Friday, March 29, 2019

How Facebook Grew Too Big to Handle | FT (via Medium)

Final paragraphs from an extensive Facebook reality check:
"Facebook’s problems are deeply embedded in the platform and culture that was created by Zuckerberg and his colleagues in the first few years. Some critics such as early Facebook investor Roger McNamee and Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia law school, have argued that the only thing to do is to break the company up.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Anti-Social Media, is one such critic. But he believes even a break-up would not solve all the problems that the platform amplifies. “Thinking about the problem of Facebook is much like thinking about the problem of climate change. In many ways, it is too big to wrap our minds around,” he says.
Facebook and governments are responding to the social network’s problems one by one, rather than addressing underlying causes. Tristan Harris believes the company has created a “digital Frankenstein”. “By definition, they cannot control it,” he says. “I think they don’t want to admit that.”"
How Facebook Grew Too Big to Handle | FT (via Medium)

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