From WIRED:
In 2003, one year before Facebook was founded, a website called Facemash began nonconsensually scraping pictures of students at Harvard from the school’s intranet and asking users to rate their hotness. Obviously, it caused an outcry. The website’s developer quickly proffered an apology. "I hope you understand, this is not how I meant for things to go, and I apologize for any harm done as a result of my neglect to consider how quickly the site would spread and its consequences thereafter,” wrote a young Mark Zuckerberg. “I definitely see how my intentions could be seen in the wrong light.”
In 2004 Zuckerberg cofounded Facebook, which rapidly spread from Harvard to other universities. And in 2006 the young company blindsided its users with the launch of News Feed, which collated and presented in one place information that people had previously had to search for piecemeal. Many users were shocked and alarmed that there was no warning and that there were no privacy controls. Zuckerberg apologized. “This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it,” he wrote on Facebook’s blog. "We really messed this one up," he said. "We did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them."If you're thinking that the tone of those quotes sound very familiar, then you're not alone. "By 2008, Zuckerberg had written only four posts on Facebook’s blog: Every single one of them was an apology or an attempt to explain a decision that had upset users." Facebook's privacy problems have been baked into the company's DNA since before it was founded. The fact that they've learned absolutely nothing in the fourteen years since is simply astonishing.
And they really haven't learned anything in fourteen years, as demonstrated by their ongoing hit parade of privacy issues:
- 2007: Facebook’s Beacon advertising system launched without proper controls or consent, and ended up compromising user privacy by making people’s purchases public.
Fifty thousand Facebook users signed an e-petition titled “Facebook: Stop invading my privacy.” Zuckerberg responded with an apology: “We simply did a bad job with this release and I apologize for it." He promised to improve. “I'm not proud of the way we've handled this situation and I know we can do better,” he wrote.
- 2010: Facebook violates users' privacy by making key types of information public without proper consent or warning.
Zuckerberg again responded with an apology—this time published in an op-ed in The Washington Post. “We just missed the mark,” he said. “We heard the feedback,” he added. “There needs to be a simpler way to control your information.” “In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use,” he promised.As someone who's had almost nothing to do with Facebook, ever, I didn't pay much attention to these stories when they happened; I just assumed that disgruntled users would go elsewhere, and that Facebook would falter, and eventually fail, if they didn't get their act together. In hindsight, though, that would appear to have been a mistake, because neither of those things happened. And so here we are, with Cambridge Analytica very much in the news, and Facebook finally finding themselves forced to fix issues that have been baked into everything they've done since 2004.
In other words... Facebook is the problem. And it's not just some specific vulnerability of the platform that needs fixing; it's everything about Facebook.
WIRED goes on to analyze Zuckerberg's most recent apology tour in brutal detail, pointing out over and over again that this is nothing new, and that Facebook's most recent promises are all things that they've promised before, including in a 2011 consent decree with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and that there's very little reason to believe that they're capable of changing on their own, i.e. unless forced by regulatory action.
There is no other way to interpret Facebook’s privacy invading moves over the years [...] as anything other than decisions driven by a combination of self-serving impulses: namely, profit motives, the structural incentives inherent to the company’s business model, and the one-sided ideology of its founders and some executives. [...] And even the ideology—a vague philosophy that purports to prize openness and connectivity with little to say about privacy and other values—is one that does not seem to apply to people who run Facebook or work for it.Remember the secret message-delete function, that we just learned about today, and which is only being rolled out to users at large because of the PR backlash? That's a relatively minor thing, compared to some of the other issues, but it clearly shows Facebook's hypocrisy at work.
WIRED's piece has a lot of detail in it, and I'm really just skimming the surface here - it's absolutely worth a read, and I do urge you to click through and read the whole thing. Their conclusion, though, is as inescapable as it is brutal:
There is indeed a case of Stockholm syndrome here. There are very few other contexts in which a person would be be allowed to make a series of decisions that have obviously enriched them while eroding the privacy and well-being of billions of people; to make basically the same apology for those decisions countless times over the space of just 14 years; and then to profess innocence, idealism, and complete independence from the obvious structural incentives that have shaped the whole process.
[...]
And yet, it appears that nobody around Facebook’s sovereign and singular ruler has managed to convince their leader that these are blindingly obvious truths whose acceptance may well provide us with some hints of a healthier way forward. That the repeated word of the use “community” to refer Facebook’s users is not appropriate and is, in fact, misleading. That the constant repetition of “sorry” and “we meant well” and “we will fix it this time!” to refer to what is basically the same betrayal over 14 years should no longer be accepted as a promise to do better, but should instead be seen as but one symptom of a profound crisis of accountability. When a large chorus of people outside the company raises alarms on a regular basis, it’s not a sufficient explanation to say, “Oh we were blindsided (again).”
[...]
Even without [an] independent investigation, one thing is clear: Facebook’s sole sovereign is neither equipped to, nor should he be in a position to, make all these decisions by himself, and Facebook’s long reign of unaccountability should end.Hear, hear.
Seriously, go read the whole WIRED piece, it's well worth your time. And then free yourself from the ongoing hostage situation that Facebook has, apparently, always been at its core.
#FacebookIsTheProblem
#DeleteFacebook