The New York Times took a penetrating look at how Facebook has handled the continuing questions about how it deals with its own shenanigans, and its difficulties in stopping the shenanigans of those who would use Facebook for its own propaganda and misinformation purposes.
The Times‘ “Deny, Delay and Deflect” story makes the world’s biggest social media company look mendacious. The paper’s story was so long it needed a smaller story summarizing the main story’s six key points.
Ethics students, and people who use Facebook, should take a look at the story and think about the ethical questions raised, including hiring a PR firm to plant negative stories about competitors and using conservative news organizations to unfairly blame some of its problems on George Soros, a guy conservatives love to hate.
Facebook’s leaders defended themselves after the stories broke, and it announced that it fired the PR firm that spread the dirt.
But in a world where Facebook thrives off the transparency of others, its unseen hand raises more questions.
And also worthy of consideration is deep criticism of founder Mark Zuckerberg from a New York Times writer who claims 2010’s The Social Network movie “told us what we need to know about Facebook.” As Jim Rutenberg wrote:
In the final scene of “The Social Network,” a lawyer advises Mr. Zuckerberg to settle with the [Facebook co-founders] people who had accused him of steamrolling them… .
I knew in 2010 that he would do just that as the camera showed him alone in an office to ponder it. But I had the reason wrong. It wasn’t about doing right by those he had trampled. It was about doing only what he had to do to keep moving on, unimpeded.
Before the credits roll, we see Mr. Zuckerberg refreshing his laptop screen again and again — a signal, in retrospect, that history would repeat itself.
Running the world’s largest social media company is difficult, with legal and ethical questions aplenty in dealing with so many people from so many nations. Facebook continues to claim it is transparent in making decisions, but The Times stories continue to show that Facebook continues to fall short.