Yes, I do not think so. I expect Facebook's goal to be to maximize shareholder value within the bounds of regulations.
I do not expect an entity such as Facebook to behave in any other way.
From Facebook's perspective, the current value system is possibly distorted, for example, because of a lack of competition. Suppose another social platform would enter the picture, and users would flock to that platform because it has a greater social responsibility. In that case, it might become Facebook's best interest to be more socially responsible as well.
However, that has not happened yet. It is making me believe that the burden to solve this issue is with regulators, not Facebook.
I mean Facebook does deserve the negative PR it's receiving, don't get me wrong. I finally deleted my account, too, since it's become too much. It does seem to me like it's very much in their interest of the media to keep attacking Facebook now that it's socially acceptable (Cambridge Analytica stuff and all), since Facebook's one of the companies that greatly influenced and interfered with their possibility to generate an income.
When was Facebook about improving society? Oh sure they'll do that as long as it doesn't jeopardize profits, but after all we've learned about their social engineering, social experimentation, pattern recognition and various mechanisms to maintain engagement, is it really right to pretend they are any different than any other large corporation? The dollar is the endgame, and if improving society becomes a profitable endeavor, then and only then is it safe to say they will pursue it.
Not really. This is well-understood problem with well-understood solutions. There is no reason to believe that Facebook doesn't have both the resources and the motivation to get this right.
No doubt. I just find Mr. Zuckerberg's wording a bit odd. Clearly they fear that someone might blame them someday if they fail to take action. Instead of saying "Look, we have a problem and we're working on it" he goes "Look FB is great, we help people!"
Of course, this is typical PR speak but it leaves a sour taste when it comes to such a serious topic, imho.
I don't agree. Facebook has to make changes given the risk of regulation, reputational risk, recruiting challenges, and the mismatch in their own self-professed mission.
We can debate if the change will be substantial enough to truly change things (I'm doubtful), but they have already made changes due to this media coverage (hiring more content moderators as just one example).
Throughout history, media has always had to weigh the tradeoffs of informing people vs engaging people. Yellow journalism in the US was an example of when the engagement imperative overwhelmed the informing imperative, and the issues did lead to changes in media. Facebook is going through this same journey (though painfully and slowly).
I've been doing talks on ethics and dark patterns. And although most of my research for the talks are things I knew about as they happened, it feels different when you see it all together. Just scroll through the Wikipedia on FB criticism for a sense of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook (as an aside, criticism of Google ain't too shabby either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_google )
It's hard to look at this as something other than systematic, intentional trampling of decency. If no laws were broken, then we are missing some important laws.
I wouldn't cry any tears if they were broken up, that's for sure. But the argument? Here it is:
Facebook buys up any up and comer before they become a challenge. And if they don't sell like Instagram did and Snapchat didn't, they will crush them by copying them until the newcomer is completely crippled.
>As a corporation, Facebook truly seems to be trying to improve its behavior for the benefit of society at large
Based on what? Lip service? Empty gestures? Those are worth as much as Google's "Don't be evil" motto and Apple's and Nike's social justice campaigns...
On the one hand, I think the things they are changing sound like things that should be changed: limited group sizes rather than a public broadcast, and subscription-based rather than ad-based. Guarantee data confidentiality and you've got a neat platform I still wouldn't use.
On the other hand, we know how this story goes: they either fail outright, or they succeed and scale up, slowly adding more and more features people request in order to create more growth, until eventually they look like the platforms they started as a reaction against.
Because Facebook, et al. didn't randomly arrive at the combination of qualities that makes them destructive, they got there by giving people what they asked for. Until you change what people ask for, you're either going to keep creating Facebooks, or get driven out of business by Facebook. Replace Facebook with the social media platform of your choice.
If true then surely that's better, not worse, as it means that Facebook simply needs to be suitably (financially) incentivised to change its behaviour - perhaps achievable via tighter regulation, penalties & rewards, etc etc.
Thus the public criticism.
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