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FACEBOOK: "BULLET MEET TOES"
Facebook shot itself in the foot again this week as its clown show rolled into town with lots of hearty chuckles for everyone.
Independent civil rights auditors -- hand-picked by Facebook two years ago -- issued a 90-page report this week which raked the company over the coals and made it clear that Facebook's dangerously irresponsible policies constituted “significant setbacks for civil rights,” "facilitated voter suppression" and posed a threat to the 2020 presidential election.
The audit was reportedly a pet project of COO Sheryl Sandberg. It was devastating for Facebook. While FB might have thought that just the fact of a civil rights "audit" would demonstrate its seriousness of purpose, it did exactly the opposite.
The New York Times said, "The report gave fuel to the company’s detractors, who said the site had allowed hate speech and misinformation to flourish. The audit also placed the social network in the spotlight for an issue it had worked hard to avoid since the 2016 election: That it may once again be negatively influencing American voters."
Sandberg had this to say about the report: It is “the beginning of the journey, not the end.” As regular readers understand, anytime someone uses the word "journey" you know you're in for some massive bullshit.
Sandberg then went on to borrow from the Zuckerberg Infinite Loop Of Perfunctory Drivel to give us the famous "...we have a long way to go."
Invasion of the PR Hacks
Caught in the middle of the Facebook embarrassment was Nick Clegg, Facebook's VP of global affairs and communications. Clegg is the former British Deputy Prime Minister who sold his soul for money almost two years ago when he joined Facebook.
It was just 10 days ago when Clegg published a major apologia in AdAge. According to Clegg, “I want to be unambiguous: Facebook does not profit from hate.” If I may, I would like to be unambiguous, too: Bullshit.
Facebook's algorithms learned a long time ago what keeps people glued to their screens. As Prof Hany Farid, an expert in digital forensics (whatever the hell that is) of UC Berkeley has said, “They didn’t set out to fuel misinformation and hate and divisiveness, but that’s what the algorithms learned."
You have to be seriously stupid to believe that Mark Zuckerberg doesn't know how his algorithms work.
No, I'm Not Making This Up
In other news, civil rights leaders met with Zuckerberg and Sandberg this week hoping for progress, but left with nothing.
"Facebook approached our meeting today like it was nothing more than a PR exercise," said one attendee. “...the company’s leaders delivered the same old talking points to try to placate us..."
"They showed up to the meeting expecting an A for attendance," said Color Of Change Executive Director Rashad Robinson
Yahoo News reported, "According to organizers, Zuckerberg and Sandberg said Facebook is on a 'journey'..."
Someone shoot me.
Meanwhile, Over In Fantasyland...
Shares in Facebook reached new highs this week as investors continued their unrelenting march to the Wall Street cliff.
If This Is Social, I'd Hate To See Anti-Social
Social media is tens of millions of unpleasant people looking to make trouble. A company called Arkose Labs recently did a real-time study of over 1 billion social media interactions. They found that 53% of the logins were fraudulent.
Many social media scammers are just in it for the money. But among the most successful social media troublemakers have been exploiters of political alienation.
When the history of this era is written, one of the key themes will be the remarkable success that social media manipulators have had in influencing and exacerbating the divisions in democratic societies. They didn't invent the divisions, but they have become brilliantly adept at exploiting and inflaming them.
Here in the States there was a time when intelligent people of good will could disagree in a civilized manner. Those days are gone. Don't think that social media, and those who know how to fiddle it, haven't played a significant role.
Your Journey Isn't Over
Yes, there's more. An interesting (I think) and entertaining (I hope) podcast can be found here at The Marketing Book Podcast as Douglas Burdett and I discuss some of the heretical ideas put forth in Advertising For Skeptics. Please give it a listen.
