fox files

Who Zucks the Zuckerberg?

Facebook CEO would like the U.S. government to fix Facebook for him

Mark Zuckerberg is upset.

All he wanted to do is harvest your private data and sell it to the highest bidder. And now everyone is mad at him. (What gives, guys?)

In a watery op-ed published in the Washington Post over the weekend, Zuckerberg executed one of the most lackluster attempts at passing the buck I have ever seen in my life.

Zuckerberg’s piece can be boiled down to, “We don’t want to police our own platform. People get mad at us when we try. The government should do it instead.”

A change of character

Facebook has spent millions lobbying against anti-privacy laws. But as of late, its billionaire CEO has become a champion for online privacy for no apparent reason.

(*Cough* Cambridge Analytica *cough* government probes *cough* doesn’t want to go to jail.)

In his article, Zuckerberg called for global regulation of the internet, identified four key problems that need to be addressed, and made some suggestions on how to fix these problems.

This is a bit like El Chapo telling the DEA how to police the Mexican cartels. But let’s hear the little lizard man out.

Hateful and Violent Content

In recent years, Facebook has taken flak for allowing hate speech and terrorist propaganda on its platform.

But when it finally stepped up to the plate and tried to stamp it out, Facebook was accused of over-policing and snuffing out free speech.

Zuckerberg doesn’t like it when people are mad at his little data harvesting machine, so he wants to pass the buck to the government.

“One idea is for third-party bodies to set standards governing the distribution of harmful content and measure companies against those standards,” says Zuckerberg. “Regulation could set baselines for what’s prohibited and require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a bare minimum.”

Great idea, Zuck! Hand over the reins of free speech to the government. Because that specific idea has never backfired in the course of human history before.

Election Integrity

Zuckerberg has admitted in the past that his platform was used to meddle in elections around the world.

(Zuck’s about-face on the issue of privacy was likely motivated by Congress dragging his ass to Washington and forcing him to explain about election meddling on live television.)

In his op-ed, Zuckerberg said that Facebook has tried to put a system into place to identify election meddling on Facebook. But he says it’s also not very good.

“We built a searchable archive that shows who pays for ads, what other ads they ran and what audiences saw the ads. However, deciding whether an ad is political isn’t always straightforward. Our systems would be more effective if regulation created common standards for verifying political actors.”

Mark’s solution? Regulation that clearly defines what constitutes election meddling.

That way Facebook is simply enforcing someone else’s rules. (So you can’t get mad at Mark if you don’t like it.)

Privacy and Data Protection

Zuckerberg, the great privacy violator, would like stricter privacy laws (as long as they don’t actually do anything).

Mark would like the rest of the world to regulate privacy and data just like the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

“New privacy regulation in the United States and around the world should build on the protections GDPR provides,” says Zuckerberg. “It should protect your right to choose how your information is used — while enabling companies to use information for safety purposes and to provide services.”

This seems like a major concession at a glance. But for anyone even slightly familiar with the GDPR, it’s obvious why Zuckerberg loves the GDPR.

The GDPR is what you get when you have people who know nothing about the internet writing laws about the internet.

The GDPR:

Allows Facebook to appear to be concerned about your data, while still allowing it to harvest it in droves.

Legally covers Facebook’s ass. If someone accuses Facebook of misusing the data it can simply point to the law (which allows the company to do what it likes as long as it covers certain bases).

All Facebook had to do after the law was passed was add a simple agree-to-data-sharing button, some paper-thin parental controls, and a privacy settings menu that most people don’t know exists.

Technically, you can use this settings menu to customize how you’d like your data to be shared. But since nobody really knows about it, Facebook gets to reap all the data it likes. And now Facebook’s ass is covered by the law.

Mighty big of you, Mark.

Data Portability

Data portability is the ability to move your data between apps.

Zuckerberg initially introduces this as a “problem.” But in the actual op-ed, Markie boy goes on to say how great data portability is and how everyone wants it.

He just wants the government’s rubber stamp to allow Facebook to share data across apps (like WhatsApp and Instagram, which are both owned by Facebook).

Facebook’s investors and users don’t see eye-to-eye

It looks like Facebook’s investors are buying Mark’s shtick for now. Facebook’s stock rose about 1% when the markets woke up this morning.

But investors don’t hold Facebook’s future in their hands. The next generation of social media users do.

And boy, they do not like Facebook.

According to a Pew study released last year, the rate of teens using Facebook is plummeting.

Between 2015 and 2018 the number of U.S. teens who use Facebook plunged dramatically from 71% to just 51%.

So where is this all heading? You tell me.