Traditionally,the president of the united states has been considered as the most powerful person on the planet.After all,he controls the most powerful army on earth,and has considerably influence over the $18 trillion US economy.
But president obama is beholden to systems that keep his power in check:congress and the supreme court,term limits and the American electorate.
Mark Zuckerberg has non of these limitations.His power flows from facebook,the seventh largest corporation on the planet by masrket capitalization of which he owns 18% of the stock and controls 60% of the voting rights.At 32,he could still remain the CEO of facebook for another 40 years.
But Financials are just small part of what makes facebook so powerful.Here are some ways it dominates human attention.
-More than 1 billion people use facebook everyday.¼ of all time spent on the internet is spent using facebook.
-For many people (excluding me),facebook is the internet.Its the first place most people announce weddings,births,deaths etc.
-Facebook is increasingly the place where people consume other forms of media.
Through its freebasics program,Facebook has literally become the internet for the worlds poor (who have to pay money to access websites outside facebook).It annoys me to think that he brought free basics to Nigeria.Does he think we cant buy data?.As for me,i dont even use the freebasics program because its completely useless.
Facebook has also used its monopoly in human to control what news is shown to whom,affecting public opinion from the shadows.You may have heard how it influenced the US elections.
Facebook knows far more about humanity than any other corporation on earth.500 terabytes of our personal data flow into Facebook every day.
So far,Zuckerberg has mainly used facebooks power to further grow facebook.He acquired facebooks most aerious competitors,instagram,and WhatsApp.He offered to buy snapchat but the owner refused his money.He is now competing with Youtube for video and twitter for real time communication.
Mark is even creating Als and launching satellites(though the first one exploded).
But as facebook races towards becoming the largest corporation ever,Zuckerberg plans for it may change.
Even though he has pledged to give away 99% of his facebook stock during the course of his life,he will retain control of its board.And his power comes not from his billions of dollars but from his access to our attention and data.
For the rest of his life,Zuckerberg will be able to bring facebooks incredible power to bear in achieving what he wants.
Fake news may have played a huge role in the outcome of the US elections and other elections of recent.Even fake headlines often used to trick people into clicking through ads to unrelated products can be damaging.Headlines are the only part of news that most people bother to read.
Zuckerbergs apparent goal is to reenter china,where facebook has been blocked seen 2009.
Is it a responsible use of power for mark to use his companys vast wealth and army of software engineers to aid repression of the worlds most populous country?.All to get more market share?.
Facebook Everywhere
Facebook is already on our phone to pester us with notifications.For example FB messenger pops up on top of whatever you are doing once anybody sends you a message.
The only way to shut off these annoying notifications for more than 24 hours is to go deep into the OS level.
And zuck wont stop at merely pervading our existence.He wants facebook to be our existence.
Facebook is a threat to the open web
Something like facebook could never have emerged within itself.It needed an open web within to exist and operate.
Google co founder sergey brim has condemned facebook and acknowledged that google itself could not succeed in the "walled garden" that facebook is making.
He said:"You have to play by thier rules,which are really restrictive.The kind of environment that we developed google in,the reason we were able to build a search engine,is because the web was open.Once you get too many rules,that will stiffle innovation".
By locking down the web,facebook is not only sucking up more of humanity's waking hours-its poisoning the well.
Organisations like Google+ and others who would come to challenge facebooks dominance will never be able to find a fertile soil they need to take root in the first place.
What can you do about it?
Many peoples instinctive reaction is to delete thier facebook account and simply ignore it.Unfortunately,that will not help matters.
Like it or not,Many people who need to hear your thoughtful opinions the most are right there on facebook,and they are being bathed in misinformation all day long.There are some ways you can make facebook saner for yourself.
1-The trending section is filled with ads and misinformation.You can block it using facebook purity chrome extension.
2-Decline facebooks frequent request for your data.Dont give them access to your gmail contacts or phone number displayed.
3-Dont use facebook authentication to sign into websites or apps.
4-Spend less time on facebook,you can use your time to innovate something better than facebook instead of improving facebooks cash.
5-Think twice about sharing any personal information.
I really admire Edward Snowden and Pavel Durov(telegrams Ceo) for thier beliefs on internet privacy.Dont give facebook your whole life under surveillance.
1 replies:
nice....
Dear readers, after reading the Content please ask for advice and to provide constructive feedback Please Write Relevant Comment with Polite Language.Your comments inspired me to continue blogging. Your opinion much more valuable to me. Thank you.