Perhaps my dispassion is because I, too, use Facebook for 'nefarious' reasons--like selling my books. The more my posts and name gets shared around the world, the happier I am. The more my friends become your friends and your friends, mine--the more we get together the happier I am. Free advertising and all that jazz.

Yeah, Facebook! A platform that reaches billions and doesn't cost me a penny.

I'm clever enough to realize the best things in life are not free, and that facebook makes money from my presence. It has to make money or it wouldn't exist for long unless it was funded by government or philanthropists. It doesn't bother me, it's the price I'm quite willing to pay in order to have a platform that reaches billions and doesn't cost me a penny.

As long as Facebook's profit doesn't involve stealing, killing, sharing or reselling my copyrighted materials--which there's no indication it has done--I'll play their game.

I've always understood the nature of this beast with which I've joined forces and followed these rules:

• I have never posted anything that I wouldn't mind sharing with the world.
• I've never relied on Facebook as my news source.
• I've never liked things on Facebook when I didn't know their source.
• I've never posted, liked or shared anything promoting intolerance or hatred.
• Anything I want to say but would hesitate to say in person in public gets put in phone calls or offline messages.
• I'm not myself on Facebook, I'm an author with seven published novels looking to sell them.

That's not to say I don't chat on Facebook, connect with family and friends, offer opinions and encouragement and sometimes rebuke.  I'm honest online, I'm not hiding behind a pseudonym or caricature. But my online personae is only the public side of me, the side of me that might conceivably help me sell books, the side of me that isn't going to affect a U.S. election or a U.K. plebiscite.

The downside of all this, though, that I must consider is that my Facebook friends may not have bought into my scenario, yet they apparently are at risk of world-wide exposure and malicious manipulation simply because they're my friends.

I advise my friends and all other Facebook users and social media users in general:

• beware of fake news, ads, and manipulations
• don't share private things online
• respect others' privacy
• use the power of social media to make the world not only a more interesting place, but a safer and kinder one.

#DeleteFacebook has been brought to you by Dispassionate Lies --in the near future, the World Wide Web collapses.