Facebook in the Disinformation Age
I have a personal stake in Facebook. My son works on the management team and I have stock in the company. It's been a lot of fun! So what's going on with Facebook? Frankly I don't really use the site that much except to occasionally look at pictures of my grandchildren. I don't understand how to use it very well and I always find myself getting caught up in a million interesting posts which, quite frankly, makes me feel like I've wasted a lot of time. I also don't particularly enjoy sharing my thoughts about everything under the sun with everyone on my Facebook page, most of whom I haven't spoken to in 40 years. But every once in a while I like to write this blog to clarify things in my own mind and then share it on FB.
Recently FB has come under an artillery barrage of criticism over the "hack" of about 50 million(!) accounts and unauthorized use of this private information by Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign. I don't get it. It appears to me from reading the news stories that the "data" consisted of user profiles, locations and "likes." That is a far cry from the the hack of names, addresses, driver's license numbers and social security numbers of 145 million people from Equifax in July 2017. In 2015 the US government Office of Personnel Management had 21.5 million employee records stolen including social security numbers. But maybe that's different because the government called it a "data breach." In 2013 every one of Yahoo's account holders was hacked. That's 3 billion (!) users. And what about our most important secrets? The one's our government develops to snoop on unsuspecting spies and terrorists. Well, oops, in April 2017 those tools were stolen. So when more than 300,000 companies, including hospitals, were hit with ransomware viruses like WannaCry that locked down computers until the ransoms were payed, who was responsible?
The point of all this is that computers are vulnerable and if the NSA couldn't protect their own deepest secrets, should we be surprised when private company data is compromised? But let's also draw a distinction here. Addresses and social security numbers are one thing. "Likes" and buying habits are an entirely different realm. Advertising companies have been collecting that data for 100 years to influence the public. So what? Someone just found a shortcut to sending out a million questionnaires, except now they call it "psychometrics." They found out that if you like Lady Gaga you were an extrovert. Oh my God. That's why Trump was elected.
I think it's important to protect data on Facebook. They should be doing everything they can to protect our information from being used by anyone we don't expressly give permission to. But hey, let's get real. The reason Facebook has been so successful is that we all want a lot of people to see what we like and dislike. That's a human character trait the Mark Zuckerberg learned how to exploit. We love that FB allows us to filter advertisements to those that interest us and that totalitarian dictatorships are brought down by social movements on Facebook. And then we rave and rant when that same technology allows people to influence us in ways we feel tricked by. So Cambridge Analytica used this data to try and influence us. The more important point is that Donald Trump's team used a company started by Steve Bannon that specifically touted it's ability to influence people's behavior through its sophisticated understanding of human psychology and it's ability to target and persuade people of it's clients preferred message. As far as I'm concerned that's just a convenient way of explaining why so many people were duped by Trump.
And it's only going to get worse. Pundits are saying Facebook is not a "social network" as much as it is a "media company." And yet those same people are critical of Facebook for allowing the dissemination of "fake" news. Probably half of the country thinks that the news on MSNBC is fake and the other half feels the same about Fox. But Mark Zuckerberg got it right when he said the problem is that people using FB should be held to the same "truth in advertising" standards as every other advertiser. That probably includes all of us. If you write a lie and post it, you should be as liable as anyone "posting" on radio or television, even though half of the country thinks the other half is lying.
I propose that FB is doing everything right. They're trying honestly to plug a hole in the dike that probably is unpluggable. You think fake news and psychometrics are a problem now. Wait until existing programs that permit computers to alter video undetectably are common place. Any movie can be altered so that someone can be seen doing something they're not. Then what's real? If Stormy Daniels is altered to be Donald Trump will that make him ineligible to serve in the military?
