Is Facebook good or evil?

There is significant coverage about the Facebook group’s poor behaviour today. Former employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen came forward to dish the dirt on Facebook’s practices.

It would seem (not surprisingly) that Facebook has been prioritising engagement and clickthrough to ads above all else and that this has led to them not following their dream “to make the world a more open and connected place.” They know that one way to increase engagement and time on the platform is to make people angry. Placing in your newsfeed things that annoy you and make you feel compelled to argue with is one way of increasing your engagement with the platform. This is a mechanism we all see every time we log on.

She said in an interview “The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money.” This should come as no surprise to anyone, after all Zuckerberg is running a business not a charity, however, I think it’s fair to say that Facebook has a unique position in the world with their user numbers rapidly closing in on 3 billion, as they have the opportunity to shape world events in a way that most media outlets simply don’t.

This “fanning the flames” of people’s neuroses and fears has driven some significant upsets in the political world (which may or may not have been part of Facebook’s strategy) with the rise of polarised political systems and some interesting (and self harming) voting behaviours in many countries.

We see from Haugen also, and this is perhaps more worrying, that despite the fact they they know teenage girls are particularly susceptible to developing eating disorders and that Instagram newsfeeds have been shown to precipitate this behaviour, they still construct an algorithm that plays to these young women’s fears rather than supporting their mental health…no doubts at the expense of reducing time on the platform.

Based on Haugen’s documents that showed Facebook was aware of the damage its Instagram app was causing to teen mental health and wellbeing. One survey in the leaked research estimated that 30% of teenage girls felt Instagram made dissatisfaction with their body worse. Yet they decided not to do something about this to make the situation better.

The question is, where do we go from here?

Clearly networks with the power of Facebook cannot be allowed to self-govern, because they have had many opportunities to do the right thing and have chosen not to do so. We also know from history that rarely does a money-making machine limit it’s ability to make money in order to do the right thing.

In my opinion Facebook’s behaviour is totally unacceptable and how they share content, police content, talk to users and monetise those users need both a significant overhaul AND some tough legislative framework inside which Facebook must remain.

However. There is a flip side to this coin.

Facebook does much good in the world. It keeps all of us in contact with people we otherwise would have long-since forgotten. It unites families across continents and time zones. It helps us inform our friends and families of the birth of our children or loss of our parents and provides a simple and effective mechanism to receive celebrations for the good times and support for the bad.

Facebook also gives people, everyone, a global platform to share their views (for better or for worse) and this, arguably makes it a rare beast in the modern world of mogul-owned media outlets all of which are subject to extreme bias.

Facebook does a remarkable job of connecting busy people to other busy people, people we wouldn’t remain close to and it often helps us to see whether this “friend” is in fact someone we want to be friends with…or not.

For me, Facebook is a vital institution for 2021 and beyond and the world would be a worse place if it were to disappear but, and it’s a big but, things obviously cannot continue as they are.