I know for many Facebook employees, it’s a job that pays the bills… but I don’t know if I could continue working for a company with a CEO (Zuckerberg) that has this much cognitive dissonance associated with the platform and how he defends some of the positions that he champions for it. And that is even more so considering how the platform has been weaponized for disinformation campaigns by bad actors (who also happen to spend a lot money with Facebook to get it on their platform and into users newsfeeds because they know that it won’t be subjected to any fact checking).
Zuckerberg is smart enough to know that this (some of what can be considered “dirty money”) is generating a good portion of the company’s revenues. And that in turn continues juicing his wealth (he has a controlling interest in Facebook) as it share price appreciates over time. Zuckerberg’s justification for not moderating political content even when they are patently false is just over the top sleezy though (political ads on broadcast networks have to go through a comprehensive vetting process due to their media reach). Facebook as one of the largest social media networks has an even broader world wide reach, but isn’t subjected to the same sort of regulations of traditional media. The justification used years ago was that regulation would stifle innovation of these Internet based companies.
There’s a point though where such companies grow too large and end up becoming overwhelmingly influential in the process. And that’s what has happened with Facebook as a media platform; where it can disseminate information via a variety of means (print, video, special interest groups in pages, etc) utilizing their algorithms that custom tailors a users newsfeed based on their interests, likes, usage patterns, interactions with friends (and their own interests, likes, and usage patterns). For some users, Facebook is almost like a utility. For folks like myself, it has been an experiment (the Facebook app has never been installed on my device and I’ve never provided my real date of birth, any phone number, or any address – no matter what means their site tries to acquire this information, I always opt out of providing it) of always throwing curveballs at the underlying algorithms to build any sort of accurate profile about me).
