Facebooks history, current situation and a glimpse to the future
In this article about Facebook, I will cover:
- The original vision
- How social media affects you
- Mark Zuckerberg offering users personal data to a friend
- Winklevoss twins pay out
- Business structure
- Current users and revenue
- Politcal Ties
- Chief Operational Officer political ties with Hilary Clinton
- Cambridge Analytica and Trump's victory symbiotic
- Privacy issues
- Censorship
- Conclusion fact
- Conclusion opinion
Facebook's original vision
While it’s original vision seemed positive for humanity:
"We’ve always cared primarily about our social mission, the services we’re building and the people who use them,"
"Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services."
The reality of the unintended consequences are more than we bargained for.
How social media affects you
Former vice president of user growth at Facebook Chamath Palihapitiya say's it best:
“I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”
”The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” Palihapitiya said. “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem — this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem.”
“Bad actors can now manipulate large swaths of people to do anything you want. It’s a bad, bad state of affairs. And we compound the problem. We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection, because we get rewarded in these short term signals: Hearts, likes, thumbs up. And we conflate that with value and we conflate it with truth, and instead what it really is is fake, brittle popularity that’s short term and that leaves you even more, and admit it, vacant and empty before you did it. Because it forces you into this vicious cycle about what’s the next thing I need to do, because I need it back. And think about that compounded by two billion people.“
”You don’t realize it but you are being programmed. It was unintentional, but now you’ve got to decide how much you want to give up.“
Zuckerberg himself has offered users personal information
CEO Mark Zuckerburg has also said some negatives in Facebook's early days. Offering specific users personal information, the friend asked how he could get it and Mark replied:
"They trust me — dumb fucks,"
Facebook has recently suffered a 5% plunge in stocks as the news broke about a few leaks. This has resulted in people like Elon Musk following the trending hashtag "#deletefacebook."
Original founder
Facebook's original founder is arguable, The Winklevoss twins got a huge payout during their court procedures where they disputed that Facebook was stolen from them. There would be no payout if there wasn't some credible evidence backing their case.
Business structure
Making out like Mark is out to do the best by the world is naive, it's a business. Facebook's not out to try help connect the world, it's business structure is set around monetising the connections it creates.
You buy the product or you are the product!
Facebook has 1.23 billion monthly users and a 14,000-word terms of service and data use policy that I doubt many users read.
With a $118,533,000,000 income in revenue over the last ten years, Facebook has become powerful tool for both the public, government and private sectors.
“If you’ve been on Facebook for the last three years, you’ve made the company over $36”
How does it make so much? It sells your data that you provide and consent to. Facebook knows and can sell what articles you click, what you like, your personal information, the list goes on and they sell it at a relatively low cost:
Political ties
Here's where it gets interesting. Facebook has political ties.
Facebooks COO was helping the Clinton campaign.
It's Chief Operational Office Sheryl Sandberg has recently had leaked information which shows her working with Hillary Clinton's advisor John Podesta to try ensure Hillary's presidency.
"Look forward to working with you to elect the first woman President of the United States."
Source
Don't forget Trumps campaign using Cambridge Analytica to micro target voters
"None of the techniques described in the document are illegal. However, the scandal over Cambridge Analytica’s acquisition of data from more than 50 million Facebook users is lifting the lid on an industry that has learned how to closely track the online footprint and daily lives of US voters."
Source
When people found out Trump had used Cambridge Analytica, the media went insane, this isn't new though. People forget Barrack Obama utilised millions of users Facebook Data to win 2012.
Privacy issues
Privacy matters for many reasons, both tangible and not, and it’s wise to exercise control when you can. The reason it matters so much, is because it's interlinked in our lives much more than we know.
Facebook is tool that spy agencies have back doors in.
"Here we have the world's most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to U.S. intelligence."
Source
The reason why Spy agencies use Facebook is the amount of data it actually stores, which is more than you would think. They have recently made it so you can see the data they have on file about you, if you would like to see what facebook knows, click here.
If you would like to see how the process works and what companies are involved see this diagram.
Facebook has also downloaded your contacts,call logs and texts off your mobile if you use messenger and didn't opt out of these privacy settings prior.
If you want to upgrade your privacy settings, have a look at a few tools here.
Censorship
Facebook has the ability to censor competition, like when it comes to cryptocurrency.
“Facebook is banning all advertisements for cryptocurrency”
The ban is broad and real, yet I see scams still sponsored daily so all facebook is doing is stunting innovation and competitions ability to market
Product management director Rob Leathern said
“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception. That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs, and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith. This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up”
Conclusion Facts
We're not sure who was the original founder.
3rd party apps had/have too much access to sensitive data.
Facebook has too much access to sensitive data.
Mark Zuckerberg doesn't/ didn't care about users privacy.
Facebook is a business, it cares about profit and monetising connections.
It is centralised and has political ties.
It chooses it's censorship.
Social media affects the brain and dopamine levels.
Conclusion Opinion
With Facebooks skeletons coming out of the closet and it's inability to become decentralised, we will see it slowly be dropped for services which provide users more value and security.
Services that use blockchain's decentralised technology will be the transparency and security that's needed.
When Facebooks empire starts dropping, we will see users and the money associated with users flow into other social media or content services.
Steemit for example, rewards users for their content and pays them in Steem. So rather than likes, you get upvotes and get paid for the quality of your content. Once content is uploaded and have been for seven days, it cannot be deleted. It also uses blockchain to ensure security.
Resteemed your article. This article was resteemed because you are part of the New Steemians project. You can learn more about it here: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@gaman/new-steemians-project-launch