Facebook has made it
clear that their main objective, and indeed the success of their social media
site, is customer engagement, including providing the customer with
well-matched advertisements and news stories tailored to their specific
interests. It is in fact an amazing
business success story and a marketer’s dream so is there really anything not
to like? Well possibly, as there are questions about the undue influence it
might have had in the political arena and who knows where else?
In the 2016 election, many of the stories on
the internet were misleading, poorly reported and sometimes made up for example
Facebook users falsely learned that the pope endorsed Donald Trump when he
didn’t. These kinds of stories are contributing to the so called “post-truth”
world where friends and emotional responses are being believed, are indeed more
engaging, than facts, logic and truth itself which represent a more difficult
and challenging side of life. Google has tried to address the problem by no
longer giving fake news sites access to its advertising network thereby
depriving them of a key revenue source and Facebook has followed suit.
These internet companies
have grown rapidly and are now a terrifyingly powerful force within our social
fabric and culture. Surely with their
size and power must also come true accountability and responsibility? It is disingenuous
or naïve of CEO Mark Zuckerberg to make money out of data manipulation (masquerading
as customer engagement) without full recognition of his company’s power and
potentially dangerous capability. Surely the obsessive drive for more accurate
algorithms must now be tempered with a clear corporate responsibility strategy and
a heavy dose of altruism and ethical purpose. That would help to give Facebook
the real thumbs up by engaging all its stakeholders.
