Facebook is again getting an eminently justified wave of bad publicity today. It deserves every bit. It is the prime incubator racist, quasi-fascist propaganda, state-run psyops operations and more. But to really understand the problem it is important to understand the ...
2/ structural roots of the problem, how much of this is baked into the core architecture and business model. Some of it is inherent to post-2000 tech. Facebook is an ingenious engine for information and ideational manipulation. It's a Pavlov engine for heightening ...
3/ sharpening and intensifying instinctive responses. That's the basis of the algorithms and why it is hugely lucrative. That also makes it ripe for misuse and bad acting. But the core of second wave Internet commerce operations is finding network models were costs grow ...
4/ arithmetically and revenues grow exponentially. With the possible exception of Apple that's the core of all the big tech goliaths. That's why there's no phone support for Google or Facebook or Twitter or any of the rest. It's why these companies employ so few people relative..
5/ to scale and profitability. Managing or distinguishing between legitimately and bad uses of this engine is one that would require huge, huge investment, lots of people to manage. That is a scale of investment and involvement that is wholly beyond the business model.
6/ It's why all these platforms routinely have comical stories about people reporting on white supremacy or pedophilia being banned for white supremacist or pedophile content. The core economic model requires doing it on the cheap. From an economic perspective it is a grand ...
7/ of socializing the externalities and keeping the revenues wholly for the owners. Nuclear power is actually incredibly cheap. The fuel is fairly plentiful and easy to pull out the ground and you set up a little engine and it makes limitless energy. What makes it ...
8/ ruinously expensive is managing the externalities, all the risks and dangers or radiation, accidents and radioactive waste. Facebook is best seen as a fantastically profitable nuclear energy producer whose profitability is based on dumping the waste on the side of the ...
9/ road and seeing frequently accidents and explosions as just an inherent part of the enterprise. Again, if nuclear power producers did that they would unquestionably be the most profitable companies in the world. On a longer time horizon it's what fossil fuel producers ...
10/ have been doing for decades. The point is that they've created a hugely powerful and potentially very dangerous machine. The core business model is based on getting all the revenue and having a few algothrms and a very, very limited investment in personal try to ...
11/ get a handle on the most outrageous and shocking abuses. It's not about Zuckerberg being a jerk - though he is one. It is built into the very foundation of the operation. To manage the potential negative externalities of what they've created would require money they ...
12/ are totally unwilling and in some ways unable to spend.
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