Cleaning Facebook: hurt the stock, help the world?



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The year has been difficult for Facebook and its investors. The issues of data privacy, news proliferation and user growth have weighed on the business.

Now she is investing heavily in solving these problems. Not everyone is convinced of the solutions, but if you take Facebook to the word, the changes that it provides will ultimately make the social media service better for its 2.2 billion dollars. users.

For Facebook, investment is not just about restoring users; It is also an act of self-preservation.

If trust in the platform erodes, the company's user base as well as advertisers who pay a lot of money to access the eyeballs also do so . Said Drew Margolin, professor of communication at Cornell University.

The actions of the social media giant lost Thursday 19% of their biggest one-day drop in Facebook's history the day after this user's discovery. Growth has slowed amid swirling questions about how Facebook's information is being used. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg says it's for a good cause, even at the expense of short-term profits and stock prices. "As I've said in past calls, we're investing so much in security that it's going to drastically. We're starting to see what this quarter," Zuckerberg said during a conference call with the US. badysts.

So what do these investments look like? On the one hand, the company is about to hire 20,000 content moderators this year to clean messages, photos and videos on its platform that violate the rules of the social network [19659007]. To determine what can stay on Facebook and what to do,

Facebook also invests in artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate its cleanup efforts, but experts say that it could take decades before this effort is successful. Selman, a professor of computer science at Cornell University and expert in artificial intelligence, notes that while the company "is recruiting great people" and is quickly preparing to catch up with rivals like Google, it is possible -be too optimistic about the speed of AI. help them solve big problems such as false news and political manipulation.

The company is already using AI to automatically eliminate child badgraphy and terrorist propaganda, but with In the gray areas, humans must intervene.

Facebook must also keep its service useful and entertaining for people while facing growing concerns about technological dependence and the effects of social media on the well-being of people

. , the company knew how to grow as it did by using subtle and not so subtle tricks to keep as many people on Facebook as possible, including endless notifications and prompts to connect, algorithms that show users want to see and an endless stream of friend suggestions under the heading "people you can know."

To solve this problem, Facebook says that it now prioritizes "meaningful" content in people's feeds, such as photos and notes of friends and family, and messages that trigger conversation instead. as unconscious scrolling.

The changes could cause people to spend less time on the site, which could reduce ad revenue and daily user numbers.

Then there is the confidentiality of the users. Encouraged in part by European regulations coming into effect in May and by broader privacy concerns, Facebook says it gives more choice to people as to the advertisements that they want to see. and how they are followed in the service. In Europe, the company does not really have the choice. But there is a more general reaction to how it handles users' private information, and in an increasingly privacy-conscious world, its base model might begin to show some flaws.

Critics say that there are many reasons to be skeptical. Despite Zuckerberg's missives on building the community and improving the world, it's still a business.

"The biggest problem is that we still do not know what's going on," said Michael Connor. technology companies to respond to privacy, abuse and other issues. Of course, they made changes, he added. But it's hard to tell if these are significant changes or just tinkering.

Rich Mogull, CEO of the security company Securosis, said that the question of whether Facebook takes the right approach will depend on the degree of "As long as the business model of Facebook relies on mbadive data collection users and sales access to these users, they will always struggle to maintain a balance that promotes privacy, "he said. "They can be incredibly secure, but that will only involve confidentiality when Facebook decides to do it, and find a business model that supports it."

(This story was not edited by the staff of Business Standard and is generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)

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