Facebook has made itself so necessary to the
online experience that for many people it
is the internet.
And that is causing some major problems when
it comes to user data, and security.
You can trace a lot of these problems
to a phenomenon called “the network effect”.
I think the first time I ever read about this, they
were talking about fax machines, right.
The first fax machine is invented, it's totally
useless.
But the more people who have it,
the more useful it becomes, because you can
communicate with other people.
Facebook is network effects on steroids,
right?
It’s an event calendar, a contact book,
a photo album, it’s texting, video calling,
money transferring SOCIAL NETWORK that makes
millions of dollars a day.
“A million dollars isn’t cool, you know what’s cool?”
Two billion people!
And at that size the network effects push
Facebook beyond useful, to pretty much being
integral to daily life.
It's not just that you personally would miss
stuff if you went off Facebook, but it would
almost be rude, right?
It could be an inconvenience to your peers,
for you to not be on Facebook, because then
they couldn't invite you to things that way.
So you create a problem for yourself, and
you create a problem for other people by opting
out of it.
This FOMO is how Facebook turns the network
effect into profit.
Even though no one pays to use the core service.
But advertisers, marketers, and other folks
WILL pay.
For user data.
And because users feel that the free core
service is so beneficial, they agree to pay,
in a sense, by providing that data.
Yeah.
Read those Terms of Service.
What happened with Cambridge Analytica illustrates
how our personal boundaries for using that
data in the real world are being tested.
The consulting firm, hired by the Trump campaign
for the 2016 election, exploited access to
the data of millions Facebook users.
Now, Facebook allows academic researchers more
access to user data than commercial companies
and app developers.
So a researcher built this personality quiz app
under those guidelines. People used it
and in doing so, allowed it to harvest
data from their Facebook profiles. But no
one really read the Terms of Service, because it also
gave the app access to some data on the friends
of the people who took the quiz.
These are friends, who did not directly consent
to the terms of the app.
Only 270 thousand people took the quiz, but by Facebook’s latest estimate,
the app was able to harvest
the data of at least 87 million users.
Here’s the kicker: this was all above board…
the data collection didn’t violate any rules.
But what wasn’t allowed was handing over
that data, collected for “research purposes”,
to Cambridge Analytica.
And when it came out that Cambridge used all
this data to develop techniques to target
voters during the 2016 election, people were
not happy.
And users wanted to know why Facebook was allowed to do this.
When you have executives saying, "It's our
responsibility to do x."
A good question to ask is, in what sense is
it your responsibility?
Is it your legal responsibility?
Or are you just saying you'll feel bad?
The situation with Facebook is unique,
in that there are no legal responsibilities. At all.
Which is different from financial institutions, medical records, other kinds of things like that.
Even though angering its users might seem
bad for business, Facebook isn’t doing anything
unexpected here in regards to your data.
Because the aunts and high school friends
and work acquaintances on Facebook aren’t
just the users of the platform.
They’re also the product.
And Facebook sells that product — all of
that data — to advertisers who want information
about potential customers.
Which is how Facebook makes millions daily
without charging you to use it.
When you look at it this way, Facebook is
very, very good at what it does… even if
the people spending the most time on it don’t
actually like it that much.
And that's why I think it's important to see that as far
as we can tell from the research that's available,
Facebook is not really good for its customers,
it makes people feel lonely and depressed.
Matt’s referring to this study, by the University
of Copenhagen.
It compared how participants
self reported various emotions before and
after quitting facebook for a week.
It's a good reminder that,
while Facebook does exist to connect you with
friends,
and help you find events,
that's secondary to the platform’s
business goal of mining your data.
Put another way: Facebook only cares that
you’re using Facebook, not whether you like
to use Facebook.
Which is why the main selling point is that
everyone is on Facebook.
Because at roughly two billion users… those
network effects likely aren't going anywhere.
And whether you like them or not, you probably aren't going anywhere either.
