Skip to main content

It Zucks!




Mark Zuckerberg recently claimed it is not his job to clean up hate speech on his platform.  Yet, try to post a picture of a naked woman on fb and see if you don't get warned or have your user privileges revoked for 30 days.  That happened to me when I shared Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland UK album cover with friends after finally finding a copy I could afford.

After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it is pretty clear what Zuckerberg loves most is money. He rakes in huge advertising dollars from political as well as commercial campaigns that see the value in harvesting data and spreading their message on fb.  He's not about to give up on that revenue generator, no matter how egregiously misleading the political ads become.  He's also making no attempt to crack down on the companies that mine fb for personal data, which is how CA was able to gather information on over 50 million fb users, more than enough to create an emotional profile for virtually every type of person in the world so that they could better target their political advertisements.

Zuck wants his cake and eat it too.  He and his buddies created a platform that is now visited by more than a billion users worldwide.  Of course, it's anyone's guess how many of these users are duplicates, as profiles are cloned or users forget their passwords and have to create new ones.  Nevertheless, we are talking about 100s of millions of users all around the globe.  That's a virtual bottomless pit of information that political campaigns harvest and use to better target their ads.

What seemed like a novel idea in 2008 when Obama successfully used social media to spread his campaign message has become the template for all subsequent political campaigns.  Trump turned the template on its head in 2016, showing that you can take full advantage of people's gullibility to win.  The same was true for the Brexit campaign that year.  The very same person, Brittany Kaiser, who was a part of the Obama social media campaign became an influential figure at Cambridge Analytica, which provided its data services to both Trump and Brexit.  The reason was quite simple -- money.  CA paid Brittany immensely for her efforts so that she could enjoy the lifestyle she always dreamed of.

Political campaigns today will use any hook or crook to gather information.  The most popular being personality tests that users freely share with their friends.  This allows political campaigns to get a pretty good representation of the types of voters out there and how best to tailor their messages to reach them on their timelines.  I realize it would be a Herculean task to rein in this sort of abuse, but fb makes virtually no attempt whatsoever.  Zuck adopts the Libertarian view that it is up to the user to sort out unwanted information by hiding ads or unfollowing friends who post unwanted memes and advertisements.

Facebook already has the means at its disposal to monitor sites.  Users can flag ads and posts that they deem offensive, but the ads and posts just keep popping up.  It's kind of like that dummy button you push at the crosswalk to turn the traffic lights.  The lights are on a timer, so you can push that button all you like, the lights will switch on their own programmed accord.

You can use social media data for bad or for good.  You can use it as a means of informing people about climate change, or you can use it to undermine their confidence in the science behind climate change.  It's a fine line, and I can follow Zuck's argument to a certain point, but when you see political and social ad campaigns purposely exploiting users' ignorance, you can put up red flags.  FB has the means to do so, but chooses not to.

The sad fact is that virtually all these tech companies have become very conservative over the years.  They rely largely on consumer loyalty, not technological improvements to their products.  FB has not changed demonstrably since it first appeared on the Internet.  Neither have other social media platforms.  The reason is quite simple. They are all part of media conglomerates that are more interested in the data they are compiling than maintaining a reputable service.  Information has become the latest gold mine, and there are billions of dollars to be made from it.

This is why Elizabeth Warren wants to break up these tech companies.  They have become monopolies, buying up other social media sites so that it is hard to track who owns who anymore.  Facebook owns instagram and a whole host of other popular sites.  Google owns Youtube and Android.  These search engines, cellphone platforms and social media sites are all owned and operated by a handful of companies.  These tech companies now make AT&T pale by comparison and we remember all the angst when this telecommunications company was broken up in the 80s.  Not that it did much good, AT&T reformed and is as big as it ever was.  Still, it opened up the door for other telecommunication companies, at least for a short while.

The problem with these media giants is that they cease to provide any great technological innovations. It just becomes a game of smoke and mirrors, which Apple has illustrated so well in becoming a trillion dollar company.  The "freedom of speech" argument that Zuck tries to use is bogus. He's essentially adopted the same model as Fox, allowing anyone to voice his or her opinion, as long as it isn't too offensive, and let users decide for themselves.  Given there are no federal regulations regarding truth in media, Zuck has no legal obligation to monitor the political and commercial ads that pop up on fb timelines.  FB worries more about kids potentially seeing porn.

Free to say whatever they want, political campaigns have shown no shame when it comes to peddling conspiracy theories and smear campaigns on social media.  Twitter, Trump's favorite medium, is just as guilty as facebook in this regard.  The blowback comes from other users, who can be unmerciful at times.  Unfortunately, these facebook and twitter wars do little to rein in the abuse.  They only encourage it, as users take from these online arguments only what they want to support their own arguments.

Snopes, Politifact and other online services valiantly try to check facts, but they often come under attack themselves for being biased.  It has become increasingly difficult to form any baseline of factual information, as we have seen from the scurrilous anti-vax campaign that uses the universally discredited information of Andrew Wakefield.  Zuck makes no effort to contain this epidemic of misinformation either, which is far more harmful to young children than seeing the original Electric Ladyland album cover.

These social media overlords want to take no responsibility for the lies and disinformation that are openly spread on their platforms.  Yet, their sites are disseminating news on a huge scale, to the point CNN, NY Times, Washington Post and other news sites are providing feeds on facebook and twitter to better reach this huge audience.  It takes an inordinate amount of pressure to take down a site like Infowars, only for Alex Jones to return under a new guise.

What is Zuck's response to Liz Warren calling him out on his indifference?  He has threatened to sue her if she tries to break up facebook.  That sounds exactly like something Trump would do to stifle criticism.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!