Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced a major strategy shift towards messaging and “privacy.” Don’t be fooled. It’s not about making you feel safer — at all. At the center of this two-step are two different definitions of privacy. When you think about privacy, you are thinking “I don’t want my private information shared.” That’s not what…
The alternate title for this post was “Why things suck.” I’ve been analyzing corporate behavior for 25 years. I’ve covered Microsoft, Comcast, Facebook, sports leagues, and government. And one simple statement — monopolies prioritize strategy over customers — explains so much. Monopolies are not evil. It’s not that they don’t care. It’s just that once…
The strangest thing happened to me the other day. And I’m wondering why Facebook doesn’t have the (artificial) intelligence to catch it. This attractive woman who I didn’t know sent me a friend request on Facebook. Has that ever happened to you? It has? So it’s not just me? In fact, since I’ve been on…
If you had profited from a highly addictive drug that had done great damage to society, what would you do? A trial about this — about Insys and fentanyl — is happening right now in Boston. But I’m not talking about opioids. I’m talking about Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal looks…
In the US, the midterm election day is one week from today, November 6. Facebook says it will ban misinformation on voting. If you find this news item encouraging, allow me to discourage you. First off, the ban is limited in scope. Facebook is not banning fake news (as if such a thing were possible)…
According to the Washington Post, Facebook is rating your trustworthiness on a zero-to-one scale. Not only that, they won’t tell you how they rate people. Here’s why that’s a necessary first step in squashing the spread of fake news. First, let’s get this out of the way. Facebook is biased. All social media and search…
Facebook has joined Apple, Youtube, and Disqus in banning Alex Jones and yanking his InfoWars pages. Jones and his supporters are livid, claiming free speech violations, while liberals are wondering what took so long. The challenge here is that lying on Facebook is perfectly fine; only “hate speech” will get you banned. Let’s take a…
Senator Mark R. Warner’s office wrote a paper with 20 legislative ideas on how to restrain the excesses, abuses, and ill effects of internet giants like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple; Axios got a copy and published it. With problems from fake news to data sharing and bullying, these platforms certainly deserve scrutiny. Of course,…
Mark Zuckerberg got himself in hot water by explaining why he couldn’t kick Holocaust deniers off of Facebook. That sounds indefensible until you try to figure out how you’d do it. It’s a hard problem, but I have a solution. Here’s what Mark Zuckerberg told Recode in an interview with Kara Swisher: Zuckerberg: I’m Jewish,…