“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.” — Thomas Huxley, “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1”

Facebook this week reported the death of the social media site’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

Dead at 36, Zuckerberg was taken by the coronavirus in his California home, several posts across my feeds said. Some of the apparent news posts noted he had been convicted of pedophilia before his death.

None of it was true.

Zuckerberg is 40, has never faced pedophilia charges, and is very much alive.

The posts flooded the site to mock Zuckerberg’s announcement this week that Facebook would end its affiliation with third-party fact-checkers who have for years flagged misleading or outright untrue posts, especially those from prominent users.

Instead of fact-checkers, Facebook will go the way of Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) and rely on so-called “community notes” in which other Facebook users can flag problematic posts.

That should put the nail in the coffin on the idea that social media is a reliable news source.

I remember when MySpace, the first successful social media site, came out shortly after I graduated high school.

It was great. It allowed me to stay in touch with friends from high school and reconnect with long-lost friends from when I lived in Texas. I played in a band at the time, and MySpace allowed me to share my music and promote upcoming gigs.

Then Facebook came out and was even more user-friendly and robust, allowing me to find other friends with whom I’d lost touch. We all posted photos and the site allowed us to feel connected to each other, even though we’d all landed in different places around the country.

I enjoyed social media then.

Then, somehow, around the mid-2010s, Facebook and later Twitter became the go-to place for people to get information, replacing newspapers and TV and radio news.

I couldn’t understand it.

I saw social media as just that: a place to be social, a great place to keep up on the goings-on of my friends and relatives, but not a place to keep up on the goings-on in my community or the world.

Facebook didn’t employ journalists, people with no skin in the game who go out and ask hard questions and observe and check facts to make sure the information they impart to the world is useful and reliable.

The information on Facebook came from my friends and relatives, love them though I do, aren’t journalists, either. They don’t conduct research and verify the information presented to them and go to primary sources. They have jobs and families and leisure activities. They aren’t trained and paid to make sure they’re right.

So why should I turn to them to know what’s going on in Washington?

Social media wasn’t even designed to play that role.

But, as their audience grew to billions and users told survey-takers time and time again they turned to social media as their primary source of information, social media companies tried to fill that niche. When researchers pointed out that people were getting junk for “news” on their sites, social media companies tried to bring in fact-checkers and content moderators and started flagging and taking down mistruths.

But it never really worked. With posts flowing from billions of sources 24/7, the fact-checkers and content moderators could do little more than play whack-a-mole. Never have I opened my Facebook feed and not seen at least one outrageous conspiracy theory or outright fabrication presented as fact.

So let Facebook abandon its fact-checking efforts.

It’s a free country and Zuckerberg is free to run his business how he sees fit.

And Facebook users are free to post whatever they like.

But let’s start treating Facebook and X and all the rest for what they are: social gatherings, not news feeds. A great place to see cute pictures of your old college roommate’s kids and your grandma’s dog and find out that your second cousin got a great new job, not get the skinny on Congress’s newest tax plan.

Zuckerberg just told us he’s no longer even pretending we can trust what we see on Facebook.

So let’s stop pretending, too.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-354-3112 or jhinkley@TheAlpenaNews.com. Follow him on X @JustinHinkley.