Page 60 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

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that many old-world media companies have been facing for many years. This would force Social Media platforms to engage in onerous editorial and legal responsibilities.
Zuckerberg said (i.e. posted), in a Facebook post on 4 January 2018, that his personal challenge for 2018 is to prevent Facebook from being misused in ways that potentially do harm to its billions of users and to society at large.
The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do -- whether it’s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent.
Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook’s problems touch on “issues of history, civics, political philosophy, media, government, and of course technology” and he also admitted he is not able to solve those problems alone: “I’m looking forward to bringing groups of experts together to discuss and help work through these topics”, he posted.
Who is going to control the enormous amount of encrypted data in the Big Social Data Lake on which Facebook is going to be based?
Knowing that Zuckerberg’s personal challenges in past years have included learning Mandarin, reading two books a month and traveling to US states he had not yet visited, his challenge for 2018 is going to be more “demanding”. It is quite clear to many of us, incuding Zuckerberg himself, that Social Media platforms are approaching a sort of crossroads: are they are going to become an even bigger and more powerful Cyber-Physi- cal-Social Hyperspace, a place for further socio-technological disruption, or are they going to have their power limited by new regulations coming from alarmed and worried governments?
Acknowledging a problem is one thing, finding a solution is another. It is an incredibly major
personal challenge, involving billions of users, and technology is just the last one on the long list. We could argue that no other company and/ or person in the world has to be knowledgeable in so many different fields more than Facebook Inc. and its founder, president and CEO. Being a tecnology expert, Zuckerberg is already thinking about a solution – or at least part of the solution, which includes encryption and cryptocurrency
in order to come back to “Facebook’s mission”, which has always been “give people the power”, and re-establish trust in technology (Facebook?) because “many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it”. These technologies “take power from central- ized systems and put it back into people’s hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control”.
Who is going to control the enormous amount of encrypted data in the Big Social Data Lake
on which Facebook is going to be based? Who is going to decide what is good or bad interference from governments and to open the gate in such a huge and relevant digital space?
During 2017 the abovementioned issues trig- gered very strong public reactions and posed regulatory challenges, but they have not affected Facebook’s earnings. Facebook Inc. reported almoust $16 Billion in net income on $36 Billion in revenues during the 12 months that ended
on 30 September 2017, making Facebook the most profitable company of the FANGs. Online digital advertising brought billions of dollars in revenue for Facebook and Google. If doubts about ad-sales effectiveness and practices grow, they could undermine Social Media businesses’
THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA · JOVANKA ADZIC
Digital Trends in Culture