“Facebook leads the industry in stopping bad actors online. That’s because they’ve invested $13B in teams and technology to enhance safety over the last five years. It’s working. In just the past few months, they’ve taken down 1.7 billion fake accounts to stop bad actors from doing harm. But working to reduce harmful and illicit content on their platforms is never done.”
– Facebook ad on a popular podcast, December 2021
If automobiles caused as much harm as Facebook, those vehicles would be recalled. If a drug caused as much harm as Facebook, that drug would be pulled from the shelves. And yet, toxic Facebook remains unimpeded in the damage that it causes. Their own ad copy acknowledges enough when it concludes: “… is never done.”
Rather than laud Facebook for the money that it’s spending not to solve the problem ($13 BILLION!”), let’s all acknowledge that their spending 100x as much or more wouldn’t put a dent in the problem. Their business model is fundamentally broken … and trivial to fix.
Craft laws–akin to those laws that bar defective automobiles and drugs–that require social media platforms to shift their income stream from digital advertising and the resulting need for keeping and growing user attention to a subscription income stream use can be healthy and not based on amplifying rage and falsehood.
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