Let’s face it, Facebook broke our trust. By now you know that Facebook let third party applications harvest data from potentially hundreds of millions of users around the world. What happened to that data is not yet fully known. But we do know that at least some of it was used to try to influence the 2016 election in President Donald Trump’s favor.
A lot of authors I know and work with have an equivocal relationship with Facebook. I did too when I first encountered it in the mid aughts. Posts mostly consisted of lots of photos of what people were eating and just random thoughts. People didn’t really know what to use it for and it kind of felt like not even Facebook was sure what it was.
The first time I thought that Facebook was useful for authors was when I searched for Freakonomics on the site. The Freakonomics authors had not yet set up an author page or any presence on Facebook at all. But since so many people had listed it as their favorite book, Facebook had pulled in Freakonomics’ Wiki page which had over a hundred thousand “likes”. The authors eventually got control of that page but it was a lesson to me. Always create an author and book page, even if you do nothing with it. You just never know.
I started experimenting with Facebook advertising for my authors and I was, frankly, awed by the ability to target book lovers with my ads so easily and inexpensively. At this point, Facebook was encouraging businesses to grow their audiences and the algorithm would allow your posts to reach every one of those peoples’ feeds…for free. Once a majority of companies did come and had built their audiences, Facebook decided that in order to reach those people, you had to pay to reach them. This was where the real money was. Individuals didn’t pay for Facebook, instead they were served ads. Businesses paid to reach audiences and the value was great because the targeting was so specific. Want to reach female literary thriller fans in Kalamazoo, Michigan between the ages of 18-35? Check. Want to promote your event in Naples, FL to male golf fans over the age of 55 in a certain zip code. Check. It remains an incredible tool.
But the only reason it’s incredible is because we’ve been lulled into putting so much personal information on the site. I mean, one of the nicest things is to get all those birthday wishes from friends and acquaintances. Or seeing photos of an old friend’s children. And it’s also a terrific organizational tool. In addition to giving you a connection to your readers and fans, it can be a tool for change. So many democratic protests (even in Russia) and grassroots organizations depend on Facebook to get the word out about their activities. So now that we are fully aware of how Facebook has abused our trust, despite all the positive aspects of the site, should authors abandon it?
First of all, the horse has pretty much left the barn at this point. Facebook allowed this data to be harvested for about 10 years. And that led to a robust black market for the data. Who knows who has it at this point? The only saving grace is that data is not dynamic, it is static. While your life changes, the data that Facebook harvested does not. As time goes by, as you move, change jobs, have children, etc. that data becomes obsolete. And Facebook has an incentive to make sure this stops. They are facing extraordinary fines.
While we’re waiting to see what happens to Facebook, I would recommend that you do a little housework around your personal Facebook page (if you use it) and delete all the information that you prefer not to be used by advertisers to target you. Then look at your personal profile and your author page profile. Is there anything there that you don’t want people to know? When you’re an author, it’s usually pretty easy for folks to find out where you’re from. Often it’s right in your bio on your Amazon book page. So if Facebook knows that, so what? But if you’re really paranoid, you might want to become less specific. Instead of saying you live in Darien, Connecticut, maybe you put just Connecticut. Maybe you want to take out your birth year but leave your birthday. It’s up to you. Just be sure that you’re okay with what’s there. The point is to be very conscious of what information is available about you.
Then go into “settings” and then to “apps” and see what apps are accessing your information. Remove all the apps that you don’t want there. These are apps that you allowed to access your Facebook information as a way to log into their site. Instead of signing in to apps with Facebook, log in with an email address.
You can also change your posting style as well. Everyone has a different style of using Facebook. Some folks post lots and lots of photos of themselves, their kids, and their pets. You might want to cut back on that kind of sharing. Face recognition technology is gaining steam and who know what trouble that can get you in. I hardly ever post photos of my kids and I never tag anyone in my photos. If you’re using your author page, keep the posts closely related to your work as an author and your books. Post links to your reviews, giveaways, your events, and any other publicly available writing you might want to promote (short stories or essays for example). But keep personal information out of it.
I don’t think that Facebook will change from its advertising model and maybe, in a few years, we’ll all have left the site for greener fields. But in the meantime, because of ease of targeting and relatively inexpensive advertising rates, Facebook remains a useful tool for authors to reach fans and new readers.