Summary: Zucked: Waking Up To The Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee

Zucked (2019) is one pre­ma­ture Face­book investor’s per­son­al alert about the haz­ards of the plat­form. It vivid­ly depicts how Face­book is harm­ing both pub­lic health and the health of our democ­ra­cies. From manip­u­lat­ing pub­lic opin­ion to fos­ter­ing our addic­tion to tech­nol­o­gy, the image paint­ed in Zucked is of a busi­ness adrift from civic or moral responsibility.

Who is it for?

• Every­one who uti­lizes Facebook
• Indi­vid­u­als con­cerned about data pri­va­cy, the manip­u­la­tion of pub­lic opin­ion or tech-addiction
• Any­one intrigued by the future of social media and tech-giants

Grasp the genuine narrative of Facebook and its detrimental impact on society.

Face­book is one of the most incred­i­bly pop­u­lar enter­pris­es in his­to­ry. With 2.2 bil­lion users, and rev­enues that sur­passed $40 bil­lion in 2017, it is noth­ing short of an extra­or­di­nary suc­cess. But more than mere­ly being pop­u­lar – and prof­itable – Face­book is influ­en­tial. It has, in less than two decades, evolved into a vital part of the pub­lic sphere, the plat­form on which we not only com­mu­ni­cate with our friends, but read the news, exchange opin­ions, and debate the news of the day.

How­ev­er, Facebook’s pop­u­lar­i­ty and influ­ence con­ceal a grim real­i­ty: it lacks clear moral or civic val­ues to steer it. And in the absence of effi­cient reg­u­la­tion, it is active­ly caus­ing harm to our society.

In these sum­maries, you’ll dis­cov­er how Face­book employs manip­u­la­tive tac­tics to keep you engaged, and how one con­se­quence is polar­iz­ing pub­lic dis­course. The sum­maries demon­strate how Face­book pros­pers on sur­veil­lance, accu­mu­lat­ing data on you to retain your inter­est on the site and boost your worth to its adver­tis­ers. And you’ll come to com­pre­hend just how effort­less­ly exter­nal actors like Rus­sia have been able to exploit Face­book to influ­ence users in the Unit­ed States.

Technological and economic changes facilitated Facebook’s expansion and a perilous internal culture

Back in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, there weren’t many pros­per­ous Sil­i­con Val­ley start-ups man­aged by indi­vid­u­als fresh out of col­lege. Pros­per­ous com­put­er engi­neer­ing relied on skill and expe­ri­ence and had to sur­mount the con­straints of lim­it­ed com­put­er pro­cess­ing pow­er, stor­age, and mem­o­ry. The neces­si­ty for seri­ous hard­ware infra­struc­ture meant that not just any­one could estab­lish a start-up – and be an instant success.

Tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments in the late twen­ti­eth and ear­ly twen­ty-first cen­turies fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­formed this. When Mark Zucker­berg ini­ti­at­ed Face­book in 2004, many of these obsta­cles to new com­pa­nies had sim­ply van­ished. Engi­neers could con­coct a work­able prod­uct quick­ly, thanks to open-source soft­ware com­po­nents like the brows­er Mozil­la. And the emer­gence of cloud stor­age meant that start-ups could mere­ly pay a month­ly fee for their net­work infra­struc­tures, rather than hav­ing to con­struct some­thing cost­ly themselves.

All of a sud­den, the lean start-up mod­el sur­faced. Busi­ness­es like Face­book no longer need­ed to progress grad­u­al­ly towards per­fec­tion before launch­ing a prod­uct. They could rapid­ly estab­lish some­thing fun­da­men­tal, push it out to users and enhance from there. Facebook’s renowned “move fast and break things” phi­los­o­phy was born.

This also had a pro­found impact on the cul­ture of com­pa­nies like Face­book. An entre­pre­neur like Zucker­berg no longer required a large and expe­ri­enced pool of engi­neers with pro­found sys­tems exper­tise to exe­cute a busi­ness plan.

In real­i­ty, we are aware that Zucker­berg did­n’t want indi­vid­u­als with expe­ri­ence. Inex­pe­ri­enced young men – and they were more fre­quent­ly men – were not only cheap­er but could be fash­ioned in his like­ness, ren­der­ing the com­pa­ny sim­pler to manage.

In the ini­tial years of Face­book, Zucker­berg him­self was unyield­ing­ly con­fi­dent, not sole­ly in his busi­ness plan but in the self-evi­dent­ly ben­e­fi­cial objec­tive of con­nect­ing the world. And as Facebook’s user num­bers – and ulti­mate­ly, prof­itabil­i­ty – soared, why would any­one on his team ques­tion him? And even if they want­ed to, Zucker­berg had devised Facebook’s share­hold­ing rules so that he held a “gold­en vote,” mean­ing the com­pa­ny would invari­ably do what he chose.

To advance as speed­i­ly as pos­si­ble, Face­book exe­cut­ed what­ev­er it could to erad­i­cate sources of fric­tion: the prod­uct would be com­pli­men­ta­ry, and the busi­ness would steer clear of reg­u­la­tion, thus also evad­ing a neces­si­ty for trans­paren­cy in its algo­rithms that might invite criticism.

Regret­tably, while these were the right cir­cum­stances for the growth of a glob­al sen­sa­tion, they were also cir­cum­stances that nur­tured a neglect for user pri­va­cy, safe­ty, and civic responsibility.

Facebook drastically gathers data on its users and has displayed blatant disregard for user privacy.

Now you know a tad about Face­book. But how exten­sive­ly does Face­book rec­og­nize you?

Face­book retains up to 29,000 data points on each of its users. That’s 29,000 minute details it knows about your life, from the real­i­ty that you fan­cy cat videos to whom you’ve been social­iz­ing with recently.

So where does Face­book acquire that data?

Con­sid­er Con­nect, a ser­vice com­menced in 2008 that enables users to sign into third-par­ty web­sites through Face­book. Many users val­ue the sim­plic­i­ty of not need­ing to rec­ol­lect count­less com­plex pass­words for oth­er sites. What most users don’t grasp is that the ser­vice does­n’t sole­ly log them in. It also enables Face­book to mon­i­tor them on any site or appli­ca­tion that uti­lized the log-in. Use Con­nect to log into news web­sites? Face­book is aware of pre­cise­ly what you are reading.

Or con­sid­er pho­tos. Many of us rel­ish tag­ging our friends after a pleas­ant day or night out. You may believe it’s a sim­ple method to share with your friends, but for Face­book, you’re fur­nish­ing a valu­able col­lec­tion of infor­ma­tion about your loca­tion, your activ­i­ties, and your social connections.

Now, if a busi­ness is so avid for your per­son­al data, you’d at least expect that it would han­dle that data with cau­tion, right? Regret­tably, ever since the ear­li­est days of Face­book, Mark Zuckerberg’s enter­prise has dis­played an appar­ent dis­re­gard for data privacy.

In real­i­ty, accord­ing to Busi­ness Insid­er, after Zucker­berg accu­mu­lat­ed his first few thou­sand users, he mes­saged a friend to inform them that if they ever sought infor­ma­tion on any­one at their uni­ver­si­ty, they should sim­ply inquire. He now pos­sessed thou­sands of emails, pho­tos, and address­es. Peo­ple had sim­ply pro­vid­ed them, the young entre­pre­neur indi­cat­ed. They were, in his report­ed words, “fool­ish.”

An insou­ciant atti­tude toward data pri­va­cy at Face­book has endured ever since. For instance, in 2018, jour­nal­ists dis­closed that Face­book had dis­patched mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als to phone num­bers pro­vid­ed by users for two-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion, a secu­ri­ty fea­ture, despite hav­ing vowed not to do so.

And dur­ing the same year, it tran­spired that Face­book had sim­ply down­loaded the phone records – encom­pass­ing calls and texts – of those of its users who used Android phones. Again, the users in ques­tion had no inkling this was transpiring.

Face­book cov­ets your data for a rea­son: to earn more mon­ey by

Retain­ing your pres­ence on the plat­form for an extend­ed peri­od, con­se­quent­ly enhanc­ing its appeal to adver­tis­ers. Let’s exam­ine this in greater detail.

Facebook employs mind manipulation to prolong your online activity and increase its profits

For social net­work­ing plat­forms, time equates to mon­ey, more specif­i­cal­ly, your time trans­lates to their rev­enue. The more time you ded­i­cate to Face­book, Twit­ter, or Insta­gram, and the more atten­tion you bestow upon them, the greater the vol­ume of adver­tis­ing they can vend.

Hence, seiz­ing and retain­ing your focus lies at the core of Face­book’s com­mer­cial tri­umph. The com­pa­ny has excelled beyond all oth­ers in infil­trat­ing your mind.

Sev­er­al tech­niques employed revolve around the pre­sen­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion. These encom­pass the auto­mat­ic ini­ti­a­tion of video play­back and an inces­sant stream of con­tent. These strate­gies keep you cap­ti­vat­ed by elim­i­nat­ing the cus­tom­ary sig­nals to dis­en­gage. While you can reach the end of a tra­di­tion­al news­pa­per, there seems to be no con­clu­sion to Face­book’s news stream.

Oth­er meth­ods delve deep­er into human psy­chol­o­gy by exploit­ing the fear of miss­ing out (FOMO), for instance. Attempt to deac­ti­vate your Face­book account, and you won’t mere­ly encounter a rou­tine con­fir­ma­tion screen; you’ll be greet­ed with images of your clos­est pals, Tom and Jane, cou­pled with the state­ment, “Tom and Jane will miss you.”

The most intri­cate and malev­o­lent tac­tics orches­trat­ed by Face­book lie with­in the deci­sion-mak­ing frame­work of its arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, which deter­mines what con­tent to dis­play to you.

While scrolling through Face­book, you may pre­sume you’re perus­ing a straight­for­ward news feed. How­ev­er, you are essen­tial­ly com­bat­ing a colos­sal arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence armed with copi­ous amounts of data about you, tai­lor­ing con­tent to pro­long your engage­ment on the plat­form. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this often entails mate­r­i­al that res­onates with your pri­mal emotions.

Why does this mat­ter? Well, stim­u­lat­ing our inher­ent emo­tions is what retains your inter­est. Pos­i­tive emo­tions are effec­tive, as evi­denced by the preva­lence of adorable cat videos. But which emo­tions yield the great­est impact? Feel­ings like fear and anger.

Hence, Face­book tends to steer us toward con­tent that incites strong reac­tions, as emo­tion­al­ly charged users con­sume and dis­trib­ute more con­tent. Con­se­quent­ly, you are less inclined to encounter serene head­lines depict­ing events and more pre­dis­posed to con­front sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic asser­tions in suc­cinct, atten­tion-grab­bing videos.

This can pose risks, par­tic­u­lar­ly when we find our­selves ensnared in a bub­ble where our fury, appre­hen­sions, or oth­er sen­ti­ments are con­tin­u­al­ly rein­forced by indi­vid­u­als shar­ing sim­i­lar per­spec­tives. This encap­su­lates the per­il of the so-called fil­ter bub­ble, delved into in the sub­se­quent chapter.

Filter bubbles foster polarization of viewpoints

Every moment you browse Face­book, you are feed­ing infor­ma­tion into its fil­tra­tion algo­rithm. The out­come? A fil­ter bub­ble emerges, where­in Face­book sieves out con­tent it deems unsuit­able for you, whilst ush­er­ing in con­tent you are more inclined to peruse, appre­ci­ate, and distribute.

Eli Paris­er, head of the advo­ca­cy group MoveOn, was among the first to shed light on the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of fil­ter bub­bles dur­ing a Ted Talk in 2011. Paris­er observed that, despite main­tain­ing a fair­ly bal­anced ros­ter of con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al acquain­tances on Face­book, his news­feed was con­spic­u­ous­ly biased. His pen­chant for engag­ing with lib­er­al con­tent prompt­ed Face­book to inun­date him with what it assumed he desired, even­tu­al­ly lead­ing to the exclu­sion of con­ser­v­a­tive con­tent entirely.

This presents a conun­drum. Many indi­vid­u­als source their news and updates from Face­book, pre­sum­ing they are being exposed to a range of per­spec­tives. Nev­er­the­less, in real­i­ty, algo­rithms wield­ing sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence but devoid of civic oblig­a­tions feed them a prej­u­diced por­tray­al of glob­al affairs.

The sit­u­a­tion wors­ens when fil­ter bub­bles cat­alyze the tran­si­tion of users from main­stream to more extrem­ist view­points. This meta­mor­pho­sis can tran­spire due to algo­rithms steer­ing users toward emo­tion­al­ly charged, out­landish content.

For instance, a for­mer employ­ee of YouTube, Guil­laume Chaslot, fash­ioned soft­ware illus­trat­ing the func­tion­al­i­ty of YouTube’s algo­rith­mic sug­ges­tions. It illus­trat­ed that after view­ing any video on the plat­form con­cern­ing the 9/11 attacks, the user would sub­se­quent­ly receive rec­om­men­da­tions for con­spir­a­to­r­i­al 9/11 videos.

Even sans algo­rithms, social media fre­quent­ly insti­gate rad­i­cal­iza­tion among users. This ten­den­cy is par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­nounced with­in Face­book groups. Face­book hosts an abun­dance of groups cater­ing to diverse polit­i­cal incli­na­tions, facil­i­tat­ing tar­get­ed adver­tise­ment placement.

How­ev­er, com­pli­ca­tions arise from these groups. Behav­ioral econ­o­mist and Nudge coau­thor Cass Sun­stein demon­strat­ed that when indi­vid­u­als hold­ing akin view­points delib­er­ate on issues, their opin­ions tend to solid­i­fy and become more extreme over time.

Anoth­er pit­fall with groups lies in their sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to manip­u­la­tion. Data for Democ­ra­cy dis­closed that mere­ly one or two per­cent of a group’s mem­ber­ship pos­sess­es the poten­tial to steer and dic­tate the dia­logue, pro­vid­ed they pos­sess the req­ui­site know-how.

This is pre­cise­ly what the Rus­sians orches­trat­ed pri­or to the 2016 US elections.

Russia leveraged Facebook surreptitiously yet effectively to sway US elections.

Can you con­fi­dent­ly dis­cern the ori­gins of the con­tent you encounter on Face­book? If you were resid­ing in the Unit­ed States through­out 2016, chances are high that you con­sumed and con­ceiv­ably dis­sem­i­nat­ed con­tent on Face­book engi­neered by Russ­ian provocateurs.

Despite mount­ing evi­dence, Face­book staunch­ly refut­ed accu­sa­tions of Rus­si­a’s exploita­tion of the plat­form until Sep­tem­ber 2017, when it con­ced­ed uncov­er­ing rough­ly $100,000 of adver­tis­ing expen­di­ture by spu­ri­ous Russ­ian accounts. Sub­se­quent­ly, Face­book dis­closed that Russ­ian inter­fer­ence had reached 126 mil­lion users on its plat­form and an addi­tion­al 20 mil­lion on Insta­gram. Giv­en that 137 mil­lion indi­vid­u­als par­tic­i­pat­ed in the elec­tion, it’s ardu­ous to dis­count the notion that Russ­ian inter­fer­ence wield­ed some influence.

Rus­si­a’s tac­tics dur­ing the 2016 elec­tion aimed to ener­gize Trump sup­port­ers while damp­en­ing the turnout among poten­tial Demo­c­ra­t­ic voters.

Regret­tably, it was effort­less­ly achiev­able owing to Face­book groups pro­vid­ing Rus­sia with a direct route to spe­cif­ic demo­graph­ics. Russ­ian oper­a­tives estab­lished numer­ous groups tar­get­ing indi­vid­u­als of diverse eth­nic­i­ties, such as the group Black­tivist, pur­port­ed­ly to dis­sem­i­nate untruths that would dis­suade users from back­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date, Hillary Clinton.

Fur­ther­more, these groups facil­i­tat­ed the seam­less dis­sem­i­na­tion of con­tent. We often place implic­it trust in fel­low group mem­bers, assum­ing that infor­ma­tion shared with­in a group align­ing with our iden­ti­ty stems from trust­wor­thy sources.

The author per­son­al­ly wit­nessed acquain­tances shar­ing pro­found­ly misog­y­nis­tic depic­tions of Hillary Clin­ton orig­i­nat­ing in Face­book groups sup­port­ing Bernie Sanders, Clin­ton’s con­tender in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry. It was bewil­der­ing to believe that Sanders’ cam­paign endorsed such con­tent, yet it swift­ly propagated.

Rus­si­a’s effi­ca­cy in influ­enc­ing through groups was vivid­ly illus­trat­ed by the infa­mous instance of the 2016 Hous­ton mosque demon­stra­tions. Face­book events orches­trat­ed by Rus­sians orches­trat­ed simul­ta­ne­ous protests advo­cat­ing for and against Islam out­side a mosque in Hous­ton, Texas. This manip­u­la­tion formed part of Rus­si­a’s broad­er strat­e­gy to sow dis­cord and con­fronta­tion in the Unit­ed States root­ed in anti-minor­i­ty and anti-immi­grant sen­ti­ments, a ploy antic­i­pat­ed to favor the Trump campaign.

Four mil­lion indi­vid­u­als sup­port­ed Oba­ma in 2012 but refrained from endors­ing Clin­ton in 2016. How many of these four mil­lion abstained from Demo­c­ra­t­ic sup­port due to the dis­sem­i­na­tion of Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion and false­hoods about the Clin­ton campaign?

The Cambridge Analytica narrative exposed Facebook’s casual attitude towards data privacy.

In 2011, Face­book reached an agree­ment with the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion, an Amer­i­can con­sumer pro­tec­tion agency and reg­u­la­tor, pro­hibit­ing decep­tive data pri­va­cy prac­tices. As per the set­tle­ment, Face­book was required to obtain explic­it, informed con­sent from users before shar­ing their data. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Face­book failed to adhere to these conditions.

By March 2018, a rev­e­la­tion linked Face­book’s polit­i­cal influ­ence to its dis­re­gard for user pri­va­cy. Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, a firm offer­ing data ana­lyt­ics for Don­ald Trump’s elec­tion cam­paign, unlaw­ful­ly col­lect­ed and exploit­ed near­ly fifty mil­lion Face­book user profiles.

Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca financed a researcher named Alek­san­dr Kogan to amass a data­base of Amer­i­can vot­ers. Kogan craft­ed a per­son­al­i­ty quiz on Face­book, tak­en by 270,000 indi­vid­u­als in exchange for a small amount of mon­ey. This quiz acquired details about their per­son­al­i­ty traits.

Crit­i­cal­ly, it also gath­ered data about the friends of the quiz-tak­ers — total­ing 49 mil­lion indi­vid­u­als col­lec­tive­ly — with­out these friends’ knowl­edge or con­sent. Sub­se­quent­ly, the data team sup­port­ing a con­tro­ver­sial pres­i­den­tial can­di­date gained access to a vast trove of high­ly detailed per­son­al infor­ma­tion for approx­i­mate­ly 49 mil­lion indi­vid­u­als. Despite Face­book’s terms of ser­vice pro­hibit­ing com­mer­cial use of the data, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca pro­ceed­ed to exploit it.

The sit­u­a­tion became even more con­tentious when a whistle­blow­er revealed that Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca suc­cess­ful­ly matched Face­book pro­files with 30 mil­lion ver­i­fied vot­er files. This enabled the Trump cam­paign to obtain valu­able data on thir­teen per­cent of the coun­try’s vot­ers, facil­i­tat­ing tar­get­ed pro­pa­gan­da at these indi­vid­u­als with remark­able pre­ci­sion. Con­sid­er­ing that Trump’s vic­to­ry mar­gin in the Elec­toral Col­lege came from just three swing states, won by a mere 77,744 votes, it’s almost incon­ceiv­able that Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s pre­cise tar­get­ing, based on Face­book’s data breach, did­n’t impact the elec­tion result.

Fol­low­ing the scan­dal, Face­book attempt­ed to assert that it was a vic­tim of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s mis­con­duct. How­ev­er, Face­book’s actions tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Upon dis­cov­er­ing the data breach, Face­book request­ed Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca to destroy the dataset through writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Yet, there was no sub­se­quent audit or inspec­tion con­duct­ed. Instead, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca was sim­ply required to con­firm com­pli­ance by check­ing a box on a form. Addi­tion­al­ly, while Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca col­lab­o­rat­ed with Face­book, Face­book embed­ded three team mem­bers with­in the Trump cam­paign’s dig­i­tal operations.

The Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca saga marked a piv­otal moment, prompt­ing many to believe that Face­book had dis­re­gard­ed its eth­i­cal and soci­etal respon­si­bil­i­ties in favor of growth and profit.

If these alle­ga­tions are true, a per­ti­nent ques­tion aris­es: What steps can soci­ety take in response?

Facebook and other major tech corporations require robust regulation to mitigate potential harm.

The episodes involv­ing Russ­ian inter­fer­ence and Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca illus­trate Face­book’s inad­e­quate com­mit­ment to self-reg­u­la­tion. Hence, there is a grow­ing neces­si­ty to con­tem­plate exter­nal reg­u­la­to­ry frameworks.

One aspect of this could involve imple­ment­ing eco­nom­ic reg­u­la­tions to dilute Face­book and oth­er tech giants’ over­whelm­ing mar­ket dom­i­nance, sim­i­lar to the reg­u­la­to­ry mea­sures applied in the past to behe­moths like Microsoft and IBM. Face­book’s for­mi­da­ble posi­tion stems part­ly from its strate­gic acqui­si­tions of com­peti­tors like Insta­gram and WhatsApp.

Such reg­u­la­tions need not nec­es­sar­i­ly sti­fle eco­nom­ic growth or inno­va­tion neg­a­tive­ly, as exem­pli­fied by the case of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions giant AT&T. In 1956, AT&T reached a set­tle­ment with the gov­ern­ment to curb its expand­ing influ­ence. The agree­ment oblig­ed AT&T to con­fine its oper­a­tions to land­line tele­pho­ny and pro­vide patent licens­es free of charge for oth­ers’ benefit.

Ulti­mate­ly, this arrange­ment proved ben­e­fi­cial for the U.S. econ­o­my. By mak­ing AT&T’s piv­otal patent, the tran­sis­tor, freely acces­si­ble, this antitrust rul­ing cat­alyzed the emer­gence of Sil­i­con Val­ley — the birth­place of com­put­ers, video games, smart­phones, and the inter­net, all root­ed in tran­sis­tor technology.

More­over, this reg­u­la­to­ry approach favored AT&T itself. Even though con­fined to its core busi­ness, the com­pa­ny thrived to such an extent that it faced anoth­er monop­oly case in 1984. Apply­ing a sim­i­lar ratio­nale to enti­ties like Face­book and Google would ensure their sus­te­nance while curb­ing their mar­ket monop­oly and fos­ter­ing healthy competition.

While eco­nom­ic reg­u­la­tion is cru­cial, address­ing Face­book’s soci­etal impact neces­si­tates reg­u­la­tions that tack­le the root caus­es of harm.

One plau­si­ble start­ing point could involve man­dat­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of an unfil­tered Face­book news­feed view. By enabling users to switch between their per­son­al­ized view – shaped by Face­book’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence algo­rithms favor­ing pro­longed engage­ment — and a more unbi­ased per­spec­tive of glob­al events with a sin­gle click, users can access a broad­er spec­trum of information.

Anoth­er con­struc­tive approach would involve reg­u­lat­ing algo­rithms and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Estab­lish­ing a tech­nol­o­gy equiv­a­lent to the FDA in the U.S. could over­see the eth­i­cal deploy­ment of algo­rithms, ensur­ing they serve human inter­ests instead of exploit­ing them. Man­dat­ed third-par­ty audits of algo­rithms would enhance trans­paren­cy, mit­i­gat­ing instances of echo cham­bers and manipulation.

Reg­u­la­tion is com­mon­place in var­i­ous indus­tries, strik­ing a bal­ance between pub­lic wel­fare and eco­nom­ic lib­er­ty. In the tech realm, this equi­lib­ri­um requires fine-tun­ing. Change is imperative.

Summary

The crux of the mat­ter lies in these summaries:

Face­book has mor­phed into a calami­ty, ensnar­ing users in end­less screen time, nudg­ing them towards extreme view­points, tram­pling over per­son­al pri­va­cy, and sway­ing elec­toral out­comes. It’s time to push back and cease accept­ing Face­book’s adverse effects on indi­vid­u­als and soci­ety as tolerable.

Action­able sug­ges­tion: Alter your device aes­thet­ics to dimin­ish their impact on your well-being.

A cou­ple of tweaks to your dig­i­tal devices can yield sub­stan­tial ben­e­fits. First­ly, enabling night-shift mode on your device dimin­ish­es the blue light emit­ted, reduc­ing eye strain and aid­ing in bet­ter sleep. Sec­ond­ly, switch­ing your smart­phone to mono­chrome mode lessens its visu­al inten­si­ty, con­se­quent­ly reduc­ing the dopamine rush trig­gered by screen time.

About the author

Roger McNamee boasts over three decades of invest­ment expe­ri­ence in Sil­i­con Val­ley and was an ear­ly investor in both Face­book and Google. His lat­est endeav­or, Ele­va­tion, co-found­ed with U2’s Bono, focus­es on pro­mot­ing aware­ness regard­ing the adverse impacts of social media.