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Ganging Up On Facebook

October 26, 2021 By

The news media are ganging up on Facebook. Why?

There are two underlying reasons: (1) Because they now can, based on AI and database management software and cooperative news consortiums that can take advantage of this software to analyze millions of emails and documents. (2) Because Zuckerberg is on the autism spectrum and has no concept of empathy.

Several years ago news organizations around the world created the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to investigate a global tax avoidance scheme based on 11.5 million leaked documents (2.6 terabytes of data). A single news organization such as The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal would probably take at least a year to analyze this much data, even with sophisticated software. However, a global network of 280 journalists in over 100 media organizations spanning more than 100 countries, including the United States, Australia, France, Spain, Hungary, Serbia, Belgium, and Ireland was able to scope out the leaked data and publish investigative articles that were labeled the Panama Papers.

The Panama Papers, when they were published in 2016 by such newspapers in the U.S. as the Washington Post, not only created a sensation but also resulted in the prosecution of Jan Marsalek, who is still a person of interest to a number of European governments due to his revealed links with Russian intelligence and international financial fraudsters David and Josh Baazov. Also, Iceland’s Prime Minister resigned as a result of revelations about offshore accounts detailed in The Panama Papers.

This October the ICIJ struck again with the Pandora Papers. A leak of 11.9 million documents to the ICIJ exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 world leaders, including current and former presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state as well as more than 100 billionaires, celebrities, and business leaders.

Also, this October, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who shared company documents, led a meticulous media rollout of Facebook internal emails that demonstrated that Facebook executives and, of course, Mark Zuckerberg, knew that their products (Facebook and Instagram) were toxic and harming people worldwide. Led by the Wall Street Journal in a series of articles titled The Facebook Files, Haugen’s whistleblowing certified what we knew all along — that Facebook is dishonest, hypocritical, dangerous, and, most of all, greedy.

Why, many people might ask, does Mark Zuckerberg, who is worth $116.2 billion dollars, put revenue growth above the well-being of Facebook’s over 3 billion users? Isn’t he rich enough?

He doesn’t seem to think so. He’s on the autism spectrum (what until the DSM Fifth Edition was published in 2013 was known as Asperger’s syndrome) and has no sense of empathy. He can’t read emotions in others or empathize with them.

One of the symptoms of those on the high-functioning autism spectrum is that they often have impaired social skills. They are sometimes unable to form friendships, especially with their peers, and may find it difficult to act in a socially appropriate manner. Many instead befriend animals, and they find it especially challenging to have conversations with people they don’t know (i.e. U.S. Senators).

In a recent Sway podcast titled “Is Mark Zuckerberg a Man Without Principles?”, host Kara Swisher interviewed her long-time mentor, Walt Mossberg, the former technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal. In the podcast Swisher asked Mossberg about Zuckerberg and Facebook:

“I think the company is fundamentally unethical.” And, drawing on his experience covering controversial leaders, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (as he calls them, “the old guard”), Mossberg says the Facebook C.E.O. is still an aberration: “In my encounters with Mark Zuckerberg, I’ve never been able to discover any principles.”

Mossberg talks about several interesting encounters with both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. He indicates that even though he had disagreements with both entrepreneurs as they tried to get favorable coverage in his influential column on technology and that even though they were highly competitive, they both had a conscience, both had principles — a red line that they wouldn’t cross.

Mossberg says that he thinks of the Big Five tech companies( Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook), that Facebook is the most poorly managed. He tells a story about when Zuckerberg visited him in his Washington, DC office. Walt says he talked to Zuckerberg about privacy, but that it was like “ships passing in the night.” Mossberg kept talking about privacy and Zuckerberg had no idea what he was talking about.

Zuckerberg, as Facebook’s CEO and majority shareholder of FB’s voting stock, has complete control of the company, its policies, and its practices. Therefore, if he doesn’t want to change, if he wants the company to continue to be unprincipled and greedy, nothing can stop him short of massive government regulation, which is probably coming in some form or another.

However, what can be done until the government acts? Public opinion. Public opinion and approbation can damage the company’s reputation enough to, perhaps, get Zuckerberg’s attention, especially if FB’s stock continues its decline.

So, yes, the news media is ganging up on Facebook, and good for them. Keep it up.

Filed Under: Facebook, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

How To Solve the Facebook Problem

October 7, 2021 By

There seem to be more solutions to the Facebook Problem than Facebook has problems. I posted a simplistic solution last week, which was for everyone over 40 to cancel their Facebook and Instagram accounts. Silly and impractical.

Many columnists, such as media critic Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post, want the government to take action. Sullivan, in an October 6, column titled “Facebook is harming our society. Here’s how to reign it in,” writes:

A problem that threatens the underpinnings of our civil society calls for a radical solution: A new federal agency focused on the digital economy.

The idea comes from none other than a former Federal Communications Commission chairman, Tom Wheeler, who maintains that neither his agency nor the Federal Trade Commission are nimble or tech-savvy enough to protect consumers in this volatile and evolving industry.

“You need an agency that doesn’t say ‘here are the rigid rules,’ when the rules become obsolete almost immediately,” Wheeler, who headed the FCC from 2013 to 2017, told me Monday.

Too much of the digital world operates according to Mark Zuckerberg’s famous motto: “Move fast and break things.” That’s a perfect expression of what Wheeler called “consequence-free behavior.”

I am uncomfortable with a government solution because, even though I am generally in favor of government regulation to reign in greedy business behavior, regulating Facebook means, essentially, defining free speech, which I worry about the government doing.

Kara Swisher of the NY Times in her October 5, column titled “Brazen Is the Order of the Day at Facebook” interviewed Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and a former head of security at Facebook. Stamos had the following solution:

I think Zuckerberg is going to need to step down as C.E.O. if these problems are going to be solved. Having a company led by the founder has a lot of benefits, but one of the big problems is that it makes it close to impossible to significantly change the corporate culture. It’s not just Zuckerberg; the top ranks of Facebook are full of people who have been there for a dozen years. They were part of making key decisions and supporting key cultural touchstones that might have been appropriate when Facebook was a scrappy upstart but that must be abandoned as a global juggernaut. It is really hard for individuals to recognize when it is time to change their minds, and I think it would be better if the people setting the goals for the company were changed for this new era of the company, starting with Zuckerberg.

I like this solution. Facebook’s Board of Directors could fire Zuckerberg and Sandberg. There are nine members of the board:

  1. Zuckerberg
  2. Sandberg
  3. Peggy Alford – Formerly Pay Pal
  4. Marc Andreesen – Co-founder Netscape, investor
  5. Andrew Houston – CEO Dropbox
  6. Nany Killefer – Formerly McKinsey
  7. Robert Kimmitt – Lawyer
  8. Peter Theil – Formerly Pay Pal, FB investor
  9. Tracey Travis – Formerly CFO Estee Lauder

I don’t know the Facebook bylaws, but if a majority of the board can fire the CEO and COO, they should do so.

By the Board of Directors taking action to solve the problem, it would be a situation of a business policing itself and, thus, avoiding government regulation.

I’m also in favor of peaceful protests. I’d love to see a protest crowd appear outside Facebook’s headquarters with signs saying FIRE ZUCKERBERG AND SANDBERG. Such a protest might not have an immediate effect, but it might get the board thinking in the right direction.

Filed Under: Facebook Tagged With: , ,

The Facebook Problem

September 22, 2021 By

In media news, there has been a lot of discussion about the Wall Street Journal’s series of articles about Facebook’s duplicity, titled “The Facebook Files.” The in-depth series is worth a read because the normally business-friendly WSJ exposes Facebook’s dishonesty, harmfulness to society and greed.

The WSJ is doing what good journalism is supposed to do — hold the powerful accountable. The WSJ pointed out the problem, but what is the solution?

In a September 9, Media Curmudgeon post titled “The New New Journalism,” I wrote about solutions journalism as advocated and taught by the Solutions Journalism Network. Solutions journalism takes a positive approach and produces news articles that show how institutions and communities have solved problems. Good idea.

But what do you do about the Facebook problem? It’s a unique problem because Facebook is so huge (3 billion active users worldwide), so profitable (2020 revenue = $70.697 billion, income = $29, 146 billion), has so many businesses worldwide that depend on it (10 million advertisers) and has so many stockholders (over 80% of Facebook’s shares are owned by mutual funds, many of them various government retirement funds).

One solution, as advocated by Shira Ovide, a NY Times technology columnist, in her September 21, column titled “Shrink Facebook To Save the World” is for Facebook to get out of some countries:

But maybe we should all ask ourselves radical questions about the horrors of Facebook: Is a better Facebook a realistic option, or is the solution a smaller Facebook? And what if no one can or should operate a hugely influential, lightning-fast communication mechanism for billions of people in nearly every country?

There’s a deep irony in my suggestion that a less-global Facebook might be better. The power of people to use the network to express themselves, collaborate and challenge authority is more profound in places where institutions are weak or corrupt and where citizens haven’t had a voice. It’s also in those places where Facebook has done the most harm, and where the company and the world have paid the least attention.

And who is going to force Facebook, a private company, to downsize in Myanmar, or the Philippines or anywhere else? The U.S. government via regulations? The government sued Facebook in June, and a judge threw out the FTC and 48 state attorneys generals’ case saying that the FTC hadn’t proved any anti-trust violations.

Some critics of Facebook have suggested that government make Facebook a utility, a common carrier, and thus, completely regulated by the government, like AT&T was until 1984 when a government anti-trust case broke AT&T up into the seven baby bells.

So what good did that do? In 1984 no one, especially the government, could have predicted Steve Jobs inventing the iPhone and, therefore, AT&T is back bigger than ever, although not dominant.

During WW II when Britain was being bombed unmercifully by the Nazis, out of necessity the government nationalized the hospitals, and they are sill owned by the government today and are an integral part of the national health care system.

But imagine the outcry if the U.S. government nationalized Facebook. Socialism! It would be a political disaster, not to mention an economic disaster. Who cares if Mark Zuckerberg or Peter Thiel lose a billion dollars? But we do care if pension funds lose money.

So what’s to be done to reduce Facebook and Instagram’s power? Cancel your accounts.

Never go to Facebook or Instagram again — or Snapchat or Tik Tok. Deleting your accounts may be relatively easy if you’re my age (89), but getting people under 40 to kick their addiction to social media is hard. For people under 30, it’s virtually impossible.

It won’t work for parents to reduce screen time to, say, two or three hours a week because social media is more addictive than heroin. However, if everyone over 40 deletes their social media accounts, think how much time they would have to protest, protest against major advertisers who advertise in social media, protest against the Texas anti-abortion law, protest against the use of plastic, protest in favor of vaccinations and wearing masks.

Read Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism, delete your social media accounts and write that poetry, novel, screenplay or play you’ve always dreamed of writing.

I am.

Filed Under: Facebook, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Facebook Quacks Like A Media Company, But Isn’t One

January 13, 2017 By

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. In the past couple of weeks Facebook has been quacking like it’s a media company. It’s not ducking its responsibility for controlling lies masquerading as news, and it’s snuggling up to traditional news media that distribute content on the massive Facebook platform.

Facebook has hired Campbell Brown, former CNN and NBC anchor, as head of news partnerships. In announcing that she was joining Facebook, Brown wrote: “I will be working directly with our partners to help them understand how Facebook can expand the reach of their journalism, and contribute value to their businesses. That also means making sure there is ongoing feedback from publishers as Facebook develops new products and tools for news organizations.”

The week following hiring Brown, Facebook announced that it was going to begin serving ads in the middle of videos (mid-roll) and “giving publishers 55% of all sales, which is the same split that YouTube offers” according to Digiday.

However, all of of this well-intentioned and welcome sense of journalistic responsibility does not make Facebook a media company. It is much more than that. Facebook is a platform like Microsoft’s Windows, Amazon and the biggest platform of them all, Google. Even though Facebook and Google are supported by advertising like media companies such as Comcast, the Walt Disney Company, Time Warner, Twenty-First Century Fox, Google alone is worth more (market cap) than all of the media companies mentioned.

As of Jan. 12, 2017, Google’s market cap is $560.4 billion and Facebook’s market cap is $358.4 billion. The only company that is more valuable than Google is Apple ($635.9 billion). For comparison’s sake, the largest traditional media company is Comcast, which has market cap of $171.10 billion, about 48% of Google’s. Disney’s $170.5 billion market cap is just 47.5% of Google’s and 21st Century Fox’s market cap ($54.86 billion) is more than twice CBS’s market cap  ($26.93 billion), which means that Google is more than 20 times more valuable than CBS and Facebook is more than 13 times more valuable than CBS.

And the size of the audiences that marketers can reach via Google and Facebook dwarf the audiences available on the traditional media to a similar degree as the difference in their market caps indicate.

Why have marketers and advertisers switched much of their advertising investment from the traditional media to Google and Facebook? Because of the precise targeting capabilities of online advertising. When advertisers (including political candidates) invested in advertising on traditional media such as TV, they bought content that they assumed reached the audiences they wanted to reach — they bought news for older, better educated people, for example.

With digital ads, advertisers don’t buy content; they buy individual impressions and they buy these impressions programmatically in real time. Thus, Campbell Brown doesn’t have to handle individual buys from news publishers or advertisers. Instead, she educates them on the advantages and benefits of publishing or advertising on Facebook and then they do the work of placing the orders and managing their accounts programmatically, computer to computer on the Facebook Audience Network.

In addition to automating the ad buying and selling process, Facebook and Google, as platforms and not content producers (media or news companies), don’t have to take the heat, insults and rants from an media-bashing president elect and his press thugs.

In the current anti-media climate coming from Trump Tower and soon from the White House, what organization would want to be labeled as a media company? Bring on the platforms.

Filed Under: Facebook