The Liar That Claims to be Your Friend
by Miki Saxon
If someone claimed they were your friend, but constantly lied to you, used you, stole from you, and vouched for con artists would you still trust them?
Would you invite them into your home and introduce them to your friends?
You probably already have.
The ‘someone’ is Facebook in all its forms, subsidiaries and partners.
In truth, parent Facebook lies constantly.
It lies about who/how they share you.
Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages. (…) The social network permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends’ posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had stopped that type of sharing years earlier.
It lies about stalking you for targeted ads.
“There is no way for people to opt out of using location for ads entirely,” the Facebook spokesperson said told Gizmodo.
It lies about its true purpose — and always has.
It should not come as a surprise that Facebook — a giant, for-profit company whose early employees reportedly ended staff meetings by chanting “domination!” — would act in its own interests.
It lies about its efforts to stop fake news.
Current and former fact-checkers for Facebook have slammed the company in interviews with The Guardian, saying it cared more about “crisis PR” than actually combatting the spread of fake news.
Do you think Sheryl Sandberg’s a role model? If so, think again.
A report from The New York Times shows that, while Sandberg was building her global brand, she was using aggressive and underhanded tactics at Facebook. As the company faced increasing criticism and pressure (…) she embraced a strategy to suppress information about Facebook’s problems, discredit its critics, and deflect blame onto its competitors.
What about companies owned by Facebook?
WhatsApp is a major child pornography platform.WhatsApp has become a platform for users to “openly” share pictures and videos of child pornography, the Financial Times reports. (…) WhatsApp only has 300 employees to monitor its 1.5 billion users globally.
Then there’s Instagram.
Instagram was of even more help to Russian interests in 2016 than Facebook.
“Instagram was a significant front in the IRA’s [Russian Internet Research Agency] influence operation, something that Facebook executives appear to have avoided mentioning in Congressional testimony …”
It has far more harassment and bullying, than Facebook — in spite of its so-called “kindness” initiative” Read the stories, they are a real eye-opener.
As is the recently released Senate report on Russian disinformation in which Instagram is a star.
Zukerberg not only lies, he is expert at turning a blind eye on the headline-generating happenings and focusing on all the marvelous accomplishments in 2017.
In his annual year-end letter, which he published on his Facebook page on Friday, (…) boasting of all that the company had accomplished this year and all the great things it does for its users. “I’m proud of the progress we’ve made.”
Join me tomorrow for a look at the nefarious doing of others and Friday for what you can do to fight back.
Image credit: Marco Paköeningrat
