“That’s self-serving garbage,” he said.ĭoes it not make a difference that Mark Zuckerberg is a principled CEO with good intentions? Not according to McChesney: “I am sure the people who produced napalm thought they were doing a good service to protect the free world.” Digital colonialism McChesney scoffs at the suggestion that Facebook is acting democratically by serving its many users. When you get companies this big they are not just a threat to democracy, they are also a threat to capitalism Robert McChesney He has an extreme solution: if Facebook can’t be regulated effectively, it should be nationalised to ensure it acts in the interest of the public. They suck investment capital and profits away from smaller businesses and screw over the competitive sector.” “When you get companies this big they are not just a threat to democracy, but they are also a threat to capitalism. “We treat them like neutral utility companies but they are value-maximising commercial entities.”įacebook is a monopoly with too much power, argues author and activist Robert McChesney. “We don’t have the right regulatory paradigm for these globe-striding technology giants,” said Carl Miller, research director at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the thinktank Demos. ![]() Some believe Facebook has become too big to be regulated effectively. For every new dollar spent by brands online, a whopping 85 cents goes to Facebook and Google at a time when traditional publishers are facing layoffs. It’s so easy to place an ad and get immediate results,” said media expert Gordon Borrell, whose analysis suggests that Facebook has taken $1bn away from print publications in the past year. ![]() “They have perfected advertising in a way that makes it extremely enticing. In the first three quarters of this year, the company made almost $6bn in profit – a big jump from a mere $3.69bn in 2015. Thanks to its 1.79bn users and how much it knows about them, Facebook rakes in billions in advertising. But this year has revealed how difficult it has become for the social network to stand behind its mission to “make the world more open and connected” when the decisions it makes can be so divisive. None of these controversies made a dent on the bottom line Facebook had a bumper year for advertising revenue, and the $3bn investment to tackle “all diseases” (no big deal) through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was well received. Mark Zuckerberg must long for the day when his biggest dilemma was deciding which grey T-shirt to wear on his first day back at work. ![]() The icing on the already unpalatable cake was Pope Francis last week declaring that fake news is a sin. ![]() Things came to a head in November, when the social network was accused of influencing the US presidential election through politically polarized filter bubbles and a failure to tackle the spread of misinformation. Not to mention misreported advertising metrics and the increasingly desperate cloning of rival Snapchat’s core features. As the year unfurled, Facebook had to deal with a string of controversies and blunders, not limited to: being accused of imperialism in India, censorship of historical photos, and livestreaming footage of human rights violations. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, had just had their daughter, Max, and had been sharing warm and fuzzy photos of gingerbread houses and their dreadlocked dog Beast over the holiday season. “As the world faces new challenges and opportunities, may we all find the courage to keep making progress and making all our days count,” he wrote on his Facebook wall on 1 January. Mark Zuckerberg started 2016 with a cookie cutter message of hope.
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