Episode 447: Delete Yourself From Social Media

You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is MyFace. No, this is Lost in the Stacks, the Research Library Rock'n'Roll radio show. I am Charlie with a cold, in the studio with Abby, Fred, Liz, Wendy, and Matthew. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it.

Hope you pull through there, Charlie. Sounding a little rough. CHARLIE BENNETT: I'm doing my best. A little bit. CHARLIE BENNETT: I was doing great until I started laughing at Taco there. Our show today is called Delete Yourself From Social Media.

Easy there. Is that a call to action? WENDY HAGENMAIER: No, but we are going to talk about why we might extricate ourselves from online social networks, whether it's even possible to do so, and we might just talk a little bit about what this has to do with libraries. We got to. It's a library radio show. WENDY HAGENMAIER: We'll also be welcoming one of our Georgia Tech Library colleagues, a returning guest producer of this show, to the discussion.

If you want to join the conversation online, the hashtag for this show is LITS447 for Lost in the Stacks, episode 447. If you want to join the conversation offline, post a handwritten message on MyFace board. I keep it on a wall in my office. You log in by knocking on the door. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Our songs today are about disconnecting, disappearing, and what happens next. Sometimes when we log on to social media, we're looking for a community, but find out we're in the wrong neighborhood.

That's a little personal, don't you think, Fred?

Well, that's what social media is all about. It's about making connections.

I'm on Twitter for now.

OK. So it's got an endpoint.

Oh, yeah.

I think you mentioned in a previous show. Maybe next year.

I'm looking forward to blowing it up. Yeah.

Right.

How about you? What are you on?

I still have a Twitter account that I don't-- CHARLIE BENNETT: You don't use it. You're not on Twitter. Yeah. I really just need to delete the account because I've never checked it.

Delete yourself from social media, man.

I think so. Liz, our guest today, how about you?

I have three active social media accounts. So I'm active on Instagram, I have a professional Facebook, and then I have a personal Facebook. And then I've got a neglected Pinterest page, a neglected Twitter account, and I can't even remember. I think I never deleted Myspace.

Oh, wow. They might have done it for you.

Yeah, it's probably gone.

Is there a Friendster in there somewhere?

No.

Wendy?

So I think I started with Facebook. That was early adopter. I still have an account. I really hate it. And I've thought about deleting it several weekends ever since we've been talking about this. And I just don't even want to look at it to delete-- there's pain going on there. And so I'm working through it, but I'm likely to delete it. At the same time, I can recognize some value in some kind of social media.

Let's move to the younger demographic in the room. Abby, what are you on?

I have a Facebook that I guess I use to waste time. Not very actively in any sort of posting capacity--

Already making the point of the show for us.

I have a very neglected Instagram that I didn't even start myself, but is technically under my name that my friend started for me.

Do you have the password?

I do. I've just never actually posted a picture to it myself. So that one's fun, but I-- yeah, it's just kind of been sitting there. I don't know if LinkedIn counts. LinkedIn is like a weird--

Oh, I forgot, I have a LinkedIn.

Weird space because it counts, but it's just like a more professional Facebook.

I'd like to point out that I was thorough enough to delete my LinkedIn also.

Wow. Matthew?

I have Twitter. I'm probably going down with that ship. I like it too much, I guess.

Oh, dear.

I also have LinkedIn. That's my two.

But you actually deleted Facebook pretty recently, right?

Oh, yeah. A couple months ago. Yeah. And it's led to me not knowing about parties in my own house and other funny--

That's not just a joke, folks. We learned about this, that Matthew did not know there was a party at his house until he arrived home.

Because I was not on the Facebook group.

Because he was not on Facebook.

Because parties have Facebook groups now. I don't know if you guys know this. Like, that's how kids organize parties.

Hey, don't push your politics on us.

I have been to a party that was organized on Facebook.

All right. So I heard, so I can waste time, neglected. I also heard, I like it too much. And I didn't really hear anybody talk about a purpose to social media. Does anyone have a purpose in mind that you could say is the argument against deleting? Oh, both of you leaned in. How about Abby first?

I guess Pinterest was one that was mentioned that I didn't say, but I have a Pinterest. And I use it more as a kind of specialized search engine.

Yeah?

Because I use it to find new recipes and like new things to bake, and so it's still a creative outlet. I don't know if I'm really actively like pinning things or anything like that. But I do use it pretty frequently as a resource.

My girlfriend has a very large extended family, and she's very close with them. She moved from New Jersey. They all live in the same neighborhood, so she uses it keep in touch with everybody.

There we go. Liz, I think that brings us to what you were saying off-air about what the purpose of a social media network or account might be.

Oh, sure. So I can talk about my experiences pre-social media. I was a queer teenager in a tiny little town in Tennessee. We had the internet, but we didn't have social media. So I found other gay people, especially queer teenagers and teenagers who are facing the same problems I had, on websites and message boards, and being able to talk to people who are going through the same thing that I was going through.

You know, you mentioned growing up in a small town. In a small town, everyone tends to know something about everybody else in that small town. And social media is kind of sharing that small town information with a big town, a global town.

Oh, yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: Creating a small town that is not defined by geography, but is defined by interest and identity. Absolutely. Except that people have access to you. So in my small town-- Fred and I were talking about early in the week, I had a super embarrassing high school incident where my pants got totally torn open and I was wandering around through my day until one of my girlfriends took me aside and was like, hey, by the way, your butt is hanging out of your pants.

OK. Well, so now that's a pretty good case for social media, to try and recreate that sort of network. We're almost done with this segment so let's go at it hard. Why should we or why would we delete a social media account?

Because when my pants tear open and somebody has their camera phone out and then puts it on Facebook and Instagram or wherever, I don't have that context, that supporting community. I am now the butt of the joke for 300 million people. CHARLIE BENNETT: OK, that's your pun. Yes.

For the show?

Yes. I'm so proud of that.

Well done. Also, I think in social media, the pants tearing open tends to usually be self-inflicted.

In order to get likes?

Or accidental. Yeah.

I feel like there's a fragmentation of identity when you're talking about the history that you share with people, their understanding of you. Everyone's got a version of their friends in their head. And the idea of there being another sort of automated version that sort of pulled out of a statistically very small number of preferences and actions that then lives online, like an AI. That just seems kind of creepy and wrong.

Yes. And? We also have diaries. The diary that didn't get thrown in the fire when your family destroys your paper-- papers in the 19th century where we can know somebody's thoughts or their letters that maybe they wouldn't have shared. The person who's coming to mind is-- oh, who wrote Ulysses?

James Joyce?

James Joyce?

James Joyce. Read his papers one day.

I don't think I will. I like the books I don't want anymore.

He's got some very specific feelings.

OK. Fred, do you feel like we've laid the groundwork for the rest of the show?

I'm going to delete my social media and everyone else's, too.

This is good. I like this. I like this a lot.

This is Lost in the Stacks, and we'll be back with more about deleting ourselves from social media after a music set. File this set under HM742.P3723.

That was Link Wray doing the Willie Dixon tune "Taildragger," and before that, "Becoming Shadows" by Stef Chura. Songs about disappearing and covering your tracks.

Welcome back to Lost in the Stacks. In the last segment, we talked about why we might want to hit the eject button on our social media accounts. But even if we want to do that, can we? In a previous show, we talked about life without GAFAM, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft. Of those companies, Facebook is the company that many of us here on the show have successfully eliminated from our lives, or some of us. Are we confident in that deletion?

No.

No.

In fact, they will put stuff on your operating system, on your browser to keep tracking you even when you're not logged into Facebook. So clearly, they are keeping something.

Yeah. I think it's just too valuable. They would not be able to-- even if they deleted your account, you never logged on to Facebook, again. the two, three five years, whatever you spend on Facebook, the data that you have given to them is just too valuable in the other applications and business opportunities that they undoubtedly want to pursue.

Now, certainly, that's one of the reasons to delete your Facebook, because of the recognition that your data is being used, is being recorded in a way that you don't have much control over. But I deleted my Facebook so that my behavior would change. That's my main reason. And that has worked, and that's a real thing.

We should add, this is our speculation about Facebook. Yeah. We're totally operating on a, what do we think, not what we actually have evidence of.

It is true that there was the recognition that there was tracking when you were not logged into Facebook if you used your personal web browser, iOS, whatever. So that's out there.

But that's also something that Facebook is not the only one that uses that. So it's not like they have some special tool where they're the only ones tracking you. Like, that's how you get targeted ads for--

Oh, I think Mark Zuckerberg is a very special kind of tool.

I mean, yes, but. Facebook isn't the only company doing that.

Does anybody here think you cannot delete your Facebook, either socially or professionally, effectively? Does anybody feel like-- where are you, Wendy, with this whole I want to delete my Facebook? WENDY HAGENMAIER: You mean-- well, do I think that if I deleted it, they would delete my data? Or just, I can't quit. Both. Both.

I'm open to the possibility that they wouldn't delete the data, because I think it's hard to do data governance and ensure what you have where. But I mean, if anybody could pay to do good data governance, Facebook could. I don't know if they will. Why it's hard to quit? Because yeah, so many years of my life are-- and connections that I have with people but I don't maintain.

Yeah. The first step is to admit that you're powerless over Facebook.

Yeah.

Liz, could you delete either your personal account or your professional account?

I guess if I wanted to. Right now it's still useful for me, so I don't. I did go through-- chose to do a Facebook diet, my personal Facebook diet last year where the first part of the year I checked Facebook once a month. I put some time on a Saturday and went through, just to make sure that I wasn't asking people about their mother and their mother was dead, or that kind of thing.

Liz, lots have happened since you left Facebook. Here are 172 notifications of people who liked pages we think you like.

Mhm. But I chose to do that to produce the amount of stress that I had from checking Facebook regularly and seeing people's political posts that I didn't want to see, even if I agreed with it. So being more deliberate in how I use social media has made a big difference for me.

Wendy said something very interesting, that there's guilt and shame surrounding the idea of deleting a personal history and taking away connections that you had, humanity that you had shared with other folks. But a big part of what we fear from social media seems to be the recording of our history, including the recording of guilty or shameful history. So there's also an entanglement.

It'd be fine. I like using it. It's a tool. I actually get way more pleasure and enjoyment out of Instagram. I like that much better.

Yeah. Methadone is a lot better than heroin.

Yeah, isn't it? And I like Twitter. I'm a Twitter lurker, and there are things that I get from Twitter that I can't see anywhere else. So I got to watch all of these content providers, like Town and Country and The New Yorker and New York Magazine unionize, BuzzFeed, parts of their stuff unionized, and that played out on Twitter. You got to watch it.

Like, the narrative was not elsewhere that you could have found?

Not really. Not much.

Is that a benefit or is that a stopgap because we no longer have local journalism?

Both?

Oh.

Yes?

You're not Phil Burress. You're not allowed to say depends.

Well, I try to look at it this way. So no social media, 1990s. Let's say I'm 34 in 1998. I would not know about the staff unionization effort at the Miami Herald if it happened at that time. I just would never know about it. I wouldn't be able to send them a pizza or a note of encouragement or anything like that. So I have that through Twitter that I wouldn't have otherwise.

I feel like this is the McLuhan argument. That's an extension of our information gathering, and thus is a good thing. But it is then corrupted by the things that are done with the recordings of our behavior and the intrusion of private interests onto essentially an extension of our senses. Well, since I just killed the conversation dead, we'll be back with more Lost in the Stacks on the left side of the hour.

Hi, I'm Mandy, the accordion playing data librarian, and you are listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta.

Today's Lost in the Stacks is called Delete Yourself From Social Media. We're discussing whether social media can be removed from our lives, whether we can remove ourselves from social media, whether we should. Who benefits with or without social media? Who has privilege to be forgiven for a thoughtless tweet? Who is held accountable? Jon Ronson, author of So You've Been Publicly Shamed, was asked about his thoughts on the matter in an interview with The Guardian online. This was his response.

You just heard "Exist Stage Right" by Ronnie Burns. Before that was "Self-Made Man" by David Byrne. Two burns. Those were songs about trying to claim control of yourself and your identity.

This is Lost in the Stacks, and our show today is all about deleting social media, deleting parts of social media, being forgotten online. Liz, libraries have a policy of being both a community hub, and a place that is supposed to remember nothing about you, your motivations, or your reading habits as a person. Are libraries going to lead the charge in the social engineering change to disconnect or be forgotten? Are we going to embrace it?

We're not.

Oh, no.

I know, I'm good for it. OK, so you have libraries up north, and this is where I'm failing my worthy colleagues who have events where, this is how you install the Tor at-home--

Tor browsers. LIZ HOLDSWORTH: Yeah, Tor browser, so you can search the internets, do your thing without any kind of tracking or extremely difficult to track tracking. And then we have folks who are desperate to preserve everything we can about society. So I'm going to-- I do have the right credit for this. I went to school with a librarian named Billie Cotterman. She has, I think, another master's in the classics and talks about what it could have been to have access to every tweet a Roman made.

Some things never change.

Yeah.

So if digital preservation does its job, humanity will have a record of every tweet made from 2006 to, I think 2017 that the Library of Congress collected. Is it a good idea that the Library of Congress has a copy of every tweet from that time period? Like, warts and all?

It's agonizing, but-- and I've thought this over quite a bit. And it's agonizing, but a 10-year slice, all things being equal, still working on it, I think that's a beautiful thing to have. And also, that was a very interesting 10 years in internet development. You could say looking at that body of information, oh yeah, white supremacists really started tweeting very loudly in 2006 or 2009. Or we can see how this spread.

And being able to search an archive of tweets, not using Twitter search, but instead using an actual built to search function, would allow someone to get a lot more out of that collection of tweets.

To be clear, you can't search that library of Congress collection or access, it's totally--

No one can. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: But when it's time, I can only hope that future historians don't have to use the Twitter search function.

It seems like maybe we can a little bit reconcile or, Liz, the services you referenced, the privacy instruction can coexist with Twitter archive at LC because librarians might play a role in empowering people to understand terms of service, understand how they can opt out so they don't-- so that they aren't in the archive of whatever is being collected, or they aren't in the classics digital preservation example, just sort of so people know what they're getting into.

Sure. And I had to go back and look and see when the right-- not just the right to read. So does the library have a variety of things that can offend you? A variety of things that can offend you, but also, your right to develop as an intellectual privately. So the books that you check out aren't-- it's just you to do. And that was a, I guess, relatively recent invention. So 1939, that was incorporated into the ALA principles.

OK, let me ask you something. So which part of library services do you imagine social media reflects? Is it our browsing and checkout history, or is it publishing? Because no one would ever say, oh, once you got your book published, I bet you didn't realize that it was going to end up in a library. But we imagine that our actions and behavior are not going to be tracked. Which do you think social media is? Is it a giant publishing-- a self-publishing endeavor that we're all taking on?

I teeter, but I have to go with self-publishing.

Yeah?

I go back and forth on this, and I'll probably change my mind next week and come to regret this. But Wendy has a really good point about teaching people how to be deliberate in the public sphere. And we have lots of social norms about how to be deliberate in the public sphere. And social media is relatively new. It's, what, 10, 15 years old, and we kind of haven't caught up with it yet, I think socially. So having that help to be a person of public, public libraries do that work as well.

That's your position, but you hate it?

I just-- I go back and forth. Some of my ideas when I was 19 were really stupid, and I'm glad that they weren't available and glad I didn't have camera phones to record that. On the other hand, there are some 19-year-olds out there who have terrible ideas, who never leave those ideas, who then go do terrible things.

I'll also note that while we were finishing up our discussion there, somebody's social media notification dinged on the phone. I think it might have gotten picked up on the mic. Once again, we at Lost in the Stacks have merely scratched the surface of an important topic. And we were joined today by guest producer Liz Holdsworth. She is STEM librarian and esteemed colleague here at the Georgia Tech Library. Liz, thank you so much for joining us today.

Always. Thank you.

And we'll be back after a music set.

File this set under BX2845.F73. [MUSIC PLAYING] You were the promise at dawn

That was "I'm Stranded" by The Saints, and before that was "Is This What You Wanted?" by Leonard Cohen. Songs about choosing not to connect and what happens next.

Today's Lost in the Stacks is called Delete Yourself From Social Media. WENDY HAGENMAIER: We talked about why someone might choose to delete some or all of our social media.

And if someone chooses to delete it, is it really deleted?

And should it be deleted? Who gets to decide what can be forgotten and what needs to be remembered?

I'm just going to say I do. All right. Roll the credits.

Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, produced by Charlie Bennett, Ameet Doshi, Wendy Hagenmaier, and Fred Rascoe.

Abby was our engineer today, and the show was brought to you in part by the Library Collective. Registration for next year's gathering is open now. Find out more about them at the librarycollective.org.

Legal counsel and notepads and sharpies for posting offline messages were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Special Thanks to Liz for being on the show, and thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening. Find us online at lostinthestacks.org and you can subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix

Next week on Lost in the Stacks, Liz will return asynchronously, along with our colleague Marlee, to talk about captains of book chapter writing.

Time for our last song today, and I'm not totally convinced that eliminating social media from my life is achievable. And I have the same fantasy about not carrying a smartphone.

Fred, let's just go to the mountains, man. Let's just get out of here. Just crush all our electronics beneath our heel.

Sounds great. But at least from my point of view, I'm going to carry that wish as my heart's wild desire. It's never going to happen, though, is it?

It is a wild desire, though.

So let's close with "Wild Desire" by The Celibate Rifles. Have a great weekend, everyone.