I’ve said before that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is like the teenager you’ve put in charge of your family’s online security. “Don’t worry,” he says, his adolescent voice cracking, “I’ve got your credit card in safe keeping. And as for those websites you don’t want me to visit? Rest assured, I’ve blocked myself from ever seeing them again.”
We’ve put all our trust in the computer nerd from Harvard – the then 19-year-old who allegedly stole the Facebook idea from three college seniors. The one who came up with Facebook’s original motto: “Move fast and break things.”
According to author Roger McNamee, he’s succeeded on both fronts. With over 2.2 billion users worldwide, Zuckerberg is now the fifth richest man in the world. And the things he’s broken? McNamee goes through them in detail in his book, Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook catastrophe.
Let’s begin with democracy. It’s well known that Facebook is vulnerable to foreign (i.e. Russian) influence when it comes to elections. In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, fake news stories, targeted advertising and made-up Facebook groups may have been enough to tip the scales in favour of Donald Trump.
Then there’s social decay. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube (owned by Google) thrive off of conspiracy theories and extremist views. Their algorithms, created to keep your eyes on the screen, indirectly encourage the spread of misinformation. The dynamics on these platforms have led to bullying, harassment and the undue influence of fanatics (Alex Jones’ notorious Infowars is one example).
And then there’s the invasion/loss of privacy. Businesses and political parties can purchase your personal Facebook data to better target, influence and control you. For the sake of profit, they want to know what makes you and your children tick.
To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about these things until I read McNamee’s book. After all, I’m a lover of technology and embrace it freely. Hey, I bought our last car in part because it had Apple CarPlay.
McNamee was much the same. A product of Silicon Valley, he was an advisor to Zuckerberg when Facebook first started up. He invested in Facebook in its early days. Now he’s advising the billionaire he affectionately calls “Zuck” to fundamentally change the business that made him rich.
But Zuck, like an insolent teenager, is no longer listening. Nor are any of the tech giants. McNamee’s proposals would mean the end to their successful business model: growth at all cost.
NcNamee makes a powerful case for government intervention when it comes to these companies. He challenges the notion that technology moves too fast for enacting regulation. Or that personal data should be owned by the companies. Or that they can’t be broken up.
The tech giants are ripe for anti-trust legislation, says McNamee. Like the oil companies of the early 1900s, they wield unprecedented monopolistic powers. They are a threat to open market competition and are in fact stalling innovation by preventing the growth of new start-ups. And they aren’t providing economic growth (i.e. jobs) that traditional industries have created in the past.
They are the products of great timing and opportunity. In the case of Facebook, a relatively simple online platform now wields extraordinary influence. And it's mining your personal data worth billions.
It's like giving your car keys and credit card to your teenager so you they'll help you use Skype.
Sometimes you have to wonder if we realize how much we're giving away.
