Dear Mark Z:
I welcomed your recent announcement about changes to make Facebook a more positive experience. I couldn’t agree with you more. Social media, when successful, makes us feel connected to the world, our lives, and each other as opposed to isolated. I know. As one of social media’s founders, the first social network I launched (a PC Magazine “Top 100” site for 3 years) was built before you were shaving.
Alas, while certainly acknowledging your business acumen, I find your statement about adjusting Facebook News Feeds to favor friends and family over publishers and brands kind of hard to believe – dare I say a complete falsehood. This is not my opinion – this is easily fact checked. In fact, two years ago, several months before the presidential election, you made the exact same promise about News Feeds. Let me repeat that – the exact same promise – less junk in our newsfeeds and more real posts with our family and friends. Look at how that turned out for us and for you. We had a contested election impacted by false news spreading like wildfire in newsfeeds on Facebook. You got billions more in profits. Our newsfeeds were jammed (and still are) with BS.
Every decision you and Facebook make is about data – and clearly this “new” announcement is motivated by the relentless pursuit of gathering more data about Facebook members in order for your algorithms to more effectively manipulate our buying decisions. You want more data, and that can best come by watching us interact more with our family and friends. Come on - positivity is not Facebook’s history nor will it be your legacy. Such vows merely echo a long line of false promises voiced instead of concerned responses acted on.
So, here we are again. The optimist in me would say perhaps you’re truly repentant this time. You’ve seen the error of your ways. But then the realist in me reminds me that none of what you state changes the foundation of your company. Facebook abides by two simple rules. Rule #1 is get as much data from users and non-users as you can possibly gather, because data is your manna. Your company lives and dies based on the effective gathering, selling and monetizing of personal data. Rule #2 is when you think you have enough data on all of us, refer to rule #1.
Facebook’s practices are incredibly invasive of our privacy. More to the point, they contradict it, thriving through our loss of it. Countless fact-based reports cite Facebook as responsible for cultural deterioration, murders and assassinations, weakening of democracy, heightened bullying and suicides amongst teens, relationships broken, jobs lost or not gotten, college applications rejected. Yet in the midst of this, the best you can do is to say you’ll give us more time to share with each other – so that you have more data about us to better sell us, target and monetize our wallets, while manipulating our thoughts and minds.
Can you say with any confidence that you truly know how those marketing companies, data brokers, etc., that you do business with and depend on, use our information and with whom? Technically the way the data food chain works that becomes nearly an impossibility to trace. We know about targeted ads, but we don’t know what information those companies have, where they store it, and who has access to it. We do know that they have thousands of points of data on each one of us, members and non-members, thanks to you and your black magic algorithms.
Facebook is a social media app in name only. In reality it is a data collector, marketer, and newsfeed manipulator in practice. That’s not social anything. It’s just a smokescreen for digital stalking. And of course your message mentioned nothing of such.
You more than anyone know your company’s laundry list of privacy violations and behavior. These are just 3 recent ones of literally 100s of violations and offenses worldwide:
· Europe fined you $122 million for giving misleading statements about how you intended to handle personal information from WhatsApp after you acquired it
· Your latest idea, Messenger Kids, is an incredibly bad idea which creates social media addiction while acquiring private information from the most naïve and innocent audience imaginable, children aged 6-12
· You got ridiculed for asking Australians to send in their own nude photos to wipe revenge porn off Facebook. Really? What are you smoking? An entire country should send you nude photos of themselves and trust you to destroy them after you program your algorithms to recognize the images forever?
I won’t even delve into the oddity of that last point. On a higher level, I fail to see how any of your recent actions show how you take privacy seriously at all. You don’t even mention it in your News Feed update press release. You focus instead on what a wonderful experience the new Facebook will offer users. Really man – get some smelling salts.
It all kind of wreaks of bait and switch. You shine a spotlight on communicating more with loved ones, but the hoped-for result is people use Facebook more and share more information in the name of the almighty data vacuum. Even you would have to admit that. In your model, privacy and functionality live on opposite sides of the spectrum so that you can optimize your profits and bottom line, not the user experience. You collect members as products to sell and not customers to serve. Why not just tell the truth, for once.
I also find it ironic that your response to the fake news infiltrating your platform is with what could be called fake news about Facebook’s services. Why can’t you just be honest about your model? It’s bad for all of us except Facebook’s shareholders. Own it, like you did when you admitted you didn’t take fake news as seriously as you should have. At least that was a moment of stark honesty. You still don’t, btw. One of your former executives recently stated his deep remorse over having helped to build Facebook, calling it an app that erodes “the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other.”
I can only hope that one side of you, the Zuckerberg that is the social media user, understands everything I’m writing. He needs to have a sit-down with your other side, the Zuckerberg who is the CEO. Convince CEO Zuckerberg to make a fresh start. To that end, I have a suggestion. Get off of Facebook. As a public figure, it’s hard enough for you to have a private life. I’m not recommending you walk away from social media mind you, just that you ditch Facebook, for your own karma and your family’s privacy. Join a platform like MeWe, that doesn’t mine your data or watch you like a mercurial big brother, where you fully control your own information, and it comes with privacy-by-design built in, from the ground up. No Ads, No Newsfeed Manipulation, No Boosted Fake News, No Member Data For Sale, No Facial Recognition, No BS.
Your children will thank you for removing their life’s story in all of its inglorious details from the Facebook fingertips of everyone on earth for their lifetime – and beyond. Take the leap to MeWe, man. Don’t worry; your kids will still be billionaires to boot. Get your life back – kind of just like you are doing with your neighbors – buying up their properties so you can have privacy and peace of mind.
It’s time for the world to turn the page on Facebook. You too. Don’t make promises you and your company can’t and won’t keep. Spare us the BS and stop insulting our intelligence. It’s a new day and the world has wizened. Now how do we get you to do the same? Come join me at MeWe and experience social media the way it is meant to be.
Cheers,
Mark W