Should we Trust Facebook and Google?
By: Rachelle Monteau
Should Facebook and Google be trusted if they are easily swayed by money?
After Facebook and Google allowed ads and keywords to be bought and used for racist and hateful terms and ideas, people are left wondering if these companies should be trusted.
Facebook and Google allowed prejudice people on the internet purchase advertisements and be able to show their views with the public, while paying the companies. The problem with this is that, Facebook and Google were basically bribed into allowing these accounts spread their ideas. It would be different if these accounts just posted about their ideas and tried to go viral that way. Since they were now advertisers that means that even if you did not want to look at their page or hear about their views, you would see it anyway since Facebook and Google make money mostly over advertisements. Once people started to have a problem with what Facebook and Google were allowing, the excuses started flowing. Facebook didn’t deny what they did but they did vow to “restrict how advertisers targeted their audiences on the social network.” Google claimed to not “catch” all the offensive suggestions and said that they would work harder to stop the offensive ads. There is no real sincerity when it comes to Facebook and Google and what they did. The article (Google and Facebook Face Criticism for Ads Targeting Racust Sentiments) shares that Facebook profited $100,000 worth of ads from fake accounts based in Russia. The article also states that the ads were focused mainly on topics like gay rights, gun control and race and immigration. All those ads were linked to 470 fake accounts. Facebook and Google are probably not racist, prejudice networks but what they allowed with these ads was selfish and not fair, since some people who don’t have as much money can’t spread their positive ideas as far as those fake accounts did. This brings me back to my guiding question; if Facebook and Google allowed these accounts to purchase ads, probably knowing their true intentions, should they be trusted? How can we know that the news we see on Facebook or the websites Google provide us with aren’t just fake accounts trying to sway us into their beliefs?
