Facebook now at a crossroad

YOUR former high school classmate has pictures of a new baby, your aunt has videos of her great holiday in Spain, and a presidential candidate has several articles accusing her of killing an FBI agent for leaking e-mails.

One of these things is not like the others (hint: it’s the last one), but Facebook will share them all if it thinks they’ll please you. It will even promote them further if it thinks that other users will find them interesting as well.

To the algorithms that control the site, what matters is the “connection” you make with others via these snippets of information. Whether it’s based on something true is an entirely different question.

In the current kerfuffle over whether the fake news and misinformation that proliferated on the site might have influenced the outcome of the 2016 US election, Facebook’s difficulty in acknowledging whether it’s simply a provider of pleasant connections or a public utility with real obligations has come to the fore.

The criticisms have illuminated Facebook’s crisis of mission: profitable lifestyle platform or force for common good? More than a decade after its launch, its creator is still trying to figure out what it’s supposed to be – but it’s frankly irresponsible to remain undecided for much longer.

As originally conceived, Facebook’s value was limited. In its 2006 mission statement, it claimed that