Is Facebook a 'Bug' in Our Democracy? Part 1
Bug: noun | \ ˈbəg \ Selected definitions:
An error in a computer program or system.
A concealed listening device.
A microorganism (such
Is Facebook a 'Bug' in Our Democracy? Part 1
Bug: noun | \ ˈbəg \ Selected definitions:
An error in a computer program or system.
A concealed listening device.
A microorganism (such as a bacterium or virus) especially when causing illness or disease.
An unexpected defect, fault, flaw, or imperfection.
A sudden enthusiasm.
Is it time to recognize that Facebook, and ‘Big Tech’ at large, may be a bug in our democracy? The Cambridge Analytica story reveals the harmful effects of business models that rely on massive data collection. What is lost is our privacy, contributing to the declining health of our democratic discourse.
Privacy, Facebook’s Business Model, and ‘Surveillance Capitalism’
Loss of Privacy
Bug; n., An error in a computer program or system.
With its stock price tumbling, Facebook has been scrambling to respond to the news that Cambridge Analytica, for political purposes, used personal information acquired about Facebook users by an external researcher who claimed to be collecting the data for academic purposes. Facebook has admitted that data on 87 million users may have been improperly shared. On March 28, the company announced it will be rolling out a centralized system for its users to control their privacy and security settings. And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the massive data comprise in an apologetic media tour. He has committed to testifying on April 11 before the House Commerce Committee.
For many, Zuckerberg's response has been seen as a small concession that does not address the much bigger problem. As Ethan Zuckerman notes in The Atlantic, “Zuckerberg’s statement fell short in a very specific way: He’s treating the Cambridge Analytica breach as a bad-actor problem when it’s actually a known bug.”
And the 'bug' is this: Facebook relies on eroding users' privacy -- or, at least, their expectation of privacy -- to maintain its economic power.
In 2010, then 25-year-old Mark Zuckerberg turned over the rock, showing us the bug. "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people," he said. "That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."
Business Model: Data Exploitation
Facebook’s business model is based on collecting users’ demographic and psychographic information and then selling the ability to target advertisements to people using this data. As University of Virginia Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan described in the New York Times:
Its core functions are to deploy its algorithms to amplify content that generates strong emotional responses among its users, and then convert what it learns about our interests and desires into targeted ads. This is what makes Facebook Facebook. This is also what makes Facebook such an effective vehicle for promoting so much garbage and what makes it the most pervasive personal surveillance system in the world. As long as that’s true, don’t expect Facebook to fix itself.
Tristan Harris, a former Google Design Ethicist and founder of the Center for Humane Technology, said, “[Product designers] play your psychological vulnerabilities (consciously and unconsciously) against you in the race to grab your attention.”
This business model creates a powerful incentive to gather as much personal information from as many people as possible.
Most ad-supported websites track their users a