Facebook should ban micro-trageting

 

“ I am really sad about Facebook, now I am embarrassed and I am ashamed” a memo written by Roger McNamee  to Mark Zukerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

Roger McNamee  was an early investor and had advised Zukerberg on crucial decisions including turning down a $1bn acquisition offer, and helped him hire Sandberg as his second-in-command, and saw Facebook’s problems long before many other grew concerned about the dangers that the social network posed to democracy.

Russian operatives are using the platform to manipulate political divisions and that millions of users’ data had leaked to Cambridge Analytica an analysis company  that worked for Donald Trump in the Republican candidate’s successful run to the White House.

McNamee rebelled against the Silicon Valley’s code of silence to become a key lead in a campaign against Facebook, and allied with former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris and lobbied politicians who eventually called Zuckerberg to testify in front of Congress in April 2018.

Zuked details how the company’s growth and data-obsessed culture drove poor decision-making , accusing Zuckerberg of operating the company “ as if everything could be solved with more or better code”.

Zukerber’s lean start-up model had significant side effect as  he did not have to hire far more experienced engineers, but could hire people his own age and mould them.

McNamee dreams that billions of users will rebel forcing massive change or that employees will rise up. Concerned about the capacity of Facebook to manipulate democracy, McNamee’s propsals range from those the social network could do instantly banning microtargeting in political advertising – to those it is unlikely to adopt voluntarily such as becoming a fiduciary with the same responsibility to protect user’s private data as doctors and lawyers have.

Zuked concludes that Facebook has mad “ few substantive changes “, simply addressing a list of past failures in sequence rather than the root causes – its business model and algorithm or anticipating new threats. If the company does not change that, others may do it for them.

 

Zuked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee, Penguin Press $28, 362 pages.