In class this week, we discussed the Netflix Documentary “The Social Dilemma”. Given its popularity and critique of social media giants, most notably: Facebook. The company responded to the criticism with this post on their website: here
A CNBC news article commented on Facebook’s response poking some holes in Facebook's arguments. The one I agree with CNBC on is their critique of Facebook’s statement that users are not the product. Facebook constantly uses the “daily active users” as a key performance metric in earning calls and even goes so far as to provide average revenue per user. This further reinforces the conflict of interest that Facebook has when considering what is best for its users/products and what is best for the company.
I side with Facebook on its Election rebuttal to the documentary. The Cambridge Analytica (CA) scandal had rippling consequences for both Brexit and the 2016 US elections. The tools CA used have valid uses in regular business interaction but were abused by a malicious actor. Facebook acknowledged the mistakes made and have taken steps to prevent anything similar from happening. It is difficult to stop something from happening that has not happened previously, so its active effort to prevent something similar from happening again is the only reasonable expectation. There is always a cat and mouse game being played with almost every company and those who try to gain the system. As consumers we need to acknowledge and accept there is always going to be some risk.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/02/facebook-rebuts-the-social-dilemma-popular-netflix-documentary.html
No comments:
Post a Comment