{"id":26982,"date":"2019-12-30T13:22:20","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T18:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=26982"},"modified":"2020-01-06T12:46:08","modified_gmt":"2020-01-06T17:46:08","slug":"facebook-another-moral-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/facebook-another-moral-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook \u2013 Another Moral Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"
>> Back to January 2020 Issue<\/a><\/div>\n

A Pew Research study<\/a> revealed that social media is king when it comes to the news. In the US, 72 percent of millennials read the news via their Facebook, Twitter feed, and other social networking sites. Only 21 percent of people aged 50+ do the same. The older generation predominantly consumes news via their television.<\/p>\n

Unilever CMO Keith Weed warned in a speech in March 2018 \u201cthat trusted brands could not afford to be associated with social media platforms that fail to safeguard users\u2019 privacy.\u201d <\/em>He also said, \u201cAcross the world, dramatic shifts are taking place in people\u2019s trust, particularly in media. We are seeing a critical separation of how people trust social media and more \u2018traditional\u2019 media. In the US only less than a third of people now trust social media (30%), whilst almost two thirds trust traditional media (58%).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Mark
Photo courtesy of Politico<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the fall of 2017, I wrote an article<\/a> for GreenMoney <\/em>suggesting that Facebook was in the midst of a moral dilemma, based on a business model that sustains itself by removing as many privacy barriers to access its members\u2019 data as was possible, within the context of what was legal and what the market permitted. Shortly after that article, Facebook\u2019s roof began to leak.<\/p>\n

In March 2018, we became aware of a massive breach (80-90 million uses) of its privacy agreement, by Cambridge Analytica. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook\u2019s CEO, spent quite a bit of time doing damage control, most notably before a Congressional Committee in the fall of 2019.<\/p>\n

Shortly after that cycle of damage control, Zuckerberg appeared before a technology forum to discuss \u201cFacebook News\u201d, a now formal initiative to launch a \u201cnews\u201d portal as part of its ecosystem. Facebook already enjoys the fact that it is a primary news source from it main feed. Now it has developed a \u201cFacebook News\u201d tab that is being tested in various markets.<\/p>\n

And thus, we are now at the second saga of Facebook, an attempt to capitalize on the rise of social media as a primary news source for younger generations of Americans. The interesting thing is that they do not call themselves a news outlet, but a news \u2018platform.\u2019 That is a subtle but meaningful distinction as it relates to the issue of their responsibility for the news that finds it way onto its \u2018platform\u2019.<\/p>\n

Here are some high level characteristics of the \u2018news platform\u2019 that are intriguing to me:<\/strong><\/p>\n

News will be optimized according to the infamous Facebook algorithm, which is a black box within a black box and not understood by many outside of Facebook.<\/p>\n

Facebook will source its news from a variety of traditional sources and will pay some of those sources (distributors) for content. It is not clear how the payment system will work and whether those who are paid will have a preferred status for their news.<\/p>\n

Facebook will cover Facebook. Their news will include direct news about Facebook. What\u2019s the likelihood that this news will be negative? Many critics suggest they should refrain from being a source of news about themselves.<\/p>\n

Facebook is loath to make judgments about the nature of certain political content (key difference between being an outlet and a platform), which is what leads to there being no or few filters applied to lies and deception, a continual problem for them.<\/em><\/h3>\n

Facebook\u2019s Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has been clear that he is not likely to exercise any control over certain political speech. \u201cOur policy is that we do not fact-check politicians\u2019 speech. And the reason for that is that we believe that in a democracy it is important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n