Facing Up to the Reality of Facebook

Review of The Social Network originally published in 2010

Image Credit: Merrick Morton/Columbia Pictures

Fifteen years ago I was writing about the dangers of Facebook on a now defunct political blog. The major concern then was privacy. That all seems to have been forgotten; efforts to dissuade people from giving up their privacy for naught. Then, Facebook’s users numbered in the millions; now it’s measured in billions. Today the concern is disinformation and propaganda, as Mark Zuckerberg joins Elon Musk in championing “free speech” which amounts to “anything goes” in terms of disinformation and hateful attacks on marginalized groups. Also following Musk, “positive political content” will be featured - just in time for the new Trump administration.

I caved and joined Facebook about seven years after writing the below, having been pressured to do so as necessary to promote my documentary film about the 2011 Wisconsin Uprising, Divided We Fall. Facebook never was any use for that. I am now leaving the platform. I still think The Social Network is a great film and captures the essence of Zuckerberg.

First published October 10, 2010

My favorite quote from the dozens of reviews and commentaries I’ve read about the Facebook film has to be Melissa Silverstein’s conclusion: “The Social Network proves that assholes pretty much run the world. As if we needed a reminder.”

That about sums it up. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is just the latest in a long line of predatory capitalists, a latter day robber baron, if you will, ruthlessly annihilating the competition with single-minded ferocity. Instead of building an empire from railroads across the American geographical frontier, Zuckerberg builds his on the frontier of social networking in cyberspace. Where 19th century robber barons exacted a physical toll from an exploited immigrant workforce, (giving rise to sayings such as, “There is an Irishman buried under every railroad tie”), Facebook profits from the commodification of human relationships.

Under the guise of “helping people to connect and communicate more efficiently,” as Zuckerberg likes to repeat over and over in interviews, the greatest market research scheme ever devised entices users into freely offering up a wealth of personal information about their habits, preferences, and activities in a form that can be mined, manipulated, packaged, and sold to third parties. Helping people to “communicate more efficiently” apparently also involves continually changing the rules about what information users will be allowed to keep private. More ominously, given our post 9-11, post Patriot Act political environment, Facebook attracted the attention early on of individuals interested in funding high-tech startups that might prove useful for intelligence gathering.

Sure, Zuckerberg’s original intent was to create a better version of early social networking applications and to capitalize on college students’ interest in using them. There’s no evidence that, in the early stages, he conceived of Facebook as a giant market research tool or silo for government data mining. But certainly he knew he was onto something big, and money was part of it – or more accurately, the power and status that flows from owning a lucrative creation.

His defenders like to say that Zuckerberg doesn’t care about money. It’s true that he lives relatively simply, given his net worth, and that he has turned down lucrative offers to buy him out. But he wouldn’t be the first wealthy entrepreneur to live simply (Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart comes to mind). Nor would he be the first to turn down a good offer for something he believes has the potential to become even bigger and more valuable down the road.

In the film, he resists friend and then company CFO Eduardo Saverin’s efforts to monetize Facebook through the traditional advertising route. Napster founder Sean Parker agrees with Zuckerberg’s instinct to hold out for something better because “we don’t know what we have yet.” Parker asks Zuckerberg whether he’s ever seen a fisherman with a photo of the 14 trout he caught. Fishermen keep photos of the big Marlins, Parker points out, not groups of small fish. Parker asks Zuckerberg whether he wants Facebook to be a Marlin or a trout? "A million dollars isn't cool," Parker tells Zuckerberg. "You know what's cool? A billion dollars."

The film, like most dramatizations of actual events, takes some liberties with the truth. For example, it’s unlikely that Zuckerberg was driven to create Facebook by his exclusion from prestigious final clubs at Harvard. Nor did he spend years pining for the girl who had rejected him before the creation of Facebook, as the final scene from the movie depicts. By all accounts, he’s had the same girlfriend for seven years. I suspect these embellishments were storytelling devices intended to highlight the irony of a guy seriously deficient in interpersonal skills developing a brilliant social networking application.

But much of the story is derived from actual emails, IMs, blogs written by Zuckerberg, and legal documents. One set of IMs from Facebook’s early history that the filmmakers didn’t include, but should have, epitomizes Zuckerberg’s attitude toward privacy and those who entrust his social network with their personal information:

Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Z: Just ask.
Z: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Z: People just submitted it.
Z: I don’t know why.
Z: They “trust me”
Z: Dumb fucks.

Zuckerberg was very young at the time of this exchange but his attitude doesn’t appear to have changed much since then. In January of [2010], Zuckerberg stated that if he were to introduce Facebook today, user information would be public by default. In April, he reiterated this idea, announcing that Facebook is “building a Web where the default is social.” That same month, in an off the record exchange, New York Times technology blogger Nick Bilton asked a Facebook employee how Zuckerberg felt about privacy. The employee laughed and said, “He doesn’t believe in it.”

Actions, they say, speak louder than words and Facebook is no slouch in the action department. Year in and year out, Facebook chips away at user privacy in a predictable pattern:

1) Facebook introduces some new feature that reduces user privacy;
2) Users protest loudly; organized opposition and occasional lawsuits are launched;
3) Facebook responds with a few concessions, and when the dust settles;
4) The cycle starts all over again.

Consider three of the most egregious cases:

2006 – Facebook introduces Newsfeed, a feature that bombards users with “headlines” detailing the minutiae of their “friends’” activities on the site – including conversations among users, changes in relationship status, new “likes,” who “friended” who – and time-stamping each action. Opposition groups and a petition were quickly organized (on Facebook – where else??), attracting hundreds of thousands to protest a feature they felt was intrusive and enabled “Facebook stalking.” Zuckerberg eventually apologized and changed the feature to allow users to opt out of news feed on some types of activities. In the 2010 redesign, users were given the option of removing updates from any application.

2007 – Facebook unveils what proves to be its most controversial feature, Beacon, an advertising application that tracks the activities of Facebook users at partner sites and sends the information back to Facebook. The stated goal was to develop highly targeted ads for 44 brands including Coca Cola, Verizon, and Sony Pictures. For example, if a Facebook user purchased something at a partner site, Facebook announced that activity on that user’s friends’ news feeds. Initially, Facebook tracked all users of its partner sites, including those who didn’t even have Facebook accounts.

Again, controversy ensued, and this time MoveOn.org got involved, launching a drive to require Facebook to allow users to opt out of the Beacon program. Again, Zuckerberg apologized and again Facebook relented. However, tests conducted by a security research firm at the end of November 2007 found that despite users’ opt-outs, data was still being collected and sent to Facebook. The following month, Facebook provided an option for turning off Beacon entirely.

Still, by their own account, partner sites continued sending data about all users’ activities to Facebook. Deleting information for those who opt out was left to Zuckerberg and co. A class action lawsuit was filed in 2008, followed by a 2009 Facebook announcement that it would shut down Beacon.

2009 - Less than two months after announcing the shutdown of Beacon, Facebook made shared content and status messages publicly visible. Users who hoped to preserve their privacy were forced to negotiate a complicated system of settings. Once again, users loudly protested, this time joined in their opposition by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. A few months later, Zuckerberg presented a simplified version of the privacy settings, though the default remained public.

Other creepy and privacy-compromising features introduced in recent years include making Facebook a platform that allows outside applications to run inside the site; Facebook Connect, which allows users to sign onto other websites using their Facebook account; Open Graph, which allows users to see which news articles their Facebook friends have read, shared, and liked; and Places, which allows users to “check in” to their current location (i.e., restaurants, bars, and so on – not the city in which one resides) and see whether friends have shared theirs.

It should be obvious by now that Facebook is committed to the erosion of privacy and increased surveillance of user activity – both on and off the web. The beauty of the system is that users cooperate in providing ever more data on themselves and those they have “friended.” Facebook’s data silos are potential gold mines for market researchers – and the intelligence community.

Several of Facebook’s early investors are connected to the venture capitalist firm In-Q-Tel, which is run for the CIA, through a series of interlocking directorates. The mission of In-Q-Tel is to fund start-up companies that are developing technologies useful for intelligence gathering; specifically, “to help companies add capabilities that the Intelligence Community customers need.”

In its second round of funding in 2005, Facebook received $12.7 million from Accel Partners. James Breyer, managing partner of Accel, described the Facebook team at the time as “intellectually honest and breathtakingly brilliant.” Breyer today is a board member of Facebook. Breyer is also a past board member and chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, where he served with Gilman Louie, founder of In-Q-Tel.

In its third round of funding in 2006, Facebook received $25 million from Greylock Partners. Howard Cox, Greylock advising partner, also sits on the board of In-Q-Tel.

These are just a couple of linkages that are publicly available and easily obtained. How those representing the intelligence community may have influenced or advised Facebook is unknown – at least to me. But it’s naïve to discount the potential for domestic spying that Facebook presents. Of course, Facebook is not the only or first internet company linked to In-Q-Tel. Google, for example, has a history of partnering with In-Q-tel.

The point is that Facebook is more than just a fun social networking site invented by a brilliant but misunderstood anti-hero. And, the world is pretty much run by assholes.