It has been more than a week of adversarial events for Facebook, and not better days appear to be ahead. The social media giant has been caught in allegations of moral deficiency, after a leak revealed it deliberately chooses profit over public safety. Now there is an uprising that may mar its ad-based business empire.
Common Dreams reported on a new campaign calling for federal action to “shut down Facebook’s surveillance machine” including passing legislation to ensure strong data privacy protections.
“The best way to stop Facebook’s harms for the whole world is to cut off the fuel supply for its dangerous machine,” says the How to Stop Facebook campaign, launched Wednesday by a diverse coalition of over 40 organizations.
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Frances Haugen, Facebook’s former product manager, recently leaked documents of the social media’s internal research that reveals it knows how much harm the platform causes but chooses to ignore it. She had testified before a Senate Committee and suggested tighter regulation as a way to keep the social media platform in check.
The How to Stop Facebook campaign is touting a tighter private data legislation, arguing that the fuel driving Facebook’s business model is the trove of user data the company amasses to power algorithms that generate ad revenue and corporate profits.
“The problem with companies like Facebook and YouTube is not that they host user-generated content, it’s that they use surveillance-driven algorithms to pick and choose what content goes viral and what content no one sees, in order to keep us all on the platform clicking and scrolling to maximize advertising revenue,” said Fight for the Future director Evan Greer.
Facebook did put out a rebuttal. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a statement issued last week, following Facebook’s recovery from its six-hour outage, refuted Haugen’s allegations.
“We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health. It’s difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives. At the most basic level, I think most of us just don’t recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted,” he said.
However, this attempt to tell the Facebook side of the story has failed to calm the avalanche of criticism that has greeted the leak, forcing Facebook to take extra steps to address the matter.
Last year, a similar campaign against Facebook took off following the death of George Floyd in the hands of the US police. A coalition of rights groups and companies had started a movement, urging advertisers to boycott Facebook until it addresses the rising concerns that its platform is aiding racial injustice and is upholding moral decadence.
But the campaign failed as Facebook posted more revenue than expected. That means, even though many companies joined the calls to boycott Facebook by halting their ad purchases, Facebook was neither hurt nor deterred.
Now the new coalition whose members include Fight for the Future, Win Without War, Media Justice, Public Knowledge, and United We Dream are taking a different approach.
According to Sara Collins, policy counsel at Public Knowledge, “The harms described by Ms. Haugen are fueled by unrestrained data collection and data use.”
A petition linked to the campaign lays out a number of recommendations:
Congress must pass strong data privacy legislation, and the FTC should move forward with rule making that prohibits companies from collecting, purchasing, or otherwise acquiring user information beyond what is needed to provide the service requested by the user, and from using this information for another purpose or to transfer it to another company without the user’s explicit, opt-in consent. There should also be clear guardrails around what companies can do. People shouldn’t have to pay more if they assert their privacy rights, using a service shouldn’t be conditioned on turning over personal information that is not necessary, and technology companies should not be able to discriminate against people in ways that would be illegal in the physical world or that undermine the intent of existing civil rights laws.
A further recommendation is for lawmakers to use their subpoena power and begin a full investigation into “Facebook’s harms.”
As Myaisha Hayes, campaign strategies director of Media Justice, sees it, the need to address the sweeping harms is urgent.
“Facebook’s surveillance capitalist business model is fundamentally incompatible with basic human rights,” she said, “and disproportionately harms Black and brown communities by silencing our voices while artificially amplifying racist and harmful content.”
The company’s “surveillance machine,” she added, “is putting our communities and our democracy in danger. It’s time for lawmakers to cut off their fuel supply by passing a strong data privacy law.”
Besides issuing a rebuttal, Facebook has extended an invite to Haugen to speak with the content moderation Board. The Board said it hopes to “gather information that can help push for greater transparency and accountability from Facebook through our case decisions and recommendations.”
Advertising is Facebook’s major means of revenue. The company was deeply hurt earlier in the year, after Apple implemented a new iOS policy prohibiting it from harvesting private data for targeted ads from unconsenting users. A tighter private data legislation will likely see Facebook’s revenue plummet – a jeopardy for its growth.