There are a number of troubling points in this article. It's not about us 'losing innocence' - it's about @facebook's massive failure of leadership and organization from day one. Thread.
First, it's about FB's deep-rooted failure to think through which commercial advertising is different from political advertising. It's about them standing up commercial revenues in the political space without any forethought.
Second, it is about FB's deep-rooted failure to safeguard their platform against manipulation and their data against being compromised. It is about FB's failure to think about the differences between commercial and political data.
And, it is about FB's failure to have a system in place to be able to address violations in their terms of data use, which has greater consequences in the context of politics.
It is about FB's deep-rooted failure to set transparent and consistent policies around the use of their platform for political purposes.
This includes FB's failure to *ever* clearly and publicly define and consistently enforce what sorts of political data and targeting should be allowed, what types of speech should be permissible, and its responsibilities to its users as members of democratic publics.
Every step along the way, FB has made decisions about all of these things. But in repeated and stunning failures of leadership and management, they have been inconsistent, unfair, incoherent, and hidden from public view.
And this is a non-partisan thing. In the routine context of electoral politics - which I study - FB makes arbitrary and non-public decisions about everything from allowable political advertising to takedowns of content to algorithmic changes that shape public attention.
One telling fact is that on both sides of the aisle, at the highest level of politics, people have literally no idea how FB works as an organization. Who is responsible for decisions? Who reports to whom? What guidelines are in place? What are FB's ethical standards?
Above all, the CA story is about FB's deep-rooted failure to be thoughtful and transparent about its organization, ethics, policies, and failings in the context of democratic processes/END
