Roger McNamee,Time
I am really sad about Facebook.
I got involved with the company more than a decade ago and have taken great pride and joy in the company’s success … until the past few months. Now I am disappointed. I am embarrassed. I am ashamed. With more than 1.7 billion members, Facebook is among the most influential businesses in the world. Whether they like it or not–whether Facebook is a technology company or a media company–the company has a huge impact on politics and social welfare. Every decision that management makes can matter to the lives of real people. Management is responsible for every action. Just as they get credit for every success, they need to be held accountable for failures. Recently, Facebook has done some things that are truly horrible, and I can no longer excuse its behavior.
Nine days before the November 2016 election, I sent the email above to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. It was the text for an op-ed I was planning to publish about problems I was seeing on Facebook. Earlier in the year, I noticed a surge of disturbing images, shared by friends, that originated on Facebook Groups ostensibly associated with the Bernie Sanders campaign, but it was impossible to imagine they came from his campaign. I wanted to share with Sandberg and Zuckerberg my fear that bad actors were exploiting Facebook’s architecture and business model to inflict harm on innocent people.
When I sent that email to Zuck and Sheryl, I assumed that Facebook was a victim. What I learned in the months that followed–about the 2016 election, about the spread of Brexit lies, about data on users being sold to other groups–shocked and disappointed me. It took me a very long time to accept that success had blinded Zuck and Sheryl to the consequences of their actions. I have never had a reason to bite Facebook’s hand. Even at this writing, I still own shares in Facebook. My criticism of the company is a matter of principle, and owning shares is a good way to make that point. I became an activist because I was among the first to see a catastrophe unfolding, and my history with the company made me a credible voice.
This is a story of my journey. It is a story about power. About privilege. About trust, and how it can be abused.
The massive success of Facebook eventually led to catastrophe. The business model depends on advertising, which in turn depends on manipulating the attention of users so they see more ads. One of the best ways to manipulate attention is to appeal to outrage and fear, emotions that increase engagement. Facebook’s algorithms give users what they want, so each person’s News Feed becomes a unique reality, a filter bubble that creates the illusion that most people the user knows believe the same things. Showing users only posts they agree with was good for Facebook’s bottom line, but some research showed it also increased polarization and, as we learned, harmed democracy.
To feed its AI and algorithms, Facebook gathered data anywhere it could. Before long, Facebook was spying on everyone, including people who do not use Facebook. Unfortunately for users, Facebook failed to safeguard that data. Facebook sometimes traded the data to get better business deals. These things increased user count and time on-site, but it took another innovation to make Facebook’s advertising business a giant success.
The harm to public health, democracy, privacy and competition caused by Facebook and other platforms results from their business models, which must be changed. As users, we have more power to force change than we realize. We can alter our behavior. We can create a political movement. We can insist on government intervention to promote human-driven technology as an alternative to extractive technology. At the same time, the government must take steps to repair the damage from Internet platforms. We need to rebuild institutions, find common ground with those with whom we disagree, and start acting like one country again. The political and social power of Facebook and the other Internet platforms is unhealthy and inappropriate in a democracy like ours. We must hold them accountable and insist on real-world solutions, not more code.
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