Sending Facebook the wrong message--it's not just Zuckerberg who needs to go

I received this petition request in my mailbox (on my secret server) from SumOfUs.org lamenting the enormous data breach earlier this year from Facebook's vaults (and indeed they are vaults, so transformed by Zuck. with all that salable information). This is not the biggest breach, consider the Equifax hack; but it's certainly near the top of the list. Bank of America was hacked. What large corp. hasn't been hacked.

In a few weeks, Mark Zuckerberg will have to sit before the U.S. Congress and justify to the world how 50 million Facebook users' data got in the hands of a third party app that has helped undermine democratic processes across the world--from the United States to the UK.
Once news of the massive Facebook data breach broke, it took Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg five whole days to issue an apology after stock prices started taking a hit. Zuckerberg has continuously refused to take responsibility for some of the company's worst offenses. If his actions didn't make it clear enough already, profits from Facebook's surveillance-based business model are Zuckerberg's main priority far above the protection of user data and privacy.

It's time for new leadership at Facebook to ensure that the millions of people who want to use this service to stay connected with friends and family can do so with the knowledge that their personal information is not being shared and exploited to line Facebook's pockets.
Call on Mark Zuckerberg to step down as CEO of Facebook now.

Late last month, Facebook announced that it suspended the third party app called Strategic Communications Laboratories and its political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytics. Both ran data operations for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign, and have been widely credited for helping Trump more effectively target voters on Facebook. Which is a pretty big deal since 45% of Facebook users in the U.S. consume news on the site.
This is not the first time Facebook has passed along user data to unsavory hands. Two years ago the company shut down Korryn Gaines' livestream of her fatal police encounter at the request of Baltimore police. Over the past few years, Facebook has been in the spotlight for state-sponsored censorship, the proliferation of fake news, contradictory hate speech policies and unethical data collection practices.

There are no checks in place at Facebook to hold Zuckerberg accountable for putting users at risk. We have an opportunity to change that. In the past few weeks, Facebook has lost an estimate of almost $100 billion in market value. Zuckerberg is feeling the heat, finally issuing a public apology but refusing to testify for UK lawmakers. If the pressure continues, Facebook will be forced to hold him to account and change its governance structure.

Enough is enough: Please sign now to tell Zuckerberg to step down as CEO of Facebook.
Not only is Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Facebook but he is also the chair of the board of directors, meaning that he is accountable to himself only. The governance structure of Facebook gives very little power to shareholders and concentrates the power in one place: Mark Zuckerberg himself.
Last year we filed a shareholder resolution to create a boss for Zuckerberg-- an independent Chair of the Board of Directors. Because we knew this lack of accountability was a recipe for disaster and more scandals to come. But Zuckerberg controls 60% of the shareholder voting power while owning only a minority of the shares. So even though our proposal earned the support of almost half of the shareholders not controlled by Zuckerberg, we knew it would be a tough fight.
SumOfUs isn't afraid to take on Facebook. Last year, 140,000 members like you called out Facebook on its censorship practices after several reports surfaced of activists being silenced around the world. We know that when we work together, we have the power to change Facebook to make it a secure and better online space for all.

Making Zuckerberg THE scapegoat for this fiasco misses the mark. Z is just a neoliberal enabler. Despite what many FB user-addicts may think, FB is not necessary to maintain health or comfort. It is, to put it crassly, a time-wasting toy for the multitudes but a diamond mine for the owners. Getting rid of Z, although a good move, is just playing whack-a-mole with other corporatists ready, willing, and able to step in.

Twitter, Snapchat, etc. are no different. The are ALL feverishly data-mining. And their results evidently pay off--at least until somebody catches them in the act. Z's mea culpa only came 5 days after the breach was revealed. That shows his compassion for FB'ers. He's been selling off stocks for months in relatively small lots to avoid a disastrous fall. Insider trading at it's best (or worst). This leads me to think that the Cambridge Analytica (CA) breach was known months ago, before revealed publicly.

CA is not a think tank. It is a leak tank. This FB episode is just the latest example and probably the biggest.

Terms of Service: the booby trap resident in almost ALL applications for mobile devices and computers is that you, the end-user, specifically grant the app. developer the right to track you, market, to other firms and, likely, political parties.

Is there a cure. Yes. More than one. One measure enacted in some EU countries is the "right to be forgotten" in which data tracking is forbidden. We need this sort of legislation more than we need Z to be ridden out of town.

Breaking up these oligarchic messaging system will surely come across problems but there must be better technological ways to weaken propaganda, data-mining enterprises.

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Pricknick's picture

They think by removing Zuckerberg facebook will magically

ensure that the millions of people who want to use this service to stay connected with friends and family can do so with the knowledge that their personal information is not being shared and exploited to line Facebook's pockets.

That's as delusional as thinking that if Trump were removed the military would stop bombing brown people.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Zuckerberg had to be pushed into compliance with the Prime Directive of RUSSIA!!! INFLUENCED THE ELECTION!!! BY MARKETING ADS WITH PUPPY-PICS!!! AND BLM!!! when everybody should know that Black lives really don't matter and why would Black people ever mind being abused and murdered by police when only an unAmerican RUSSIAN!!! SPY or an anti-American PUTIN PUPPET!!! would think anything was wrong with that?

So maybe TPTB have somebody more compliant in mind to take over his own company?

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Alligator Ed's picture

@Ellen North He better hope it opens.

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@Alligator Ed

On the other hand, he probably wouldn't starve after splash-down anyway.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

wendy davis's picture

cambridge analytica, but is this the cliffs notes on 'what we need to know', or just more partisan rubbish?

i'm asking because: julian assange being silenced and w/o health care and visitors in the ecuadorian embassy.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@wendy davis One edge allegedly profiles site users, in this case FB, for electoral purposes. So far, so good. But CA then takes the same data and off-loads it for a price, to other users, most likely simply for merchandising. But might there not also be more covert and less legitimate uses of data-mining, such as detecting political enemies?

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wendy davis's picture

@Alligator Ed

well, i'll just post it all sorta soon, see what sticks to the wall.

sleep well if you can.

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Hawkfish's picture

@wendy davis @wendy davis

I was reading an article in the Verge last week quoting a Dutch researcher who said their claims were largely bullshit. Sometimes fear (of the unknown, of being left behind) is good enough to make a pile of money. Then when the panopticon herd gets distracted by the next squirrel you just head off to the Caribbean or the next shell company.

Which is not to say that our data isn’t valuable, just that the tech isn’t quite where some would have us believe. Yet.

(Edited to add link. No fake news here!)

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

Mark from Queens's picture

and it's another barn burner.

He's been on fire lately.

Can We Be Saved From Facebook?
The social media giant has swallowed up the free press, become an unstoppable private spying operation and undermined democracy. Is it too late to stop it?

Just too good to excerpt, but here's a taste, from the first couple of paragraphs:

It's our collective misfortune that this perhaps silliest-in-history supercorporation – a tossed-off hookup site turned international cat-video vault turned Orwellian surveillance megavillain – has dragged us all to the very cliff edge of modern technological capitalism.

We've reached a moment in history where many companies are more powerful than even major industrialized nations, and in some cases have essentially replaced governments as de facto regulators and overseers.

Describes FB as the "blithely addictive social media site bathed in unthreatening baby-blue graphics that one tech columnist derided as 'the place where you check to see who married Jill the cheerleader'" and Zuckerberg as someone who "exudes all the warmth of a talking parking meter."

Well, ok, and another:

As a result, we're now facing a problem potentially worse than either a Trump election or a Russian cyber-incursion: a world in which the informational landscape for billions of people is controlled more or less entirely by a pair of advanced private spying operations, Google and Facebook – and Facebook especially.

The Facebook mess is really the final chapter in a decades-long collision of the news media with the Internet. Many smart people expected this tale to end well. It hasn't. The creators of the Internet sold their invention as inherently democratizing. Instead, information is now so concentrated that a 1984 scenario is just a few clicks away.

Nice work yourself, AE. Thanks.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut