Facebook: The Journey Pt2
By: Nandhini Swaminathan
Tags: Life, Privacy, Technology, Facebook, Silicon Valley

Facebook has been exceedingly profitable for Mr. Zuckerberg, who is among the richest and most influential men in the world. But for the world itself, it serves as a vector for paranoia, polarizing content, and misinformation.

In the previous article, we explored some ideas as to why Facebook became popular, and now we’ll be looking into a few reasons why it is facing its current problems. In the next article, I'll be exploring the future of the company, if its power will be clipped, and how.

The company’s ambitions of changing the world for the better are often at odds with its appetite for dominance. Here’s how.

Content

“A platform, not a publisher”, an often-repeated excuse, it has helped Facebook avoid accountability for the content on its platforms in the past. But Facebook is not a neutral platform, its business model depends on its algorithms understanding the user’s behavior, manipulating them, and selling their attention to the highest bidders.

Free speech and paid speech are not the same things. Amplifying specific organizations’ messages and trapping the public within set perspectives inhibiting their growth is not something that any company should profit from. After a severe backlash on multiple fronts, the platform has slowly been taking steps to tackle this issue.

Privacy issues

Sigh… where to begin?

In its initial days, Facebook differentiated itself from its then competitor Myspace by emphasizing privacy. However, once it established itself as a monopoly it went back on its words.

Whilst we are to blame when we reveal too much to the internet, it is troubling when we see ads appearing on our accounts that seem catered to what we want and need exactly when we require them.

It is obvious to users that Facebook is amassing and analyzing information about them. What is concerning about this is that they do not know what exactly is being mined from their accounts. It does not help when amendments to the privacy policy are frequently made, confusing them.

User Experience Saturation

It would be fair to say Facebook no longer has the “novelty” factor it had when it began. It has been losing the younger demographic in the past few years. There are few people who have disengaged from the platform and altogether given up on it. Some quit over privacy concerns, some put off by the multitude of advertisements, some because of the availability of newer, more exciting social media platforms. Which makes us question, if Facebook can reinvent itself and become a fad again.

Treatment of employees and contractors

Content moderators do the taxing work of making sure the site is not filled with graphic images and videos. However, since they’re not employees but outsourced talent they do not get any benefits like psychological support among many. This led to an alarming rise in suicides. This induced pressure on Facebook to preserve its standing among its own workforce as a good place to work which led to the giant making multiple reforms in favor of its moderators.

Tax Avoidance

Frustrated over how big corporations like Facebook re-routes their profits through low-tax jurisdictions, countries like the UK have launched a new digital sales tax aimed at forcing tech giants to pay more on the income they generate inside the country.

Frequent UI changes

Initially easy to use, the user interface has undergone frequent layout changes. People end up having a hard time adapting to them, and few eventually stop using it as often. These changes might be due to its need to reinvent itself, in the sense of experimenting with new features to explore.

The problem however is that it seems to be getting more complex with each update. A clutter of new activities each day only serve to bewilder the average user.

The profit-driven platform connects the world’s people to the information. This has led to the concentration of power in the hands of a few. The realization has dawned on many countries now and in the next post, we shall take a look at some of the probable outcomes for the company.

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