As long as they're believed. That, my friends, is how we wound up with the Manchurian Candidate as US President.
As for Facebook itself, it is responding to "furore," not a new revelation of facts. They've known about CA's data misuse since 12/15. There were "thousands" of other apps doing the same thing. Why did Facebook allow so much third-party access to user data for so many years? Jonathan Albright of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism says, "This problem is part of Facebook and cannot be split off as an unfortunate instance of misuse. ... It was standard practice and encouraged. Facebook was literally racing towards building tools that opened their users' data to marketing partners and new business verticals. So this is something that's inherent in the culture and design of the company."
Facebook's response is too little, too late. Furthermore its various iterations of a response -- between initial ones and Zuckerberg's latest -- show that they really don't have an honest clue as to how they can be held responsible. They are saying, in effect, "Hey, if you accept an app with Byzantine terms of service, welcome to Byzantium."
Protecting their users is not in their bones. It's not in Google's bones either. These massive creators of a public information good have a conflict of interest deep down: are they more loyal to their users or to the purchasers of advertising? I think we all know the answer. When it comes to ethical, user-focused values, these guys are rotten to the core.
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Internet, is worried. "The system is failing. The way ad revenue works with clickbait is not fulfilling the goal of helping humanity promote truth and democracy." He's also concerned about eroding net neutrality, observing that connectivity should be treated as a utility. But that's a piece of the same problem. Solve one, we solve them all.
Unfortunately, Berners-Lee has no answers, even while calling for them. Being committed to folly, however, I have no such problem. I believe that the answer is simple. In the case of Facebook, the answer is to provide a Citizenbook administered by networked public libraries.
No advertising. None.
And as for the core of such an enterprise being dedication to user confidentiality, have you ever known a librarian? You might think that a librarian's soul is wrapped up in helping people find bedtime reading or information, or maybe even in shushing, but if that's the case, you are wrong. The librarian's core ethical tenet is protection of user information. Librarians have and will fight tooth and nail to see that user records are treated as confidential by law.
Besides, public libraries in particular need a broadened mission that serves a broad base of citizenry, not just those who go out of their way to visit the physical location for connectivity or reading material. Which is not to say that public libraries have nothing of use in the virtual world -- they do -- but this would be an order-of-magnitude transformation of a trusted institution that already exists to enhance the commonwealth.
The only thing standing in the way of this transformation is that it would require public funding. Given the amount of money being churned through assaultive clickbait and political skulduggery, I refuse to see that that is a real issue.
It would be well worth it. After all, everyone had the same "vision" of Facebook when they first signed on. It would be updates from Friends ... and that's it. Ah, but no one imagines the Spanish Inquisition. Look at Facebook now. Advertising and "suggested links" crowd out posts from your Friends because ... it's big biz in Byzantium. Because that's where the heart is, and as long as that's the case, your interests are not even secondary.
I don't suggest that a public Facebook would be completely free of clickbait, but if it showed up on your wall it would be traceable to the conscious actions of a Friend and not to the automated actions of an AI bot with you in its sights. It's the difference between you running over a pedestrian and an Uber self-driving car doing it.
Think about what's happening here. Go back to Alexander Nix's quote at the top of the blog. Facebook has created what functions as a public utility and has allowed -- no, enabled -- it to be subverted by bad actors for nefarious purposes, because it was in Facebook's interest to do so. Facebook has no interest in the truth. Facebook doesn't care if things can be made up out of whole cloth and made to appear true. That's the business model! And it's targeted at you, and thrown at you again and again and again, wearing down your defenses, the ones conditioned to tuning out the old-world, passive advertising in newspapers and on TV.
A new world is here. Grow up, friends. Citizenbook is the only way.
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