Welcome back to the show. The world can seem like a pretty dark place right now. So you’ll
be happy to know that someone is doing great, Facebook!
What data user scandal Facebook just keeps growing it now has 2.2 billion users worldwide
during the first three months of the year, Facebook’s users grew 13%.
Yeah but that 13% bump was just from all the Senators signing up to find out what Facebook
is or maybe they’re doing so well because Mark Zuckerberg genuinely devoted to fixing
things.
It was my mistake and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible
for what happens here.
I believe him, that upgraded sincerity algorithm is really convincing. I don’t know, maybe
Zuck really does want to make Facebook better the problem is that everything about the way
he built Facebook makes a simple fix impossible. Scraping personal data has been Zuckerberg’s
business model even before Facebook was Facebook.
Before Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook he created something called Facemash. Facemash
used photos of Harvard girls and then asked users to choose the hotter person.
Zuckerberg hacked into the school’s computers to collect images of students
Obviously people felt mocked or exposed and it was one of the first big experiences that
Mark had with the privacy issues of the masses
and what he learned from that experience was she rubbed me like money he also learned that
if you want to abuse users data, all you have to do is apologize and apologize and apologize.
Why did the founder of the hugely popular Facebook website, apologized to millions today
for invading their privacy.
The founder of Facebook was trying to save some face today by saying I’m sorry.
He confesses that the website’s complex privacy controls are just too much and he
pledges to do better.
Facebook has come out and apologized.
Mark Zuckerberg posted to the Facebook blog quote, I am the first to admit we’ve made
a bunch of mistakes about privacy. Zuckerberg has posted 25 times in Facebook history, ten
of those are essentially apologies.
This was a major breach of trust and and I’m really sorry that this happened.
You know a man has fucked up when he’s forced to apologize as much as a woman but while
they apologized in public, Facebook didn’t actually give much of a shit about solving
privacy issues. According to former Facebook operations manager Sandy Eric Ellis.
I had been the main person who was working on privacy issues. It was a real hornet’s
nest of problems because they were giving access to all this Facebook to developers
with very few controls.
Did you bring bring this to the attention of the higher-ups, the executives.
A number of folks including several executives. They prioritized the growth of users, the
growth and the data they could collect and their ability to monetize that through advertising.
Okay but privacy is not gonna pay for your life-size foosball table. We just have a really
fun work culture, it’s like they work hard but they also play hard. Now, I don’t think
it’s entirely fair to say that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care about privacy. I mean he did
buy four neighboring houses to protect his own and he uses those houses to throw some
crazy parties. But it hasn’t stopped Facebook from strip-mining the world’s personal data.
It reads Facebook messages if you have an Android, it can save your call and text data
even if even if you’ve never used Facebook, you might still have a shadow profile they
created based on information your friends unknowingly shared. Shadow profile is also
the name of my tasteful independent Cinemax movie. They are also great at providing a
nurturing environment for hate. Facebook’s community standards are often nonsensical
and even when they’re not, human Facebook moderators get to interpret these standards
and you know how awful humans are which is how posts like an event encouraging motorists
to run over Black Lives Matter protesters were allowed to stay up but don’t worry,
Facebook moderators did take down dozens of posts that said men are scum so at the least
some people’s feelings arent’ getting hurt. Now I’m pretty sure that Facebook’s
community standards are just a guy wearing a shirt that says you do you bro. Ads can
also capitalize on hate speech.
Facebook under fire, the social media giant removing a feature that potentially allowed
advertisers to target people with anti-semitic views including those who listed Nazi party
as their employers could say it’s automating and monetizing anti-semitism through a series
of tests on Facebook self-servicing ad buying platforms, reporters were able to target almost
2300 people who expressed interest in Jew hater, how to burn Jews, and why Jews ruin
the world.
Aw but if I can’t target Jew haters how will I ever sell my Steve Bannon action figure.
If you press a button on his back his pockmarks is pus and Facebook doesn’t just hurt people
online, it contributes to real violence. In Sri Lanka, Facebook ignored posts full of
viral rumors and hate speech about the Muslim minority though government officials begged
them to take them down. Even after the posts led a mob to destroy Muslim-owned businesses
and killed a young Muslim man, Facebook left them up. Posts like the ones that led to the
death of that young man in Sri Lanka and inflamed genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar
are promoted by Facebook’s algorithm because they get a lot of engagement. Facebook profits
off of human attention and the best ways to hold human’s attention are also the worst
things about us. Tribalism, fear, hate, minion memes. Facebook’s product is us, our cliques,
our personal information, of course, they’re not the only business ever to use that model.
I mean, I can only stand here right now because it helps sell Jeep Cherokees.
Jeep Cherokees, beep-beep it’s car time.
but Facebook is by far the most powerful and that’s a problem. Facebook isn’t evil,
Facebook is more like a robot that eats human skin. I mean maybe that robot does amazing
things like cure cancer or make thin mints and that is great but it’s fueling those
amazing things with human skin and you can’t be surprised when a human skin eating robot
starts skinning people, that’s what you built it to do, the only way to stop it from
building skin traps is to either shut it down or fundamentally change the way it works.
Also, no one cares that you built the skin bots in your fucking dorm room so hey, you
oatmeal colored tadpole man, you better knock it off with the “who me? I’m just a cute
little millennial” schtick. You are one of the most powerful men in the world, you
built this monster and it made you rich, it is your job to kill it, get this shit under
control before you oopsie another genocide. I mean if you don’t mind, sir, I mean please
don’t tank our Facebook videos, don’t forget to like and share! We’ll be right
back.