Before I begin I must confess that these days I am finding it harder and harder to like Facebook. Every time when I am about to forgive them for something untoward we learn of another thing then another and another. The only conclusion I can reach is that Facebook really is a company that doesn’t care or even pretend to care about its users. They only think of how they can exploit users without regard to ethics or morals.
If you think I am being dramatic and moaning over nothing, as some of you might argue. Big Tech companies like Google exploit their users for profit too. The thing though is that at least the others pretend to conform to norms and values of society and do it in a classy way. Facebook seems to be making a mess of things. Still not convinced? Here are some things we have learnt about them over the past few weeks thanks to leaked documents:
- The company knew that mostly black people were being auctioned on it’s platform to be used as slaves in countries like United Arab Emirates. Despite this information Facebook did not act in a timely manner to shutdown these auctions. The BBC and other news organisations did exposes on these markets and still nothing was done. They are now fighting these markets but a lot of them remain up and running. Either Facebook doesn’t care or are simply struggling to police their platform.
- Facebook actually knows that Instagram is toxic to teens. They have known for a while because they do have internal studies and researches that they do. Instead of acting on this they decided to suppress the reports. In fact, a number of whistleblowers have alleged that Facebook habitually suppresses internal research when it doesn’t say what they want. Countless teenagers have comitted suicide over social media issues that could have been prevented by Facebook if they had acted ethically. The company knowingly and willfully pollutes the minds of teens on Instagram in a bid to keep them hooked and make money
- Facebook has two sets of rules when it comes to what you can post on their platform. There is one rule for the Big Kahunas out there and another law for an ordinary Taurai and Tarisai like me. Celebrities like Donald J Trump were left to freely bully, lie and cheat while ordinary people like us were heavily censored.
- It has also been revealed that Facebook regulary cozies up to despotic and restrictive regimes. They will happily dish out your data in order to avoid getting blocked in these countries even if that puts you at risk.
- The company shamelessly pushes positive stories about itself to the top in order to give the impression that it is a good and ethical company. User feeds are pumped with positive stories about Facebook on the platform in a bid to influence wider public opinion. It’s like having the referree habitually kicking the ball in the goal of the team he dosn’t like.
- Mark Zuckerberg is more a little Napoleon who constantly overrides the advice of his employees especially when it comes to moderation ideas. When the company tried to push algorithms to clean up it’s feeds the algorithms had the opposite effect. Staffers pointed this out but Mr Zuckerberg would have none of it. He insisted that they keep doing. It’s a bit of a habit of his-overriding employees it seems.
I could go on and the exposes are still ongoing but all this proves that Facebook is indeed a toxic company that is struggling to clean up its image. I don’t even know if that’s possible. The thing though is that with more and more becoming disaffected by their behaviour they risk becoming another Ecocash.
You see EcoCash was an indomitable company once and the authorities resented that. Eventually due to things like failed transactions and such EcoCash managed to alienate the public. Authorities seized their chance and docked their tail. The same thing seems to be set to happen to Facebook.
Conservative America has always loathed the left-leaning platform and the oversized influence it has in the political arena. With these leaks and more damaging information on the way, they have their chance. The company has now been summoned before the Senate. More and more countries are also starting to try and regulate how Facebook is used in their countries. Like conservative America, the authorities in these countries now have the ammunition they need.
These revelations are also going to hurt Facebook in the long run. We have already seen Facebook try and launch a cryptocurrency of its own. Panicky authorities moved fast to block this move because they felt Facebook was already too powerful and didn’t need more power handed to them. Expect these kinds of attitudes to prevail and hinder the company’s plans in the long term.
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Devil’s Advocate here….
On the first charge I am not even going to try to defend it cos I straight up don’t want to. This disgusts me.
Toxic to teens you say? Yes that’s not really good look for Facebook and something that is really sad.
But I put it to you that there are millions of teens that use Instagram quite happily without any problems but that’s not newsworthy. We only focus on the deaths and lump all the blame on Facebook as if they they’re the only one’s at fault,what about the bullies? The parents of the bullies nd of the bullied? They didn’t notice that they raised devil’s or that their child was struggling with some issues. Children since time immemorial are monster’s it’s the job of their parents to raise responsible and decent human beings but nowadays parents seem to have abdicated their responsibility to Facebook and are surprised when things go wrong. Bullies are not a new phenomenon.
The big boys who would make the little boys fight each other when we were herding cattle, the boy’s who used to beat up the cleverest/dumbest kid in the class or the kids who shun the kids with the green sms bubble because they have android phones as opposed to trendy iphones.
The list is endless. The circumstances may change but after it is all said and done it’s Bullying no matter if it’s online or in the real world. The fact that we as a society avoid this simple truth and try to pin the blame on anything everything else whilst this simple truth says something about humanity as whole.
True.
When we were growing up, most societal problems were blamed on TV , video games and music we listened to. When some teenager shot up a school , the media would get into a frenzy talking about the shooter’s music/tv/video game preferences. But where were the parents when junior woke up and took a gun to school???? No one asked that question. It was always either Grand theft Auto or some popular musician’s fault.
Man, i feel old!!!
It’s currently 2 am whilst I’m typing this nd I can’t sleep, but I seem to have slipped into some sort of parallel dimension where wishes come true.
Two sets of rules you say?
I wonder why that would be? Does it have anything to do with the fact that those celebrities have the money to sue
Or the power to literally ban Facebook in the country, (cough Nigeria cough)?
Maybe these celebrities have the power to literally write new laws that will negatively affect the company?
Mayybe they have such a rabid fanbase that any move to censor them has to be carefully thought out with all the ramifications and risks calculated?
Because in the world I live in the statement…
All men are created equal but some are more equal than others….is sad and unfortunate fact of life.
And those with either fame, money or power or all of these at once will always be treated very differently from those don’t. And to expect any different is just wishful thinking.
Facebook is an American company but it also operates in over a 100 countries. But in order to operate officially in all those other countries Facebook has has to abide by the laws of each of those various countries.
Some of the governments of those countries maybe “despotic and restrictive regimes” but so long as Facebook wants to officially operate in those countries they subject to laws of those “despotic and restrictive regimes”
And it’s really hypocritical to say Facebook should refuse to hand over to foreign governments the same type of data that is given to the USA government upon request. Even if those governments are “despotic and restrictive regimes” Facebook would have no legal foot to stand on if they were try to do this.
Until the world is run by the United Nations and all the laws of the world are the same Facebook will have to comply with the laws of the various countries it operates in.
Did you see these adverts…
NETONE WE RAISED OUR DATA PRICES BECAUSE WE WANTED TO ND THERE’S SWEET F**K ALL YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT….
…or this one
AT ZOL WE ONLY WANT RICH PEOPLE TO USE OUR NETWORK SO WE RAISED OUR DATA PRICES.
You didn’t see these adverts? Must be the insomnia making me see things. It’s now 0246.
But seriously though. Why wouldn’t Facebook post good things about themselves?
It’s the job of the competition or press to point out the various lies and issues that plague Facebook.
To expect Facebook itself to honestly reveal all the bad stuff plaguing it, would be criminally naive.
Here’s the thing Zuckerberg is the CEO of Facebook, he is also the majority shareholder in Facebook. How do I put this nicely?
The employer (Zuckerberg) is under no obligation to follow the “advice” given by the employees.
Zuckerberg is famous for his motto… Move fast and break things.
Using this motto he took Facebook from nothing to a multi billion dollar enterprise. Each quarter under his leadership Facebook makes billions in net profit. As CEO his job is to make the company profitable as a shareholder he wants the company to be profitable.
And until Facebook stops being profitable Zuckerberg ignoring the employees advice is the best move because doing so has not negatively affected the profitability of the company.
In fact it could be argued those employees should be fired cos their advice even when not followed nothing bad happens meaning they are poor advisors.
Linking up Facebook to Ecocash really? imo this argument is weak but OK.
There’s no doubt that Facebook nd Ecocash image low but here’s the thing.
People are not forced to use either platform but everyday they use it because there is nothing better. Their competitors have spent millions/billions but Slacks/OneMoney just can’t seem to be able to topple the king.
No one likes the king but when given the chance to make a new king the people still stay with the old king
Let’s put aside the dislike that various ministers have shown for Econet/Ecocash in general.
But the government had to act on Ecocash from a national security point of view. It’s not ideal to have one company/entity as the sole payment system in the country.
In a world where ransomware and bored hackers are a thing. The idea of the country grinding to a halt just because something went wrong at Ecocash servers is the stuff nightmares are made of.
So making interoperability the law of the land was a good step towards fixing that.
Ecocash system was over strained. Not even in the wildest dreams of Ecocash management did they ever think that they were going to end up with a 90%+ share market their rosiest projections were definitely much lower nd they planned accordingly so the dropped transactions nd the like were the result because the system was overloaded.
OneMoney/Telcash are the real world example of the video gaming term of Pig Teammates.
Even with the government implementing various rules and laws, Ecocash also having the highest transaction charges in the land all this should have allowed them to increase market share but there’s been no real tangible improvement at all.
It’s now 0420….
Ah evil insomnia oh how I hate you,
Let me count the ways….
Google is 23 years old today.
I’m older than Google and every service they offer.
That’s a depressing thought lol
It is depressing for real,now i wont be able to sleep too,thanks to you😡
@Empress tsvagai mabasa tsano. Ipapa hamuna kana chikwere chehuku. Basa rekutyper pakati pehusiku😂😂
Any suggestions?
I am open to any and all suggestions. Give me some ideas 🤣🤣
Im sure we allow this through permissions 🤔