DIGITAL LIFE

Facebook's delicate relationship with the truth

"I don't want to be the arbiter of the truth." With this sentence, Mark Zuckerberg defined his position in relation to the content that circulates on his social networks. For him, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and all the other apps around him are just content drivers, without being responsible for it.
From an ethical point of view, it is abhorrent. Once again. However good the product, service or platform, management without commitment to ethics destroys value. In addition to being simply wrong. From a purely business point of view, however, I understand the reasons why you say this. In today's polarized world, where what's true for me isn't necessarily true for you, Zuck doesn't want to upset anyone. Everyone who stays with his truth - as long as everyone stays on Facebook.
This recipe has worked wonderfully, at least so far. Whoever put some money into Facebook shares in the IPO, in 2012, saw their equity multiply by six. Whoever bought right after the IPO, won even more. Today, the company is a giant with more than 2.6 billion active users per month. Adding Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are almost 3 billion people, about 40% of the world population. It is the dream company of any value investor: monopolist and with a very high degree of consumer adherence, which is captive to the product. This user adherence to the platform is the basis of Facebook's business model: the greater the number of users, the the longer they use the network and the higher the level of engagement, the more information about them the company will obtain and the more ads will be sold using this data. The secret is to keep the user as long as possible inside the platform, without friction. Being an arbiter of the truth, that is, issuing any editorial opinion on the content that circulates on the network, means creating friction in the gear: displeasing me, you or both. In Zuck's playbook, that doesn't exist.
When we participate in a social network, we are not consuming a product: we are the product. And therein lies the problem. In his book “Zucked”, Roger McNamee clearly exposes this relationship. “For their business model to work, internet platforms like Facebook and YouTube have reversed the traditional relationship between technology and human beings. Instead of technology being an instrument at the service of humanity, it is human beings who are at the service of technology. ” Companies like Facebook, through the constant use of artificial intelligence, are able to understand and, in many cases, manipulate the human brain. McNamee adds: “Years of collecting likes, shares, posts and comments have taught Facebook's artificial intelligence to monopolize our attention.”
McNamee had a very close relationship with Zuckerberg, having been his mentor and advisor since 2006. Investor in the company before the IPO, he was a staunch admirer of the company and its business model. Everything changed in 2016, when he realized that the company's almost magical power over our instincts, in addition to compelling us to consume products and services, can also be used to manipulate elections.
The platform was, in fact, used in the 2016 election. Admittedly, Cambridge Analytica had access to data from more than 50 million users, using it to create marketing campaigns with targeted ads to influence voters. There is a lot of doubt about what has been done about data protection since that episode. Certainly, after all the consternation created, some steps were taken. Whether they were sufficient and whether they are actually being executed is not known with certainty. We're going to have to believe Zuck, and what he says he did.
However, more than data protection, the great Achilles' heel is what you can do with them when they fall into the wrong hands. Letting content circulate that can be liar, exaggerated, biased and potentially produced so that the user is influenced to do something is to leave the space open for ethically execrable sociological experiences. Doing nothing about it may be the right business attitude in the short run, but it destroys value in the long run. In addition to indigning the user, it is an attitude that invites regulators to dedicate themselves diligently to investigate, scrutinize and regulate their business.
Google is already under pressure: the justice department and secretaries in almost every state in the United States have opened investigations to investigate allegations that the company violated antitrust laws. Zuckerberg and his number two, Sheryl Sandberg, cannot set foot in Canada and Britain at risk of being immediately led to testify in the House of Commons of both countries on the case of Cambridge Analytica. Zuck and Sheryl are also under increasing pressure from employees themselves.

Norberto Zaiet-Brazil