Facebook announced a mountain of changes last week. From this New York Times article, the emphasis is on private messaging, groups and Stories. Many of the changes, according to the report, was made by Facebook to combat years of privacy concerns. Uh…maybe.
Yes, I think Facebook cares about privacy, but they care about revenue a lot more. The move to one-to-one and one-to-few communications is where the future is going. I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg has a plan on a white board somewhere that shows Facebook controlling private communications around the world.
With Facebook messenger, Whatsapp and the popularity of Facebook groups, the “catch all” feed is going away and being replaced with Facebook becoming the playground for nearly all intimate communications. Good, bad or indifferent, you can see the path and it’s happening right in front of us.
Speaking of Facebook, last week I mentioned the book Zucked by Roger McNamee, the tell-all book from the former Facebook advisor that came down hard on Facebook for Russian meddling during the 2016 election. Well, this Ted talk from Carole Cadwalladr, a British investigative journalist, is a much watch (credit Jim McDermott). In the 15-minute video she makes the case that Brexit happened because of election-fraud and fake news on Facebook.
Now take a deep breath. This is not about politics. I don’t care what political side you are on (well, maybe a little). My concern, with technology such as Facebook and the opportunity to spread false content and influence people, is it possible to have a free and fair election ever again?
I honestly don’t know. I also don’t know what to do about it.
But since there is overwhelming evidence that Facebook played a role in this (either through their knowledge or not), do we just keep using Facebook and throw up our hands? At some point we are going to have to take a stand. Maybe the time is now.
Heck, three times last week I had to tell people that the facts they were telling me were not true. In each case, they were getting their information from Facebook. This is a huge problem. Is Facebook doing enough about it even with their most recent changes? No, nope and nada.
The following was an excerpt from Joe’s newsletter. Only subscribers receive the full version.