IN SUMMARY: Mr. Cicilline, a member of the House of Representatives from Rhode Island, is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law is calling for an investigation into Facebook for violating antitrust laws. It won’t matter as Facebook continues to act with impunity.
A year ago, the world learned that Facebook allowed a political consulting company called Cambridge Analytica to exploit the personal information of up to 87 million users, to obtain data that would help the company’s clients “fight a culture war” in America. And in its pursuit of dominance, Facebook gave at least 60 device makersdirect access to its users’ data. Those actions are under criminal investigation, The Times reported last week.
But it doesn’t matter. Why? Because Facebook continues to rake in boatloads of money from advertising and users aren’t willing to hold Facebook accountable. There hasn’t been any “mass exodus” from Facebook because users are addicted to the site.
What about holding brands “socially responsible”?
Supposedly Millennials like too hold brand socially responsible for their actions but Facebook, it seems, has received a lot of “get out of jail” cards. Mr. Zuckerberg rules Facebook with a closed mind and iron fist and relies on Ms. Sandberg to run interference. Facebooks complicity in electing the worst administration in history remains up for debate even though clear evidence suggests they were largely responsible for a lot of “fake news”.
In what’s known as “chutzpah” Facebook wants to include more local news but can’t because they say “there isn’t enough local news”. Maybe because they have put them out of business as they did to Vine when they stopped carrying their feed?
The bottom line is that as long as advertisers beg Facebook to take their online ad dollars and as long as users stay Facebook will continue to treat everyone else like dung.
