GiD Report#180 — The Facebook problem

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GlobaliD

5 min readOct 5, 2021

Welcome to The GiD Report, a weekly newsletter that covers GlobaliD team and partner news, market perspectives, and industry analysis. You can check out last week’s report here.

ICYMI:

This week:

The Facebook problem
Facebook shelves kids’ initiative
Ripple gets serious about NFTs
Stuff happens

1. The Facebook problem

More like Facebook First, Photo: Maurizio Pesce

It hasn’t been the greatest month for Facebook. The WSJ published a series of scathing exposees highlighting the kinds of choices the company’s leadership regularly makes when faced with the option to expand profits versus “do the right thing.” (Which then doesn’t match their public proclamations of “doing better.”)

That in and of itself isn’t going to be much of a surprise to most people. The Facebook brand doesn’t have a ton of credibility these days. But seeing the nitty gritty details is still jarring — especially when we’re talking about children’s mental health.

We now know who we owe these nitty gritty details, too — a company whistleblower known as “Sean.” Here actual name is Frances Haugen, according to a New York Times report.

In any case, Matt Levine has a straightforward breakdown of the situation:

Okay fine. Facebook is a for-profit company with obligations to its shareholders, and at various points it has a choice between doing pro-social things that are expensive or doing anti-social things that maximize its profits. Sometimes (she asserts, and I don’t particularly disagree) it chooses profit over public good. This is not a huge surprise, incentives being what they are, but it is good for policymakers and the public to know about the particular cases. It is good because, if we know about these choices, we can make informed decisions about regulation and enforcement. If Facebook sometimes chose to break the law to maximize profit, then regulators should punish it. If everything that Facebook does to maximize profits is legal, but some of it is horrible, then we should write new laws to make the horrible stuff illegal. If Facebook does things that are bad for the world then policymakers should try to make it stop. Basic stuff.

That’s the inherent issue with a top-down platform that’s incentivized to maximize engagement and sharing in order to leverage its users’ data by serving them ads. Sometimes you need regulators to come in to whip them into shape.

Here comes the shameless plug. With Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram all down today, why not try a bottom-up messenger that preserves your digital privacy and that is end-to-end encrypted by default? (Shameless plug idea courtesy of GlobaliD Developer Support Engineer Paul Keen.)

2. Facebook shelves Instagram Kids initiative

But sometimes, all you need is a bright enough light. After the WSJ published Facebook’s internal documents about Instagram and teens, the company has dutifully shelved the project.

Here’s Axios:

Instagram announced Monday that it is pausing its plans to develop a version of its platform for children under 13.
Why it matters: Facebook has received backlash since the Wall Street Journal published a report that showed the company knew its Instagram app is harmful to teenagers.
…
By the numbers: The Journal revealed that Facebook was aware that, among teenage users, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram.
What they’re saying: “While we stand by the need to develop this experience, we’ve decided to pause this project. This will give us time to work with parents, experts, policymakers and regulators, to listen to their concerns, and to demonstrate the value and importance of this project for younger teens online today,” Mosseri said.
…
What’s next: The Senate is scheduled to hold a hearing on Thursday to address “Facebook’s research into the impact of its apps on young audiences, its actions to address threats to these users, and policy considerations to safeguard kids online.”

Whistleblower Frances Haugen is also scheduled to testify before the Senate tomorrow.

Relevant:

3. Ripple gets serious about NFTs with $250M creator fund

Here’s Bloomberg:

The Creator Fund will provide NFT originators with the financial, creative and technical support to explore and craft premium NFTs and other tokenization projects on the XRP Ledger, Ripple said in a statement Wednesday. While the best-known NFTs tend to be art and collectibles, the fund will aim to support other use cases as well, like interactive experiences and fractional ownership, the according to the statement. Mintable, mintNFT and VSA Partners will also be involved, Ripple said.
“While NFTs have opened the door for a tokenized future, actually navigating these concepts is a different ballgame for many,” said Monica Long, general manager of RippleX at Ripple. “By starting with marketplaces and creators, our fund seeks to take the guesswork out of NFT projects to unlock unexplored tokenization use cases on the XRP Ledger.”