Facebook Frolics 0
Cathy O’Neil skewers the Zuckerborg’s argument that it is to big and complex to break up. A snippet (emphasis added). As an aside, I suspect that U. S. Steel, American Sugar, and other trusts busted by Teddy Roosevelt made similar arguments.
Really? No doubt, the breakup would be difficult for Facebook’s managers, who rely on data sharing among WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook to create the most complete possible profiles of users and then sell their attention to the highest bidder. If the companies were separated, all the investment they’d been making into surveillance and targeting wouldn’t immediately work out as well as they had hoped. For them, the product is the advertising, not the service to users.
I still have a Facebook account because, from time to time, I do outreach for an organization I belong to and, if one must do outreach, one must reach out where the people are. But, honestly, I dread logging into Facebook. It has become a kludge of krap.
