But the big news on Monday was that the Department of Justice was investigating Google and Apple; while the and Federal Trade Commission (FTCO is looking into Facebook and Amazon. All of accused of anticompetitive tactics for promoting their own services over that of rivals.
The more tech companies know about their users, the more effectively they can direct them to goods and services that they are likely to buy. The more companies know about their users, the more competitive they are in the market.
More than one-third of American adults view social media as harmful to their mental health, according to a new survey from the American Psychiatric Association. Just 5% view social media as being positive for their mental health, the survey found
As digital technologies facilitate the growth of both new and incumbent organisations, we have started to see the darker sides…
A number of prominent figures have called for some sort of regulation of Facebook – including one of the company’s co-founders and a venture capitalist who was one of Facebook’s early backers. Much of the criticism of Facebook relates to how the company’s algorithms target users with advertising, and the “echo chambers” that show users ideologically slanted content.
That didn’t take long. Facebook’s new plan to be more secure lasted just two months since Zuckerberg’s pronouncement in early March about this shift after 2018’s annus horribilis.
The Facebook CEO “controls three core communications platforms… that billions of people use every day” namely Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and has control of 60% of the voting stock. “I’m worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them.”
Governments and advocates in the U.S. and Europe, as well as elsewhere around the globe, have been pushing Facebook to make the inner workings of its advertising system clearer to the public.
Facebook has been battered from all sides for failing to do enough about misuse of its systems. It’s not surprising, what with many recent data breaches, misuse of user information, and abuse of its live-streaming functions leaving black marks all over the company. It’s hoping to change the way that users see it, with a new one-strike policy for Facebook Live being a major change for the company.
This will be published after South Africa’s election, which we certainly hope has only been manipulated by the usual political forces and not online trolls using Facebook, as happened in the Great Brexit Scandal and the US presidential elections of 2016