Weekly Column
Thinking Outside the Black Box
What the algorithms can’t see may be the most human thing about us
It feels like we’ve finally reached “peak Facebook.”
Thanks in part to recent revelations about how the company gave access to user data and private messages to Netflix, Spotify, and others, as well as the dirty tricks campaign to smear Facebook critic George Soros, people are becoming aware that the platform doesn’t merely hurt society as a side effect. Facebook is an intentionally bad actor. That said, maybe there’s something to be gained or learned from the social network before it’s gone.
We may not have a lot of time. Facebook’s products have become too obviously destructive for almost anyone to justify. A decade of articles, documentaries, and school curriculums dedicated to explaining to users that they are not Facebook’s customers but its product, combined with evidence of its weaponized memetics and that icky feeling of being actively targeted by algorithms, has finally taken its toll: People use Facebook when they absolutely have to, but rarely because they want to. And now, with all the desperation of a cigarette company denying that its product is addictive, Facebook has revealed just how low it will go by blaming Russian spies for using the platform as designed or…
