There’s also an argument to be made that Facebook is too large to be hurt by even mass defections.
This is 100% true. Even if all of Facebook’s members unsubscribed, they’d still make billions from ad sales from the information they already accumulated and continue to track, from ex-members as well info as Messenger, Instagram, What’s App, etc. And there’s the information collected via their very successful Custom Audiences partnerships:
Not long ago, they bought face tracking/3D and motion sensor/tracking apps not long ago, which will feed into Oculus VR and feed a lot more information into the mix.
And if you log into Facebook and then use the same browser to wander around the web, Facebook is tracking where you are going and what you do when you get there.
All this accumulated information is what makes Facebook such a desirable advertising and marketing platform. Check out how easy it is for advertisers to reach highly specific targets with Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences:
Too many people get all their information from Facebook itself at this point to even realize such a thing was happening, and too many people are too uneducated or too apathetic to make such a change. The logical conclusion thus becomes that the only way to rein in Facebook’s abuses is through external regulatory means.
I totally agree, and I think the EU regulations are a good start. But I have my doubts that anything close to this will get passed in the US.
At the Collision conference I was at, where I heard Kara Swisher talk, she was also interviewing Alex Stamos, who used to be Facebook’s chief security officer. His opinion was that breaking up Facebook wouldn’t really help since then there would just be three companies all doing the same sort of evil things (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, I assume).
He does have a point, I think, since the problem with Facebook is largely just that it’s huge, not that it’s using its ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp and the like to harm consumers. Breaking the company up might help competition slightly by giving smaller competitors a chance, but there’s no reason to assume that it would prevent the kind of abuses that Facebook has been caught red-handed in repeatedly.
His suggestion was that Mark Zuckerberg should step down as CEO and appoint himself chief product officer so he could focus on the actual service, and Facebook’s board should then appoint a new CEO like Microsoft president Brad Smith who could then bring some responsibility to the company. From Smith’s Wikipedia page:
On behalf of Microsoft, Smith has settled multibillion-dollar lawsuits with other companies and the European Union, has filed multiple lawsuits against the United States government to protect customer privacy, led efforts to bring broadband and technology jobs to rural America, and signed partnerships with the United Nations Office on Human Rights. He has led philanthropic efforts on immigration and education.
I’m not sure I necessarily agree that self-policing by a new CEO would be sufficient, but Stamos certainly knows Facebook better than nearly anyone.
I’ve left FB, I’ve severe doubts about Instagram and have a wary eye on WhatsApp. I don’t know any young people on this side of the Atlantic who use Facebook.
Instagram however is another matter, the primary communications tool for young people with a good deal of Snapchat, though that seems to be waning a tad.
Their parents generation have taken up WhatsApp with a vengeance however, it’s virtually omnipresent with group chats on everything from projects at work to neighborhood cleanups to (apparently and my idea of a nightmare) street WhatsApp groups, ie a group for the houses on your street, with the likes of ‘suspicious car outside number 7’ messages.
It is a very good article. But personally, I was very surprised that none of the members of Congress brought up the fact that Facebook and other online content providers are skating through a big legal loophole in a US Federal Election Commission regulations that were last revised in 2002 that requires print and broadcast political advertising to clearly include the details on who is sponsoring the ad. Penalties for non compliance are strict:
Advertising on Apple News in the US is sold by NBC Universal, so I think it’s a safe assumption they follow US guidelines. (An interesting aside…Verizon is now selling ads on News outside the US.) And since publications can include ads from their advertisers in Apple News, I assume they have to.
If I remember correctly, there was some discussion years ago about revising the FEC regulation years ago, but obviously nothing happened with it. And none of the politicians raised the issue yesterday, and it is a regulation, not a law that requires a vote to pass. So I think the whole shebang was just a lot of sound and fury and PR for the questioners. But hopefully it will signify something.
Aaron Sorkin had what I think is a very good Op Ed in today’s New York Times: