Facebook is no friend of human rights

Editor's note

Facebook is having a torrid time: criticised for its failure to prevent ‘fake news’ from being spread on its platform and hit with protests over a data mining company accessing users’ personal information. But these and other similar controversies point to a more fundamental issue – that the business model of Facebook and its social media peers is simply incompatible with basic human rights, argues Sarah Joseph.

Michael Courts

Deputy Section Editor: Politics + Society

Top story

Facebook’s actions – or inactions – facilitated breaches of privacy and human rights associated with democratic governance. EPA/Peter DaSilva

Why the business model of social media giants like Facebook is incompatible with human rights

Sarah Joseph, Monash University

Human rights abuses might be embedded in the business model that has evolved for social media companies in their second decade.

Health + Medicine
Explainer: what is lupus and how is stress implicated? Eric Morand, Monash Health A new study has provided further proof of a link between stress and auto-immune disorders.

Business + Economy
Disability workers are facing longer days with less pay Fiona Macdonald, RMIT University; Eleanor Bentham, RMIT University; Jenny Malone, RMIT University While disability carers are employed to work part-time hours, they often have long work days with short periods of work interspersed with non-work periods.

Arts + Culture
Babylon Berlin and why our fascination with 1920s Germany reveals the anxieties of our times Peter Tregear, University of Melbourne At a time when young people across the West are increasingly sceptical about liberal democracy, the Netflix series Babylon Berlin reminds us of the lessons to be learnt from the history of the Weimar Republic.

Cities

Public housing ban on people with drug records likely to do more harm than good, research tell us

Kev Dertadian, Western Sydney University

The evidence is clear on the sort of support that is needed to reduce the harms of drug use. A punitive approach that denies people a second chance makes it more likely they will reoffend.
The urban agenda: what will New Zealand's new government bring for towns and cities?

Jenny McArthur, UCL

New Zealand's coalition government plans to transition to a low-emissions economy while also addressing major urban issues such as unaffordable housing, inequality and poverty.

Science + Technology
Why we made iWitnessed, an app to collect evidence Helen M. Paterson, University of Sydney Memories of events are notoriously unreliable - especially after some time has passed. Experts and police have developed an app to help the general public record evidence when it's fresh.

Education
Why some migrant school students do better than their local peers (they're not 'just smarter') Justine Dandy, Edith Cowan University Students from the Philippines, China and India consistently achieve better results at school than their Australian-born counterparts. This is due to a number of factors, including parents' values.