[ad_1]
And what about us? After all, we are $ 3 billion. What if all Facebook users decided to be a better person, to think more, to know more, to be kinder, more patient, and more tolerant? Well, we’ve been working to improve humanity for at least 2,000 years, and it’s not going so well. There’s no reason to believe that even in “media education” or “media literacy” efforts aimed at young people in rich countries, we can count on human improvement — especially when Facebook is designed to take advantage of the shallow trend. emotional and extreme expressions that escape our better angels.
Facebook was designed for better animals than humans. It was designed for creatures who do not hate, exploit, persecute, or intimidate each other, like gold retrievers. But we humans are evil beasts. So we need to regulate and design our technologies to address our weaknesses. The challenge is to figure out how.
First, we need to acknowledge that Facebook’s threat is not in some marginal aspect of its products or even in the nature of the content it distributes. It is in these core values that Zuckerberg has embedded in all aspects of his company: a commitment to continuous growth and commitment. It’s the broad surveillance that Facebook exploits to target ads and content.
Above all, Facebook has a detrimental effect on our ability to think collectively.
This means that we cannot organize a political movement for Donald Trump to exploit Facebook for his own benefit in 2016 or for Donald Trump to be ousted from Facebook in 2021 or even for Facebook to directly assist the people in Myanmar in the expulsion and mass murder of the Rohingya. We can’t gather people around the worldwide online advertising market around the idea that Facebook is dominant and consistent. We can’t explain the nuances of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and expect consensus on what to do about it (or whether reforming the law would make a difference on Facebook). That is not enough.
Facebook is dangerous because of the collective impact of having 3 billion people constantly monitored and then managed by predictive algorithms that advocate for a commitment to continually, augment, and immerse their social ties, cultural stimuli, and political consciousness. The problem isn’t that some crank or president is known on Facebook in a corner of the world. Facebook’s problem is Facebook.
Facebook is likely to be that powerful for many decades — if not more. So while we strive to live better with him (and with each other), we must all spend the next few years imagining a more radical reform program. We need to get to the root of Facebook (and, while we’re at it, Google). More specifically, there is a final rule intervention, albeit a modest one, that can be a good first step.
In 2018, the European Union began to emphasize that all companies that collect data respect some basic rights of citizens. TGeneral Data Protection Regulation it gives users some autonomy from the data we generate, and requires minimal transparency when using that data. Although implementation has been poor, and the most impressive symbol of the GDPR have been extra warnings that require you to click to accept the terms. The law offers the power to limit the power of empty big data like Facebook and Google. It should be closely studied, strengthened and spread around the world. If the U.S. Congress (and the parliaments of Canada, Australia, and India) took citizens ’data rights more seriously than content regulation, there could be hope.
[ad_2]
Source link
