What is Facebook good for? The company鈥檚 stated mission is to build community and bring the world closer together, but these days it often achieves the opposite.
The social network has been embroiled in controversy for allowing the spread of hate speech in Myanmar, facilitating misinformation that affected the outcomes of the 2016 US election and the UK Brexit vote, and damaging democratic norms around the world.
Now, the UK parliament has published internal emails from Facebook that reveal the mindset inside the company. They show discussions among staff over whether to collect users鈥� phone call logs and SMS messages through its Android app.
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鈥淭his is a pretty high-risk thing to do from a PR perspective but it appears that the growth team will charge ahead and do it,鈥� said Facebook product manager Michael LeBeau in an email from 2015. That seems to be Facebook鈥檚 modus operandi. The company鈥檚 motto was once 鈥渕ove fast and break things鈥�, and now everything is broken.
Crisis to crisis
As the firm lurches from crisis to crisis, assuring the world that it has learned its lesson and will behave better in the future, governments, politicians and regulators are starting to pay serious attention 鈥� there鈥檚 too much at stake not to. Facebook holds sway over one of the main ways people get information, and in some countries it effectively is the internet. That means it has more power than some nations, or even many nations combined.
So what can be done? Governments can fine Facebook, though it would take a hefty penalty to make a dent in the company鈥檚 bottom line. The biggest corporate fine ever levied was for BP, which was found to be grossly negligent by the US Department of Justice and ordered to pay $20.8 billion in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A penalty of that magnitude might make Facebook and its investors tread more carefully.
Of course, the damage to the digital environment is much harder to quantify than an oil spill, but tech firms are increasingly being subjected to fines. In the past couple of years, the European Commission has hit Google with fines totalling 鈧�6.76 billion for abusing its market position.
Facebook itself has also been fined 拢500,000 by the UK鈥檚 data watchdog the Information Commissioner鈥檚 Office for its part in the Cambridge Analytica scandal 鈥� a drop in the ocean, but the maximum permissible under laws that applied at the time.
Beyond fines, regulations could also force more transparency about how Facebook works, how its algorithms choose which news to highlight, and who is funding the ads on the platform.
Antitrust laws could break Facebook apart, reversing its multi-billion dollar acquisitions of rival social media services like Instagram and WhatsApp. The documents released by the UK parliament reveal that Facebook used one of its acquisitions, a data analytics firm called Onavo, to like WhatsApp.
It is possible that reining in how Facebook operates may ultimately put up obstacles that will trickle down to smaller tech companies looking to grow, or even replace the behemoth. But that may be the price the world has to pay to hold the firm to account. Right now, Facebook isn鈥檛 too big to fail 鈥� it鈥檚 too big to succeed.
