Facebook is out of control. If it were a country
it would be North Korea
Carole
Cadwalladr
If the combined might of brands like Unilever and
Coca-Cola don’t scare Mark Zuckerberg, who can hold the social media platform
to account?
Published
onSun 5 Jul 2020 08.00 BST
There is no
power on this earth that is capable of holding Facebook to account. No
legislature, no law enforcement agency, no regulator. Congress has failed. The
EU has failed. When the Federal Trade Commission fined it a record $5bn for its
role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, its stock price actually went up.
Which is
what makes this moment so interesting and, possibly, epochal. If the boycott of
Facebook by some of the world’s biggest brands – Unilever, Coca-Cola, Starbucks
– succeeds, it will be because it has targeted the only thing that Facebook
understands: its bottom line. And if it fails, that will be another sort of
landmark.
Because
this is a company that facilitated an attack on a US election by a foreign
power, that live-streamed a massacre then broadcast it to millions around the
world, and helped incite a genocide.
I’ll say
that again. It helped incite a genocide. A United Nations report says the use
of Facebook played a “determining role” in inciting hate and violence against
Myanmar’s Rohingya, which has seen tens of thousands die and hundreds of
thousands flee for their lives.
Facebook is not a mirror. It’s a gun. Unlicensed, out
of control, in the hands of 2.6 billion people across the planet
I often
think about that report. When I watch documentaries showing Facebook employees
playing ping-pong inside their Menlo Park safe space. When I took a jaunt to
the suburban Silicon Valley town earlier this year and strolled down the
“normal” street where Mark Zuckerberg lives his totally normal life as the sole
decision-maker in a company the like of which the world has never seen before.
When I heard that Maria Ressa, the Filipino journalist who has done so much to
warn of Facebook’s harms, had been sentenced to jail. When I read the Orwellian
defence that our former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg wrote last week. “Platforms
like Facebook hold a mirror up to society,” he said.
Facebook is
not a mirror. It’s a gun. Unlicensed – it is not subject to laws or control –
it is in the hands and homes of 2.6 billion people, infiltrated by covert
agents acting for nation states, a laboratory for groups who praise the
cleansing effects of the Holocaust and believe 5G will fry our brainwaves in
our sleep.
People
sometimes say that if Facebook was a country, it would be bigger than China.
But this is the wrong analogy. If Facebook was a country, it would be a rogue
state. It would be North Korea. And it isn’t a gun. It’s a nuclear weapon.
Because
this isn’t a company so much as an autocracy, a dictatorship, a global empire
controlled by a single man. Who – even as the evidence of harm has become
undeniable, indisputable, overwhelming – has simply chosen to ignore its
critics across the world.
Instead, it
has continued to pump out relentless, unbelievable, increasingly preposterous
propaganda even as it controls the main news distribution channels. And just as
the citizens of North Korea are unable to operate outside the state, it feels
almost impossible to be alive today and live a life untouched by Facebook,
WhatsApp and Instagram.
The
#StopHateForProfit campaign is focused on hate speech. It’s what has united six
American civil rights organisations in the US to lobby advertisers to “pause”
their ads for July, a campaign precipitated by Facebook’s decision not to
remove a post by Donald Trump threatening violence against Black Lives Matter
protesters: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
But this is
so much bigger than Facebook’s problem with hate. And it goes far far beyond
the US, though the role it will play in the US election is pivotal (and it’s
worth noting that #StopHateForProfit’s demands don’t extend to stopping lies in
political ads, a crucial necessity). Facebook’s harms are global. Its threat to
democracy is existential.
Is it a
coincidence that the three countries that have dealt with coronavirus worst are
those with populist leaders whose campaigns exploited Facebook’s ability to
spread lies at scale? Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson. Perhaps. Perhaps not.
And if you
don’t care about democracy, think for a moment about coronavirus. If and when a
vaccine comes along, will enough people want to have it? Facebook is riddled
with anti-vaxxing like it’s infected by antisemitism. If that’s a mirror, Nick,
you might want to take a long, cold, hard look in it.
Zuckerberg
is not Kim Jong-un. He’s much, much more powerful. “My guess is that all these
advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough,” he is reported to have
told employees last week. And although 500 companies have now joined the
boycott, the Wall Street Journal reports this represents only a 5% dip in
profits. It may turn out that Facebook isn’t just bigger than China. It’s bigger
than capitalism.
It comes,
in the end, down to us and our wallets and what we say to these brands. Because
the world has to realise that there’s no one and no thing coming to the rescue.
Trump and Zuckerberg have formed an unspoken, almost certainly unstated,
strategic alliance. Only the US has the power to clip Facebook’s wings. And
only Facebook has the power to stop Trump spreading lies.
Sometimes
you don’t realise the pivotal moments in history until it’s too late. And
sometimes you do. It’s not quite yet too late. Just almost.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário