Facebook has changed its official name to Meta. According to Mark Zuckerberg, this reflected its ambitions to get users to be even more involved in debate, discussion and sharing ideas in a virtual world.

According to many other people, however, it was a cynical ploy to divert attention from ever increasing woes of the company’s reputation.

Even as we wrote this, an ex-Facebook employee was touring Europe carrying a bunch of documents revealing the inner workings of the company. And they do not make for very happy reading.

Frances Haugen has been releasing evidence that Facebook thrives on sowing division and hate. The company realised it could keep people glued to their devices simply by making them angry. And keeping them glued to the screen meant more eyeballs for their adverts.

With that simple logic, Facebook decided to prioritise profits over principle and, in some cases, even public safety. This is why many are increasingly worried.

The documents, now called The Facebook Papers, demonstrated that Facebook knowingly promoted extremist views in order to elicit a response from its users. This would create a continuous loop of people arguing for and against often preposterous ideas not even held by most people.

They were also aware of, and even promoted, information dished out by troll farms. The evidence shows that, although not intentionally, Facebook may have given Donald Trump a leg up in the presidential race thanks to its algorithms promoting far-right conspiracy theories and giving them a national platform.

Members of the US Senate and Congress have expressed dismay at the news and so too did many members of the European Parliament.

Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have vowed to look at potential legislation. Danish centre-left MEP Christel Schaldemose, who is rapporteur on the EU’s new digital services law, said that Haugen showed we must “not let large tech companies regulate themselves”. “We need to regulate the whole system,” German Green MEP Alexandra Geese added.

But have we not been down this road before? Is it that long ago that Cambridge Analytica was allowed to use Facebook to persuade the electorate about the benefits of Brexit?

This was the same Cambridge Analytica allegedly used in preparation as part of the Labour Party’s MEP election campaign in 2015.

The fact is that Facebook has been some politicians’ best friend.

So, would our legislators be the best people to keep an eye on it? As Facebook continues to devolve into a major shouting match, filled with grudges, hate speech and proto-fascist conspiracy theories, perhaps it’s time for us, the citizens of this country, to at least take our own part of Facebook into our own hands.

If we no longer want to see so much hate, if we no longer want to see the product of so many troll farms appear on our website, let’s try a simple experiment.

Let us fool Facebook’s algorithm by not engaging with hate-filled comments, with news meant to provoke controversy.

Let’s disregard anything which provokes us, or makes us angry. Let’s leave those articles and comments to fester in their own bubble.

If we feel any comments cross the line, we should report them to the authorities. The court has shown it is clamping down on comments which incite hate and violence.

It is a long shot but, maybe, just maybe, some of the ugliness which has permeated through society will slowly start to disappear.