has facebook- "meta" wasted your time?

 has facebook "meta" wasted your time?

Okay, Facebook- Meta

We need to talk.

A few days ago, one of my old posts suddenly went viral.

I went from approximately 225 followers to 975 in about a day.

The post had 454 shares and more than 60,000 views.

I've shared plenty of things over the years.

Nothing has ever done anything remotely like this.

Then I started looking at the new followers.

I began seeing patterns that made me suspicious — including accounts with no profile photo appearing among clusters of other new accounts. I took screenshots because I wanted to document what I was seeing.

I don't know that every account was a bot.

I don't know who created them.

I don't know exactly why they appeared.

But I know what happened next.

I started cleaning them out.

And I discovered that removing and blocking these accounts is a one-at-a-time process.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Hours of my time.

Time I didn't ask to spend.

Time I didn't create the problem to begin with.

So I started wondering:

what is a class action?

A class action is a lawsuit in which one or more representative people bring a claim on behalf of a larger group of people who have sufficiently similar legal or factual issues.

It is not simply “get 40 people and sue Facebook.”

In British Columbia, for example, the legislation says an identifiable class can consist of two or more people, but a court still has to determine whether there is a valid cause of action, common issues, whether a class proceeding is the preferable procedure, and whether there is an appropriate representative plaintiff with a workable plan.

Federal Canadian rules have similar certification requirements.

So why would anyone want a class action?

Because sometimes one person's problem isn't big enough to justify years of litigation.

But if thousands of people have experienced substantially the same problem, bringing the common issues together can make it possible to ask a court to examine what happened.

It can also make something visible that might otherwise remain thousands of separate complaints.

And that's the question I'm asking.

Has Facebook wasted your time too?

Not just with fake followers.

Not just bots.

Not just suspicious friend requests.

I'm talking about the larger question:

How much of our lives are we spending managing problems created by the technology we're using?

Facebook can operate at enormous scale.

It can recommend.

Sort.

Promote.

Suppress.

Detect.

Connect.

Separate.

And apparently sometimes send hundreds of people toward one little post.

But when an ordinary person wants to clean up the resulting mess?

Apparently:

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

One account at a time.

So, Facebook, I have a question:

Who pays for my time?

Because my time is not free.

And this isn't just about me.

I'm curious how many other people have stories.

Maybe there is nothing legally actionable here.

Maybe there is.

That's for lawyers and courts to determine — not me.

But I would like to ask a lawyer who understands technology, social media platforms and class proceedings to look at it.

Because I am getting pretty damn tired of being manipulated by someone else's code.

And I don't mean only Facebook.

We're increasingly living inside systems designed by people we will never meet, using algorithms we cannot see, making decisions we often don't understand.

And then we're told to adapt.

Click here.

Accept this.

Block that.

Change this setting.

Report this.

Verify that.

Start over.

Do it again.

Your time. Your attention. Your data. Your labour.

All valuable.

so I have some questions.

Not just for Facebook users.

For teachers:

What are we teaching children about algorithms, attention, manipulation and digital power?

For kids:

Do you realize how much of your world is being shaped by code written by somebody else?

For parents and grandparents:

Do we understand what we're asking young people to live inside?

For business owners:

How much of your livelihood depends on algorithms you don't control?

For mental-health professionals:

What happens to people when they spend hours fighting systems that never seem to listen?

For frontline workers:

How much of your working day is now spent dealing with automated systems instead of actual human beings?

For teachers again:

Should digital literacy include not just how to use technology, but how to recognize when technology is using us?

For politicians:

Who is responsible when enormous platforms create enormous problems for ordinary people?

For Mark Carney:

What does accountability look like when some of the most powerful systems affecting Canadians are private technology platforms operating across borders?

For David Eby:

What protections should ordinary British Columbians have when digital platforms create problems that consume people's time, privacy, money or safety?

For Elizabeth May:

How do we protect human beings from systems that are increasingly powerful, automated and difficult for individuals to challenge?

And for all of us:

When did our time become something corporations could simply take?

When did “free” technology stop meaning free?

Who owns the algorithm?

Who gets to see how it works?

Who gets to challenge it when it gets something wrong?

Who pays when we have to clean up its mistakes?

And perhaps the hardest question:

Are we still using the technology — or has the technology started using us?

I don't know the answers.

But I think these are questions worth asking.

And if you've spent hours cleaning up fake followers, bots, suspicious accounts, hacked accounts, unwanted messages or some other digital mess you didn't create:

Tell me about it.

Maybe my strange little Facebook episode isn't just a weird story.

Maybe it's a tiny example of a much bigger problem.

And maybe it's time we started keeping track.