In 2008, I first wrote publicly about how Cheating Platforms, like Facebook are bad for our country (and the world). I wrote 67 other articles related to the l’enfant terrible of technology since. After 13 years, dear government, have you finally woken up yet?
My critical warnings against the unbridled freedom of technology and Facebook specifically were then removed by editors from popular Silicon Valley publications, such as VentureBeat. Look who is smiling now?
It should not take a whistleblower, like Frances Haugen, to surface before we detect that any totalitarian monism is bad for the world. The fact that Facebook has gotten this far is a testament our (global) governments are asleep in the practice of protecting the sovereignties of their countries.
So, I urge governments to clean up their act as much as Facebook needs to. To some extend we cannot expect Facebook to be responsible for the protection of sovereignties and freedoms we ourselves leave ill-defined. I offered preliminary suggestions of how the issues with Facebook can be resolved.
There is a higher-order solution to this mess, when not just technology companies but governments take their business more serious. It lies not in the corrective measures we can apply to hamstring Facebook, but it lies upstream in redefining the first-principles humanity must abide by.
Putting another bandaid on Facebook will not resolve the principle issue of technology’s overreach in societal structures.
