The dictionary’s last definition of agency is ‘a means of accomplishing something, instrumentality’.

It is one thing to lose your agency because someone comes and takes it away; it is another to surrender it. I rather suspect when people react to the Facebook shenanigans with a shrug and say they aren’t doing anything wrong, are missing the point.

There are billions of people who aren’t doing anything wrong. They go through their days working, loving, worrying. But, they don’t have to be doing anything wrong when Facebook is. Why Facebook did it is the question.

Facebook deliberately set out to track people across devices and to keep all their e-mails. They sat down one day and decided to do it, then they set some guys in R&D to write the code for it.

The head honcho promised once again they won’t share our information. Why do they want it? What are their plans for it?

We know what the data mining vermin at Cambridge Analytics did with it. Until everyone started to get up in arms about it, the company’s head man bragged about winning elections with it.

Why let these guys anywhere near our government? We are giving up our agency to someone who doesn’t care. He just wants the win.

I actually asked a couple of people what was so wonderful about Donald Trump or what it was he had to do. They couldn’t tell me, they just thought he should be allowed to do it. I didn’t get the memo and so far all I can see is tax cuts for people like him. He doesn’t care about the average person except as a tool for what he wants. He doesn’t care about anything but his image.

Trump is not the problem, he is only a symptom of it – the front man for the vermin who have a plan.

That election was compromised by foreign actors and big money. Even if they sort it out and craft new laws to stop if from happening again the victims will still be dead.

Why we make the decisions we do is often a mystery to us, but it should be our mystery, not Cambridge Analytics, Facebook’s or Big Brother’s. How they can take advantage of that is surprising and why can be revolting.

To secure ourselves and our information we may have to forego the pleasures of Facebook, perhaps in favour of a platform that charges a nominal fee. Facebook may be free to the user but it made founder Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire.

Then we have to rejig our election laws. No corporate donations, no money from foundations or trusts, no Super Pacs. Just small money donations from individuals.

Then get rid of the consultants. They gobble up enormous sums of money and offer little but gas. The DNC spent $700 million on five consultants and lost the election.

We have the right to know who our politicians actually are, not some airbrushed figure that comes on stage and utters stock phrases that mean nothing. We have a right to know what they actually think.

Finally, once we have decided to spend $10 a month on our social media, and once the politicians who are always looking around for the pork barrel are gone, we have to get up to speed on the issues and vote on them.

And, no matter how we lost our agency, take it back.

Eva Sartorius,
High Prairie