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2017 Was an “Annus Horribilis” for Facebook and Silicon Valley. And 2018 Is Looking Worse.
Facebook isn’t Equifax. And “data breach” probably isn’t the most illuminating way to describe how Cambridge Analytica came to harvest the private information of potentially 50 million of the social network’s members. There wasn’t some technical security flaw that savvy hackers found and exploited.
Rather what happened was a misuse of data that was initially collected in a way Facebook encouraged through the Facebook Login tool for app developers. But that social graph data was, first, allegedly collected under false unclear pretenses (unlike the similar — if not more extensive — 2012 Obama reelection campaign Facebook data effort), and then, second, passed along to Cambridge Analytica. So a bad actor violated Facebook’s terms of service (which have since been modified). Moreover, it isn’t clear that the psychographic profiles of voters using the data are really that effective or had any meaningful impact on the 2016 presidential election. (I think there is a plausible case that the Trump campaign actually underperformed given the state of the economy and the quality of the opposing candidate.)
All of which . . . will provide a rather thin heat shield for Facebook — and Big Tech more broadly — in an environment of growing criticism that the megaplatforms are big, powerful, and out of control. I would be surprised if Mark Zuckerberg, in particular, won’t soon be heading to Washington to answer questions in front of a congressional committee or two. If 2017 was a reputational annus horribilis for Silicon Valley, 2018 is looking even worse. The sector’s reality distortion field is definitely on the fritz.
And you can’t just blame the bad actors, whether Cambridge Analytica or Russia’s Internet Research Agency. At the very least, Facebook seems to suffer from a lack of imagination about how its platforms can be misused. “The company routinely ignores or downplays the worst-case scenarios, idealistically building products without the necessary safeguards, and then drags its feet to admit the extent of the problems,” writes TechCrunch editor John Constine. And when crisis has hit, its public response has been lacking. Certainly, Facebook and the industry need to take privacy more seriously and be perceived as doing so. CNBC’s Matt Rosoff nails it: “Facebook is facing real problems. Instead of giving answers to those problems, top execs are selling, spinning and staying silent.”
People like to connect through Facebook, find info through Google, and buy products through Amazon. But none of that is going to stave off strong regulatory attempts by Congress. And that could include some fairly radical action such as, say, making tech firms more liable for the content on their platforms by significantly amending or even eliminating Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And there might also be a growing push for antitrust action, even if the energy there is still more among activists than policymakers.
Published in Culture, Economics, Technology
Shut Them Down.
all of them.
Amazon, Facebook. Google, Twitter, You tube
they’re all leftist shills
Shut Them Down.
So there’s no story, other than people finding out using a “free” service allows their data to be sold. This is one reason I’m not on Facebook (or Twitter, or anything other than Ricochet).
James, I hope your data wasn’t misused . . .
Breathe. I appreciate your frustration. With property rights, freedom of speech and the right of free association all in the way and much more valuable, obviously, that is a gut reflex but lets not waste that decent brew of beer by it being being escorted in a kinetically enhanced bottle into the television set quite, yet.
Let’s do our own thing, build our own platforms, and pursue our own channels, whilst at the same time fight them on their beaches, invade their platforms, but intelligently, permeate them with good content, argue our case, make it public and use as much much law-fare against them when they overreach daily and derogate us as necessary and as we can afford. Charles Murray’s approach to create a funding base for conservatives fighting bureaucratic authoritarians should apply against such biased culturally marxist oligopolies just as well. Creative destruction by the market. We are the market.
Facebook isn’t exciting to young people anymore. It’s mostly grandma showing pictures of their grandkids and cat pictures. I suspect it will soon be replaced by something else.
But that might change,
This guy grew up in Albania LOL.