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ZUCKERBERG MUST GO
I know, I know...I'm supposed to be off the grid for a while. But this week was too delicious to sit out.
He Cannot Not Lie
This week, in light of a snowballing advertiser boycott Mark Zuckerberg blinked. He promised some ill-defined reforms to Facebook's idiotic, dangerous publishing policies.
We don't know exactly what changes FB will implement, but we do know one thing -- they'll be minimal. Facebook has done serious, perhaps irreparable, damage to world ethics and stability. Here at blogweasel central, we've been calling for advertisers to get off their asses and stop the FB freight train of sleaze for years.
Over two years ago, in an identically titled newsletter, I wrote that Zuckerberg had "shown himself to be utterly inadequate to handle the responsibilities of managing an organization with the power and influence of Facebook. Or even understanding what the responsibilities are."
"The absence of probity and maturity that Facebook has displayed has been baked into the company's DNA by Zuckerberg's arrogance, and will remain there as long as his vapid philosophies define their culture...'Move fast and break things,'...'Young people are just smarter'... These are the pronouncements of an infantile narcissist. You can draw a straight line from this nonsense to the current headlines."
"Facebook's history of fabrication and deception is unprecedented and unacceptable. Even in the context of the tech industry -- an industry famous for its willingness to play fast and loose with ethics and integrity -- Zuckerberg is considered shady."
"He has zero credibility... Facebook's initial statements about any issue always turn out to be bullshit. Truth is something that must be squeezed out of them."
Even this week, as they were bludgeoned into giving minimal concessions, they claimed they were not doing it out of pressure. According to The Wall Street Journal, "...a spokesman said the changes were a follow-up to Mr. Zuckerberg’s previous commitment to prepare for coming elections." As usual, 100% pure bullshit.
Strong Letter to Follow
The ad industry has been sitting on its hands for years enabling Facebook's disgraceful policies. As I wrote in 2018...
"...While Facebook is being demonized, let's keep in mind who's funding all this sordid activity -- it's the ad industry. It is the money we keep pouring into Facebook that makes all this sleaze possible. If we had an ounce of responsibility we would say 'no more.' But, of course, we don't. We just hide behind Facebook's skirts and let them take the hits."
We could have ended FB's subversion of decency any time we wanted to. Now we're all puffed up and righteous about pulling ads from FB for 30 days. We're pathetic.
Most Pathetic Of All
As usual, most pathetic of all are our "leaders." Where have the 4As, the ANA and the IAB been in all of this? As usual, writing wretched press releases about how important it is to maintain the hideous privacy abuse practices that keep Facebook and its circle of creeps in business.
On The Other Hand...
I want to acknowledge a few of the companies who have seen beyond Facebook and have committed to stopping all social media spending for the year, including Coca-Cola and Diageo. Social media has devolved into a cesspool of slime and degradation.
Top Facebook Outrages of 2019
ICYMI, here is a partial list of Facebook barbarities from last year.
2019 was the year Facebook cemented its position as the world's most despised company. Here are 29 ways the "move fast and break things" jerk-offs soiled our lives in 2019. Pick your top 10, stick 'em in an old sock and light 'em on fire.
1. January: It was discovered that Facebook-owned WhatsApp was being used to spread illegal child pornography.
2. January: Researcher Aaron Greenspan, former running mate of Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, said that Facebook's claim of reaching 2 billion people is a lie and said Zuckerberg "may be the greatest con man in history."
3. January: Zuckerberg writes a Wall Street Journal op ed defending Facebook and gets roundly roasted for it.
4. January: British health minister threatens to close down social media after 14-year-old girl commits suicide after seeing disturbing content on Facebook-owned Instagram.
5. February: It was discovered that Facebook was paying kids as young as 13 to install spyware on their phones.
6. February: A committee of Parliament in England denounced Facebook as "digital gangsters" and said, "Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised ‘dark adverts'..."
7. February: The Wall Street Journal discovered that people were entering private information into apps and, unknown to them, the apps were feeding the info to Facebook.
8. March: Federal investigators summoned a grand jury to investigate criminal implications of Facebook's agreement with over 100 tech companies to provide them with information about 100s of millions of FB users without their knowledge or consent.x
9. March: Facebook leaves hundreds of millions of user passwords unencrypted.
10. March: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sued Facebook for allowing "advertisers to exclude people from seeing housing ads based on their race, religion, background and other characteristics"
11. March: In the wake of the massacre of 50 people in New Zealand which was live-streamed on FB, the Prime Minister of Australia threatened to jail social media execs.
12: April: It was discovered that a Mexican company had stored over 500 million Facebook records in plain site on the Amazon cloud for anyone to access.
13: April: Bloomberg reported that almost 400,000 crooks have been using Facebook for as long as eight years as a marketplace to buy and sell criminal materials.
14: April: The Daily Beast reported that "Child Brides in Africa Are Advertised on Facebook and Sold to Old Men."
15. April: The New York Times reported that "Regulators on four continents are preparing for a long-awaited showdown with Facebook..."
16. May: In an article in the NY Times, Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook, called for its breakup.
17: July: FTC fines Facebook $5 billion for Cambridge Analytica scandal.
18: August: Netflix airs "The Great Hack" about the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal. PBS airs "The Facebook Dilemma," savaging the company and claiming it has blood on its hands.
19: September: TechCrunch found another unprotected data base online which contained the phone numbers and user IDs of 419 million Facebook users.
20: September: The BBC reported that a study by Privacy International determined that "Intimate data, including when people have had sex, is being shared with Facebook."
21: September: Massachusetts attorney general found that Facebook lied when they said they suspended 400 apps to remediate after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In fact, they suspended 69,000 questionable apps.
22: September: A study conducted by researchers at Oxford University found that "Facebook remains the No. 1 social network for disinformation...Organized propaganda campaigns were found on the platform in 56 countries."
23: October: Facebook agreed to pay a group of advertisers $40 million to settle a suit which claimed that Facebook had inflated its video metrics by as much as 900%.
24: October: Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown University defending Facebook's policy of airing political advertising they know to be false.
25: October: BuzzFeed reported "How A Massive Facebook Scam Siphoned Millions Of Dollars From Unsuspecting Boomers."
26: October: P&G's announced that they had built their own data base of 1.5 billion people because they don't trust the numbers of Facebook or Google.
27: November: Aaron Sorkin, writer of the movie "The Social Network," savaged Zuckerberg's "free speech" hypocrisy in a NY Times op ed.
28: December: CNET reported "more than 267 million Facebook user phone numbers, names and user IDs were exposed in a database that anyone could access online."
29: December: In response to an inquiry from two U.S. Senators, Facebook admitted it can track peoples' location even if they opt out of tracking.
