What Can Facebook Do For You?

Recently, Facebook announced that they were going to release Graph Search. Similar to other internet search sources, this allows users to search for their interests or recommendations for different outlets but with a twist. The user uses Facebook as a search engine and the results that will be given are limited to their own contacts and then filled in with searches from Bing to have a more full result list. In addition to many other search engines, like Google, Bing, or even Yahoo!, this is another way that we, as consumers, are being limited to the information we receive by the “ruling class”, as Marxist ideas would call it. I can say that when I search for one topic here in Chicago, the results are different than if I would search back home in Oklahoma. There’s a minimal difference, but yet it is still there. In this case, I would be receiving the results that the geographical location I am in can benefit from, and not necessarily what will benefit my own personal research. But yet, when we turn the internet, we automatically accept what is placed in front of us with few questions as to what else is out there.

While the goal of the internet is to allow people in one area to have accessibility to the same information people in a different part of the world do, these catering features to allow results with “unique interests” are merely limiting us to our own social circles and taking away the choices we have to decide what we want to see. Google or Facebook have the power to decide that because we belong to a certain demographic or location that automatically we only want or need to see certain results. And while this may not be true at first, after seeing the same restraints over and over again, in a way we begin to alienate ourselves from other groups of people. Much like the example from the Marxist Analysis of birds flocking to feed to form the Coca-Cola symbol, with Graph Search, we want to see what our friends are doing and what is popular. We no longer decide to do something we want to, we do it because everyone else is doing it and we want to be part of that group. And even though we may be trying to be part of a group, the idea behind that is “what is going to happen if I don’t know what’s going on?” or “I need to be up to date on everything”. As our informational options are more limited, we move from thinking about what others are doing outside of whatever group we identify with and think what can I be doing to be the same.