To think that being able to share funny cat videos and holiday photos isn't a good enough reason to allow FB to be used to subvert democracy?

[BogstandardBelle]

www.ted.com/talks/carole_cadwalladr_facebook_s_role_in_brexit_and_the_threat_to_democracy

Good on her for digging this up and sticking at it. I imagine that the air could have been cut with a knife at the TED talk, with the big tech companies up in the 20,000 dollar seats, hearing themselves called out in this way.

I had no idea this is what happened with Brexit. That the same technology that brings me targeted adverts, news feed articles etc was abused to bypass all the legal safeguards that have - until now - tried to keep our democracy functioning. Fair enough, people choose different news sources from the Daily Mail to the Socialist Worker - but all of them are up there, on the shelves, and we all read the same version when we go to buy / read one. But this? Manipulative, emotive, just plain lies that the algorithms fed into certain people's news feeds, which then disappear by the next day or week, and can't be tracked or traced or measured by anyone other than FB? I certainly never had anything like the Leave.com ads pop up on my FB feed pre-Brexit. I couldn't understand - as she says - why certain people seemed to be experiencing a completely different campaign to the one that I saw. And this is why: I never saw it. I wasn't the target.

This isn't a Brexit post BTW. The campaign could have been about anything - capital punishment, gun control, whatever. But Brexit was the test case. And democracy lost.

Apologies if this has been all over the news in the UK: I live o/seas.

I hardly think Brexit was won on lost on a FB campaign lots of people don’t have FB for a start

Her point was that the referendum result was really really close, and that the targeted misinformation campaign through FB may have been enough to swing it. But we don’t know, because only FB has the stats - which in other forms of advertising would be public information.

It might not be wrong though.
My facebook was full of Brexit ads and recommend posts in the runner up to the referendum.
Absolute majority of it was for Brexit.
I am an EU citizen 😂 I guess my mistake was googling who the fuck Farage was😂

You're wrong to suggest that Facebook's only positive benefit is to share cat videos and holiday snaps. There are many specialist groups sharing knowledge and expertise, local community groups are helping to combat crime through sharing information (and reunite lost pets with their owners), and my local community is having a resurgence of community spirit as a direct result of discussion on the local Facebook group.

Getting rid o facebook wouldn't solve the problem, something else would rise in its place.

Ironically enough, as a Brit living in France who is probably going to have to apply for french nationality in order to preserve my rights (and my children’s) to education, healthcare etc FB is one of the most helpful resources in this respect: as you say, as a place for special interest groups to meet and find new members, it’s great.

Thé Ted talk didn’t call for the abolition of FB. What she said, and I agree, is that our current laws don’t work in a digital world run by private, commercial interests. So the laws need to change and the tech companies need to be brought in line.

It’s a bit like the electronic scooters that have appeared everywhere: they are too fast for pavement use and too slow to be used in the road. None f the existing road / traffic laws were written with them in mind, so we need to update the laws to accommodate new technology - and to protect us from the downsides.