We are saddened to see that The Beachcomber’s response to the problem of anonymous postings on your website is to require posters to use Facebook accounts. We support verifying identities, and we’re happy to be identified when speaking to our community. But using Facebook accounts seems to endorse this social network — about which we have grave reservations — and shuts those of us who choose not to use Facebook out of an important medium of community dialogue.

Facebook is a corporation which profits by mining personal data from its users and selling that data to other corporations. People using Facebook’s “free” service miss the reality that they themselves are the source of profit and that advertisers use personal data to target them and their “friends.” More subtly, Facebook intentionally exposes users to products, ideas and people that they are expected to like (and click on). Other products, ideas and people — those that are different from the users’ past choices — are not shown.

Similar to the systems used by other seemingly neutral information sources (such as search engines), the system is biased to show people things that they will like. This reduces dialogue and exchange of ideas among people of diverse views, undermines awareness of real-world facts, increases political polarization and damages actual communities, including ours.

Obviously, people are using Facebook for fun and profit; it can be used for positive purposes including political organizing that we support. Yet this medium undermines personal privacy, supports separation and distrust among people of differing viewpoints and transforms private lives and civic discourse into a source of profit for corporations that is not shared with individuals. We’re not joining.

We’d like to see a good deal more healthy skepticism about Facebook and more support for local real-world journalism. Offering another way to verify identities for web comments is a good place to start.

— Margot Boyer and Bob Powell