February 20; Never write to me on Facebook 🧑🏻💻
Staying optimistic in the midst of identity fraud and crypto scams... this was my week
Happy Sunday,
I once heard a good joke: Imagine you could travel back in time sixty years, and show your phone to the people you meet in 1962, telling them “This little box of glass and metal, the size and weight of a chocolate bar, is in my pocket all the time, and gives me access to any information known to humans since the beginning of time. Images, text, sounds, or video. Plus I can talk to anyone anywhere in the world. What would you do with it?”
Without doubt, 1962 folks would be awed, and would say things like “read all the books”, “listen to any music”, “talk to friends and relatives in faraway places”. And you’d tell them “Yes, you could. But most of the time we just argue with strangers and watch funny videos of cats”.
I had to think of this again today, when yet another friend of mine, the tenth already over the course of the past 12 months, sent me a message warning me of an impostor using my Facebook name and avatar, befriending them and trying to sell them cryptocurrency, pretending to be me, over Facebook Messenger.
For one, I’m completely uninterested in crypto, have never bought or sold it, and will never offer you to buy it.
Secondly, I hereby stop using Facebook Messenger, which I have very rarely been doing anyways, so please disregard and excuse me if you receive any such message from someone who looks like me.
Thirdly, I’m sadly reminded of the above joke, and the general notion of how hard it is to adopt new technologies and make optimal use of them.
Facebook was once a wonderful place where you connected with people you’ve known long, or met recently, and had a first-row view to how they were living their life, enjoying their happy moments together with them, and connecting over moments less happy on occasion. That all ended in the past several years, as a result of the ad-driven business model, and today it’s little more than an internet analogy of a 24/7 gossip news and tell-sell channel.
Such is likely the fate of other social networks as well, unless some big shift occurs in the near future. A shame really, as the original setup was excellent.
Henry Kissinger wrote in his seminal 1994 book Diplomacy, how the real human tragedy behind World War I was about 19th-century ideas clashing with 20th-century technological advances. Young men went to fight like their fathers and grandfathers before them, trained for shotguns on horses, and instead had to face bomber aircraft, tanks, nerve gas, landmines, and machine guns.
Today’s internet is eerily similar to that historical metaphor. We crave for technologically augmented authentic human connection, but all we get is algorithmically optimized content, aimed at influencing our buying and spending decisions, making us miserable.
I believe that a way out of this is to work towards a technological world where less of our information is centrally managed by huge, profit-focused corporations. Part of this is the current trend for decentralization, part will be stricter regulation of data, already underway, especially in the EU. I think as venture capitalists, we can also play a crucial role in this, incentivizing entrepreneurs to build products that deliver long-term value to clients and communities, rather than aiming to exit big to Silicon Valley.
A year ago, I started Sunday Max as my way of focusing less on social media and more on meaningful and non-intrusive contact with people I care about. It thrills me that there’s about a hundred of you who actively read and respond to these weekly updates, and I’m looking forward to slowly and steadily growing our relationships here and in real life.
Until then, stay sane, and whatever you do, don’t buy crypto from someone called Max Gurvits on Facebook Messenger:)
Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇
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