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These giga platforms

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination
FACEBOOK / Where is the limit of social media use of freedom of expression if they deliberately ignore systematic and global abuses in the form of hate speech and undemocratic methods such as fake news and hate speech?




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

Half of the earth's population uses Facebook – daily or weekly – which with over three billion people makes the Mark Zuckerberg platform the world's most used social media. Facebook has been – and is – surrounded by huge and extremely principled scandals. Scandals about our privacy versus big business and profits, where information about our user profile is leaked to (sold to) political election campaigns and Russian hackers. And much more.

But how Facebook handled and handled with Mark Zuckerberg and his business mentor Sheryl Sandberg the enormous responsibility at a time when democratic values ​​but also the democracies themselves are under pressure due to the hate speech and fake news of social media?

The biggest Facebook scandals

Bow The Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination by New York Times journalists Sheera Frankel and Cecilia Kang illuminate this through a long line of well-documented scandals and evidence. And it raises the question of whether legislators and regulators of today and tomorrow have enough courage and insight to protect our digital privacy and the core values ​​of democracy.

According to the New York Times book review, “Frenkel and Kang have written a book that is the ultimate take-down via elaborate, understandable coverage of the biggest Facebook scandals. An Ugly Truth gives the reader the kind of satisfaction that if you hired a private detective to investigate your spouse's laws affair: The book confirms your worst suspicions and gives you all the dating episodes in detail to cut through Facecbook's spin.

Fadi Toon (Norway)-Digital Era. See Libex.Eu

Cambridge Analytica

What scandals are there? The primary one is the one regarding the tech company Cambridge Analytica, where leading up to the US presidential election in 2016, millions of user profiles were supplied to the Donald Trump camp, where these illegally collected Facebook profiles – perhaps yours or mine – were used for political campaigning. But also for fake news and hate speech. An election campaign that will go down in history for Russian interference and hacking of Democratic Party emails – including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The Giga scandal Facebook management systematically tried to hide.

This giga scandal shows the book with many details, which the Facebook management systematically tried to hide, and when it was impossible then at least minimize and finally apologize.

When CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg was questioned in 2018 in the biggest case against a company in the United States since the breakup of the telecommunications giant AT&T in 1984, it was perhaps both his and Facebook's most important and most difficult moment. But shortly after, the case was put on standby – with a 1 trillion usd fine to Zuckerberg & Co – but without basic explanations of this fatal lack of confidentiality in the world's largest social medium.

And when the American judge closed the case, Facebook's shares skyrocketed and on the same day reached the staggering value of just over 1 trillion dollars. 1.000.000.000.000 dollars.

In other words, Frenkel and Kang conclude that the investors were happy again. And that Zuckerberg basically got away with these – and other principled scandals – by saying that he and Sheryl Sandberg were concerned with the company's finances and profits – and not security mechanisms.

Ironic but symptomatic of the 21st century's current – ​​and certainly future – tech wonderboys (and girls) such as Zuckerberg, who suddenly stand at the head of huge digital empires outside of ordinary law and order.

Blatant irresponsibility

An Ugly Truth is not the first book about this problem with the digital world versus the real one – and the intersection between the use or abuse of these giga platforms. But the book is and will be a guide for legislators worldwide in relation to the legal and digital frameworks for social media's influence on society and democracy. And there and my privacy.

So what is the ugly truth in the book?

So what is the ugly truth in the book? That Facebook will release a small financial fine for them, despite the scandals' undoubted evidence of egregiousness irresponsibility.

The book is extremely interesting and thought-provoking in a time where humanity 2-3 decades into the digital internet age is facing almost superhuman, but real non-digital challenges such as climate change, poverty and pressure on democracy and personal freedom. Facebook is still functional (idiot) for those who deny the Covid-19 pandemic or refuse to comply with lockdowns or doubt the effectiveness and importance of vaccines. And the pandemic is the biggest crisis and challenge for humanity and our planet since the Second World War. As a South America correspondent living in Argentina, the region's largest country, Brazil, is currently debating how little or how much the country's president and radical right-wing ex-general Jair Bolsonaro will abuse and exploit social media – including Facebook to divide Brazilians even more with his tropical version of Trump's hate speech and fake news. Brazilians are worried about democracy no more, no less. And whether Bolsonaro can use social media to change the public mood and his even more radical supporters to perhaps even challenge democracy.

Read the book. I'm just checking my face.

Rune V. Harritshøj
Rune V. Harritshøj
Writer living in Buenos Aires.

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