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facebook
is pervasive the world's population is
over 7 billion
close to 3 billion of us are active
facebook users
and that scale creates power the power
to turn off the news
in breaking news this morning social
media giant facebook has followed
through
on its threat restricting people in
australia from viewing news content
the power to turn off those in power
facebook have extended their block on
donald trump's accounts for at least the
next two weeks until joe biden's
inauguration accusing the president of
using the platform to incite
insurrection and the power to change how
we connect how we communicate
for better says facebook for worse says
this former employee
we have created tools that are ripping
apart the social fabric of how
society works facebook is powerful
but is facebook too powerful well this
is how mark zuckerberg
sees its role facebook is an idealistic
and optimistic company
for most of our existence we focused on
all the good that connecting people can
do
idealistic optimistic focused on the
good
let's keep those words in mind as we
consider three stories the news ban in
australia
the storming of the capital in
washington and first
a coup
this is myanmar's military moving in to
stop protesters gathering on the streets
in early february
it had removed aung san tsuchi's
civilian government from power
and the man controlling the military is
commander-in-chief
min he's a fan of facebook he's been an
active user for years
not so much now facebook has taken down
some of the military's pages because of
it says repeated violations of our
community standards prohibiting
incitement of violence and coordinating
heart
this looks straightforward if you launch
a military coup and threaten peaceful
protests
you lose your facebook page but the
story of facebook's power in myanmar
is not straightforward here's why this
is a country of
54 million people and over half of them
have a facebook account
that didn't happen by chance one-third
of people in myanmar
live in poverty and to help people get
online facebook removed all data charges
and organized for the facebook app to be
pre-loaded on many phones it worked
listen to this technology reporter from
the new york times
the entire internet is facebook and
facebook is the internet most people
don't necessarily know how to operate or
get on and navigate regular websites
they kind of live eat sleep and breathe
facebook
soon though facebook was accused of
playing a determining role
in grave crimes in 2017 rohingya muslim
villages were ransacked people were
murdered
hundreds of thousands fled into
bangladesh and the un says facebook's
platform
helped create this we know that the
ultra-nationalist buddhists have
their own facebooks and really inciting
a lot of violence and a lot of hatred
against
the rohingya or other ethnic minorities
and i'm afraid that facebook has now
turned into uh
to into a beast than what it was
originally intended to be used
facebook was the main platform for
sharing horrific content that incited
violence against the rohingyas
mark zuckerberg was asked about this in
2018 and he said
what is happening in myanmar is a
terrible tragedy and we need to do more
it has done more to remove content and
now it's closed the military's pages
after a coup
but this is the same military that
attacked the rohingyas and which
continued to use facebook
the point being in myanmar facebook
dominates how information is shared
and decides who gets to share it that's
a lot of responsibility
for one company and if that's facebook's
role in myanmar
next let's turn to washington and the
storming of the capital
this was early 2021 america's fractured
politics were laid
bare and were the very opposite of mark
zuckerberg's ambition
for america and for facebook as he
outlined them
in 2017. today when we look around our
society is still very divided
right so now i believe that we have a
responsibility to do even more
right not simply connect the world but
also work
to bring the world closer together but
is facebook
actually doing that to consider that we
need to look at how facebook works this
is
a former president it's a social
validation feedback loop
that that it's like a i mean it's
exactly the kind of thing
that a that a hacker like myself would
come up with because you're exploiting a
vulnerability
in in human psychology and then a
version of those concerns was seen in a
2020 leak
to the wall street journal internal
facebook documents warn
our algorithms exploit the human's
brain's attraction
to divisiveness if unchecked it would
continue to serve facebook users
more and more divisive content in an
effort to gain user attention
and increase time on the platform but
can we connect the experience of being
on facebook
with real-life actions well 38 congress
members think so
in the aftermath of the storming of the
capital they sent a letter to mark
zuckerberg saying
perhaps no single entity is more
responsible for the spread of dangerous
conspiracy theories at scale
and for inflaming anti-government
grievance than the one
that you started and this is democrat
congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez
mark zuckerberg and facebook bear
partial responsibility
for wednesday's events one new york
times columnist wrote
facebook pumps paranoia and
disinformation into the body politic
the toxic byproduct of its relentless
drive for profit
and there again is that accusation that
technology designed to make a product
popular
has ended up undermining democracy and
encouraging
prejudice well in response to the
capital attack
facebook ceo cheryl sandberg said i
think these events were largely
organized on platforms that don't have
our abilities to stop
hate and don't have our standards and
don't have our transparency
this though highlights a truth about
facebook's power
it is ruler of its vast domain and it
can remove
whatever it likes be that hate speech or
donald trump's account
or the news this is an assault on a
sovereign nation
it is an assault on people's freedom
and in particular it is an utter abuse
of big technologies
market power and control over technology
the third story we're looking at is
about how without warning
facebook removed all news content in
australia
and let's go back to mark zuckerberg in
2019.
facebook is about putting power in
people's hands
but there wasn't power in the hands of
australians who get their news via
facebook the news had
vanished responding to this australia's
prime minister scott morrison posted on
yes facebook saying they may be changing
the world
but that doesn't mean they run it but
facebook is a company fighting for its
interest as
companies do in this case it's over
around whether to pay
news providers for content but the
context of the row
is facebook scale it's estimated that 40
percent of australians use facebook as
their primary news source
that's a problem according to this
former facebook executive
i think he has too much power you know
we're seeing sovereign nations having to
come up against facebook yet
you know we're not on the same playing
field with uh with facebook's power
and that concern has reached the uk this
is the head of the competition and
markets authority
talking to the bbc i think it's a very
worrisome
development and i think he really shows
that we need to
urgently do something to reduce this
imbalance of power
by turning off the news albeit
temporarily
facebook showed its extraordinary power
and if countries feel
they're at risk of being overpowered a
more fundamental issue arises
here's my colleague rory clefland jones
the only real
action that can can really affect
facebook
is to break it up and and there will be
growing discussion about that even in
the united states there
there are moves by certain democratic
congressmen to say
this is the only way forward it is too
powerful you can
you can try little laws like this but
what you really need to do
is lessen its power and that means
breaking it up well what happens next
will in part be driven by president
biden a man who we know sees facebook as
a problem but as we consider these
questions of facebook's power
i find it useful to go back to that
famous clip of david bowie
talking to the bbc about the internet
i don't think we've even seen the tip of
the iceberg i think the potential
of what the internet is going to do to
society both good and bad
is unimaginable
i think we're actually on the cusp of
something exhilarating and
terrifying i wanted to play that because
the issues raised by
facebook are really fundamental issues
raised by the internet
the australia story is about old
business models being broken
economies being restructured the stories
in myanmar and america in
very different ways show countries
navigating the complete rearrangement of
how we produce
and consume information these are vast
political
economic and social shifts and
facebook's right in the middle of all
that
it does have extraordinary power perhaps
too much
but more powerful still is the internet
and how it's changing
every facet of our lives that's the
power
that we're really wrestling with
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