A series of Facebook fumbles and other blunders during the month of October has left the social media giant on the defensive and running for cover.
Technology
One of the bigger Facebook fumbles occurred on October 4th when Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram (all owned by Facebook) shut down simultaneously for almost 7 hours.
“To all the people and businesses around the world who depend on us, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused by today’s outage across our platforms. We’ve been working as hard as we can to restore access, and our systems are now back up and running,” the social media company said in a statement.
In mid-October, multiple Facebook whistleblowers came forward with information that the company prioritizes revenue over combating misinformation and hate speech.
According to The Washington Post, a former member of Facebook’s Integrity team overheard superiors of the company dismissing Facebook’s role surrounding Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election.
“It will be a flash in the pan,” the Facebook official reportedly said while dismissing their connection to the Russian interference controversy. “Some legislators will get pissy. And then in a few weeks, they will move on to something else. Meanwhile, we are printing money in the basement, and we are fine.”
This information came after Facebook ended its plans to launch Instagram for Kids — which experts believed would have been a prime target for pedophiles.
If that wasn’t enough, Frances Haugen, a former data scientist at Facebook, leaked documents and revealed that the social media network is aware that Instagram is bad for the mental health of many of its users, particularly teens. Haugen also criticized the company’s track record on misinformation, political polarization, and hate speech. Of course, Facebook’s privacy concerns have always been an issue among its users.
In an effort to eliminate all the negative press regarding its brand, Facebook announced last week that it intends to change its name. The new name will be announced Thursday and will rebrand the company similar to the way Google rebranded itself as the Alphabet Company.
According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he wants to “transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.” Or, in other words, Zuckerberg is hoping to distance himself from Facebook and Instagram, the very brands he owns.
Experts agree that no name change will ever erase all the evil and Facebook fumbles the company has engaged in over the years.
“It will be a flash in the pan,” the Facebook official reportedly said while dismissing their connection to the Russian interference controversy. “Some legislators will get pissy. And then in a few weeks, they will move on to something else. Meanwhile, we are printing money in the basement, and we are fine.”
Sadly, the Facebook official is right. And WE, as a society and a democracy, will continue paying the price for it until some legislators have the Courage to smash it to pieces.
Regular readers know how I feel about Facebook. I’ve never trusted it. Zuckerberg’s milk-toast little boyish look Never fooled me. He is as rotten to the core as any man driven by “love of money over people.” And Facebook and ALL things related to it are, in my opinion, a Scourge upon this nation, if not, the world.