The Texan asked me about the current Facebook leak and I gave them my honest assessment. They only reported a small part of our conversation, and you can read it here. What they left out were my comments about the so-called apologies and the PR spin put out by the Facebook leadership about ‘doing better’. We’ve heard this from Facebook for a decade. They always apologize after the fact and promise to do better. This is why we need proper regulation, business cannot be relied on self-police, money and profit always take priority. How many businesses have mission statements that speak in lofty terms about ‘adding value’ to the world, or ’empowering people to do more’ – it’s as if they are charities or educational institutions, not corporate profit seekers. Facebook’s mission is to ‘bring the world closer together’….right…I think they left off the final clause of the sentence that says ‘so that we can exploit these close connections for money’. We do realize that this is their real mission, right?
Of course, the latest scandal will have little impact other than embarrassing some folks, I doubt many people will give up using FB. When asked why, I liken social media and privacy loss to fast food. We know it’s not good for us but we eat it anyway. We also had to learn over many years that diet and nutrition have to be worked on….privacy is the same, it will take most people time to learn that personal information space needs to be nourished too, and it takes effort. Meanwhile the MacDonalds of the internet will keep pretending to be good for us while saving the planet too.