His detractors and enemies have been waiting some time for this, but it must have given them moments of mild cheer. Facebook, the all-gazing, accumulating system of personal profiles and information, poster child, in fact, of surveillance capitalism, is losing users. At the very least, it is falling to that mild phenomenon in business speak called “flat-lining”, a deceptively benign term suggesting that the fizz is going out of the product.
This week, Mark Zuckerberg has been more humble than usual. The latest figures show that 1.49 billion users hop on the platform daily; monthly active users come in at 2.27 billion. While both figures are increases from previous metrics, these fall shy of those bubbly estimates Facebook loves forecasting: 1.51 billion in the former; 2.29 billion in the latter. “We’re well behind YouTube”, he observed; in “developed countries”, Zuckerberg conceded that his company was probably reaching saturation. While security features of Facebook had improved, there was at least another twelve months before the standard was, in his view, up to scratch.
The user market in North America is flat, while in Europe, FB has experienced a loss of 3 million daily active users. The process was already underway after 2015. The moment your grandparents start using a communications product with teenage enthusiasm, it’s time for a swift, contrarian change. But social media, as with other forms of communication, is a matter of demographics and class.
YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat have been beating down doors and making off with users. A May study from the Pew Research Centre found that half of US teens between the ages of 13 and 17 claim to use Facebook. But YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are bullishly ahead with usage figures of 85, 72 and 69 per cent respectively. To locus of this move is as much in the type of technology being used as behavioural change, with 95 per cent of teens claiming to have access to a smartphone. A mind slushing statistic stands out: of those, 45 percent are online constantly in numb inducing ecstasy.
The company, in an effort to plug various deficiencies in the operating systems, has been busy hiring content moderators, a point that has not gone unnoticed by users. This, in of itself, is a flawed exercise, and one imposed upon the company in an effort of moralised policing. Various legislatures and parliaments have gotten itchy in passing legislation obligating Facebook and similar content sharers to remove hate speech, extremist subject matter and state-sponsored propaganda. (Where, pray, is that line ever drawn?)
This raises a jurisdictional tangle suggesting that local parliaments and courts are getting ahead of themselves in gnawing away at the extra-territorial nature of tech giants. This year, a German law was passed requiring social media companies to remove illegal, racist or slanderous content within 24 hours after being flagged by users or face fines to the tune of $57 million. Such legislation, while localised in terms of jurisdiction, has international consequences. Content otherwise permitted by the US First Amendment will have to be removed for offending regulations in another country.
This is a far from academic speculation. Canada’s Supreme Court in June last year ruled that Google had to remove search results pertaining to certain pirated products. The natural consequence of this was a universal one. “The internet has no borders – its natural habitat is global,” claimed the trite observation from the majority. “The only way to ensure that the interlocutory injunction attained its objective was to have it apply where Google operates – globally.”
This precipitated a legal spat that proceeded to involve a Californian decision handed down by Judge Edward J. Davila, who turned his nose up at the Canadian judiciary’s grant of the interlocutory injunction. To expect companies such as Google to remove links to third-party material menaced “free speech on the global internet.” The emergence of a “splinternet” – one where online content is permissible in one country and not another – has been given a dramatic shove. Police, in other words, or be damned.
By the end of September, an army of some 33,000 labouring souls were retained by Facebook for the onerous task of sifting, assessing and removing errant content. But this whole task has come with its own pitfalls, a preoccupation of danger and emotional disturbance. Those recruited have become content warriors with a need for a strong constitution, a point that has presented Zuckerberg with yet another problem.
Former moderator Selena Scola, who worked at Facebook from June 2017 till March this year, has gone so far as to sue the company for post-traumatic stress disorder after witnessing content depicting graphic violence “from her cubicle in Facebook’s Silicon Valley offices”. Scola, through her legal counsel, claims that the company did not create a safe environment, instead working upon the practice of having a “revolving door of contractors”. Moderators, according to the legal suit, are “bombarded” with “thousands of videos, images and livestreamed broadcasts of child sexual abuse, rape, torture, bestiality, beheadings, suicide and murder.”
Facebook ushered in a remarkable form of dysfunction between users, and the actual platform of communication. This is very much in the spirit of a concept that lends itself to a hollowed variant of friendship, one based on appropriation, marketing and a somewhat voyeuristic format. If you can’t make friends in the flesh, as Zuckerberg struggled to do, create facsimiles of friendship, their ersatz equivalents. And most of all, place the incentive of generating revenue and profiles upon them. Facebook is not merely there for those who use it but for those who feel free to be used. This point is all too readily missed by the political classes.
Facebook makes everyone a practitioner, and creator, of surveillance, and anybody with a rudimentary understanding of totalitarian societies would know what that does to trust. Split personalities and hived forms of conduct manifest themselves. Unhealthily, then, the number of users globally is still increasing, even if it is dropping in specific parts of the world. Much like the Catholic Church, reliance is placed upon the developing world to supply new pools of converts.
Zuckerberg’s company faces investigations from the European Union, the FBI, the FTC, the SEC and the US Department of Justice. Such moves are not necessarily initiated out of altruism; there is the prevailing fear that such a platform is all too readily susceptible to manipulation (the horror, it seems, of misinformation, as if this was ever a new issue). Fake ads can still be readily purchased; campaigns economic with the facts can still be run and organised on its pages. But to attribute blame to Facebook for a tendency as ancient as politics is another distortion. Not even Zuckerberg can be blamed for that.
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I am getting very annoyed by these campaigns against Facebook, which provides very useful opportunities to spread information and maintain contacts. So often Facebook is written about as a monolithic entity which everyone uses the same way while the withdrawal of the teenaged cohort is given as evidence of a failure. At the same time there is a strong campaign aimed as making people fearful of Facebook, and many older people seem to think that if they engage with FB they will both have their identities stolen and their posts and ‘likes’ will be used to build profiles on them.
I think Facebook is one of the most useful tools out there for maintaining contact with friends and family that are separated by distance and generations. Recently I put up a photo of a young family taken in 1952, which turned out to be of great interest to many family members who had not seen it before, and this led to re-establishing contacts between different branches.
I have ‘friends’ among groups of botanical experts and can quickly get help to ID an unusual plant. Through my groups, I keep in contact with a number of students who have done MOOCs across the world on a number of subjects.
I was looking at old newsletters from the 80s, compiled by a women’s group of which I was a member. This reminded me of what we did before Facebook: we collected clippings and circulated them amongst ourselves using a photocopier. Our reach was about 20 people. Nowadays this type of communication is much easier as we can share articles and interesting information with a couple of clicks on Facebook, while reaching out to many more people and also receiving feedback.
FB is the most reliable source of criminal and security intelligence used by the CIA, ASIO and other security agencies.
king1394, I disagree, farcebook is one of the most invasive stains ever created. It is there for almost purely for making obscene amounts of money through advertising and collecting as much personal information any user provides (knowingly or unknowingly) and then selling what they can get away with to corporate interests and advertising companies. When caught out, Zuckerberg weeps crocodile tears, promises time and again, to clean up farcebooks act then just continues on his merry way.
What’s wrong emailing, phone calls, letters, and actual personal contact with family and friends? I dropped farcebook precisely because of the intrusion and advertising and almost relentless pushing for adding more family and friends to sign up. Add to that the incessant adding unknown “friends” bullshit who have the same interests as you to your friends list.
I agree FB is a fabulous way of keeping in touch with family and friends and connecting with groups who share similar interests. But at what cost? I recently deleted my account. Yes. There are items of interest I miss out on. My personal data however is mine. People who know me know where and how to find me.
Tend to agree somewhat with king 1394 after just switching off another Drum Mossie-bash.
FB is definitely far more fertile for real world info than msm, even if much of what is included is taken from the more respectable elements of the MSM (say the Grauniad).
If msm did its job fairly, without fear of favour, people would not need to turn to FB.
It is true that FB has deteriorated as globalising censorship has taken hold, but if it comes to an hour on FB against an hour on nine or even the ABC much of the time, I’ll take FB anyday.
FB is based on ‘acquired’ software promoted by intelligence agencies – Look up the legal case Leader Industries versus Facebook.
The trouble with facebook is that it permits the most horrendous right wing abuse, yet
censors any legitimate criticism of capitalism or Zionism. It is not a progressive platform
and is ultimately just another capitalist weapon against Socialism and anti estblishent thought.
Yes, Christian.
It also forbids the publishing of images of people as “God” made them, and behaving as “God” intended them to behave.
But that’s the underlying puritanism which has controlled the people of the US of A since its inception.
king1394 – Yours is a very head in the sand view if the world. Sure you can form a group and swap pictures and information, etc. about plants. That is no threat to the establishment. One day though you may get some passion and decide to promote a cause, a political idea, etc. On a spectrum you will either be warned about your activities and be threatened or your site will be outright rejected and taken down by Fadebook’s goons with no warnings. Stick to your plants…