View: Bring surveillance capitalism to heel

LONDON: It’s been a grueling few weeks over at Facebook. First the social network giant had to cope with the release of damaging information about its practices by a former employee. Then the company suffered an outage across its suite of businesses ranging from Instagram to WhatsApp. Over the course of its brief history, Facebook has overcome many travails. Still, each scandal undermines the fragile trust and consent upon which technology companies, especially Facebook, depend. The case for reforming this brand of “surveillance capitalism” is overwhelming.

Facebook has trouble living up to its public image. The company claims to treat all its users equally, but internal documents published by the Wall Street Journal showed that high-profile users received special privileges that allowed them to evade Facebook’s censorious algorithms. Founder Mark Zuckerberg has spoken about how Facebook can fulfill people’s “personal, emotional and spiritual needs”. Yet in-house research released by whistleblower Frances Haugen reveals that insiders knew Instagram could be harmful to younger users. In 2018, Facebook announced that it was changing its News Feed to improve the bond between users. But staffers observed this change had actually exacerbated social antagonism.