The documentary “The Facebook Dilemma”, takes you into the world of Facebook and all the insider information that you never knew about it. Have you ever thought about why Facebook ever was created in the first place? In the documentary Mark Zuckerberg (the creator of Facebook) says that he originally made it because he thought it would be an online directory for colleges. Little did he know that it would become so much more than that.
In the PBS documentary Mark states “Make things happen and apologize later rather than make sure that you dot all your eyes and not get things done.” He believed that people are always too afraid to do things so instead he thinks they should do it and apologize later. The general focus of this idea sounds good until you come along to the problems that need to be fixed. One of the problems that began to arise was simply the posting of negative feed and harmful information being shared. One of Facebook’s company members said that they focused mostly on growth and connecting people and the good stuff rather than anything negative that it’s used for. This being said, they should have focused on not only the good Facebook may have been doing but also the bad and figuring how to minimize the negatives.
Another major issue that Facebook began to see as it grew larger and larger is personal information and user information security. Facebook will use your information and see what you view and then use a special algorithm to help pick what would be the most interesting news story for you. That news will then pop up on your feed. This information I personally knew a little about and it seemed to me not to be too worrisome but then I found out about all the data collection happening and the sharing of it. Facebook was sharing users personal information with third party developers, which essentially could have been anyone who created an app. This is super deceptive to the users, when Facebook wasn’t making it clear to their users that their information was going to these third party developers. According to a BBC news article https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46618582 Facebook did say this, “However, it has acknowledged again that it should have prevented third parties being able to tap into users’ data, after publicly announcing that it had ended the privilege for security reasons.” Not only that but Facebook wasn’t monitoring what the third party users were doing with the information. That means Facebook really had no control over where/who the information was going to once it left them. I found this very scary and disturbing as a user myself.
Facebook’s slogan and goal is to make “A more Open and Connected World.” This is something I believe they have achieved but there are many more side effects to this achievement. Along with the security issue, is the effects of news influence. This news influence includes fake news which has hugely impacted viewer’s decision making in elections. According to the documentary Facebook is the number one places for political conversation to take place and it received over a billion campaign posts for the 2016 elections. It has “connected billions while inflaming divisions.”(PBS Documentary). The “patriotic trolling” turns democracy upside down. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/us/politics/facebook-political-campaign-midterms.html “Facebook said on Tuesday that it had identified a political influence campaign that was potentially built to disrupt the midterm elections, with the company detecting and removing and 32 pages and fake accounts that had engaged in activity around divisive social issues.” That being said as a user, be careful what you share, what you view and how you let it affect your life and decisions.
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