New Orleans Facebook was a great idea. An application that would allow people to connect, families to keep up with each other and share experiences, and all without any direct out-of-pocket costs. The young ones love Instagram, and the seniors continue to sign on to Facebook, tilting the demographic their own way. WhatsApp, another one of the suite of mega-Meta products has become even more intimate for many and in much of the world a central communications utility for oral and written communications.
Much of this seemed not only positive, but vital. So sure, the founders, early movers and investors made a mint, and, capitalism being what it is, that seemed to be part of the price we accepted as part of the product. Mark Zuckerberg, the big cheese of this operation, was pretty insufferable, but he was young and vacuous, so came as part of the package. He invariably seemed to be the deer caught in the headlines between his tech concentration, wealth accumulation, and surprise to find that others felt the tool maker should be accountable for how the tools were used.
His adjustments to meet critics and frequent mea culpas and promises to do better over and over again were tedious and trying, but even if clearly a charade for another company do-over, they were still part of the game, as all of understood, and silently accepted by many. The welcome and forbearance wore thin when the harms to children and young people from the Meta platforms became inescapable. The prominent role the company played as a forum for misinformation and state actors, whether in Myanmar or the 2016 election, forced a rethinking of the whole affair. Zuckerberg countered all of this, even if ineptly, with controls and monitors, both in-house and subcontracted. With more than a billion users, many of them sly scoundrels, we all knew this was an imperfect response and a form of whack-a-mole, but if they were really trying their best and spending the coin to do so, many were willing to still give the company and Zuckerberg the benefit of a doubt. He seemed to know that a tool is valuable, but without safety protections, any tool can be a weapon.
It turns out we were complete suckers. The vaunted principles of the company and its founder are now revealed as hollow. Zuckerberg has now announced an end to controls and let a thousand evils bloom. Having tried, no matter how feebly, to block misinformation, he now pretends there are no consequences and hides behind a claim of free speech, allowing all uses to yell “fire” in the world’s theatre. In the face of Trump II, he has been revealed as completely craven. Like many of the tech folks, he’s gone to kiss the ring, and try to curry favor with a million dollars for the inauguration and a new tilt to their political and lobbying program.
We all knew he didn’t stand for much, but we were never forced to reckon with the fact that he stood for nothing. Now we have no choice but to see that “there’s no there there” in Gertrude Stein’s famous expression. Our problem now is clear, even if it is not simple: what can we do about it?