[ad_1]
Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg fifteen years ago, published a compelling argument for his destruction in the New York Times three days ago. Basically, his argument is that Facebook will continue to weaken and cause suffering if its monopoly is maintained, and Zuckerberg has the power to do what he wants.
His thesis is based on the assumption that Facebook's problems were caused by a concentration on earnings and "clicks", which led management to ignore risks and employees to ignore questionable moral practices. According to Hughes, this was only allowed by the market, because of the brutal tactics used by Facebook to cancel, buy or copy competitors.
"When I read what he wrote, my main reaction was that what he proposes to do will do nothing to help solve these problems," Mark Zuckerberg told France Info. during his stay in Paris yesterday. "So, I think if you care about democracy and elections, you want a company like us to invest billions of dollars a year, as we do, to create really advanced tools to fight electoral interference. "
Zuckerberg's argument mirrors that of Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president for international affairs and communications, who officially responded to Hughes in his New York Times editorial. "In my opinion – and that of most people who write about the impact of technology on society – what matters is not the size, but the rights and the interests consumers and our responsibility to governments and legislators who oversee trade and communications. "
Clegg agrees with Hughes that Facebook needs more regulation and needs to do a better job. If he thought otherwise, he would be crazy. But breaking society does not fundamentally prevent Russian agents from gaining political influence, terrorists spreading violence or white supremacists spreading hate. He points out the obvious: settling these problems requires money, money that only Facebook has. "The resources we are going to spend on safety and security this year alone will be more than our overall revenues in our initial public offering in 2012. That would be next to impossible for a small business."
Security errors, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal or the recent discovery that Facebook stores thousands of passwords in plain text format, are no less avoidable in a small business, or in which executives have less power. Poor content management, such as the decision to define newsworthy content such as "politics, crime or tragedy", is likely to be even more frenetic. when leaders can not intervene to change things easily.
Clegg also claims that Facebook does not have a monopoly: "Virtually all of our revenues come from digital advertising. According to most estimates, Facebook's share accounts for about 20% of the US online advertising market, which means that 80% of all digital advertising occurs. off our platforms. "
While Facebook incorporates many of the largest social networking applications, each competes with many others. "The Blue App" as pure Facebook is calling, with Instagram, to compete with YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest and the newcomer, TikTok. Whatsapp and Messenger compete with Apple's iMessage, WeChat, Line and Skype brands. Clegg's argument is weakest, as it fails to mention that Facebook applications dominate in specific regions, where entire cultures are shaped by Facebook's algorithms.
Hughes, Zuckerberg and Clegg are both right. Facebook's mistakes have disastrous consequences, more regulation can help, but there is simply no way to fix it.
[ad_2]
Source link