It is not news anymore that Facebook has more than 1 billion users around the world. Facebook has become a powerful tool for uniting communities, people and places but it can also be used as tool of discrimination and segregation. It is against this backdrop that it should be said that Facebook is now trying to create territories around the world and it should be stated that people are not really happy about it. Have you ever asked yourself why is Facebook creating territories mostly among some US territories and other continents? Come to think of it, this sounds like a modern day apartheid or 21st century discriminatory style of our modern world.
Do we really need this kind of division? Take for instance, US territories such as American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Guam, The US Virgin Island, Northern Mariana Island are being cut out of the US by the Facebook and this does not augur well for the people living in those territories and it is not fair. According to equalrightsnow.org US territories are being treated like 2nd class citizens. It is hoped that Facebook crypto currency “Libra“ will not further deepen the segregation through its territorial policies. The fact that Facebook is dividing the US and its territories shows that Facebook is bent on creating unequal world full of injustice. That makes everybody wonder why Facebook is treating some US territories and their citizens as 2nd class residents. What this treatment means is that Facebook does not care much about other countries that are not United States of America.
Furthermore, it is unbelievable that Facebook is creating confusion intentionally in the 21st century. It has become a cliché that we are all living in a small world and borderless world but some technological invention/ app like Facebook is still making things more complicated for some users around the world. The question is that, is Facebook doing this in order to have some unscrupulous financial gains from users who are not in the US? Only time will tell. It seems Facebook benefits passively from the concepts of artificial territories created in order to further drag innocent and large amount of people in the stinking mud of segregation, racism, discrimination and prejudices.
There is no doubt that Facebook has become a political and social weapon being used to attack other common people on social networking sites in order to take some undue advantages. The case of how Facebook and Whatsapp are used by some powerful people to terrorize and bully some underprivileged is a rampant example of how Facebook can be used to run and rule our society. Facebook is also used for online campaign and it can sustain the momentum of offline campaign too. Based on the points mentioned above, the manner in which some unscrupulous people used Facebook to deceive people into voting in the last US election is also one of the examples that should not be forgotten.
The concepts of Facebook territory should not just be swept under the carpet. People will vote, love, hate and they will try to be connected using Facebook, whether you like it or not. There is no doubt that Facebook is merging the concepts of global currency, power with politics. That should be one of the reasons why Facebook is creating territories and “Libra“ too. Therefore, you shouldn`t just be fooled into the fact that Facebook is only helping people connect but it is also trying to divide people from all walks of life in order to have some financial gains.
The emotional impacts of Facebook territories cannot be quantified though. It can be succinctly summarized that Facebook may be doing more damages to our emotional intelligence than it has been previously identified. The idea of creating artificial territories in our lives has left a lot to be cherished by Facebook users around the world.
Above all, what happens to Facebook and its creation of territories as well as its crypto currency will be and should be determined by its users. There`s no doubt that Facebook has united family and business people but we shouldn`t just give Facebook the chance to keep creating artificial/ superficial boundaries meant to discriminate, segregate and make people feel inferior in their own natural territories.
Written by Austin Fabumuyi