What's the big deal Bret?
Facebook is just utilizing their capitalistic agency to make money no matter what. It's unbridled capitalism and an ideology that you have long championed.
Pigs at the trough. It just is running rampant in tech land these days.
This is what happens when there is no effective regulation against big business of any kind.
The question is again, why are you so shocked?
I find MZ to be an insidious character. At best he's merely an admitted digital thief and plagiarist and we are only beginning to see what he will be at his worst.
It astounds me to no end how people get suckered into giving up their own data for free.
I have never used his platform and I never will. I might consider using it if MZ paid me for my data.
1
On the other hand, any day when you stick it to the likes of Alex Jones and Louis Farrakhan is probably a good day.
4
“We must give up once and for all saying that power represses. Power produces; it produces domains of objects and registers of truth.”
“In capitalism, all that is solid melts into air.”
“The society of the spectacle.”
“The purpose of Disneyland is to make Los Angeles look normal.”
“Welcome to the desert of the Real.”
“The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.”
Just a few randomly selecteds, and more or less accurately quoteds.
This piece by Bret Stephens is quite good.
I learned years ago (from reading newspapers) that Mark Zuckerberg has little or no regard for the privacy of Facebook users. Perhaps his motto should be "We use our users!", or "It's our business, doing pleasure with you."
I also learned long ago that Facebook does not even treat its corporate customers very well, because it controls how they can communicate with users.
So now I have reduced my Facebook Friends to only ten (one of them is dead). I never post anything, I never "like" anything, and I never click on ads. I might check my feed once every fortnight.
This arrangement works for me, although I might prefer to see Facebook die a painful death.
However, we should never forget that the others, including Twitter, Youtube, Google Search, The New York Times, television news, communication apps, gaming apps, etc., all have serious issues of various kinds, particularly privacy and bias issues. Everything stinks.
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly"
Congratulations, Mr. Stephens! You have also indirectly described the Republican Party that you so often are an apologist for.
2
Facebook is a wilfully dishonest company.
Their entire business model is based on generating more and more and more engagement.
We have discovered that the best way to do this is to create dishonest content that ricochets through the echo chambers created by Facebook for its users (depending on their predispositions).
Mark Zuckerberg will never fix it. He doesn’t have any incentive to.
It’s up to the governments to dictate how to responsibly regulate them.
"With great power, comes great responsibility."
-Uncle Ben to Peter Parker
We built FB. Nobody made us sign up. It's too big now and now it's time to take it down. FB has done more harm than good.
Have a privacy concern? Make good choices next time you post your newborn's first everything.
1
free speech can not be an absolute right.
there are no absolute rights.
screaming "fire" in a crowded theatre
can't be an absolute right protected
by the Constitution.
a free democratic republic has a right
to protect itself from hate speech that
in actual fact inspires violence
in schools, churches, mosques,
synagogues, etc.
1
Yep.
To offer another science fictional bit, it’s Michael Crichton’s take on Gyges’ Ring in “Jurassic Park:” high technology hands you immense power, without requiring you to sacrifice anything, learn any discipline, or even take much time to get it.
Crichton uses the example of guns, and compares it to the biotech being used to make dinosaurs. Same-same with Zuckerberg, a not-very-nice kid who dropped out of college so he could chase building a company on other people’s work, at a lucky moment before anybody else really tried to build his kind of social media platform.
It’s not Spiderman’s “with great power comes great responsibility,” at all, because the Zuckerbergs of the world never have their uncle shot dead right in front of them. They aren’t faced with anything tangible, so they never learn. They just evolve along the lines they were going in anyway, and tell everybody that they’re Being Moral sonthat they can keep fines, regulation and disgust at bay.
Of course, they’re doing the work of the ol’ society of the spectacle that Guy Debord talked about. It’s incredibly destructive to have everything melting into air, but Zuckerberg’s commodification of facts and thoughts and ideas is incredibly profitable.
Who cares if others have to pay the frieght?
And we’re helping.
I’ve always been leery of FB. I don’t participate. It means nothing for them to block the ravings and blathering of the more obvious “Big Bad Wolf”players. We all know about those people, and what they hate. I’d rather they corralled the more insidious “Little Piggies” who systematically insinuate and undermine. The Incel crowd comes to mind. But that will never happen. So I pretend FB doesn’t exist.
We all have the freedom to not read, not watch, not click.
Most actions have consequences, some of them unintended. But odious, dangerous people like Alex Jones must be banished from social media, whatever the consequences.
Consequences can be dealt with; Alex Jones must be silenced as completely as possible. I have no idea why he isn't in jail, or at least in a mental hospital after what he did to the Sandy Hook parents.
How refreshing to think that we could return to a world dominated by nice thoughts. The ying to trump's yang.
In Bret Stephens usual passive-aggressive conservatism he complains about a Silicon Valley tech bias against conservatives that he feels has merit. He speaks to what he sees as essentially censorship of the content on social media sites as dangerous by individuals he feels are ill equipped to make such judgements. I am no fan of any of these sites but this censorship does not violate the First Amendment. Last week Bret went on a rant about a cartoon that appeared in the NYT he felt strongly was anti-semitic. Yes judgements are and will be made by people both users of a site as well as the operators of such sites as to what they perceive as offensive or malicious content. Why should they be any different than you. What makes you more qualified to make such judgments and suggest remedial actions. Just sayin'.
2
The solution to Facebook problem? Simple stop using it.
1
It is my basic belief that modifying Facebook behavior of those who run this site is by cutting into their profits...So, remove ALL commercial posts from places you online shop, political postings and go directly to their web pages on your own..Don't let Zuckerberg and company make any profit over where you go on the internet.
I heard Tim Cook of Apple say much the same thing on the news in an interview the other day.
I have removed all the commercial posts from my page..Just friends and family now....A similar massive boycott might get their attention......
Not only is this a learning curve for users, I believe it is a learning curve for all social media...Consumers still have monetary power to exercise here. We don't have to let them set our needs for us. Our page--our call.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg both have revealed themselves to be cynical manipulators of public opinion. Their "apologies" could not possibly be more hollow and meaningless.Much like the Trump administration, their primary objective is to deceive and misdirect. They're not to be trusted. It's a waste of time to pretend otherwise.
For once, the subheading nails the essence of both the column and the problem.
"People who lack the wisdom and humility to use their power responsibly." All the Z and S-Bergs have is a gigantic bullhorn and a league of minions willing to sell their souls for a piece of the action. The rest of us, whether bearing labels of conservative or liberal, had best begin taking notice. Silicon Valley is "liberal" in the same fashion statement way that Melania Trump is a First Lady. Not buying either notion for a fraction of a New York minute.
Zuckerberg is obviously duplicitous and few people believe for a moment that he has good intentions to improve the swamp he created. Both he and Sheryl Sandberg's legacy will forever be remembered as two of the most despicable, irresponsible executives in American history.
Liberals have a problem with social media because it didn't turn out to be the progressive propaganda machine they had assumed it would be. Instead, not unlike talk radio, conservatives commanded a voice that left democrats scrambling to find a way to rein in speech that was not agreeable with their agenda. However, such biased censorship will prove to be in vain. There are far too many people connected instantly in too many ways. If anything, the tech giant gatekeepers have unwittingly created countless new votes for the GOP.
No matter how antisocial or mercenary Facebook might be, the fundamental truth is this: participation is voluntary. Not one person is forced to use Facebook, nor are participants forced in how they use it. If people are concerned for themselves, they have an extremely easy and instantaneous option.
If they are concerned for others, that is another topic.
@Bob Krantz
No man is an island - truer than ever in today's world. Participation is not voluntary when anyone with a FB account can post anything they want about you, your photo, etc, while maintaining their own complete anonymity. This is fundamentally wrong and a detriment to a civil society. Facebook has caused suicides, deaths and vast societal/political disruption. For what, cat videos and endless vanity?
Facebook is a private company. Freedom of speech does not apply to them. They have no obligation to provide such freedom to their users. End of story.
@Gerber
So perhaps we should all be engaged in a massive class action suit to demand return of all our data that has ever been sold. Let them figure out how to do the recall, or compensate us accordingly. Must be some hungry lawyers out there ready to take this on.
1
Like everything commercial, you have to vote with your feet. I've never made a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram account, and the sky has not fallen.
4
Good column.
Perhaps what's needed is a competing Facebook, so that, when Facebook makes the wrong calls, which it undoubtedly has and will continue to do, there is a remedy right at hand.
2
We're too indoctrinated with the gospel of non-regulation to consider (in the public media conversation) the classic remedies for monopoly concentration of power.
We will succeed if we break it up (Baby Facebooks!) or seize it, cash out the shareholders, and then run it as a public utility, transparently and solely in the interest of the Users, without Any advertising or data collection of any kind.
2
Why would anyone be surprised that "[t]he deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly." The unrestrained concentration of power in the hands of plutocrats -- individuals whose motives are always the aggressive accumulation of wealth and the power that comes with it unimpeded by government regulation inevitably leads to such a result.
4
If tech seems biased against conservatism, it is only because it is actually biased against malicious and manipulative misinformation. Of late, the two have become inseparable.
3
Crazy idea that techies are not conservative in their business models.
Techies care not nit about the country or the concept of service for a greater good for others. They want outrageous profits and no regulations. How is not the passion and mission of the American Capitalist Party and their conservative minions like Mr. Stephens.
1
Alex Jones can, if he wishes, write up a business plan for a Facebook competitor, pitch it to Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and launch a social media network that only carries conservative content. He will be laughed out of every VC office, if he is even allowed in. The future is being built by liberals. Conservatives can kvetch about that til the cows come home.
3
I am surprised that Bret Stephens, especially as a conservative (in the traditional, not Trumpian sense), ignores the underlying reality, that these tech corporations are all publicly traded or I.P.O. imminent companies and, as such, their only goal is to maximize profits, slick costly public relations campaigns to the contrary notwithstanding.
Therefore, the important issue is not the intelligence, ethics, values, or persona of the people running these corporations but, rather, how we both should, can, and will go about placing constraints on them through economic (boycotts), electoral, regulatory, legislative, and judicial actions.
As to unintended consequences, Stephens seems to be somewhat mixing them up with the often overlapping unforeseen consequences. Those negative consequences he refers to were actually foreseen and even written about in a number of these comment pages by more than a couple of us a decade ago.
The internet is a tool and, as with all tools, it not only can but will be used for evil purposes by those so inclined. Only public relations by those profiting and self-delusion by consumers allows the negative to flourish. As long as there are people willing to buy snake oil, there will be people happily and profitably providing it.
1
@Steve Fankuchen
The internet is not merely "a tool" - it is oxygen, and as such a limited public resource needs to be regulated, protected and defended against egregious polluters such as FB. They need to be taken out of the action completely, by whatever means necessary, the sooner the better. As of now, they are adding insult to injury.
2
@Quite Contrary
Thanks for engaging, Quite Contrary (a handle often ascribed to me, usually not positively.)
The main problem as I see it is that people make the mistake of believing that the "good guys" are smarter than the "bad guys." I don't believe that at all and, moreover, tend to think the "bad guys" tend to be more motivated than the "good guys." Thus, while I would agree with your comment, I think regulation of whatever sort, though absolutely necessary, is largely playing Sisyphus, or doing you-know-what into the wind, or whatever metaphor you prefer.
Also, it would take an unparalleled degree of international agreement, cooperation, and enforcement to have a substantial effect and, given the very different objectives of different countries, this seems a political impossibility.
1
@Steve Fankuchen
I've had a penchant for questioning authority since childhood, but you're welcome to share my handle. We might agree on this, too: I think it may ultimately be not the top down solution that could drive the tech monsters to the curb, but death by a thousand small cuts. Recent moves by the NZ and Sri Lankan gov't's have done more to shine a light on the evils of social media than our own Congressional hearing on FB, which only exposed our own illiteracy and Zuckerberg's arrogance.
The public's (presently primarily self-serving) privacy concerns could be just the tip of the spear to expose the multiple evils brought about by FB's brand of lawless, ethics-free cattle-herding operation. I welcome the coming era of dissection, having started my own wee incursion onto the hold ground, with the help of one of my state's Senators and Attorney General's Office. A thousand tiny cuts, let the necessary bleeding begin...
1
Offensive is in the eye of the beholder. ANY idea will find those agreeing, disagreeing and those that have no opinion.
Even commenters disagree about who FB chose to block.
This is the problem with society we have extreme, out of proproation reaction to those with other ideas. Flames to the other side.
I can make the choice for myself to block content that I find offensive and I want to see all sides so that I can make an educated decision informed by a diversity of ideas.
This is quite simple. Facebook is a free platform. It began as a mythic open house for people to connect. It used this generally accepted " good " to develop a business model based on a deception, i.e, that want you said to friends was purloined, secretly, for profit. In time this was seen a liability and perhaps a pernicious one requiring fine and censure.
Now, in response, FB has recast itself as an arbiter of the public good. It has decided, by a process unknown, what is " dangerous" or not. It has picked, initially, low hanging fruit ( fruitcakes ) knowing that the names alone are buzz words and that the label has already been attached by the general public. Is this the first list of many, are the criteria for " dangerous" well described and in public debate, and , or course, dangerous to whom?
As far as I can tell, the banned cover provocateurs, conspiracy theorists, wholly objectionable personalities, and religious sects purveying religious bias. All have been around a long time and have not been silenced by the courts or made bankrupt by defamation judgements ( the latter really hard to prove in court ).
Facebook , however, believes it is your interest to not be exposed to these people. Yes , as a private entity, they can do it but as a consequence they leave who you can exposed to. For me ,that is the point. I consider Representative Omar's political comment biased and ill conceived. Should she be banned, of course not. I expect Carson and Hannity are next.
2
I figured out what to do about Facebook long ago. I was only on it at all to keep track of my relatives. I never, ever posted anything about myself, not even a like. As soon as I figured out what Facebook was up to, I canceled my membership and deleted my account. I told my relatives if they wanted to get in touch with me they could send me an email, text message, call or write.
In short, Facebook is not necessary. Quit using it.
4
The days of Walter Cronkite giving us truth on television are over. Most of us who were in the 60’s generation figured out what was really going on in Vietnam. We saw it on TV every night and those of us in the military knew the war was not winnable. The year 1968 was to me a time when an entire generation awoke to the lies coming out of Washington. Today, the lies continue to come out of Washington, but it’s more difficult for people to know the truth because today’s media is spouting out different perspectives and lies at a rapid clip. The big question is, who can we trust to tell us the TRUTH? Where is our Walter Cronkite?
1
The idealistic model of a www that would connect the entire world, in which everyone would sing "Kumbaya" simultaneously, fell prey to an all-encompassing data-for-advertising-money model. Turning it around is impossible.
Google and Facebook respond first and foremost to profits. In fact, as public traded stocks, they can rightly make the argument that shareholders are their first priority. If they are caught cheating, and they have to pay a fine, they'll pay the fine. No big deal. It's a cost of doing business.
Solution: Nationalize them.
Too radical? Not for me. In today's world, data is worth more than gold. We have federal control over many important entities. The Interstates. The Army Corps of Engineers for dams and levees. Fannie Mae. F.D.I.C. Etc., etc.
Our Department of Defense isn't traded on the NYSE. We should have federal control over our data.
One may posit that I'm being alarmist, but I think a situation whereby elections can be influenced by foreign actors, and personal data can be stolen for nefarious purposes, is worthy of alarm.
1
So you’d like to have the Trump Admin run all this?
Great thinking; having irresponsible greedheads who couldn’t care less about consequence grab the wheel away from irresponsibile greedheads who couldn’t care less about cinsequences is bound to solve everything.
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly." Sounds like a lot of members of Congress.
1
@Patrick
The difference is that we elected Congressmen, and we can get rid of them just as easily; who elected Z & S-Berg Masters of the Universe? They might as well be emperors sporting Melania Trump's "I don't really care" jacket. The current focus may just show they have no other clothing, despite the sheep costume they're now attempting to rent.
Their present dilemma, and their cowardly, shortsighted reaction to it has just been explicitly and brilliantly exposed by Bret Stephens. I don't care what else he espouses; I appreciate and fully agree with this clearsighted opinion!
Consider this - what if, instead of continuing to lie and assume a posture of such stunningly false motivations, the Silicon Gang had actually done some soul searching, 'fessed up and vowed to enter into a dialogue with the offended parties (us) about how to pay for and correct their mistakes? Could some of those billions of ill-gotten gains then be siphoned off and put toward spinning better models, under the control of better-informed regulatory bodies, while solving the privacy, hate speech and hacking issues that will continue to plague any semblance of a FB-like platform? Sure they could, if they cared. Since they very obviously don't, it's up to us to do it.
Give Jeremy Rifkin the credit he deserves; he saw all this coming in his book The Age of Access circa 2001: private corporations having the "keys" to access of information and experience. Not necessarily for the better.
Contrary to Stephens' saying Facebook et al., shouldn't be regulated are the regs imposed on public broadcasting services in the 20th century - sometimes overdone such that on I Love Lucy they couldn't use the word "Pregnant" (to my knowledge), but most of the rules regarding access to the "public airwaves" were sensible - in the same vein as sensible environmental and social regulations on organizations that help ensure they serve public purposes with minimal public harm.
The answer to Stephens' concerns about Facebook handling all of its power possibly includes some public regulatory involvement. The FDA, for example, exists because we just can't expect consumers to know enough to choose the right companies to engage with - the world is too complex.
Likewise, a cornerstone of a more sustainable society is transparency - let's make privately-owned companies report the same as public ones, and let's make them all report their minimum wages, their top wages, their average/median wages - in some format so consumers have a better/simpler way to choose who to patronize. And their carbon emissions or other indicators of environmental performance.
Econ 101 is that markets work with "perfect information" - let's ensure people have it.
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly."
Sounds like a description of the Trump Administration and the GOP.
The 1956 movie Forbidden Planet is a near perfect metaphor for the unintended consequences of today's social media. An expedition from Earth had landed on the planet in spite of a warning from a previous expedition that it was unsafe. In the film (SPOILER ALERT!), the vastly advanced civilization of the planet, who were now extinct, had gained such technological capability that they were able to create a global machine so powerful that it could project their wishes materially anywhere on the planet. They thought that this ability would be of great benefit to society and people could have anything they wanted. But they forgot about the Id, that primitive subconscious animal part of the brain in which monstrous dreams dwell. So they perished from the projections of their primitive monster dreams becoming physical monsters and destroying them.
3
When the printing press was new technology, the concept of intellectual property didn't exist. If a novel was a best seller, the author did not benefit. It was the the printer who got rich. That makes no sense. So people came up with a new idea: "intellectual property". Things made sense again.
Today we have a similar problem with Facebook, et al. We need to come up with new ways of thinking about who controls and financially benefits from information. The way it works now, makes no sense.
2
Presses got into Europe around what, 1470 or so?
Intellectual property doesn’t really come along at all until 19th century patent and copyright laws, and really not until after WW2.
@TD Facebook's only cash value to its stockholders is the sale of customer data to data miners and re-sellers, not the physical content (although it has side contracts to create advertising campaigns). Facebook is not much more than a free telephone line & phone book that sells some page layout, and confidential and hidden info to strangers.
1
@Carling
Correct, but - while struggling to find a past technology to frame our understanding of the Frankenstein monster known as FB, let us not forget that phone books were local in nature, not globally connected, and also reliably accurate with name and location information as well as phone number, and freely available to all in local libraries. Advertisers never thought to utilize them to "push" sales pitches at us - they were content to pay for the privilege of appearing for our voluntary perusal, pulling instead of pushing, and restricted to a separate section in the yellow pages. It took the computer to throw us into the hellish world of robocalling and ad saturated media we now live in. And we haven't a clue how to go back to a healthier paradigm. Nonetheless, we're heading in that direction, one stumbling step at a time, one might dream. Bring back the landlines...and Mapquest. Public utilities, both.
Facebook is completely unnecessary. The best way to deal with it is to ignore it. It will disappear and the world will become a much better place.
5
I am surprised that Bret Stephens, especially as a conservative (in the traditional, not Trumpian sense), ignores the underlying reality. These tech corporations are all publicly traded or I.P.O. imminent companies and, as such, their only goal is to maximize profits, slick costly public relations campaigns to the contrary notwithstanding.
Therefore, the important issue is not the intelligence, ethics, values, or persona of the people running these corporations but, rather, how we both should, can, and will go about placing constraints on them through economic (boycotts), electoral, regulatory, legislative, and judicial actions.
As to unintended consequences, Stephens seems to be somewhat mixing them up with the often overlapping unforeseen consequences. Those negative consequences he refers to were actually foreseen and even written about in a number of these comment pages by more than a couple of us a decade ago.
The internet is a tool and, as with all tools, it not only can but will be used for evil purposes by those so inclined. Only public relations by those profiting and self-delusion by consumers allows the negative to flourish. As long as there are people willing to buy snake oil, there will be people happily and profitably providing it.
3
Stephens’ point is that either no, these aren’t just tools, or these are tools that are dangerous because of their design right from the git-go.
The granddad in “Witness,” was right, when he wouldn’t let his grandson even touch the gun: “What you take into your hand, you take into your heart.”
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly."
Mr. Stephens thinks this applies to Facebook and company. Where he is unwilling to go is that it also applies to Wall Street, international finance, hedge funds, private equity, venture capitalists, Southern Baptist leadership, the Republican Party, the Kochs, the Sacklers, the military-industrial complex, the oil patch, Wells Fargo, Boeing, Amway, VW, WSJ opinion columns, and some NYT columnists, including himself.
We need to make all these entities behave without choking off their vitality. We do it in hockey, with honest referees who have the authority to dole out penalties significant enough to keep misbehavior from destroying the game. In professional wrestling, on the other hand, the referees are part of a scripted entertainment. In our current political situation, some of the referees are part of the entertainment and are edging the honest ones into powerlessness.
Mr. Stephens has been too embedded in this nexus for too long to be able to call it out or see it clearly, much less see past it to how to get things back under control. He does not like Bernie, but at least Bernie is looking.
4
Conservative icon Ronald Wilson Reagan drew applause in 1980 at a debate in Nashua, NH with the following:
" I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green! "
Bret Stephens can criticize Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook from now until Mar-a-Lago freezes over, but as he admits in this article " Facebook’s house, Facebook’s rules. " Where's the applause for asserting that right over Farrakhan, Jones and Yiannopoulos?
Nothing heard, because they are c-o-n-s-e-r-v-a-t-i-v-e-s and in 2016 the chant " lock her up " became an expression of free speech at some campaign rallies. There's also the issue of politically motivated mass shootings being the fruit of right wing media, but that's a topic for another column.
I'm no fan of Facebook as I survived quite nicely before Facebook and may do the same after Facebook, but if Jones wants a microphone on the web he should buy one...
And be held accountable for how it's used. Same as Zuckerberg.
1
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al. are the public square of Pruneyard, which ironically was also in silicon valley. Denying access based on political belief either is or should be illegal. Censure is not the same as censor, and I don't agree that all those people are despicable, or even deplorable.
2
Mr. Stephens, they were not "unintended" consequences. All BIG tech, including social media, is owned and/or controlled by the 0.01% global financial "elite" Robber Barons.
Their business model was all about stealing and using/selling/reselling OUR private data.
All tech must be SERIOUSLY regulated - just as telephone service, credit information, social security numbers and other personal date was for decades.
Please, stop trying to pretend it was anything but purposely trying to control the people of the world by a few demented greedsters.
38
@njglea et al.:
The so-called “law” of unintended consequence is not specific enough. Bret Stephens should, instead, have cited “Murphy’s Law”:
Anything that can go wrong *will* go wrong.
Minor tech detail about Stephens’ argument about regulating tech: the people regulating are the people who haven’t really got the self-discipline, thoughtfulness, or ethics to handle things very well at all.
Stephens also apparently believes that no laws or regulations or fancy AI will make the problems go away, that that’s something plain old human beings have to work on.
And from what I can see about the Leftish these days, they’re not one whit better than Zuckerberg. Too young.
I’d trust a Pelosi, or Buffett, or maybe even a Joe Biden: they paid for something resembling wisdom, paid in hard work and paid in years. They paid in having to actually deal with actual people.
Sorry, but a lot of what’s fashionable on the social-media left—I’m looking at the Jill Steins, and many of the followers of St. Bernie—strikes me as being just as infantile, narcissistic, and dangerous as Facebook.
2
@njglea
You could not be more correct and we could not be more vulnerable.
1
Good idea to ban these uglies, very politically smart. But in reality, this is small potatoes, easily done in 1/2 hr by a low level programmer.
I want to hear that they've banned selling or giving away my info, that delete actually works, that I can truly have my privacy ensured.
3
Like it or not ,we have to find the wisdom to save free speech
And at the same time save people from death by acting on that
Speech.The character of a business owner does not carry over
From his or her upbringing, if it never existed to begin with.You
Or I will not ever change another human being .They will change only if they choose to.Facebook has a multi billion dollar
Problem, do they keep using us as profit for advertisers or change their business model ?When your whole reason for existing is profit you’re a success if your Facebook.If you
Have no built in ethics to go with greed good luck! Having
Questions about how you do business or what you think about
Our bill of rights if you remember we have one.Have you read it lately or like many in our country do you just need to make it to next month without falling into poverty.
1
Facebook - nor any other company for that matter - has nothing to do with your free speech. The article makes that clear, as does the First Amendment. The Constitution guarantees that the government (Congress) will make no law abridging free speech, nothing more and nothing less. Facebook can do whatever it likes.
@WesternMass
Facebook effectively has monopolized a public utility by a clever and very effective scheme to steal data. Mere ad revenues were not enough, it wanted bigger profits and thus weaponized it's campaign for market dominance. It is not going to be allowed to continue doing that and should face meaningful repercussions/reparation to the public it has so victimized. "Move fast and break FB" should be our motto, now, appropriated from the evil source.
I am always blown away when a newspaper, the very epitome of the free expression of ideas, argues in favor of censorship. Censorship is wrong. Period. It doesn't matter how offensive the speech is, censoring it is worse than tolerating it, because censorship is always a tool of the powerful against the minority. Look no further than the Soviet Union for an example of a state which practiced censorship to keep all their lies in place. Big lies originate from the powers that be (Saddam has nukes, Glyphosate is perfectly safe), which have tons of money invested in those lies, and the tiny embattled minority of people who try to bring this to light are the ones who are called out for lying and subsequently censored.
1
@Alex
Referencing a historical context where networked computers did not exist is like saying we should all be putting oats in our gas tanks because it worked fine for Gramp's transportation system. It does not compute - the technology has turned power structures upside down and provided dangerous avenues of input to the structures of public discourse to those least willing to exercise them responsibly. Thus are certain "tiny, embattled minorities" enabled and allowed to toy with the health and well-being of all of society, in the name of freedom of speech. Amoral geeks and libertarian nut cases alike, we do need to take away their amplification devices, before they destroy our ability to draw a peaceful breath. Our highly valued freedom of speech means less than nothing if it merely gives terrorists weaponry and cover.
Maybe you have written about this and I missed it but what about the power, influence, and irresponsibility of someone like Rupert Murdoch? Or Sinclair Broadcasting? Or the radio syndicates that produce Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage? Maybe the difference there is that unlike these young tech executives, who are at least (arguably) trying to do the right thing, Murdoch and friends are unapologetically in the business of spreading division and falsehood. Like Trump, they do their lying brazenly and out in the open. There is no self-reflection or contemplation of their actions, only a desire to maintain power, by whatever means necessary.
1
Facebook is big tobacco. Sure it might make you look thinner, make you look cooler, and make it easier to meet new people.
But it ultimately eats you from inside.
5
Facebook and Twitter, etc. have become an addiction. When your cellphone rings, you're not obligated to answer. Let it go to voicemail. Focus on whatever is important in your life and ignore the constant interruption technology makes available. Most of it is silly, anyway, and certainly a waste of time to see what people are eating or what their pets are doing. Just say no and take some control. You don't have to be an addict.
3
The problem is greed.
Some would even say that it’s the root of evil.
3
The truth is that Facebook is no different than other ideas which people find a way to use for nefarious or evil deeds. There are always those people in society. Almost anything can be used for evil purposes if someone wants to. A car can ram a group of people and kill some. A steak knife can kill someone. A chemical can be misused and death results.
The other problem here is the no “government regulation” mentality present in many in our society today. Government is supposed to be the arbiter in society. Funny thing is those people who don’t want government regulation just don’t want it for their activities. If someone is doing something they don’t like they turn to government.
One poster talked about oil company officials who didn’t want to follow the law. What would happen if someone began polluting their water, or dumping garbage on their land, or poisoning their food? Who would they turn to?
There has always been a strain of selfish, me first mentality in America. But it seems to have really surfaced in the last 2+ years. Funny.
3
FB is a monster of our own making IMO, a platform to enable “friends and family” to exchange news and virtual hellos has morphed into a ready instrument for hate, propaganda and manipulation for dark actors and amoral profiteers. I doubt if there’s any turning back, though serious regulation and/or breaking it up might get us to a safer place.
21
While Facebook has many problems, banning Jones et. al. isn't one of them, in my opinion. They may simply be nasty human beings, looking for attention and profit, but the consequences of their actions are harmful, if not bordering on lethal. When Jones declares that grieving parents of dead children are liars, he fuels hysterical reactions in his acolytes, who try to act on his ravings. This is not "free speech." It is pandering to the lowest common denominator. Likewise, people whose ravings fuel anti-semitism, or anti-Islamic hate.
Back in the 1950s, one could get hauled before congress for attending events where reputed Communists were present. That day should never come again, but we need to use some common sense.
1
You write "concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness and humility to exercise that power responsibly". Who does? Facebook changed everything. No company has ever in history had that kind of power and reach. They're making it up as they go because there is no guide book to consult, no game plan except to make money. They are writing the rule book as they go. I hope Mark can survive long enough to get it right. But expecting him to know what's coming is just pie in the sky optimism.
1
Nothing against Mr Stephens, but neither he nor his colleagues in the press understands the simple calculus at the center of the digital technology industry: it's a Wild West-style gold rush, without any regulation whatsoever.
There is nothing new about the essential elements of this industry.
"First mover advantage" is newspeak for what the 19c called a gold rush.
"Network effects" = more newspeak for monopolization and anticompetitive practices in the absence of law enforcement.
"Unfair advantage" = newspeak for bullying.
"Fear, uncertainty & doubt [F.U.D.]" = lies, manipulation, the paying off of touts who masquerade as journalists.
"This time it's different" = same old stock market manipulation through bogus accounting and lies.
"Changing the world" = the same old redirect away from the monopolist's cornering of the market and thwarting of competition.
We've seen all of these abuses before.
The only difference between the Robber Baron era and today's Wild West money grab is that, this time, the political class refuses to rein in the thieves.
Why?
Hint #1: a former VP of the US was showered with stock options by a tech monopolist and is now worth >$100 million.
Hint #2: our recent president snared a $70m sweetheart deal by another tech company.
Hint #3: the "special adviser" to said president was given a board seat and shares worth 8 figures by - you guessed it - another tech company.
None of these corrupt pols knows ANYTHING about tech.
SHAME.
6
As an old person who is a bit of a First Amendment crazy I agree with Stephens in that Zuckerberg is not to be trusted about anything and is if nothing else a raging hypocrite.
Writing as someone who does not have a Facebook page but dabbles on my wife's account if there is a topic that she thinks I would find interesting I feel the terror that people feel about Facebook's influence to be way overblown.
But then I might be making again a fairly constant mistake in overestimating the intelligence of the population at large.
Conservatives love to cry bias from Silicon Valley without any proof. Aside from that Facebook is horrible and everyone should deactivate it today.
Trump just tweeted his full support for net lowlifes, Jones & the other creeps and terrorists -- what he calls 'conservatism'. I take this as an intent to defy the rules. Since Twitter and Facebook are private, don't they have a right to monitor & delete him? Maybe they could put him into a preview slot, monitor the garbage, and block the worst. When he re-offends, cancel his accounts.
Do it on Trump just as you'd do it on Russian interference. Oh, I just typed a redundancy.
> ‘The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly.’
To say that Facebook is putting power in the hands of incompetant people is completely and utterly false. Facebook has hired the best in the nation to work on these issues. What they are doing is incredibly hard work. For a more complete and better representation of the people working on these issues please refer to the Vanity Fair article here: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-facebook-war-on-hate-speech/amp
A different perspective from all the other Facebook articles out there.
The best comment on the recent F8 developers conference in which Zuckerberg revealed a new 'privacy-focused' platform:
WIRED journalist Issie Lapowsky points out, "The question underlying Zuckerberg's privacy push is whether Facebook's "major shifts" will ever amount to much more than a fresh coat of paint on a building with rot in its foundation."
This article points to that rot.
To read more on how Facebook is walking away scot-free after killing privacy, here's an article I wrote: https://link.medium.com/CEBr63cZnW
The whole stinking pile is funded by ad dollars. Simply stop clicking on the ads or buying the stuff.
There is a simple solution: Don’t waste your time on what is preposterously called social media. To whom was it not obvious from launch that it would one day prove a dank and dismal place?
I lose nothing having nothing to do with it. I gain without it truer social interactions, even involving, gasp, face-to-face conversations and letters in the mail.
My only exposure to social media is the Times’s seemingly obsessive determination to inform me of every tweet the twit-in-chief chirps.
3
Gee, Bret! Kinda like our founding face-booked framers never imagining "that ITS elaborate systems and processes" of requisite order whence more-perfect-union-formation perpetually MOVES FORWARD "would lead to perverse results" of, say, somehow having one's MAGA fake and cheating it too to stymie prosperity.
As soon as you unnecessarily project unto "the left-wing tilt in tech" as somehow exclusively being "smug and self-serving," objectivity can't ford YOUR snaked denial. Which is why we've got selective info shutterbugs like you chop-blocking facts a la "judo moves" in lieu of jujitsu discernment to fell all the lies by the weight of clumsily missing misguided targets instead.
#28: Facebook or Twitter shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the odious people to assemble, and to petition admins for a redress of grievances.
1
Bret...why are you still calling Republicans 'conservatives'?? There's nothing conservative about a lawless coup.
And this:
"the left-wing tilt [...] doesn’t stop conservatives from getting their messages across. It certainly doesn’t keep Republicans from winning elections."
Particularly when they CHEAT, Bret!
2
The problem Mr. Stephens addresses is ancient and is clearly articulated by "Do you trust....?" I don't,..". It is the intractable problem proclaimed by the Roman poet Juvenal about 2000 years ago:"Who watches the watchers?" Do you trust the New York Times when it asks you to follow Op- ED's on Facebook, the same NewYork Times that has employed many dishonest journalists over the years, one of whom, Judith Miller, helped promulgate the war in Iraq. Yes, in time, she and most others were caught were caught and dismissed. Newspapers share a close affinity with Facebook. They are "for profit" businesses that depend, like Facebook, on advertising for revenue. Most large newspapers, like The Times are public companies that trade on stock exchanges are are dependent on shareholders who invest to make a profit. The color of the $ is the same form them as it is for Facebook. They are all watched by "boards of directors and the public. They have CEO's like Zuckerburg who are human and fallible. Who make mistakes, can correct them, and can be replaced if they don't. Watching the watchers is an infinite regress to the Garden of Eden. For myself I'm much more concerned about watching our President and Mr. Stephens Republican party than I am about Facebook and the New York Times.
1
The old Fairness Doctrine had the advantage of cutting both ways. Take a position as you wish. Make your case. Understand that anyone else with an opposing view has an equal opportunity to make THEIR case. This was the trade-off for use of the public airwaves.
Internet access in many ways is the new public utility in the same vein as the old telephone service.
Have as many providers as you like.. but the Fairness Doctrine is sounding more and more like a policy that needs to have another visit to the sunshine of Public Opinion.
Facebook and their ilk are the new networks and newspapers of our day... perhaps similar oversight and the firm application of network neutrality is in order.
1
Brett it's time to turn your focus to Twitter and Jack Dorsey. Talk about an unrestrained forum for lies and hate speech disseminated by among others the occupant of the White House, you would do well to turn your firepower that way. Thanks in advance.
Why is ‘our’ president already screaming about discrimination
against his White National followers, along with hate radio and trump TV? Stations like fox, OAN, Newsmax , they must be in an
up roar about this so called censorship.
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly," Stephen writes.
No, the deeper problem is that people are easily manipulated and oftentimes unaware of just how easily manipulated we are (and I mean ALL of us). If we weren't so easily manipulated, then those who prey upon our fears and wants would not have to be banned by Mark Zuckerberg, or anyone else (including Bret Stephens) as they would be ignored. If that were the case, a happy fringe benefit is that there would be at least six degrees of separation between Donald Trump and the Oval Office.
Yuval Harari has written and spoken convincingly about how, in the not-too-distant future, AI will know us better than we know ourselves and how that information will be used to convince us to do something without us even being fully aware of it. To me, that almost guarantees a dystopian future. And the only possible remedy is one that is not only being pushed by Harari but was long ago carved in stone on one of those Greek temples: "Know Thyself." Unfortunately, that's a lot easier said than done.
The "Iron Law of Unintended Consequences" should be tattooed on every current (and future) politician, preferably in a place where it can be seen by their gullible followers.
Humans have not evolved, psychologically, to keep pace with their ability to devise and use tools. Technology is easy to invent, almost impossible to control. And as the pace of technology ramps up (perhaps toward the "singularity," which looks more and more likely), this issue becomes more acute.
What is to be done? First, another tattoo: "Do no harm." Then: Move slowly. Incremental change is our friend. Avoid "one size fits all." De-consolidate capitalism; take away the rewards for building bigger, bigger, bigger (AT&T, you listening?). If it's too big to fail, it has failed.
1
If the argument is that certain types of dangerous speech needs to remain accessible if for no other reason that it needs to be taught as a lesson of what NOT to do and what NOT to be, the counter argument is that such speech should NOT be permitted to be distributed WITHOUT curation, explanation and context. This was social media's primary failure.
The problem with social media is that it is TOO OPEN. Content is distributed with absolutely no wisdom or historical context. It lacks depth and understanding.
Surprise surprise...lack of regulations does not lead to good ends. Unless the small percentage of bad actors are eliminated, there cannot be a civil society. This is the same reason we have police.
1
Zuckerberg was dishonest at Harvard during the development phase of Facebook, so why do we believe he’s anything different now? It is a platform for advertisers (“Follow us on Facebook!”) and stores for you to think they’re fun and exciting, and the whole goal was, and is, to make money for those running the show because they can push business your way. Along with this is the competition for souls which Silicon Valley is obsessed with, so chaos rules the day for the rest of us. The robots are coming.
4
Money poisoned Facebook, just as it poisons every social media outlet.
Not normal money, not the money people need to live a good life with the freedom to follow your interests and live in safety and comfort. The poisonous money is counted in the hundreds of millions and billions, and soon, in trillions and it isn't for buying anything.
It's for keeping score, for bragging about, for crushing imagined enemies - it's to wave around and shout "look at how many billions I have - see how brilliant I am".
Ten years ago Mr. Zuckerberg already had a stake in Facebook that gave him financial security for the rest of his life. If he hadn't been driven to gain worthless amounts of extra money, if he hadn't capitulated to the wolfish financial guys who have nothing going for them but the ability to accumulate vast sums of money, he could have created an entirely different and more benign Facebook. But he did capitulate, and totally.
Every rotten aspect of Facebook, Twitter, You-Tube and all the rest, grows out of the reckless pursuit of pointless money. All the choices made to monetize not humanize are what we're all paying for now.
5
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of...power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly."
This sentence could be applied to the older power centers as well, the owners of newspapers, television and radio stations. People who have power use it for their own purposes. Seeing themselves as paragons of virtue, the powerful in the past have filtered out a lot of what they didn't like, anything that might offend their own sensibilities.
Newspaper owners across the land, being generally people with money, skewed Republican and often hard right. The editorial pages were easy to control, but the slop over influence on news coverage, often subtle, was still apparent.
As for television and radio, right wingers tried for decades to find a way to lock-up those media. Now, they've done it with AM radio, taking over almost the entire band from coast-to-coast. Fox News has shown the way to capture visual media and Sinclair Broadcasting is following the template with over 200 local television stations now under its right wing power. "News" on Sinclair is not left in the hands of those trained in objectivity and fairness, it is often slanted to meet corporate demands.
The free for all nature of Facebook and many others presents new, unique problems. We can survive free speech but can we survive everyone screaming, ingesting propaganda and circulating it to endlessly?
4
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience,wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise power responsibly."
A good description of the shortcomings of those controlling social media. A better description of Republicans and Conservatives. What are the failings of people in government that don't believe in government? Why do we need government structures like the State Department and EPA? Why do we need the rule of law?
The word "conservative" says it all in relation to Republicans. The only agenda is to conserve and expand their wealth and power. By whatever means.
4
@Qwyna
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience,wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise power responsibly."
I seldom agree with Bret Stephens, but in terms of unintended consequences he hit the mother lode with the quote shown above... He was referring to Facebook, but my first thought was of the Trump administration.
Stephens became a Times columnist in April of 2017 so there will be no columns from the summer of 2016, but I plan to search the web for his thoughts regarding the GOP nomination. Could be amusing.
There is NOTHING unintended about Facebook's consequences.
If Karl Marx were alive today, certainly he would conclude that Facebook, and social media more generally, is the opiate of the masses. It's so much more pervasive and effective than mere religion, sports, and beer commercials with large breasted women.
From the standpoint of the Oligarchy in America and the 1% the world over it's "Mission Accomplished."
2
This comment is a bit off the topic of the article, nevertheless.... Facebook hasn't brought the world closer together. Rather, it's created a great big club that one must join in order to see what one's friends, family, and no shortage of businesses are saying. If one choose to not join the club, visitation is severely limited and is subject to a constant badgering to join the club. Facebook is the ultimate 'cool kids' group. That Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives are now the arbiters of the public's good taste, is an affront to both civilized society and our democratic principles. I see no real worth in the entity that is Facebook. It seems to me, that contrary to it's initial goal, the platform does more to drive people apart than bring them close. It's best to just say no.
3
I have enjoyed Facebook. I keep up with my ver large family and have reconnected with friend from college, high school and elementary school.
But yesterday I deleted it from all devices.
Our democracy is more important.
I will have to go back to calling people on the phone.
5
This coming election will determine if Americans don't care any more about ethical or moral behavior and the rule of law for everyone in America as long as in the words of one of Trump's buddies Stephen Moore "They're makin money!"
1
The Valley's pervasive bro culture give the lie to the idea that it's this bastion of liberalism. It's really a bastion of cynicism and selfish greed that dresses itself in the mantle of liberalism when it's advantageous to do so.
Otherwise I'll give you this:
"...the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly."
...as a totally apt description of the Valley.
I know this is a non sequitur, but the above is also an apt description of the R party.
2
Why is Facebook subject to different regulations regarding politcal (and other) advertising than tv networks? This regulatory absence to protect society is the crux
Of the problem here.
1
I think it comes down to this, the United States remains an immature nation and its peoples still haven't grown up.
I thought Stephen's discussion was good until the conservative trope about liberal media. You have your alternatives in MSM, and a national network devoted to the conservative cause. Could it be the news isn't accurate or in cases real?
FB and its companions are businesses looking to make money, Americans love free stuff and having a soapbox at their disposal, and they figured out how to masterfully turn our data into money on a scale only imagined at one time. Really, no different than selling customers names and addresses to other businesses, except millions gave strangers more information about themselves than they understood.
We have one political party that is undermining democracy through the shear use of unbridled power and subterfuge . We have corporations destroying our lands, air and water in the name of profits and shareholder interests.. We elect leaders without a modicum of training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and a sense of gravitas and responsibility. And you think the problem is with the tech businesses? No, its with us.
5
Ever the loyal member of the Professional Republican Commentariat, Brett Stephens snarkily refers to liberalism as smug and self-serving, but never mentions that his own right-wing reactionary Republican Party is smug and self-dealing to the point of being treasonous. And, of course, he neglects to admit that Facebook is run more along right-wing reactionary lines than anything liberal.
I have corrected just one of Bret’s statements for him: The deeper problem with Republicans is the overwhelming concentration of political, technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly.
3
"people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly." Facebook has compiled a 200 page, carefully reasoned flowchart to try and solve this problem. I much prefer to let Facebook deal with this rather than some government agency subject to political pressure.
2
Not a user of Faceb__t as it’s a joke. Congress needs to eliminate the exclusion these platforms ability to skirt libel laws as in its original concept no content was actually created . Those days are past. These platforms need more stringent oversight by real late enforcement at State and Federal levels. Can’t trust hoodie man.
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly."
Thanks Mr. Stephens. For a GOP conservative-no-matter-what like yourself, you describe here your party's latest offering in the form of Trump and what he thinks is an administration. It is instead a pile of chaos mixed with corruption and laced with lunacy.
In the lack and self-serving departments, Facebook has nothing on Trump and the current republicans in congress.
That's the deeper problem.
4
Just delete your fb account. My understanding is that the utility of data plateaus in any case, and they might be close to that plateau. Which means the business model of selling data to advertisers is coming to an end. Just delete your account in any case and have a nice chat, in which voices travels through the air, with your loved ones and close acquaintances. It will be your revenge to live without facebook.
3
"Facebook’s house, Facebook’s rules." That's the reality of the situation.
2
"Let the buyer beware." When did that idea become obsolescent? If people are naive enough to believe something just because it's sitting on a computer screen instead of a T.V., or newspaper, what can you do about it? Whatever it is your reading on a monitor, a human put it there. So why would you arbitrarily, unilaterally believe it? A human being put it there! I do agree with Trump on one thing. The idea of a person allowing their vote to be swayed by something they saw on monitor is farcical.
2
How much proof does everyone need to delete the Zuckerborg? FB has and is causing untold damage every minute and the Borg are incapable of change no matter what lies he says.
5
Ain unintended consequence of FB thought police is the suppression of conversations about racism. Shaun King, an activist, had his post pulled because of his discussion of racism against African Americans. King has enough societal capital to lobby FB and have his post reinstated. Most of us who work in the area of racial reconciliation in our communities do not have the political power or the social capital to argue with FB. I recently got banned from FB for a few days because I called a white racist something akin to chalky hedgerow swain. I deleted my FB account. If FB wanted to be gatekeepers for public discussion, they should have set up the platform in the beginning with those guidelines but they didn't because FB started as a platform to make fun of university women and to rate the babes. Zuckerburg never had good intentions. Best thing that could happen to public discourse would be to shut FB, twitter, and Instragram down completely and return to writing letters to the editor where your local newspaper professional played gatekeeper over polite language.
2
The big hoopla over social media is a result of the liberal left's realization that it isn't the progressive propaganda machine they had hoped for. And instead, like talk radio, has become a platform for conservatives to have a voice without liberal media interference. Not a peep of dissatisfaction would be heard if social media was being dominated by leftist ideology.
2
Bret, rock and roll has all the answers....” first I look at the purse” .
Would your life really be so bereft if you didn't use Facebook at all?
4
“Life imitates art” The Social Network was a popular movie several years ago. Zuckerberg came across in the movie as a small, selfish person who couldn’t find a date. As time goes on and we learn more he looks petty. Like a super coder who has very little life experience or common sense. He looks like the kind of person called a dork or weasel back in H.S. But he has power—thats scary. Art imitates life.
4
We didn't have Facebook during Jim Crow, but newspapers and radio and pushed conservatism /White Supremacy.
What did Billy Joel sing, "We Didn't Start the Fire".
Mark Zuckerberg is a greedy unprincipled man. Be that as it may... Mr. Zuckerberg isn't responsible for people being dumb, emotionally unstable, lazy, misogynist, racist, religious bigots, weak and/or stupid. Demagoguery has been the corner stone of American politics: An habitual lying racist was elected to the Presidency.
If Mr. Zuckerberg lacks wisdom and humility, one can argue the American people have failed to do our jobs as citizens also.
3
I don't use Facebook nor Twitter, and can't imagine why anyone relies on strangers' posts for their news. Similarly, while I know OF the individuals mentioned, I don't have to read what they have to say, or listen to them. If they're banned from Facebook, their fans know where to find them, and can still discuss their ideas with their "friends" in their Facebook echo chambers.
That said, I don't think Facebook should be solely responsible for policing content for hate speech, human trafficking and child abuse, terrorism, and other threats. If their AI algorithms help to detect such threats, so they can properly investigated within the bounds of the law and without violating First Amendment rights, that might be a good thing. Of course, it might also be misused by an authoritarian state.
Too complex a subject for me. So happy to have missed the popularity of Facebook, when it first launched.
2
Are we to understand that Bret Stephens, conservative person, is arguing for the break-up of large companies just because big is bad? The concentration of power in the hands of people who are ill-suited or ill-equipped to wield it is hardly a problem unique to Silicon Valley—it is a feature of any mega-corporation. Do the energy behemoths behave any more wisely? And are the consequences of their self-interest any less pervasive? Certainly not, yet I don’t hear Bret Stephens wailing about other examples of the mega-corp.
He points out that as a private company, FB can exclude whomever it wishes. Then he concludes with hand-wringing that it is unknowable whether FB, either by design or by ineptitude, may exclude some who are deserving or include some who aren’t. Well, “see above,” Bret—that is the unintended consequence of unregulated capitalism itself. Laissez-faire sucks, ‘m’I right?
I, not a conservative at all, agree with the logical, but perhaps unintended, conclusion of Bret’s article: yes, let’s modernize and begin once again to enforce our anti-trust laws; and, yes, let’s regulate when that is a more effective and appropriate alternative to anti-trust. The laissez-faire backlash against regulation and anti-trust that began in earnest under Ronald Reagan has gone way, way too far. We need to revive the tools—higher taxes, anti-trust enforcement, robust regulation—that helped make America great in that hazy nostalgic past so beloved of Republicans.
4
I have been writing about this for almost 10 years, but no one wanted to entertain it...especially the media.
It is well documented that the greatest challenge of both Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs was...interpersonal relationships. Successful, fulfilling interpersonal relationships are key to emotional maturity.
People with healthy balanced interpersonal relationships...are emotionally mature. People with healthy interpersonal relationships…know the value of trust and privacy.
Both Jobs and Zuckerberg created products that bypass genuine interpersonal connections; the creation never falls far from the creator.
On top of that, why would we believe - the key word is believe - that a young man with virtually no life or business experience, who's greatest personal challenge is interpersonal relationships, would wisely and responsibly run a company charged with protecting the personal information of billions of people all over the world?
Wisdom is the product of experience and emotional maturity.
Shame on us for believing otherwise; I guess Mr. Zuckerberg is not the only one who needs to mature.
2
I don't understand why the author is so upset. Facebook is a perfect example of capitalism that the author praised so many time. Let the free market to sort this thing out. Facebook accumulated too much power? But that is exactly what the capitalism produces, otherwise how did we get the high inequality when few people have much more political, moral and technical power than the rest. These people allowed to shape our rules and standards without any certification of their expertise. Why should we condemn Zuckerberg but not Koch brothers?
4
Aside from FB's very cynical business model that profits from its users' profiles and preferences without real disclosure, its founder's values are aberrant. Simply put, Zuckerberg is not trustworthy. Yes, fabulously wealthy with his $64 billion, which no doubt contributes to his arrogance. Ms. Swisher's recent suggestion that the recent fine should have been $50 billion not a "parking ticket" size fine of $5 billion might have gotten Zuckerberg's attention.
It will eventually have to move to a subscription based service, but only under regulatory pressure because it prefers the stealth notion that it is an open forum for users, many of whom probably spend hours trying to be connected and relevant. To me the unintended consequence of what we blithely refer to as "social media" is actually anti-social media.
1
@Andrew indeed, it's anti-social. Years ago we spoke about books we've read, concerts we've visited. Now we are speaking about who posted what. Comparing instead of living.
I never wanted to give up all of my Internet privacy so I never joined Facebook. I have survived just fine without it. The Internet remains very much a Wild West sort of place with some very good features and a lot of unsavory characters. Let the buyer beware, or as the Romans used to say, Caveat emptor.
1
Some people are born without empathy, so wisdom never grows in. They do not fathom how life works for those who have empathy. In fact they think of us as illogical and irrational, wandering around with our hearts on our sleeves. For Trump, lacking empathy is a huge benefit. It means he can be as cruel as he wishes, since the rest of us will not stop him. For Zuckerberg, whose lack of empathy is legend, it means his conscience is clear because he does not intend to cause harm. It matters not to either man that they are causing harm, but the underlying reasons are different. Unintended consequences for Zuckerberg is an oxymoron.
5
You've outlined a principle that governs so much of interpersonal relations. People do enormous damage to others because of their empathic deficit. Intention is not a cover for harm because others with empathic maturity can see the unfolding consequences resultant in the lives of those vulnerable to these bad actors. For those lacking much capacity to care and empathize with others, knowing that they cause harm or degrade the vulnerable may only be more appealing to a certain personality type, especially if they tell themselves they have a clear conscience.
Perhaps there is a limit to what even a reasonable healthy person can "accommodate" when it comes to empathy... an empathy fatigue in these crazy times. But even when something is not a priority of importance for one's care, concern or engagement, emotionally mature people understand pursuing their goals and desires can have unintended consequences that they proactively want to understand and mitigate. Emotionally healthy empathic people seek to the understand broader ramifications on those around them knowing that, interpersonally, talk of intentions is often a weak but convenient bromide used to avoid responsibility for harm. Those who discount their harmful behavior run the gamut from the "benign" (unintentional) narcissist to the malignant sociopath and everything in between. It is a disturbingly common deficit presenting across society and can be seen in everyone from poets to politicians, bankers to business types.
2
I still have a Facebook account, but since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke I’ve visited it only once or twice. Even before then, however, I noticed that my Facebook “friends” rarely rewarded thoughtful long form posts or those that strayed from the group’s social or political consensus. The result was a mutual admiration society where admiration was contingent on expressing views within a narrow and predictable ideological spectrum. Such is the case with social media platforms in general: since we no longer talk face to face, since we’re socially isolated and crave companionship and reassurance, we’re willing to put up with the unspoken but nonetheless rigid, confining, straitjacketed assumptions they impose on expression.
2
If Facebook wants to engage in viewpoint discrimination--which is plainly what it is doing--then it should no longer enjoy its special exemption from libel laws. If it wants to act like a publisher rather than a platform, it should face the same legal consequences as other publishers.
1
At least Facebook appears to be doing this on its own, otherwise the right to free assembly on its platform might appear to be at risk.
Mr. Stephens argues that Facebook doesn't have a "moral duty" to protect free-speech rights because the Constitution doesn't require it. Whether or not he's right in his conclusion, the argument goes a bit fast there. Nobody thinks that the Constitution is a complete guide to what we are morally required to do. John Stuart Mill, in "On Liberty," if I remember correctly, argued that society should not suppress unpopular speech.
@Mark, since Facebook is a private company, how DOES the First Amendment actually apply to them?
The reason I ask, is that I don't expect the New York Times or Breitbart to publish content written by just anyone, even if that content violates their editorial guidelines and corporate policies.
Of course, I doubt Facebook's founders envisioned that the platform would become somewhat of a "news" outlet, over time.
This is an actual question, not a disagreement, btw. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell, online.
@Karen Lee, Facebook is not a private company. They’re publicly traded! And they have a responsibility to be a protector of Freedom and democracy.
Mr. Stephens writes that, thanks to technology, there's too much power in the hands of people "who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly." I'm a bit too prone to saying I told you so, but that pretty much sums up the message of the last section of my book, "Not So Fast: Thinking Twice About Technology," published in October of 2016 (just out in paperback). That section, entitled "Fearless Leaders," has three chapters: "Gamblers," "Consequences," and "Hubris." It opens with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The age has an engine, but no engineer."
1
Brett Stephens has once again confused the purpose of business with the pursuit of ethics and morality. The two are not the same. They may overlap, since businesses generally don’t want to kill their customers, but that doesn’t mean they won’t poison them in the run for the “gold” that is the effort to maximize profit.
If you want superior ethics and morality you have to have laws, rules, regulations that keep the profit pursuit in line with humane and human values. Only those whom we refer to as “saints” generally do this most or all the time without prompting. Studies show that heads of companies have a higher level of sociopathy than the average person, so the idea of their being superior in any ethical manner to the average person is absurd on its face.
Mr. Stephens continues to promote the false idea that business leaders are somehow better than workers. And as long as people get suckered into this conservative notion, its opposite, that workers are “lesser” and laws that support them are progressive or radical (words which have been intentionally imbued with negative connotations) that is how long the American voting public will be voting against their own interests. I don’t see any great wisdom coming out of the Republicans who back business 100%, nor any great morality nor ethics for that matter, but I guess you have to write about something and criticize something. These businesses are simply making more money and are more obvious in their emptiness.
3
I don’t use social networks. This will sound smug—maybe it is—but I don’t need the validation or attention or exposure that networking provides. I am a librarian by profession, and I think the most important message I tried to give students was that any information on the Internet has no checks for truth or accuracy.
Bret, I think you fail to realize how difficult a task social networking has to stop abuse. While Facebook has clearly looked out for its own profits and well-being, I think your column suggests that the Facebooks of the world could solve this problem if their hearts were in the right place.
Here’s a simple example of how hard it is to address the problem. My sincere belief is that Donald Trump has done much more damage to this country through his documented lying and personal attacks on Twitter than, say, Louis Farrakhan has. Our President uses the Internet to lie to tens of millions of willing followers every day. Would you say that’s a fair statement? And what is it you’d like to do about that?
4
I closed my Facebook page years ago and am hearing from my adult children and their friends that this platform is quickly becoming something that only old fogies use to post opinions and vacation pictures. Creeping irrelevance may solve Mr. Zuckerberg's problem, but not in a way that makes him more money.
2
Facebook, like it or not, has become the digital version of the public green where free speech is constitutionally protected. Facebook's ability to limit speech is chilling in the sense that who's next after the low hanging fruit of an Alex Jones or a Louis Farrrakhan? When does Facebook get the call by a Trump politician, or any politicians or party for that matter, threatening possible anti-trust hearings if they don't like what is posted on the platform? Are advertisers like fossil fuel companies or military-industrial complex companies, who threaten to pull ads, going to be able to have a say in who Facebook allows in? We've already seen conflation of anti-Israeli government policy with anti-Semitism and those that challenged the Trump-Russian collusion conspiracy theory, now debunked by Mueller's two year investigation as pro-Russian and pro-Trump apologists accused of being conspiracy theorists themselves. Where does it stop? Who makes that determination of whether a point is hateful or just unpopular or countervailing to the economic interests of the powerful? Silicon Valley? Do we really want to turn over our free speech access on the digital public green to corporations? There are laws that already exist that hold those accountable for free speech abuses and the slander or harassment of others. The current lawsuit of Alex Jone is a perfect case in point.
1
I quit Facebook a month ago. I hadn't been planning to, I just had a sudden realization about how 95% of what I was seeing on it, I didn't really care about at all. Facebook has done so much tweaking with the ads and what shows up to the user, to me it's been rendered too much work to find that interesting 5%. I'm wondering if they'll engineer their own demise as society (hopefully) learns to use/ignore social media in a healthy way. For how much time I formerly spent daily on FB, I am surprised at how much I don't miss it.
4
When the US government appoints a trusted third party to manage and control the registration process of Facebook, I will start to trust Facebook. The key to Facebook's success is its provisions in the registration of its users to maintain anonymity. That, accompanied with its ability to act as a mass media outlet without the regulations imposed on actual mass media outlets has given Facebook far too much influence. Make Facebook adhere to the constraints of media companies, and take away anonymity of its users. Do these two things and Facebook will join the ash heap of the twenty or so failed social platforms that came before it.
2
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly...
[as demonstrated] by the way... Facebook’s leaders attempted to handle their serial scandals over the past two years. Ordering opposition research on their more prominent critics. Consistently downplaying the extent of Russian meddling on their platform. Berating company employees who tried to do something about that meddling. Selling the personal information of millions of its users to an unscrupulous broker so that the data could be used for political purposes." Bret Stephens, thank you!
Absolutely right. I hope the FTC, the courts, and Congress will take note.
Strangely enough FB has been the best source I have found for back stories. I consider it to be far more educational and timely that anything that is presented as news on MSM, especially the chatty. slanted, and boisterous "news" anchors of MSNBC and CNN...and I am a lefty. I am tired of seeing their polls, so askew as to be laughable, paraded on the TV screen with effusive predictions about our next nominee. On FB I find an array of polls that clearly refute the numbers spewed by MSM and their minions. Also, I find a great deal of support for progressives and their platform, and yet there is always open dialogue from all sides. I am even given the right to decide which posts I want to see and which I decide are too commercial, or just plain unrelated to my interests. So the idea to create FB somehow suits the times of No-news news that the networks offer. And for that I am grateful because what else have we the people got, for heavens sake!
@Stephanie Rivera, interesting perspective. What are your thoughts about Fox News?
Just wondering, because I don't know any progressives who refer to themselves as "lefties", and who refer to the "MSM".
@Stephanie Rivera, interesting perspective. What are your thoughts about Fox News?
When you read a back-story on Facebook, do you verify the source, and if so, how? Why do you choose to consume news via Facebook, rather than directly from the news sources that you DO trust?
Just wondering, because I don't know any progressives who refer to themselves as "lefties", and who refer to the "MSM".
The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly.
Politicians?
Are companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google really exerting world-domination? Or is it just that our definition of the "world" has grown so narrow in scope that we've stopped paying attention to everything outside their fences?
It's a false dichotomy: these companies do have a lot of real power, but we, their audience, are artificially magnifying it when we allow ourselves to forget everything we value and perceive that lies outside their realms.
1
A significant factor in the phenomenon Stephens cites is the erosion of a liberal education. Not liberal in the partisan political sense, but liberal as in liberal arts and the humanities.
For many decades, education, particularly higher education, has become vocational training. Philosophy majors were replaced by undergraduate business degrees. Several generations of young folks were discouraged, by parents and advisors, from English Literature degrees in favor of doing something that will get them a good job. Technology "wizards" are even worse, often bypassing real education as they learned the intellectually bland vocational skill of coding and made too much money too soon.
Our society believes in a correlation between wealth and worth. Thereby, these young lions gain unmerited influence on all manner of things. Bill Gates has, perhaps unwittingly, contributed to the corrosion of public education. Zuckerberg tried to bully New Jersey schools with his fortune.
Money controls America and, increasingly, the ones with the most money have no heart, no real love of beauty, no highly evolved ethics, no rich understanding of history or the human condition.
Zuckerberg's disproportionate influence on all of us is a particularly grating example, but the problem is much broader.
4
@Barking Doggerel Zuckerberg is not young, I am younger. I've seen people much older than me who adore him, i don't. But, to say it as it is, his social media is a tribute to educational decay and let me say it ... specialization. The decay of generalization, philosophic training and, let's admit it, reading, is pursuing a generation of clickers. Just compare the theory of shades in a cave (which impressed me at high-school) with liking someone's cat. What's easier?
A few questions. First, how do we know that these are "unintended" consequences. Second, what gives the impression that the billion-dollar companies and their owners are left leaning? When did they do and what did they do to improve the lives of the needy except for those who have explicitly structured foundations? Third, what kind of left-leaning fake news, false information campaigns are there on social media similar to the right-wing machinery of falsehoods on the same platforms?
No, the valley is not really left leaning. Yes, social media is an addictive menace that has to be regulates.
2
I think Zuckerberg is one of the worst human beings in the world and his application is a danger to everyone who has an account on it. He and his application are global menaces;.
Zuckerberg has no concern tor the users but sees them in terms of how he can use them to make more money. He has no regard for people's privacy or content. He should not be allowed to continue running the company. FOr the sake of the users he should be removed from office. The company, for its numerous breaches of the law should be fined to the point of bankruptcy.
What is even worse, is the way he has succeeded in forcing other applications to use Facebook as interface to the full use of these applications. For example you cannot post a message on Politico unless you have a Facebook account. This should be stopped and there should be an alternative way to use a system without having a Facebook account. The ability of a uses to have full use of an application should NOT depend on their having surrendered their privacy to Facebook.
I do NOT have a Facebook account. I think the use of that application is DANGEROUS.
7
If one is a conservative who takes a dim view of government authority, this is the trade-off. There will be no power vacuum. Something, someone will fill it. This is a remarkable column by a conservative because it aligns so well with a basic belief for us on the Left. Corporate power is not to be trusted any more than government power is, and this is true in a number of ways that go beyond Facebook.
One small side note: Milo was banned by Breitbart, too, so maybe that guy really shouldn’t have a platform anywhere.
5
The issue isn't really regulation-- which I'm not against. The issue is the wider and deeper collapse of culture and the growth of anarchy. Basically, the digital age has wiped out credentialed gatekeepers that we relied on to expose the fakery and the bias and the terroristic and foreign-financed stuff. And while the campus left controls some of this, the radical right are the ones that spotted it first and exploited it to take power, long before Trump, although Trump was an early and eager spotter of it. Actually, Bannon-Breitbart crow about how they did it -- take their word for it. We know exactly how Fox built the silo, and how it keeps its hostages excited and expands their numbers.
Fakery starts early in the narrative -- we still have media who refer to the "Church" of Scientology. Say, what? Church = tax dodge. Sometimes it means 'arms cache'. The genie can't be put back into the bottle, and Zuckerberg knows it. The only hope for a solution is to counter-build a digital world that IS valid & independent journalism, and scholarship, and alerts the reader to the boys in the dark corners.
3
Technology, like all tools, has no intrinsic moral value. It is “good” or “evil” according to how one uses it. A platform as complex as Facebook, indeed all social media, has so many users that how could anyone foresee the ingenious and sometimes nefarious uses to which we will put it. So, Stephens is throwing stones at glass houses again. Yes, wouldn’t it be wonderful if tech leaders were humble and wise? But such moral qualities are not simply in short supply in today’s US, they have nothing to do with the talent and skills required to become a leader in technology—heck, very few professions inculcate such moral qualities. But op-ed writers, now there is a class of humble and wise folk. With opinions so self-evidently true, and so compelling, I can’t understand why society and government are still so dysfunctional. People, heed these luminaries!
1
There's no such thing as hate speech. There is only speech and censorship. This paper consistently chooses censorship. The first amendment allows you to articulate your ideas and criticize others in any imaginable way. People used to be able to handle that and enjoyed it.
It is also clear there are financial reasons for wanting to regulate your chief rival for advertising dollars, whether you admit it or not.
1
When Mark Zuckerberg announced that he saw Facebook as "the new religion" that was it for me.
I engage in no social 'media' and yet somehow live a full and informed life. Imagine that.
I do not trust Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow social media titans of power. Profit drives their actions and they are an incredibly greedy bunch.
The monsters are out from under the bed.
1
The “slippery slope” conundrum. I’m running for city commission in Dayton Ohio. I also own an ad agency. Facebook is the best platform to exactly target the people who vote in primaries. A year ago I exposed the sheriff with video showing his corrections officers pepper spraying a restrained jail inmate. I included 2 seconds of that video in my campaign commercial- and Facebook censored it saying I couldn’t promote the spot because of “violent material.” They did not take it down, but restricted the truth from the voters. TV stations, because they are regulated by the FCC would have to run it, but would cost much more and reach a lot of people who aren’t in my jurisdiction.
Do you still think Facebook should have this much power?
Some guy named George predicted this.
“All animals are equal, some animals are more equal than others.”
My favorite t-shirt right now? “Make Orwell fiction again.”
2
Fine for Facebook to bar Jones, Farrakhan and other hate mongers. Now, is Twitter concerned about providing a platform to a national leader who - much more dangerously - pollutes the atmosphere on a daily basis with lies and false information? But the real problem is us - we who allow Facebook et al to invade our privacy and litter our minds with junk, all so we can "communicate" better with one another. What about email? Texting? The telephone? Or even writing letters?
1
Who needs Facebook and other social media platforms, anyway? If you want privacy, just boycott them.
1
Bret Stephens' "Valley" evokes Tennyson's: "Into the vallley of Death rode the six hundred"...different valley, same stupidity whether leftist or conservative.
But "The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly" now embodies much of American corporate leadership and is the sine qua non of the Trump administration.
With so many scandals through America's great universities, which are infusing their "tomorrow's leaders" grads with wisdom, humility and honesty?
2
Facebook has been around for long enough for us to step back and ask if it has really done anything for society that we didn't already have. After having tried it and dismissed it twice, I do not feel diminished in the least for not being involved with it. I can send messages and pictures specifically to those for whom such information might be germane via e-mail, without burdening anyone else. I can also make a phone call, write a letter, or (OMG!) travel for a face-to-face visit. And, when I so choose, I can even post my opinions on a widely read forum like the New York Times. Who needs Facebook?
3
FB is a misnomer, it has very little to do with the individual, what it is, is a money making scheme to market individual information. Mark Zuckerberg has the ethics of a flea.
Too many are enamored by their name, their life and their mis-preceived "friends". So they eagerly post too much personal data into cyberspace. What could possibly go wrong?
1
If concentration of power is in the hands of those who do not have the bandwidth. Does this buttress the calls to break them up?
I put Facebook and similar platforms in the category of opioids.
As a college administrator, I have witnessed firsthand how destructive social media has become to healthy face-to-face interaction and interpersonal social bonding. Never mind the nature of speech which it allows and protects. Their greatest unintended consequence has been the breakdown of normal human interaction. I have witnessed a cafeteria filled with students barely speaking to one another, with heads all bowed looking at their screens with thumbs blazing away. These people are addicted to their smartphones.
Call me old fashioned, but in its own perverse way, Facebook holds as much power over the millions of misusers of the platform as the Cali Cartel does over those who chose to use drugs.
1
Why do people even use Facebook anymore?
2
Social media is not media or social. Enter at your own risk.
2
Should be more concerned about the few people running Facebook than the thousands of nut-jobs believing Alex Jones? Write a column about how these people exist, because I can't understand how so many people can be so easily led by a single crazy person like Jones.
2
The first amendment is a right and privilege that is important to our democracy. But people who lie, spew propaganda and hate abuse and hide behind this privilege. The problem is no accountability. Sorry, but If someone knowingly lies, we should censure them or note is big capital letters, this is a lie. And if there is damage done by the liar, they should be held responsible. We unfortunately have despicable people who are abusing the first amendment to further their own personal agenda and benefit and have no guilt or social conscience of the consequences. Trump is a prime example.
2
You are absolutely correct, Bret. The real problem is that in our current culture of unregulated capitalism people who lack wisdom, experience, trustworthiness and humility have all the moral and financial power. We call them the “one-percent.” Fortunately for you, our system allows you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, go out and found your own online platform or start your own publication. Good luck.
1
And who has wisdom and responsibility? Have you seen all the old men in government these days? Please rid yourself of the wise old man myth, the youth are better than us.
2
This piece is laughably transparent. Stephens is lobbying to protect conservative speech. He fears that "alleged Islamophobes, militant anti-immigration types, the people who call for the elimination of Israel" might be banned. Well, I say good. They should be banned. If you don't want to be banned then don't promote hate and violence. It was the same with the right wing's opposition to the IRS targeting conservative groups. The reason they did was because that is where the cheaters are. These are the people who advocate that taxation is theft. When your resources are strictly limited (by Republicans) you focus on your best guess of who is breaking the law. They should be profiled. So it's ok for conservatives to support the profiling of non whites and Muslims by the police but not ok when Republicans are profiled.
When you take extreme positions you run the risk of being rejected, being shunned by the rest of society. When you are anti science on things like global warming and vaccination you have to live with the consequences. You are entitled to your opinion but not the facts. Facts are facts whether Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Con-way agrees or not.
2
Middle-aged, educated, wealthy and somewhat smug liberal that I am, I have to thank the Times for hiring Bret Stephens, whom I otherwise vaguely knew only as a WSJ editor. By far the smartest writer at the Times today. Or at least the one who I learn from the most.
The sudden anonymity afforded everyone in the digital age was always a cause of concern, and rightfully so, but nothing was ever done about it by the brilliance in silicon valley because they made more money by allowing people to maintain that anonymity and selling advertising on bigger, though flawed, numbers. No person could walk into a bar anywhere and spout hatred like Hitler, and yet, all of a sudden, all these perverse insular individuals seeking celebrity could do exactly that without any recourse whatsoever from the safety of their bedroom. No, that was never going be a problem, according to these brilliant tech leaders. And politicians, with not one ounce of digital experience, or foresight, for that matter, thought to monitor and regulate it -- which is one of government's primary jobs, after all.
As for bringing us all together. The reason most people get on so well is because they don't know everything about each other and spend oodles of time apart. No mystery what happens to families at Thanksgiving when they start talking politics or religion.
3
If you do not approve of Facebook's self censorship, then don't use Facebook. Is that not the same idea behind the pro-choice crowd's viewpoint on abortions?
1
Three things:
1. These are complex issues, but one thing is clear: governments need to regulate these companies. When profit is involved, individuals and corporations cannot be trusted to do the right thing. Good government and heavy regulation of the abuses of the person (and the environment) are our friends--not our enemies, as the grasping types who begrudge every penny they pay in taxes always try to claim.
2. Parents need to put more time and effort into educating their children on the uses and dangers of technology and social media. (Parents will respond, as many of them typically do respond to any suggestion that they spend time talking to their children about big issues, that the schools need to do this. If that's the case, pay more in taxes and get rid of after school sports so we can extend the school day and add classes on these issues.)
3. Everyone everywhere needs to get off social media. Really, close it down. You don't need it. If you have photos you want to share with family, create a Google folder, and share the link. If you want to know the news, visit reputable sites, where you can read reporting by people trained in journalism and bias. If you crave attention (as evidenced by your incessant need to see how many likes your photo of your breakfast this morning got), go streaking in the park, show up at karaoke night, whatever. But, it's time to acknowledge, isn't it, that **nothing** good is going to come to humanity via social media platforms.
3
This reminds me of the opioid makers. They try and make it look like they aren't pushing this incredibly addictive substance. While at the same time they make every effort to increase sales telling the public they 'cure what ails ya'. I have never joined a social media platform. At some point the line is crossed where the bad outweighs the good. Facebook is trying to make it look like 'they got this' when , in fact, they have little, if any, control. I know it's the 21st century. You have to take a little stealing of your identity, a little stoking anger until it reaches the boiling point, and a great deal of lost privacy to be able to learn that a friend from high school just had a baby or is single again or just got a new job. If you want to stay in touch you can text or call or, god forbid, send a letter. There won't be anyone sending you offers for stuff you don't need, but think you might like..... someday. Facebook will go out of business or, perhaps, someone like Zuckerberg 2.0 will come along and develop a platform that addresses the down side of social media before getting so many people hooked on it. At one time everyone thought pain killers were wonderful, too. But the warning signs were there all along. They just got louder and louder over time. Until.....
Whose Face is Facebook?
What a lousy company. Their business plan is to sell your information for maximum profit. They spread hate and greed worldwide. They were used by our enemies, along with other platforms, to steal our election and insert their favored candidate. If you continue to use FB you are complicit.
1
The problem is not the freedom for deranged minds to spout off their lies, the problem is the stupid people who actually believe them and act on those beliefs, a much more difficult problem to solve and one that present day America has not found a solution for.
A start would be to vote the hateful republican party out of office in 2020.
3
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a "champion of political moderation"?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is on open record as calling for a war against Islam. In an interview with Reason Magazine in 2007, when asked whether she was talking about a war against "radical" Islam, this was her answer: “No. Islam, period.”
She is also on record as claiming that Islam is "a destructive, nihilistic cult of death" and that "Islam is the new fascism."
So Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a "champion of political moderation"?
I thought this was the Opinion Page, not the humor section.
2
The SPLC " wound up smearing Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz, both champions of political moderation, as “anti-Muslim extremists.”
Thanks for this. I have donated to SPLC in past, but once they went cuckoo, no more. They did the same smear on Sam Harris, who is anti-jihadi only.
Great column, I agree entirely but you’re lacking a conclusion.....what are your solutions?
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly."
*Reviews Stephens' previous work to see just how vigorously he protested the installment of Donald Trump as President and numerous members of his administration.*
1
This column begins & ends, bizarrely, with unsupported assertions that Facebook was created for altruistic goals like "bringing people together" & "celebrating community." Facebook was created to make money. Like the fossil fuel industry, like the fast food industry, like the rest of Silicon Valley, it markets itself as wanting to create a better world. The goal was not to foster communication or community, but to redefine communication & community as things that could be monetized--a morally despicable, totalitarian goal. Facebook turns people into products, who, instead of interacting, advertise themselves. It turns society into an amoral machine in which differences and hatreds are as profitable as shared values and goals.
There is no such thing as a "conversation" or a "community" among billions of people. There is no honest reason for monitoring, recording & selling the words & actions of others. There is no moral or political defense for selling yourself to Facebook. There is no benign reason for any company or government to have that much power. The thing I cannot understand is why so many people believe the marketing. Is it simply because they've already sold themselves?
2
Social media is an oxymoron. The technology has operated to eliminate the meaning of the word social - people actually connecting with each other in a real time community - in its quest for worldwide connection through apps. Why did we think that technology developed by tech nerds with limited social skills would benefit relations among human beings?
2
We could also use Facebook as a Mirror held up to the minds and souls of Americans, and look to see just what needs to change in the future.
If there are millions of disaffected American youth, maybe returning to the draft and giving them a chance to serve and help build up America would be best.
If there are millions of bullied and shamed people who use the platforms to gain some stature, maybe we need to change our primary education to make sure all kids feel loved and wanted.
If we don't do things like that, I am pretty sure we will see a Rwanda time in our country. Hate radio, internet, tv, they are all there for the exploitation of the lovers of war and violence.
Hugh
1
Mr. Stephens is falling for an old gambit. Like arguing with a drunk, he is trying to rebut the argument on the drunk’s terms. It won’t work.
The Progressives (You remember, those folks from 100 years ago?) had a much more effective method. Break up the monopolies.
Facebook is social media in America. Break it into tiny pieces to reduce the power of each segment. Do the same with Google. And Apple. And Amazon. And don't forget ExxonMobil, Spectrum, and Disney (Yup, even the Mouse).
It’s the bigness of these companies that make their power a problem in our society.
3
With between 2 and 3 billion users - almost half the world's population, it is difficult to imagine FB losing so much of its customer base as to go out of business. I suppose that will never happen.
I recall the parable of the small child walking along the beach at low tide and, seeing thousands of stranded starfish on the sand, began to throw back several into the water. The child's father asked, "Do you really think your throwing back a few starfish will make a difference? There are thousands stranded on this beach."
The child answered back, "It will make a difference to the ones I throw back."
I completely deleted my FB account after the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, and, after about a week of withdrawal, recovered completely. I do not miss it at all, but I do appreciate the time I have re-captured in my day. I wasn't a chronic user like some people - my daily time on FB amounted to about 1 hour a day, 365 hours a year, (or a little over 15 days.)
Fifteen days. I get my news feed from the NY Times and other reputable sources, not some wall post passed on of dubious authenticity that may or may not have been composed by someone in Mother Russia. Not to mention the annoying ads that I would be bombarded with daily.
If you really want to maintain contact with your "friends" meet them for lunch, or call them on the phone, or write them a letter, send them an e-mail or text. I had over 300 friends on FB. Honest-to-god I didn't know three-quarters of them.
2
Ironically, I unwittingly joined Facebook while sending a NYT article to my son. It took two tries, but I'm now out of touch with Mark Z's world.
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly."
Oh for a moment I thought Mr. Stephens was referring to so many of our state and federal elected officials. My bad.
He is certainly correct that the more youthful and less experienced corporate leaders of some (notably, not all) tech companies gives pause for concern, but those individuals are accountable for strategy and decision-making to boards of directors whose members do possess many if not all the qualities Stephens highlights. If criticism is to be raised, we should not absolve the directors of these companies from its attention.
2
Facebook should police its content. Users need to be able to police content as well. Don't believe everything you read unless you verify the source. This is a simple high school social studies lesson. The only problem is that the GOP only wants STEM in schools.
2
Having worked with IT people in several organizations, there is no doubt, they are smart, and, when it comes to using various technologies to solve complex systems problems, they are valuable additions to any organization. Having said that, when they venture beyond their data processing offices into decisions about the goals and values of those systems, their narrow area of expertise fails to provide them with the kinds of real world/academic experiences to serve as a source for big picture decisions. In fact, at times, I found myself reining these IT people in when they would make these decisions in offices without consulting management. Too often they equated being the smartest person in the IT office with being the smartest person in the organization.
7
I think you've elevated the conversation to higher place than the reasoning behind it. Let's go back to the "judo move." Facebook doesn't want to be held accountable. Full stop. Everything else is a philosophical debate with little or no relation to Facebook.
The question then becomes: How do we hold Facebook accountable when Facebook doesn't want to be held accountable? They don't even want to release their ad bookings and you trust them with encryption?
Encrypting everything is just a means to destroy evidence before anyone can realize there was a crime. Not surprisingly, encryption services are a central concern in the Mueller report. The physical evidence of conspiracy may have existed. However, investigators will never be able to produce it. It's gone.
I think lawmakers need to think long and hard about the implications of this circumstance. We are long overdo for proper regulation over technology services. If it means running Facebook out of business, so be it. They don't deserve the trust.
4
The day that Facebook became so large that it required an algorthym to supervise truth and decency was the day it became too big.
Sure, the digital tool is needed to review the zillions of posts. But are there enough decent human beings operating the machinery? I doubt it.
Facebook paints itself as a neutral platform - which it really can't control. I deleted my account 2 years ago.
I recommend that Mark delete the whole company and just do some nice philanthropy. His invention is a mess and it's contribution to society is not a net positive.
If Facebook, Instagram and Twitter vanished right now, we would survive nicely. We could text or email the kitty pics. It would be OK.
3
Facebook is a great way to keep contact with friends and family. It is not a source of news or policy. The 24/7 news format, brought to us by cable, is problematic. It is impossible it keep news factual and fresh, most of it is biased and speculative. I trust major network news to be as factual as possible. They cover everything in 30 minutes. The rest need to be investigated and weighed. Facebook as a source? Only when providing a link to reputable sources.
4
“a company that once wanted to make the world more open and connected”
Would anyone but the most naïve actually describe Facebook this way? One look through his early emails shows that this was never his true motive.
5
Facebook is a voluntary association. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it. Use other platforms or don’t use any. Trust me, life will go on.
11
Except it's not, Mark. I do not and will not use any social media except newspaper comments. However, my friends and family do and consequently any information - inlcuding photos - they post about me belongs to facebook.
It is much more sinister than people realize.
1
@njglea
Absolutely right. The first time I was "tagged" in a photo, I was shocked. Then, I rapidly accepted it and posted the photo on my FB page. Now, I've deleted my FB account. One learns, too late, and in the meantime, they have taken what they want from me and, for all I know, their customers are continuing to use it to my detriment, and yours.
While Congress may not infringe on freedom of speech, there’s no law requiring a free megaphone be given to every hate monger.
When hate mongers need a platform they can go out and raise their own funds. Like NRATV did. It’s not hard to envision them selling air time to Alex Jones. Or some British news billionaire could discreetly fund a platform for them.
It’s here, it happens, it’s not going away anytime soon.
How do we counteract those interests? I’m not sure it’s possible. There was a mob in Rome two thousand years ago and there is still a mob today.
3
Though the writer is using Facebook and its presumed liberal bias (education seems to bring a liberal bias, as do facts). But in fact, even business run by conservatives (think of tobacco and oil) tend to lie, hide their sins, and even try to crush enemies. It is time to accept the no industry can regulate itself - when they do (think of Boeing) we get disaster.
17
Just to be clear, you are talking about Silicon Valley, which for 50 years has been the engine for innovation in America, and the world, not the US Senate, that ‘wise, trustworthy, humble, experienced’ center of stewardship for our country’s reputation, sense of duty and moral consciousness.
Who else might we ban from social media platforms? Perhaps, the current occupant of the White House. If we judge users of media by the same standards, perhaps cutting off access to Twitter there, might be an example of a commitment to a new sense of civility.
8
Communications systems in America and the concept of people who lack the wisdom and humility to use the power of communications systems responsibly?
America is a ridiculously contradictory nation when it comes to thought and communications systems. On one hand we are educated as much as possible, told we have individuality, that we have individual conscience, must make our own choices, but the reality emanating from both political parties and the powers that be is that no man is an island, and you are not even permitted to demonstrate that that can be so, but that you must be subjected to any number of psychological techniques, must succumb to barrage of advertisement, must fall into either of the big political folds, and in final analysis if you are still resistant, well any number of sly behind the back censoring/surveillance techniques exist to make sure you are isolated from the mainstream thus ironically proving indeed a person can be an island, just one cut off from communicating with others in any fashion.
One look at all arts and sciences in America shows how much citizens suffer a next to total breakdown of the mind. You don't get great and growing careers in the arts and sciences anymore (trajectory of growth of great novelists, musicians, scientists) but rather one shot wonders or at best secret careers overseen by inscrutable, secretive CEOs, and what gets most voice is official channels of media controlled by powers that be...Where is wisdom, power, humility?
2
"Tech is not exceptional." - a quote from an article I read in the Times a couple of weeks ago and thought I had saved, but now can't locate.
Until the myth of the "exceptionalism" of Tech is openly, widely discussed and dismantled, nothing is going to change.
6
What is the difference between Facebook and Professional Journalism?
Journalism opens the deeds and actions of the responsible ones, making that info public, thus policing the elites, giving the rest a tool to protest. At the same time, the private lives of the rest are safe. In this way, Journalism (with some exceptions) has always been a tool working for citizens.
Facebook, while giving a fake feeling of openness, reveals information of masses to the elites (quite opposite to what Journalism does), and floods the masses with the constant torrent of info (like cats, beautiful latte pics), thus distracting them from the deeds of elites (which are very-well protected from "the power of Facebook"). So does Facebook work for citizens?
The fact that Facebook uses collected info against people is not that horrible, as its other effect - distracting attention.
Lately, I've been hearing this thing too often: "I don't care about the global stuff, look at this kitten". See what happens? On their sm pages, people see what they've liked, or shared, or what's being targeted toward them. NOT what they are likely to see on TV or read in news. All their informational torrent is designed in a way to distract.
And why is that? The socials developed so fast, that no one had time to think about Facebook hygiene. What would sound weird years ago, like spending days scrolling is pretty normal now. What if Journalism would take its power back? For the sake of us all of us?
3
Moral Power is a phrase that needs to be unpacked. In a culture that is highly individualistic, materialistic, and focused on winning, morality is a casual afterthought. The winning play is to dismiss consideration on the moral impact of one’s own actions and point to others’ actions as worse (note the president and his allies). The winning strategy (for oneself) is to avoid or pay lip service to the very idea of service, duty, and common good. Facebook simply reflects and amplifies the dominant themes of an increasingly amoral America.
5
You make it seem like limiting or banning certain specific material from a media platform is new and dangerous. The latter may be true. The former is not.
You may not like it but what we view has ALWAYS been determined by a small group (usually white men) based on THEIR subjective assumptions and preferences. This includes what gets into the newspapers (and on which page) textbooks, television, movie screens etc.
Social media and crowd sourced infotainment is the first truly unfettered access to material we’ve had as a society and what people choose to share is often disheartening. But like children we’ve been overly protected from the harsh reality. Maybe we collectively need the opportunity to hone our critical thinking skills and learn to self regulate and moderate our own content?
1
A quick glance at what kids in high school and middle school are using as their social media platforms will show you that Facebook’s days are numbered. Soon, we’ll be reading about the privacy problems of another app that’s captured eyeballs.
Perhaps rather than worrying about whether algorithms are sufficiently nice to Conservatives or not we start teaching people how to be aware of what social media’s purpose really is. Maybe, like cigarettes, social media comes with a warning and social media companies pay for ads that help people understand how to be discerning about what they’re liking and sharing.
Facebook is an easy target because rather than undergo the hard work and soul searching necessary to use their products they’ve opted for a slick technology fix that won’t solve the underlying problem. They are deceiving themselves, and in the process allowing their users to be deceived.
2
@M I really don't understand why social media don't have warning signs yet. It causes addiction - yes. It influences psychologically unstable - indeed. It causes deaths? Think, would people be doing stupid dangerous selfies, but not for their addiction to likes and tweets?
Now, it makes people stoned? Yes! Distracted? Yes. Many doctors compare it to gaming, and gaming is officially a drug. So what you are saying here : " Maybe, like cigarettes, social media comes with a warning" - it's pretty logic and smart. Why it's not like this yet?
Facebook pretending to care about the protection of its user’s privacy is rich. Even Zuckerberg couldn’t keep a straight face when saying it.
At the end of the day, our personal habits and attention are the sole product that Facebook cultivates, harvests and sells. It’s that simple. They likely could not survive a significant shift from that model.
The thorny thicket of digital censorship is rightly to be treated with serious caution; but if we’re relying on Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithms to save us from Alex Jones, then Houston we have a serious problem. No amount of skillful curation can stop people from believing the most absurd and dangerous things if they’re angry, desperate and ignorant enough.
And it’s looking increasingly like tech merely exacerbates this problem rather than alleviating it.
10
People who blindly put their faith in technology will unsurprisingly fail to see what is actually going wrong. I don’t trust any billionaire, leave along these childish Gatsby’s running their digital cons, to think for me. Stephens is right to the extent that these morally uneducated titans are incapable of regulating these new robotic colossi. That would require a commitment to fundamentals of freedom and decency largely absent our leadership classes. They will need to be restrained and retrained. I wish calamity on their houses. A pox on SM and its banality.
3
The problem is less the odious speech that appears in one's feed than it is the seeming inability of most people to avoid lapping it up like an animal which eats until there is no more to eat. Frankly, you don't need social media and would be better advised to spend you time productively building actual relationships.
5
Silicon Valley has become a big fat target and whipping boy of the right wing because on many issues the majority of its denizens do support liberal beliefs, particularly on social issues. However, there is also a strong libertarian current as another comment noted, which is closer to right wing beliefs on economic issues.
The fallacy in Bret's argument is to make Silicon Valley out as some sort of outlier when in fact just about ALL American corporations in this hyper-capitalist New Gilded Age are equally amoral if not immoral. But I guess he doesn't mind that Big Tobacco has just hooked another generation of nicotine addicts so long as they vote Republican. He doesn't mind that Big Pharma has cut a murderous swath across Middle America in pursuit of profit so long as they vote Republican. He doesn't mind that Big Oil has lied for decades about climate change and done everything it could to forstall public action so long as they vote Republican.
I get it, the right wing is thrilled to have "liberal" corporations to go after. Fair enough, Facebook and the others deserve it. But I'm more worried about opioid addiction, climate change, and decent health care for all Americans than I am about Facebook. Prioritize your indignation.
4
I agree with this commenter’s priorities of climate change, the opioid problem, and health care access. But he misses the point that the Republicans who repeatedly choose the interests of the oil and gas industry, big pharma, and the tangled private health insurance industry over the problems those industries create are in power with significant help from Facebook. Decidedly so the in the case of Trump. It doesn’t matter whether the Trump campaign conspired with Putin. I’ve long thought it foolish to think that the B-team Trump gang-that-can’t-shoot-straight had the smarts or discipline to pull off a conspiracy. Facebook made it unnecessary for Putin to conspire with the campaign to get the Republican president he wanted. Read the first volume of the Mueller report and watch the Congressional hearings on Facebook’s role in the 2016 election, especially around voter suppression tactics in key districts in swing states like Michigan. (The “Blacktivist” play was particularly insidious.) Indignation towards Facebook is properly directed.
As long as human nature is what it is, the internet's visionaries and entrepreneurs will continue to make the same mistake every other human endeavor has made over the centuries in assuming the human element is operating in ethical overdrive. I just wonder in what epoch we'll be before we finally recognize that, as a species, we have an uncanny knack for self-sabotage.
Oh, that's right...we've already determined through the most profound of collective stupidity that we won't be here long enough to find out...
4
You've posed the problem Bret, but not the solution. I don't hold that against you - I am not sure that there is one.
Facebook is playing the Scandal 101 game. Apologize, pin the blame, bury a scapegoat and move on. (Not familiar with this - try looking at GM and the fact that they knowing sold cars that randomly killed people.)
But ... who is the editor, the curator, if not Facebook? The government? Crowdsourced like a wiki? Almost every solution cedes monumental power to a corporation, a politicized government, groups of trolls.
The real solution - that people learn to think, to review fact, to explore bias in content, or even just use Snopes for goodness sake, is beyond our reach. That leaves us vulnerable.
2
It is difficult to say what the biggest "Oops!" in history is, but in recent years the conduct of Facebook is the runaway leading candidate. 2 Billion people now use it, But from a personal security standpoint it might appear to a typical user that it was created by a bunch of kids just out of the sandbox. Then suddenly, years later, Zuck and the gang discover that their work can be misused, and even if used as intended is wildly insecure and can jeopardize people's lives. Meanwhile, they play havoc with little matters like the International Copyright treaty. They claim to co-own everything you post. Just try to take down things you posted that some of your friends reposted to their friends.
As "Oopsies" go, this one is a gem.
2
I ran an animal shelter for years in New Haven, CT (fairly well known). Every time we turned a person down for a dog or cat, they'd go on Facebook and slam me personally. Forget some of these people were hoarders (trash piled to the ceiling), or their last four dogs were all hit by cars, or fifty people wanted the one Yellow Lab puppy we needed to place (1 happy adopter; 49 unhappy families). I received death threats (FBI and three police forces called), slandered (lies about stealing pets in Nashville? - I've never been there), people calling for my firing (and including resumes for my job), and attacks on every aspect of the very difficult work I did. People say things on Facebook that they would never say standing in front of you. I saw the worst side of human nature. Greed, entitlement, lies that hurt the chances of other animals from finding homes. Facebook and other social media outlets have ruined this country. And what exactly has its founder accomplished? What good has come of it? I'm thinking of Annie Lennox's song "King and Queen of America" - "We've never done anything, so let's say it loud!"
13
“The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, and financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly.”
If you substitute “person” for “people” you have an excellent description of the man millions of Americans (and the Electoral College) willfully sent to the White House in 2016 and still support wholeheartedly.
2
"Do you trust Mark Zuckerberg and the other young lords of Silicon Valley to be good stewards of the world’s digital speech?"
Well who am I supposed to trust instead? Trump? CNN? Fox News? The ACLU? Bret is right that private platforms do not have any legal requirement to post users' stuff. That is not censorship, it is editorial choice.
Read, watch, consider, think. Base your world view on information, not on trust.
3
I become concerned when private enterprises can control the speech of others. Where does it stop.
Can Verizon cancel Alex Jones's cell phone service because he uses hate speech over the phone? Should United Airlines refuse to fly Louis Farrackhan because he is flying to a rally to speak hatefully? Can Staples refuse to provide office supplies to hateful organizations?
If speech rises to the level to be criminally dangerous then the government should stop it. Otherwise, we should avoid and ignore it rather than have businesses be the arbiter of speech.
Sorry, but only short-sighted fools would volunteer to be the product thinking they were the ones doing the purchasing. Yet, it is indeed long past due for anti-trust break-ups, regulations and criminal indictments. Not for being stupidly naive or even disingenuously smug. Nope, for stealing and then selling millions of people’s personal data. And then lying to authorities about it. Squeeze the mid-managers. Threaten their stock options, publish THEIR personal details. The rats will quickly scurry to sing their lungs out. And once we retake the House and deliver a 400 electoral vote wipeout to the loons, that is exactly what the reformed DOJ is going to do.
1
So, you're telling me you don't like what Facebook is doing because the "Valley" has a liberal bent. Oh, dear lord.
You remember what happened about a year back? Sinclair News Corporation directed the news anchors of its multitudinous local news stations to spew identical, scripted, conservative rhetoric during their nightly news programs. The great United States of America, where our journalists supposedly think independently, are being told what to say by their conservative corporate overlords. We looked like hypocrites to the rest of the world.
I detest Mark Zuckerberg, but if he's going to be a liberal corporate overlord by ridding the platform of the the likes of Jones, Farrakhan, et. al., I really can't object too much.
3
Doesn’t matter to me; I quit Facebook and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Facebook is digital ammonium nitrate.
When used for good Facebook is a sharing platform that allows people to connect with others globally, and ammonium nitrate is an effective fertilizer that helps grow food. But when used for evil Facebook can be a tool of democracy underminers, racists and hate-mongers, and ammonium nitrate can be the key ingredient in making bombs. Alex Jones is the digital Timothy McVeigh.
Zuckerberg has determined that it is costing Facebook more to tolerate the bad guys who use its site, so he is banning them and trying to change the business model. Just like, after the Oklahoma City bombing and other similar events, the makers of ammonium nitrate determined that it was better business to do all they could to keep the stuff out of the hands of violent nut-jobs who would use it to kill people.
The only thing Zuckerberg can be trusted to do is what is in his own best financial interest. This is not a left-right issue. In the end it is all about money.
1
Facebook was given a federal exemption from libel laws based on being a platform and not a publisher. Since they are now controlling their content, that should no longer be the case.
1
Consider though Wikipedia. It is “tech”. It is policed by individuals who enforce guidelines established by other individuals. Users have a means to monitor context and to seek correction. Through public participation and governance it achieves a level of trust greater than that achieved by the Constitution for our government. In terms of the free sharing of ideas, I have more faith in Zuckerberg than I do in many pundits and politicians who suppress opponents by bluster, lies and deliberate distortion.
The right of “free speech” has an implicit assumption that the protected speech expresses what the speaker believes; to safeguard the right we should insist on the ideal. Wiki does a better job that our politics and Facebook, with user scrutiny, offers hope.
1
I'm not convinced that Silicon Valley is "...culturally, politically and possibly algorithmically biased against conservatives". Many (if not most) tech titans are libertarians who want the government out of their lives. How else do you explain their tax evasion and desire to end net neutrality? Silicon Valley is comfortable with a plutocracy and, therefore, comfortable with a wholly de-regulated capitalist economy. Why would conservatives oppose that line of thinking?
3
"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of . . . power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly" perfectly describes the Trump administration and most of the people serving in Congress.
8
Agreed this is not a conservative vs. liberal problems. See for example Uber, destroying tens of thousands of decent jobs, in the US, and creating millions of poverty wage jobs. We need technology to increase the pie, not to simply carve it into ever smaller pieces.
3
Why do we expect Facebook et al to be better behaved, protect citizens, more idealistic than US President and his administration? I have no choice: I must pay taxes even if I disagree with 40% of how it is spent. I must pay into Social Security and Medicare even as I have no idea if they will exist and/or in what shape when it is time to get my repayments from my contributions. Meanwhile, joining , reading and contributing to Facebook is 100% voluntary and free.
11
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"
"I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it.
Everything in our world is subjective, and less and less of it is objective. Most of our population knows neither the definition or connotation - or consequences - of the distinction between those two words.
Facebook can cut the microphone, or "moderate" the speech by haplessly attempting to discourage the use of certain words and phrases; but to ignore the truth that all speech is merely a reflection of the actual thoughts of whomsoever expressed them is the real problem.
Words are protected speech because they have consequences; they can induce a panic and stampede leading to death if you yell "FIRE" when there is not one; yet it is a moral imperative to warn people if indeed there is fire. Our society uses "freedom" to bastardize both ends of the spectrum.
But words, however uncomfortable and for whatever reason they incite, repulse, or inspire others - are indicators of what a person is thinking. We can erase what has been printed, we can censor or censure who has said it; but none of that will ever be guaranteed to change the thoughts and motives of the one who said it.
That's what this country isn't facing right now. The words are signals; they are indicators of the real temperature of this country. I don't know at what temperature precisely everything starts to burn, but if we keep acting as if merely cutting the microphone will change anything, we won't.
5
As usual, Brett Stephens is right on the money, so to speak. As long as social media are profit driven, the chickens will continue to selectively guard their coop and the foxes (so to speak) will continue to feast on them.
Even with good products and good intentions, profit-driven enterprises generally lack the perspective and disinterested judgment to regulate themselves. This is as true in communications (e.g. Facebook) as it is in airliner construction (e.g. Boeing).
Regulation is the role of good government, which along with common sense has in these times become an oxymoron.
10
If the courts (in any country) decide Facebook is a publisher it can be held liable for causing harm. That will be the tipping point - opening Facebook up for endless, expensive lawsuits which, like Big Tobacco, will ultimately end up forcing it to change how it does business.
8
@Eric May
Sounds attractive, but I'm guessing fox news is considered a publisher.
I've yet to see any lawsuits.
Americans seem to value " free speech" above anything else.
@Eric May
Except right on this page of NYT Opinions is a piece explaining how Big T has NOT changed its ways one whit, and has hooked another generation of nicotine addicts.
2
The reason we are confounded by the new issues of the internet age is because we keep letting Republicans run things. Any form of regulation is off the table; interfering in the accumulation of staggering wealth by people barely old enough to drink is too "socialist."
The solution is right before our eyes in Europe. They are enforcing meaningful internet privacy protections and protecting their citizens from corporate greed far better than the US.
20
Bret, there's no "left-wing tilt"as you conceive it.
Peter Thiel, venture capitalist, assisted in the funding for PayPal, Facebook, et al. He is a well-known libertarian, and many followed his political views.
Netscape inventor and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen supported Mitt Romney and Carly Fiorina.
Men and women in tech support Democratic candidates as long as they are making money. But they do not brook government regulation and the redistribution of tax dollars to the lower classes. Democrats in Silicon Valley are not JFK's Democrats, much less FDR's.
Hence, I think the disruptive force of social media is neither Republican or Democrat. It's whatever these junior billionaires dictate to the rest of us.
With the deletes of fringe elements and nutjobs, Facebook is immunizing themselves from government regulation. They attempt to show good faith and citizenship in an effort to keep Uncle Sam from impinging on cash flow.
And it's not really any message that's paramount. It's the medium of social media, and its potential to allow interference from aggressive enemies of the U.S. In addition social media has allowed the unlettered to have a voice in mob rule. This is particularly attractive during deindustrialization and the ordeal of change in the means of production.
The only thing which will save us from a pernicious populism is regulation of the open structure of social media.
10
@Wordsworth from Wadsworth I have been on FB for six years and I have an M.A. in English...so unlettered I am not. But regardless of your snooty "mob rule" portrayal of FB, there is plenty of spirit and wisdom to go around and a chance to exchange views and human feelings and emotions...very difficult to find in the new century where we are all carved up in our mundane jobs and house holder duties. "Pernicious populism" will continue to plague you, my friend, and I will be in the forefront of the assault.
Facebook, free speech and people who lack the wisdom and humility to use their free speech responsibly?
America today is a mindbogglingly contradictory and nonsensical nation when it comes to the concept of free speech. First, we are told as citizens that we are the preeminent superpower and political economy and that the foundation of this is our superior educational system, especially higher education, yet the actuality of our lives is that millions of citizens rather than being able to form their minds in basic creative, integrative process are subjected to barrage after barrage of advertisement and propaganda by Official Reality Disseminators (official outlets) and if they in any way protest are criticized in any number of ways.
One look at all the arts such as music or literature or film today demonstrates that a person is really not permitted to grow intellectually but puts out stunted growths and the only people permitted to actually intellectually grow are those who have passed as safe by the powers that be, and they of course because of having passed muster are far more often than not predictable, tame, bland, uninteresting, dully moralistic, and always there, never able to be dislodged from position.
What this means is that for the average citizen on Facebook or anywhere else in American life if you are not in accord with the powers that be, and for all your education, you will be accused of not being in accord with reality and any number of like accusations.
5
I am surprised that Bret Stephens, especially as a conservative (in the traditional, not Trumpian sense), ignores the underlying reality. These tech corporations are all publicly traded companies and, as such, their only goal is to maximize profits, slick, costly public relations campaign to the contrary notwithstanding.
Therefore, the important issue is not who is running these corporations but, rather, how we both should and can go about placing constraints on them through economic (boycotts), electoral, regulatory, legislative, and judicial actions.
As to unintended consequences, Stephens seems to be somewhat mixing them up with (the often overlapping) unforeseen consequences. Those unforeseen negative consequences he refers to were actually foreseen and even written about in a number of these comment pages by more than a couple of us quite a few years ago.
5
First the NYT runs a series of articles under “The Privacy Project” which details all the way that our privacy is being taken away from us. The underlying assumption in the articles is that privacy is good.
Now Mr. Stephen is worried that Facebook’s increased focus on privacy will provide cover for hate groups. (An article on Slate had a similar concern.) So... Privacy is bad?
The answer is that privacy can be good or bad, depending on the circumstances. It would be nice for the NYT and other publications to have articles that consider both sides of this complex issue, instead of simple-minded articles that contradict each other, leaving a schizophrenic impression overall.
3
I'm not expecting Zuckerberg (or Google or Twitter or...) to do anything for me either, but I do expect Congress to do something. If they can't come up with any useful regulation ideas on their own they could try reading up on how the EU is tackling the issue.
24
I don't buy products I don't need or want. It doesn't matter to me if I buy a sweater at Kohl's and see ads to buy more sweaters -- I don't want anymore sweaters, so I'm not buying them. Same with coffee, drugs, political views, too many selfies, too many pictures of your cat. If I don't want to see it, I turn it off. I'm not expecting Zuckerberg to do things for me. Am I the only one?
171
@Tom J The problem isn't the sufficiently informed and self-aware consumer of information, and cat videos are trivial. The problem is the dim, easily duped, and passive consumer who is confronted with disinformation about important subjects, such as contagious disease or national security.
98
@Tom J And similarly we can stop the opioid crisis by just telling everyone to stop taking these drugs. Will it work?
41
@Tom J The algorithms of targeted advertising ideally can be a great positive for advertisers & users alike. I don't see ads for disposable diapers, among many other irrelevant (to me) products & I appreciate it a lot. Facebook's entire business model is taking the information you voluntarily provide & using it to target ads at you. Anything you post on the site become's Facebook's to use. Some nefarious actors (Russians) in rare instances have used your data to accomplish their purposes, but generally, your data is used to decide whether or not to send you ads for feminine hygiene products. There is no right to privacy when you voluntarily give it up. If you don't want FB to have your data, don't use it. Want FB to provide you with a free platform & never to make any money? Then you need to quit Facebook. You can live without it. It's silly for people to think that FB should provide a service to them for nothing. If internet companies can't make money, they will not provide a service. No one is going to give you a free platform. The selling and using of your data on Facebook (and other social media platforms) is what has made it a free (to the user) service. If we want to have a serious discussion about restricting the ability of these companies to use and sell your data collected through the app, we may also have to be willing to confront the user demand for everything to be "free" what services we're willing to pay for to provide us with the privacy we also want.
34
Just as with other corporate entities and sectors, technology will not police itself, as profit is its only motive, not ethics or any sense of morality. Governments around the world (except for here in the U.S.), recognizing the dangers of such as social media, are stepping up - at last - to not only fine but to regulate these industries. Perhaps one day the U.S. will do the same.
96
@Ellen. It is one thing for companies to “police” who and what appears on their platform, it is quite another for the government to do it. Should you live long enough to see that, Ellen, you will know that the US no longer has a democratic government.
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@Ellen Yes, China is certainly stepping up and regulating the social media and we know how beneficial that is.
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@B. Rothman, disagree. The libertarian thought process that all regulations are bad are predicated on a flawed understanding of the human condition.
If they were in charge in 1939, the U.S. would not have fought the Nazis and instead would have chosen to just "do business" with them (e.g. sell them weapons?).
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I strongly agree with the gist of this good piece of writing.
The sub-head captures this very well. I retired from a number of government positions as an environmental regulator. In doing so, I worked with a wide variety of businesses. These were ones whose activities potentially physically directly damaged the environment. I recall one older oil company person telling us in the first 5 minutes of our first meeting "we will ONLY be doing the absolute minimum requirements of your regulations. So tell us right now what they are?" (This, of courese, was before he even described what they intended to do, thus demonstrating his arrogance even further since regulatory requirements are entirely dependant upon actual well-described proposals. ) Contrast this with other occasions where generally younger people in other oil pipeline companies demonstrated "wisdom and humility to use their power responsiblity" by honestly asking us what they needed to do to protect the resources possibly impacted: and then responding with good ideas. Thus the difference is between those companies driven entirely by profit, led by those who are almost illiterate outside of their own very narrow knowledge, and those who demonstrate "wisdom and humility."
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@Paul. Where is the public’s guarantee that government regulators and prosecutors act with wisdom and humility?
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@Paul A typical company whether small or large would retain its own environmental consultant, and ask the question what are the minimum requirements? Not go to the govt and ask them.
@Steve B
Public's guarantee?
1) Existing requirements for openness by government are met;
2) Active oversight of the Executive Branch agencies by Congress; and
3) An educated and informed citizenry.
When people (including legislators) get their news from Fox, Facebook, and Twitter -- it's hard to meet those requirements.
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One of the main issues with Facebook is that its billions of users are not its customers. Rather, they are little more than vast mountains of data the company slices, dices and sells to advertisers. The advertisers are the actual customers. People can howl all they want about Facebook compromising their privacy, but Facebook could care less about the rights of individual points of data, which is all its users are. Want to change things? At a minimum, require the company to offer a subscription-based service free of advertising.
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@Mark Siegel -- Right -- the users are not Facebook's customers; they are its inventory.
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@Mark Siegel
Wow. This is really interesting. When I go on Facebook to see cute cat and baby and graduation photos , it is like I am also walking into the local mall. I am a customer.
And I come to rely on Facebook to keep me up on the happenings around my town with nonprofits or creative endeavors. So I am hooked. I just am now processing this new idea expressed in both these comments. My very personal life ( as everyone”s. life is very personal) is also inventory for some ad agency. I have to let that sink in.
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@Mark Siegel And how about giving the users a piece of the action? A fraction of a cent here and there among 4 billion users might soon add up to a pretty penny.
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"The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly."
Are we talking about Facebook or Fox News? Social media in general or consolidation in ownership in radio and local news. Russian bots or post Citizen's United dark money groups?
And who exactly are the people with the "training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives" to control speech? Are they to be appointed? Elected?
Do we just break up all large media companies of any type and bar Americans from accessing their foreign replacements?
I don't dispute the problem. I just have yet to see any proposed solution that would garner anything near consensus in this country. And I don't see a path to getting to one.
Incremental improvement may be the best we can do. And banning odious figures like Jones is not bad start.
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@LT
You raise some good questions, but there is one policy solution that hasn’t been discussed in either the article or comments I’ve read. That is anti-monopoly law.
Unlike other media, Facebook has a near-monopoly on social media. It should never have been allowed to buy Instagram, for example, allowing it to further consolidate its position. Its gini coefficient in social media is far greater than what in most any other industry would precipitate antitrust review.
The great virtue of this approach (which Warren has supported) is that doesn’t require making the judgements Stephens refers to or even talking about the First Amendment.
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@Michael I would add that whereas federal policy is something that is debated in the open (or at least it should be) and all Americans have input (or at least should have), the control of media by corporate mechanism ensures that the democratic components of that conversation are removed. Corporations are top-down structures and the guy at the top is the owner. Denying this reality is unproductive.
These arguments against federal regulations conveniently ignore the reality is that by removing oversight, the country has effectively placed the rule of the country in the hands of a few dozen CEOs of America's major companies. Read that sentence again: does that conform to ANYONE's definition of democracy?
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@LT
I thought we were talking about Congress.
I'm a little offended by the combination of the names Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, and Milo Yiannopoulos in the same sentence. I cannot see any rational comparison between Farrakhan and the other two. Mr. Farrakhan has offended many, but he also has inspired quite a few. Without a doubt he is controversial. The problem with the latter two is that they haven't inspired anyone. They inflame and dump a constant stream of sewage on the society, just to make money.
The utility of Facebook for the purpose of pacifying and disarming African Americans is aptly illustrated by this Stephen Moore quote: “So, you know, that, that is a joke that I always made about, you know, Obama lives in, you know, the president lives in public housing,” Moore says. “But I didn’t mean it like a black person did.”
Now when I grew up, in the 1960's, the existence of an executive level moron like that would have resulted in molotov cocktails on Pennsylvania Ave. Today, however, we all just get together and complain to each other on Fakebook, our little safe "free speech area" that the 1% never listens to. As long as we complain there, we are doing absolutely nothing.
Perhaps it's time for us all to get off Fakebook and start spending our time letting leaders know how we feel. The Teamsters used to do that. Now, without unions, we need somebody to object to something.
Louis Farrakhan, for all his faults, has contributed more thought provocation in the last decades than those other two could dream of.
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@Charles Coughlin I would ask you to consider that those who agree with Milo and Alex will say exactly the same as you but about Louis. A challenge in our current environment is that rather than each side believing that the other side has an opinion that we don't agree with, they instead believe the other side is evil and should not have an opinion.
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@Charles Coughlin
I'm a little offended at your blind spots. I can assure you that Milo and Alex Jones fans believe that while they have "offended many, but he also has inspired quite a few."
I'm sure KKK and Nazi fans feel the same way. Ditto for the alt-right. What you are saying is that the fact he vilifies another minority and degrades them is forgiveable because he does something for blacks. I wonder if the shoe were on the other foot (someone who did something for Jews but spewed horrific vitriol about blacks) you would be so forgiving. Your flippancy with the harms he causes is offensive.
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@Charles Coughlin
Charles, the group that Mr. Farrakhan heads, and is the reputed 'spiritual leader' of, has some heavy baggage.
There is persuasive evidence Malcom X was assassinated at the direction of Farrakhan's 'spiritual guidance'; for the effrontery of disagreeing with the 'leader'.
This is an action that rates as too common now; yet, remains for many detractors (myself included) as important and necessarily worthy of strong rebuke by those not impressed with Farrakhan charm.
I think any group who claims to be religious/pious/commendable should not employ murder as a religiously sanctioned tactic. See ISIS for further information on this phenomenon.
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Facebook is right to ban these people. The freedom of speech is not equal to a freedom of reach. While I can’t endorse Zuckerberg as the very best candidate for being a censure, I can think of some much worse candidates too.
We should support Facebook’s effort to rein in the audience reach their platforms provide and to remove flagrantly toxic voices— even if the efforts are flawed, they are in much better spirit than other behaviors the company could (and has) engaged.
I have never used Facebook nor will I ever. However, I believe its conception was well-meaning, to bring the world closer together by way of civil and friendly social interactions and connections. I do not think Zuckerberg ever intended it to become so intricately involved with hate, bigotry, racism, and, yes, even the invasion of our democratic rights by a foreign adversary. But you see, I believe that Mr. Zuckerberg lost his way. Too much, too soon. This young arrogant upstart allowed power and greed to usurp his character. Some would say that his young age and naivete was the beginning of the end of an ethical code. Yet, as we have seen all too much these past few years under the Trump paradigm, age has little to do with the lust for control and wealth. Personally, I feel that Facebook is becoming an anachronism, unable to keep up with and not caring enough for users' exploitation and abuse of the digital world. What lies ahead for Mark Z is anyone's guess. But I can not help but feel that he should give up this enterprise which has gone astray. He has a wife and a young family. Perhaps, it is time for him to think about them rather than himself.
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@Kathy Lollock For having never used Facebook, you sure have a lot to say about it, or Mark Zuckerberg. Perhaps if you tried it, you would see hundreds of millions of people find it enriches their lives. I'm convinced if you had a referendum on Facebook, the majority of the population would not want to go back to a pre-Facebook era.
That Facebook's users are letting themselves be manipulated by fake content and propaganda says more about their lack of education and judgement than about the platform itself.
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@gus Do you think those hundreds of millions would be unhappy with a service that charged them $100 a year to do what Facebook does, but did not collect nor store data on them? That would protect privacy and provide tens of billions in dollars in revenue, a cash stream that would eliminate the need for ads.
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@Dr B, agree completely! Zuckerberg did not create FB to bring people together, FB is a data collection platform that tracks users and sells the information to companies who can use it at their discretion. FB is a means to an end!
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"In time it might also become a place where only nice thoughts are allowed."
Corporate America is not an unrestricted free speech democracy.
"Nice" is good business. Surely an opportunist like Zuckerberg would understand this.
Facebook is funded by sponsored ads. I doubt the followers of nasty, conspiracy-minded, I'm more-patriotic-than-you people on Facebook have as much money to spend as the "nice" people do.
I also don't think Zuckerberg is yet fully aware of his responsibility to be a "good steward." However, I do think he'll learn to profit from it.
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I’m going to just keep saying this: read Amy Webb’s The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity.
This book explains everything we need to know about Facebook, the G-MAFIA and artificial intelligence.
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Those of us who don’t use Facebook... don’t care what they do. Sooner or later, only the cretins like trump and jones will be left on social media. If you are still on twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, my advice is to save yourself and us all... quit. Now.
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Why are liberals always “smug and self dealing” in the feverish fantasies of conservatives in the US? Who could be more smug and self dealing that the Kochs and all the other billionaire financiers of the right. Why is it smug to care about those less fortunate than yourself?
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@Daniel Hudson
I am a card-carrying liberal, but I think the "smug and self dealing" label applies more aptly to liberals like Zuckerberg than to conservatives (really, reactionaries in my book) like the Kochs, who don't pretend to be virtuous.
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@Daniel Hudson
Stephens always needs to keep his "conservative" bonafides topped off (paychecks, you know) by using such pejoratives as "smug and self-dealing" against their tribal scapegoats, liberals. Imagine, though, what he would say if those same words were employed in reference to his own tribe of "smug and self-dealing" posers (who, incidentally, don't manage to keep Democrats from getting more votes) or, to be politically incorrect, his religion. It seems slander comes in many guises, some merely adjectives employed as daggers to maintain your rank.
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"Assuming that’s Facebook’s deeper calculation — it’s hard to think of another — then it may wind up solving the company’s short-term problems."
That's exactly what FB is doing. That has been and continues to be Zuckerburg's M.O. - lie, smile, do the dorky techy with the hoodie schtick.
It's actually not unlike Trump's schtick.
It's a shell game, over and over.
Zuck and Trump, two peas in a pod.
America is producing depraved leaders.
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Solution: delete facebook.
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I think the SPLC is allowed two mistakes (which were retracted) before losing its venerable reputation for tracking hate speech.
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@Mercury S
Well, the SPLC — which I once respected a great deal — didn't act until it was sued by Majid Nawaaz (who settled for more than $3 million).
And whatever one thinks of their political points of view, neither Charles Murray (author of "The Bell Curve") nor Ben Carson (!) deserved "listing" by the SPLC, either.
Considering the scandals that have arisen at the SPLC of late, and its growing propensity to overreact, I no longer donate.
Extremely proud and smug Facebook Virgin here. Told you so, years ago. If you can’t figure out what they’re selling : it’s You.
Seriously.
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@Phyliss Dalmatian I’ve said this repeatedly through the years to other NYT commenters who claim that they’re safe from Facebook because they never joined it: you are not safe. You are obviously using the internet to post this comment, and virtually anyone can share your comment on Facebook. With your name and location. Pretty much any use of the internet AT ALL means you have a data profile that is being sold.
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@Phyliss Dalmatian
Not participating is not a guarantee that you won't be impacted. I was libeled and defamed on social media, a vehicle I don't even use. People act with cruelty and impunity on social media. That happens all the time these days.
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@Nancy
NOT my real name. Yes, I’m Phyliss, but to spare embarrassment to the Husband, NOT our last name. Anyone that knows me well could figure it out. But those folks are Family, co-workers and long time Friends. Basically, I’m Kansas incognito.
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I would argue that state's have allowed the creation of corporation which can create public forums which the laws are stopping free speech. given that the first amendment flows down to the state level as well it means that the laws around corporate entities need to be re-examined to make sure that they don't enable unconstitutional behaviour.
“The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly.”
Wow, you mean like in the health insurance industry?
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@Carmine Exactly. I mean what profit-driven entity meets the Stephenson standard?
Elizabeth Warren has it right. Markets are great. But unregulated markets are thefts waiting to happen.
The societal organization in place to ensure profit-driven organizations behave in the best interests of the public is the government.
But Reagan successfully convinced the nation that "guvment is bad" and private enterprise can do no wrong. We've essentially been operating under this paradigm ever since.
The Facebook fiasco has pierced the paradigm slightly so that even a stalwart conservative like Stephenson is starting to see the character-flaw in a Profit is God mentality.
Voters -- vote out Republicans at every level of government so that sound regulations like the Fairness Doctrine and anti-trust laws can be reintroduced.
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@Carmine And the current government...
When publishing any idea involved the heavy lifting of ink and editorial gates, that was a kind of practical censorship, so thinkers and ideas have always been discouraged. But in the digital era, Facebook has become a de facto ministry of propaganda, and that's a problem.
Brett: I'm a fan of your columns -- a must read -- but the naivete of this column is exemplified in this para.: "The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly."
There is only one incentive that motivates Zuckerberg, Sandberg, et als: The bottom line -- i.e., profit. That's all that matters to them. Period. All of those qualities you describe above are irrelevant to their profit motive.
However, you fail to acknowledge what is obvious: Government has to step up in order to regulate Facebook and the other tech giants to prevent the sorts of abuses that have led to problems ranging from Russian interference in our election to issues of privacy. Brett, don't forget it was one of your Republicans, Teddy Roosevelt, who was known as the trust-buster, because he understood that democracy cannot exist in a society of unfettered capitalism. Even a free-market type such as yourself has to acknowledge (as you essentially do in this column) that Facebook's self-described self-regulation is a farce and government intervention is needed. Facebook never should have been allowed to purchase competitors such as Instagram and What's App. The anti-regulation bias of the past 30 years will prove our society's destruction.
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A lot of people have figured out that deny-apologize-promise something new is a lot easier and cheaper than carefully thinking about what they are doing and exercising caution or oversight.
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Facebook embraces capitalism. Capitalism needs robust and effective government regulation. Since we are unable to robustly and effectively regulate our own government, we are in deep trouble.
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The deeper problem is the overwhelming concentration of technical, financial and moral power in the hands of people who lack the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly.
You've just described FOX News and hate radio.
When the fairness doctrine was dismantled by conservatives under Reagan, they understood exactly what they were doing.
Trump is the result.
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@JEB
The hierarchy:
The People
Government
Regulation
Capitalism
Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg
Our problem is that we are perversely turning this upside down, placing an individual at the top.
The profit motive is not the same as the socially responsible motive.
Blaming Mark Zuckerberg misses the point. He is at the bottom. We are at the top.
We need to hold ourselves accountable.
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@JEB That's the paragraph that struck me as well. But it made me wonder, who does have the training, experience, wisdom, trustworthiness, humility and incentives to exercise that power responsibly?
In this age of corroded institutions, from banking to the Vatican, where small groups of flawed people can exert their influence to an extraordinary degree, I can't think of anyone.
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@JEB
The old Fairness Doctrine had the advantage of cutting both ways. Take a position as you wish. Make your case. Understand that anyone else with an opposing view has an equal opportunity to make THEIR case. This was the trade-off for use of the public airwaves.
Internet access in many ways is the new public utility in the same vein as the old telephone service.
Have as many providers as you like.. but the Fairness Doctrine is sounding more and more like a policy that needs to have another visit to the sunshine of Public Opinion.
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Bret Stephens may not TRUST Zuckerman et al. But they -- and their technologies -- are still there. Complaining about the motor car didn't stop it happening.
What we need to do is find out how to cope with the new world we live in, not simply complain about its gate-keepers.
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@Dennis Callegari
It's not "their" technologies - and they should not be allowed continued free transit on "our" information highway. Push them off to a scenic route, until they learn to play by the rules of a decent society, should we ever invent one. In the meantime, I agree that we would do well to discover coping mechanisms to prevent further robberies.
The key word is humility. It's recognising the limits of your intellect, the ability to get stuff done that relies on other, the interconnectedness of our choices and actions. I learnt these lessons the hard way but I am grateful I did. I hope everyone can get to this same wisdom easily.
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Bret Stephens raises a valid point. The twisting, slippery slope of censorship requires not only an intelligent and knowledgeable but a wise hand to guide it effectively.
Intelligence often is genetically based and knowledge generally can be acquired through instruction and study, but wisdom only is achieved through long and meaningful experience, which requires a level of maturity that only is obtained over substantial periods of time.
Warren Buffet may or may not harbor Bill Gates' IQ, but both exhibit a great deal of knowledge and possess wisdom which reflects their years; Mark Zuckerberg is quite intelligent and displays passable knowledge, but is clueless about what really drives the people who use and are impacted by Facebook.
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Is it a question of having the ability and will to act responsibly? The Tech-folks who own and manage the sites under consideration here think that's what they're doing. Are they? It depends on where you stand in the political spectrum. Another example, which I was please to see you obliquely reference, is this very newspaper. To liberals it looks like a haven of sane, evenhanded reporting; to conservatives it looks like Pravda--which is it? It depends on your point-of-view. Some commonsense censorship is probably needed, without it things can really go downhill. Thoughtful people have some sense of where the limits of free speech belong. Who was the Supreme Court Justice who said he couldn't define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it? Same goes for public speech--we all have a pretty fair sense when the speaker is crossing a line.
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@Ronald B. Duke.,
I'm not a conservative, but the situation here is worse than with Pravda, because in the Soviet Union everybody, including the government and the paper itself, knew that what was written there was a lie. It was just a game, a theater. But here we have a real success:
the propaganda become so powerful that it convinced a lot of people that a lie is a reality. It actually is very scary.
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@areader,
Just the latest example. Trump never said that Nazis are good people. But many readers still believe he did.
At a minimum, it is counterproductive to keep controversial figures off of social media. Nothing raises someone's stock faster than trying to keep them out.
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Facebook made a huge mistake in allowing fake news to infiltrate our country. Now, they offer hollow gestures to give the appearance of responsibility. It's just window dressing.
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