By this point no one would dare to suggest that Facebook is in any way an ethically sound platform. The countless privacy violations just don’t allow comments like this to be taken all that seriously anymore, but this doesn’t mean that we have uncovered the extent of Facebook’s unethical behavior. It’s quite common for someone or the other to discover something new that was previously unheard of, and this further changes the way people view the once beloved social media platform.
For the most part Facebook claims that its platform does not allow any kind of abuses of power to occur as far as governments are concerned. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that a recent investigation by the Guardian has revealed that this level of trust that Facebook is attempting to establish apparently only extends to Western countries that have strong medias which Facebook wants to get on the good side of so that it can take advantage of the excellent publicity that this could end up giving to them.
The same can’t be said for smaller countries though, where Facebook apparently seems to take a far more laissez fair approach in terms of allowing the often corrupt governments of these smaller countries to get their hands on quite a bit of data. Countries like the US and South Korea, both of which are powerful and influential, had cases of political manipulation addressed surprisingly quickly. On the other hand, if you look at cases that occurred in more war torn nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq, Facebook’s response to accusations of facilitating political manipulation tended to be almost glacially slow.
The Guardian discovered this after going through a lot of internal documents as well as receiving information from former Facebook employees and the like. The general consensus is that if something results in any kind of PR problem for Facebook, the company would most likely end up dealing with it as quickly as possible. However, if a particular issue is not resulting in any major kind of bad press for Facebook, chances are high that the company would not really think about how it can go about fixing the issue regardless of the problems that it might be causing.
This goes directly against Facebook’s claims because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up causing a lot of unrest in the world. Facebook has the power to make a lot of changes and it can be a medium through which revolutions can be built, but at the same time it can be used to manipulate people as well and make them believe something that might not be entirely true all in all.
Until and unless Facebook starts to take all problems that occur through the misuse of its platform seriously, it doesn’t seem possible that the company would be able to run in an overall ethical manner. It is chilling to think what Facebook might become if it doesn’t try hard enough to prevent politicians and governments from manipulating people by preventing them from being able to use the resources of the platform in such a manner.
Read next: Do You Trust Social Media with Your Data? This Study Shows That Two Thirds of Users Do Not
For the most part Facebook claims that its platform does not allow any kind of abuses of power to occur as far as governments are concerned. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that a recent investigation by the Guardian has revealed that this level of trust that Facebook is attempting to establish apparently only extends to Western countries that have strong medias which Facebook wants to get on the good side of so that it can take advantage of the excellent publicity that this could end up giving to them.
The same can’t be said for smaller countries though, where Facebook apparently seems to take a far more laissez fair approach in terms of allowing the often corrupt governments of these smaller countries to get their hands on quite a bit of data. Countries like the US and South Korea, both of which are powerful and influential, had cases of political manipulation addressed surprisingly quickly. On the other hand, if you look at cases that occurred in more war torn nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq, Facebook’s response to accusations of facilitating political manipulation tended to be almost glacially slow.
The Guardian discovered this after going through a lot of internal documents as well as receiving information from former Facebook employees and the like. The general consensus is that if something results in any kind of PR problem for Facebook, the company would most likely end up dealing with it as quickly as possible. However, if a particular issue is not resulting in any major kind of bad press for Facebook, chances are high that the company would not really think about how it can go about fixing the issue regardless of the problems that it might be causing.
This goes directly against Facebook’s claims because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up causing a lot of unrest in the world. Facebook has the power to make a lot of changes and it can be a medium through which revolutions can be built, but at the same time it can be used to manipulate people as well and make them believe something that might not be entirely true all in all.
Until and unless Facebook starts to take all problems that occur through the misuse of its platform seriously, it doesn’t seem possible that the company would be able to run in an overall ethical manner. It is chilling to think what Facebook might become if it doesn’t try hard enough to prevent politicians and governments from manipulating people by preventing them from being able to use the resources of the platform in such a manner.
Read next: Do You Trust Social Media with Your Data? This Study Shows That Two Thirds of Users Do Not
