Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg turns 37 today. In just a few short decades, this millennial and his tech monopoly have influenced elections, provides a platform for white supremacist organizing, and contributed to public health crises.
In honor of Zuckerberg entering his 37th year, here is a list of 37 inexcusable issues with Facebook. If wisdom comes with age, maybe Zuckerberg will consider rectifying some of these. But we’re not holding out hope.
- Facebook has a huge problem with hate speech.
- And racism.
- And climate misinformation.
- And COVID-19 misinformation.
- And anti-vaccine misinformation.
- And election misinformation.
- Dangerous misinformation of all kinds spreads at breakneck speeds on the platform.
- These problems are worse in other languages.
- But the company lies about the extent of misinformation to save face.
- Instead of meaningfully addressing misinformation, Facebook spent $130 million to create an oversight board.
- Meanwhile, Facebook outsources and abuses content moderators.
- The few moderation policies the company does institute are vague and confusing.
- These policies are rolled out often too late to be effective and are always poorly enforced.
- For example, the platform allowed anti-mask/reopen groups even when their explicit purpose was to encourage users to violate state mask mandates
- These violative communities are allowed to easily evade Facebook bans.
- The company does not moderate reasonably across the platforms it owns.
- Many of the interventions Facebook has instituted (like labeling misleading content) have yet to be shown to work.
- Facebook let former President Donald Trump use the platform to spread dangerous lies (and may continue to do so if he’s allowed back on it).
- Political narratives on Facebook are dominated by the right.
- Facebook has enforced its policy less stringently against right-wing figures.
- But the platform unfairly polices content from oppressed groups.
- Facebook’s advertising model incentivizes sensational content.
- The company applies policies unevenly for ads.
- And political ads do not undergo enough scrutiny.
- Facebook has risked election integrity.
- It allowed an insurrection to be organized on the platform.
- Facebook contributed to a genocide.
- It has a history of close relationships with oppressive regimes.
- Facebook is a monopoly, buying up any relevant competition.
- The platform lied about its metrics, faking video engagement statistics that cost hundreds of journalists their jobs.
- Facebook refuses to give researchers data it has access to.
- The platform keeps introducing new features when it can’t clean up the ones that already exist.
- Including features targeted at children.
- The company lies to the media and requires journalists to jump through hoops to get access to information.
- It has a history of security breaches.
- The platform has continuously exploited users’ trust and privacy.
- The Facebook business model thrives on misinformation, which means none of this is likely to change anytime soon.