I don’t use Facebook all that much these days. Facebook was better back when Facebook knew, and all the users knew, that nothing that happened on the website mattered at all. It was a whole bunch of silly posts about nothing. But what used to be a message board for college kids has transformed into a platform run by and for people with some very big ideas about their role in the world. And as soon as you try to hold them accountable for those ideas, they feign ignorance—a modern-day Know Nothing Party that has somehow become the primary way too many people get their news and information.

On the rare occasion I do venture onto the website, I find the experience frustrating. I click a link to an article, read the article, and circle back to comment on the thing only to find the News Feed “refreshed,” and the post I was looking to comment on has disappeared. Now I have to try to remember who posted it (unlikely), or use the search feature to figure it out, all so I can leave a sarcastic comment? The product seems almost designed to frustrate me into “increased user engagement,” which has led to me not even bothering anymore.

When I first joined, all the way back in 2005, Facebook’s “purpose” was fairly simple. I posted something. Other people I-kind-of-knew posted something. We might interact by posting on each other’s “walls.” That was pretty much it. There was no Like (introduced 2009), no mobile support, no Messenger (2011). You couldn’t even comment on posts from your mobile until 2012!

I’m not saying Facebook used to be good, I’m just saying it was better when it had a limited goal—reinforcing existing social networks—before it became an algorithmically-engineered whole-internet pipeline seemingly designed to frustrate and misinform. I used the Notes feature as a rudimentary blogging platform. I posted about sports. My friends posted on my wall about fantasy football. Nobody cared. It was fine.

There weren’t even advertisements in the News Feed until 2012, unless you count the occasional (un)Sponsored Content post about products I don’t remember existing at all.

Now, Facebook is this runaway train, aimless in its expanded uber-purpose and all the more unstoppable for its aimlessness. Where other social media platforms experienced some mission creep over the years—Twitter increased its character limit, Instagram introduced stories to compete with the upstart Snapchat, Google+ mutated into an invisible nanovirus and killed tens of millions before being quietly shut down, et cetera—Facebook has experienced total mission abandonment via infinite mission expansion. Its “elevator pitch” would now take the better part of an afternoon to deliver. Facebook: a constant stream of posts and ads, sponsored content disguised as posts, and ads. Memes, and “news,” and ads. A Marketplace and Groups, and ads. Personal pages and business pages and fan pages, and Stories, and ads. Live friends’ video, live professional video, produced television shows, and Messenger (provided you use a standalone app), and ads. Memories, and Fundraising, and—oh, let’s just ride the elevator up and down a few more times, ok?

I constantly hear that there are people out there—actual human beings!—who use Facebook as their primary source for news. What news? Where? Do they mean the inane shit their “friends” and distant relatives post? Do they mean the occasional news stories from Yahoo? I don’t get it. There is no rhyme or reason on Facebook when it comes to “news.” There’s no structure. No journalists. No transparency in the gatekeeping, if there is gatekeeping. Not even some Matt Drudge head honcho type directing the flow of others’ headlines. It’s just a series of random posts, many of them untrue or misleading, almost all of them trivial.

And when Facebook is used to break a story, it’s often because they’re live-streaming a murder, like when Philando Castile was shot as his girlfriend filmed it, or because they’re live-streaming a lot of murders, like the Christchurch mosque shootings. Not exactly banner days for Journalism.

I would go so far as to say that a consumer of news would be better off literally sticking their head under a rock, rather than going on Facebook in search of information. If news sources were measured using NBA advanced stats, Facebook’s contribution would be a -50 on the box plus/minus chart. Not only is it a bad source for news, it actually shrinks your knowledge base. Like the Knicks running Kevin Knox out there for 29 minutes a game despite the fact that everyone knows he’s actively making the team worse, getting news from Facebook makes you know less—a self-inflicted lobotomy, if you will.

By way of example, I am going to highlight some of the posts I’ve seen on my feed in just the last six months. These examples are all from actual Canadian Facebook friends of mine. Don’t ask me why I have Canadian friends on Facebook. I just do.

Unnecessary aside: I know rape is no laughing matter. And I am not laughing at rape, per se. But bragging about “Low Rape” is absurdly comical, isn’t it? You can brag about general things, like low crime. But taking a victory lap over your low rape stats is ridiculous. “We had a banner year in 2018. We set our target number of rapes at 50, and through hard work, we ended the year with 31! Good job countrymen, you showed great restraint! Hip hip, hooray!”

Most of the content of the memes is boilerplate nonsense that could just as easily have the variables changed to be about any other country, really. Without exception, the posts are anti-Trudeau (Canadian Prime Minister), anti-anything-Democratic Party, and anti-anything-European-Union. In the Right-Wing Social Media Universe, there is a through-line between Trudeau’s Liberal Party and America’s Democratic Party and the EU as a whole, so it’s fine to use examples interchangeably without losing the thread. It’s nativism but with global reach and appeal.

Now, sure, these examples were specifically chosen to drive the point home—and the examples were shared by only a handful of my Canadian friends. But they do comprise a significant amount of the posts I see whenever I go to Facebook—perhaps a poor reflection of me, sure, but I didn’t write the goddamn algorithms that keep surfacing these things in my feed. So, if I were one of those people (I still refuse to believe these people exist) who used Facebook as a primary source for their news, I would think:

• Canada was overrun by Islamic extremists.

• The Canadian Prime Minister was appeasing terrorists, going as far as taking selfies with them.

• Free speech was being stifled under the guise of hate speech.

In other words, I wouldn’t have a clue about what was actually happening. Worse than not having a clue, worse than knowing nothing, I would have a completely distorted but absolutely certain view of life in Canada.

I’d sooner live under a rock.

The Know Nothing Party platform was nativist, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, conspiracy-minded, and all around xenophobic. They were secretive and paranoid, and when party members were asked about the specifics of their ideology, they feigned ignorance (thus the term “know nothings”) to avoid having to defend the indefensible to those who didn’t agree with them. Facebook in general and the online trolls that use the platform in specific use the same playbook: when someone who shares a clearly-made-up post online is confronted about the veracity of its claims, the sharer feigns ignorance—“I’m just asking questions, man,” or, “It may not be exactly factually accurate, but the underlying point stands!” And when Facebook is questioned by Congress about their privacy failures, boundless ambition, the threat they pose to democracy, or anything else about their general bad-for-the-world-ness, Mark “totally human” Zuckerberg and Sheryl “Lean In to those book sales” Sandberg feign ignorance, too. Oh, we just want to build a more connected world, is all. We just want to help people share more. And we’re sorry! We screwed up, but we’ll do better! We know nothing about all that, but we’re trying. What’s not to like about that?