I felt physically ill reading this story about Facebook’s facilitation of murder and slavery.

... reports from employees who are studying the use of Facebook around the world, including human exploitation and other abuses of the platform. They write about their embarrassment and frustration, citing decisions that allow users to post videos of murders, incitements to violence, government threats against pro-democracy campaigners and advertisements for human trafficking.

There’s been plenty of stories about Facebook’s malfeasance over the years. Two things make this story particularly awful. One is the human scale of the harm they cause. It’s not some abstract discussion about political influence, it’s personal examples like a woman named Patricia being recruited and sold into slavery. The other is that Facebook knows about the problems and is choosing not to act. Or at least not act enough to be meaningful.

Facebook treats harm in developing countries as “simply the cost of doing business” in those places.

I had enough. I rage quit Facebook Thursday. Or at least tried to.

The problem is I’m a captive of Facebook. Because despite all the horrors it’s still a good semi-private way to keep in touch with people. It’s my primary social connection to the small gay community in Nevada County, for instance, including a group that organizes weekly meetups. Also it’s helped me reconnect with old high school friends. I’m well aware of the hundreds of other social media tools I could ask them to use, I helped design some of them. But the reality is that a lot of community happens on Facebook and if you don’t participate there, you miss out.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with Facebook. I was going to delete my account but feel I can’t. I’m trying to stay logged out but I already feel the need to connect occasionally, even if only to arrange social connections outside of Facebook. I’m one of those extremely online people, I can’t just disconnect entirely. But I’m being forced to visit the house of a psychopath.

This story this week is one in a series of investigative articles by the WSJ. Some Facebook employees have been trying to lessen the harm their company is doing and they’re tired of being ignored. So they’re talking to reporters, particularly Jeff Horwitz. As a collection the reporting is incredibly damning. Lying to their oversight board, ignoring mental harm to young women, amplifying anger and lies, sabotaging American vaccination efforts, and helping the business of murderers and slavers.

Facebook is in some ways just reflecting the larger evils of society. I’ve worked on social media policy. I understand the difficulty of moderating conversations. But as a medium Facebook is a very efficient amplifier of evil; its existence uniquely enables things like the genocide of the Rohingya. That creates an obligation on Facebook to mitigate the harmful uses of their product. They have failed to that. Maybe the only remedy is to stop them from operating.

PS: the WSJ has a strong paywall. There are accessible copies of the specific story I reference here and here. The Firefox extension Bypass Paywalls Clean can help you read the WSJ and other sources.