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In this article we will discuss an interview with Frances Haugen, a computer engineer and former Facebook employee. She has leaked information about the company that could do her a lot of harm. In this post we are going to see how ethical a social network can be in order to obtain maximum profits.
To begin with and to put ourselves in context, we should talk about the company Facebook, which as we all know, was created by Mark Zuckerberg, and was originally going to be used only by students at a university to connect with each other. Little by little it grew to become one of the most used social networks. As time went by, the creator gradually took over other very successful social networks, such as Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. With this, Mark managed to gain a virtual monopoly on social networks, because, with the exception of Twitter, the rest of the most used applications in Europe and North America belong to him.
Now that we have some context, we can move on to comment on Frances' words. It is a very interesting interview because it reveals many facts that could be intuited, but were not 100% known. The fact that our data is being sold is real. No matter how much privacy they sell, people's data is very valuable nowadays for a number of reasons. The first is the interest it arouses in big brands to be able to understand consumer behaviour to perfection. The habits of the users of these social networks are of great value, and although there are many ways of marketing, if you have this set of data, it is much easier. The interviewee claims that there were many conflicts of interest between what was good for users and what was good for Facebook. She claims that the social network always chose what was in its best interest, because it made more money. He also claims that if they change the algorithm to make the app more secure, it would stop attracting so much attention and they would stop making so much money and having so many users, "Facebook chooses profit over security. To clarify all this information, Frances Haugen says she has had to collect a lot of material so that at no time could there be any doubt about the veracity of her statements. Despite this, she makes it clear that she has a lot of empathy for the creator. She knows that at no time was it her intention to create a platform for hate, but that she has allowed decisions to be made whose secondary consequences are that this hateful content reaches many more people.
This is so true that, in a study carried out, it could be seen how various European political parties had increased the aggressiveness of their publications in order to attract more attention and for the algorithm to take this into account. The article puts it very clearly: "Hatred and polarisation are the currencies of this market, where without them no one would be able to be seen. And political parties need strength to be seen".
There is another fact about this same application that really struck me. The fact is that Facebook is expanding by leaps and bounds, yes, but there are countries in the world that do not have free internet. In these places Facebook has paid a subsidy so that it can be used. What is the problem, you ask? There are more than 5,000 languages in the world, and Facebook is adapted to 50 of them, that is, 1%. This is why a problem arises, because these countries where the social network intends to expand, may not have the adapted language, and this leads to misinformation, and according to Frances, misinformation causes people to die.
She also talks about another application that belongs to Facebook, which is Instagram. According to the interviewee, this second application is harmful to many teenage girls, and as if that were not enough, she says that the algorithm rewards hate more because it attracts much more attention and helps to get more users.
On the other hand, the American says that it would be possible to create a social network in which everyone wins, benefits for both the user and the managers of this type of application. She assures that the solution to all problems begins with sharing and taking into account all users, so that in this way, it would be fairer. Therefore, the engineer specifies that: "If my statements have made people hate Facebook more, I have failed. I believe in truth and reconciliation, we have to admit reality. The first step is documentation".
Naturally, the social network did not stand idly by and decided to respond to its former employee's statements by writing: "Every day our teams must strike a balance between protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly and the need to keep the platform a safe and positive space. We continue to make significant improvements to curb the distribution of disinformation and harmful content. To suggest that we promote bad content by doing nothing is not true."
In conclusion I would first like to stress how important it is that there are people as brave, noble and fair as the interviewee. It takes a lot of courage to be able to make this kind of statement against such a big company, and above all, against one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. It is true that he must have had some other reason to explode, but the way he has done it seems to me to be very appropriate. As for the information provided, it is true that a company needs to make money to survive, but this is where the ethical side of a company and a person comes in. To what extent are you willing to "harm or damage" a person in order to make money? There is no right answer, but it is clear that one of the most powerful companies in the world should not behave in this way. It should, in my view, find a balance between its users and its profits, in order to create a business model that is fair, clean and beneficial to both society and the brand. It is about advancing, evolving and informing society, not the other way around.
Comentarios
For example, Vodafone's action to offer unlimited mobile data made it easier for banks and their customers, demonstrating an important corporate responsibility, which brings a lot to companies.
I agree that companies are looking for more good in society in the long term, both in times of pandemic and in a normal situation. This pandemic has made companies and individuals aware of the way they should act and the responsibility they each have, so our society will improve from this historic event.
If we analyze in depth the amount of information that these platforms have about us and the ability to manipulate our steps to achieve their goals is a topic that can scare even the least susceptible.
It is something that we have already internalized and assumed when signing the conditions prior to its use but this does not exempt the ethics that should exist behind these large companies, as well as agencies that control them, but also probably we are not able to imagine the possibilities they have at their fingertips and therefore we assume them so freely.
Well then, after reading this article it leads me to think that there should be much stricter and more specific legal institutions or regulations.
As a marketing person, I think it’s a good idea to make more easily campaigns and to know better our target. And people who are login to these apps and social media they know what are they going to do with their privacy, because they have signed the agreement that appears firstly. Also is better for people because they have spots and different things that are personalized for them.
In recent years, information has been coming out, some true and some not, that has been damaging, at least temporarily, to the brand.
The most famous of the last few years said that Facebook was profiting at the expense of its users, selling the information it obtained from them to other companies.
Facebook has a lot of information that it may not have permission to use, which is why there has been so much controversy.