Mark Zuckerberg wants you to know that he understands your concerns about Facebook. In fact, he’s decided to make it his responsibility to fix it.
You might have thought that, as CEO of the $500 billion company, he would already have been focusing on issues like hate speech, abuse and interference from nation states on the platform as a top priority – but don’t worry guys, he’s now made this his personal challenge.
Zuckerberg laid out his commitment to address some of these problems in a post setting out his goals for 2018.
But what does his new year’s resolution actually amount to? We cut through the tech bro talk to consider what it really means.
Every year I take on a personal challenge to learn something new. I've visited every US state, run 365 miles, built an AI for my home, read 25 books, and learned Mandarin.
This starts like a typical new year post. Zuckerberg makes a habit of publicly declaring his annual “challenges”, which are usually your regular kind of self-improvement resolutions: read more, travel, learn a new skill. But we soon get a sense that Zuck has more serious matters on his mind this time…
I started doing these challenges in 2009. That first year the economy was in a deep recession and Facebook was not yet profitable. We needed to get serious about making sure Facebook had a sustainable business model. It was a serious year, and I wore a tie every day as a reminder.
\1. Start up \2. Wear a tie \3. ???? \4. PROFIT
Today feels a lot like that first year. The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do -- whether it's protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent.
Not convinced the anxiety Zuck felt when Facebook was working to turn a profit can really be compared to that of users facing abuse, hate speech and interference by nation states.
But hey, wearing a tie worked last time, so maybe it’s worth a shot?
My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues.
Don’t worry guys, Mark’s on it.
We won't prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we're successful this year then we'll end 2018 on a much better trajectory.
There’s a vague admission here that Facebook is falling short in some respects, though note that the only problems Zuckerberg highlights are errors enforcing policies (there’s no suggestion that the policies themselves might be lacking) and misuse of Facebook’s tools (i.e. it’s not Facebook’s fault, it’s the people who use it wrongly).
What’s missing is any indication of how Zuckerberg actually intends to tackle the major issues he identifies, which it has so far failed to solve. What is the company going to do differently in 2018? By what measures is Zuckerberg going to judge if it is successful?
This may not seem like a personal challenge on its face, but I think I'll learn more by focusing intensely on these issues than I would by doing something completely separate.
You’re right Mark, it doesn’t really seem like a “personal challenge”. More like “your obligations as CEO.” But, you know, the most important thing here is your personal development. As our timelines continue to fill with hate speech and fake news, we can all rest secure in the knowledge that you think you’ll “learn more” along the way.
These issues touch on questions of history, civics, political philosophy, media, government, and of course technology. I'm looking forward to bringing groups of experts together to discuss and help work through these topics.
This is hard, guys. Facebook might have figured out how to target ads to every facet of your identity, build a drone to beam internet from the sky, and use AI to make your photos look like Van Gogh paintings, but this requires political philosophy.
“Bringing groups of experts together” is as close as we get to an actual plan.
For example, one of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs decentralization. A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in people's hands.
It’s not exactly clear what this nebulous idea about centralisation vs decentralisation has to do with solving Facebook’s issues around abuse and political interference.
Zuckerberg’s positioning is, however, interesting. He says “a lot of us,” suggesting he includes himself among those who were inspired by the decentralising potential of technology. Yet Facebook is anything but decentralised. In fact, it would be one of the first companies you’d point the finger at when complaining about the increasing centralisation of the internet.
(The first four words of Facebook's mission have always been "give people the power".)
The first four words of its mission may be "give people the power”, but the full sentence says Facebook's mission is to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
Facebook gives people the power to use Facebook.
Back in the 1990s and 2000s, most people believed technology would be a decentralizing force. But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it.
Zuckerberg is right that people are increasingly concerned about the amount of power wielded by tech giants. But what he doesn’t seem to grasp is that they’re talking about him.
There are important counter-trends to this – like encryption and cryptocurrency – that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people's hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I'm interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.
It’s funny how Zuckerberg writes here as if he’s never really looked into the issue of encryption before – despite, you know, owning WhatsApp, which uses end-to-end encryption and has been at the centre of political debates on the matter.
As for how cryptocurrency will solve abuse and fake news – well, we seem to be rather straying from the point by this stage.
This will be a serious year of self-improvement and I'm looking forward to learning from working to fix our issues together.
They're your issues really, Mark, but that's OK. The important thing is that you try your best, right? Happy New Year.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
