Facebook, attacking Democracy!!!???

                                       *Keep this definition in mind while reading this blog.

Once again in the past week, Facebook has shut down the world over some new and never before seen allegations, so we think. Apparently, they put children in harms way and breaking down democracies piece by piece and all of this is coming from a 'whistleblower', which means it has yet to be proven true. This could be some old employee who wants to get back at the company, or he could be telling the truth, lets see what the facts say. Just to put things into perspective he is testifying and saying all of this in front of the UNITED STATES CONGRESS.

***The important claims in the article***

*There was not enough people working to keep the platforms safe. I find this surprising because this a billion dollar company.

*The safety setting were turned off up until the January 6th riots.

*Children under the age of 13 are targeted by the sight. 

With that in mind here is what we know about the actual precedings. First, all of this started a whole month ago with internal documents of the company being leaked. The company knew that Instagram was hurting the mental health of teens and their news feature was polarizing the nation. She goes onto say that the higher ups in the company know how to do good but decide they dont want to. 

In the idea of weakening our democracy, just because they post more polarizing news doesn't necessarily mean that they are destroying democracy, you could argue they are inciting much needed conversation. 

One interesting thing that is coming up is that the 'whistleblower; wants the government to regulate Facebook. This is something we had an discussion about in my class.

Question: Can you call yourself a democracy when you threatening to takeaway a nation's freedom of speech?

Another interesting is that she said that Facebook, should be treated like the Tobacco and car industry in the sense of government control. The only thing about that is the average person doesn't have a say in those type of business.. In comparison to Facebook where anyone who is anyone can make an account and say whatever. Not everyone is buying a certain type of car and not everyone smokes or even cares about cigarette, so its a bit different.

Question: Do you think that social media in general should controlled by the government or should it stay the way it is. 

There is a part in the documents that say that the creator of the app Facebook, said that he chose meaningful interaction changes over decreasing hat speech and the like. Can you be mad at him he is billionaire, his only focus is make it easier for people to interact which would in turn make him more money. Personally I believe billionaires are oddly not in  touch with humanity so this decision doesn't surprise me. 

Question: Off topic, do you believe that billionaire's are disconnected from humanity because of all the money they have or something different?

The rest of article is very interesting but the rest is really outside of the scope of what I want to talk about on my blog. If you want to read the read the rest this is link (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/05/facebook-harms-children-damaging-democracy-claims-whistleblower). In all this story is very interesting because it could possibly be threatening democracy as we know. If the government gets involved with Facebook who knows what would happen to the other social media platform. There are millions of people using social media to speak and say whatever they want and have done nothing wrong. Should they have to suffer because of what the biggest one went out and got exposed.