Facebook’s ‘friendly’ focus another time-waster
Mark Zuckerberg wants you to stop wasting time. Let’s rephrase that. The founder of Facebook has let it be known that he wants you to waste time in a more “meaningful” way.
To that end, he is changing the almighty algorithm that decides what material is featured most prominently on each user’s Facebook news feed, the scrolling list of posts that appears when you visit the site. Instead of prioritising content that is most popular and keeps users’ eyeballs glued to the site, it will now promote content that encourages people to interact with their friends and family. In future, the more people exchange long comments about a post, the more it will be promoted.
This, Mr Zuckerberg claims, will “help us connect with each other” rather than drifting passively through Facebook videos and clickbait in a state of zombie-like semiconsciousness while our precious hours of free time drain away. In reality, of course, it will simply substitute one sort of time-wasting for another. For all his platitudes about “well-being and happiness”, the real significance of Facebook’s move is not so much in what it’s done, but why.
Two billion people, a quarter of the world’s population, now use Facebook on a regular basis. It is one of the biggest companies on the planet, with a market value of $180billion (£131billion) and annual profits of over $10billion. With tweaks to its algorithm, it can make or break small businesses, change users’ moods and influence elections. So why is Mr Zuckerberg now trying so hard to seem friendly?
Perhaps he can feel the tide turning. The list of complaints against Facebook is growing almost as fast as its user base. On Thursday, it agreed to pay damages to a 14-year-old Irish girl for repeatedly allowing naked “revenge porn” pictures of her to appear on the site. EU competition authorities have fined Facebook for misleading regulators, and last year saw its top lawyer grilled by congressional committees.
It is under pressure for disseminating extremist videos, failing to take down abusive content and allowing itself to become a propaganda arm of Russia’s intelligence services. That’s even before we get to its effect on mental health.
The truth is that, however powerful and profitable, no organisation is entirely immune to the groundswell of public opinion. It could take regulators and politicians years to take down Mr Zuckerberg’s empire, just as it did to split up JD Rockefeller’s Standard Oil 100 years ago, but if they wanted to do it, they would. Mr Zuckerberg’s decision to change his algorithm, even if it causes Facebook’s traffic to drop, is an admission that no company can count on an infinite stock of goodwill from customers and governments. He wants users to feel better about using Facebook to protect it from criticism and there’s a sort of accountability in that. However invincible a corporation looks, recall that only 12 per cent of companies that were in the Fortune 500 in 1955 are still there today.
As to whether these algorithmic changes will set us free from the cloying embrace of social media addiction or staunch the flow of viral fake news, the answer is no. Facebook began life as a basic code that brought up pictures of Mr Zuckerberg’s fellow undergraduates at Harvard in order to let users compare their attractiveness. So when this same man talks about “meaningful” social interactions that “bring us closer together”, remember how his company started.
On the topic of felled corporate titans, here’s a fun fact about JD Rockefeller: he really loved cheese. More specifically, he believed cheese would help him live to the age of 100.
Rockefeller, like many great Americans, was a firm believer in rigid habits. In the book Breaking Rockefeller, Peter Doran recounts how the tycoon strove to do everything exactly the same every day. Mealtimes, the hour allotted for reading his paper, napping, taking a walk: all were heavily scheduled. Eating cheese was an important part of the lunchtime ritual. In his later years, however, as Standard Oil came under investigation for anti-competitive practices, this became highly risky. To avoid being served with subpoenas, Rockefeller would flit from one estate to another. Hiding out in upstate New York on one occasion, a local taxi driver noticed the peculiarly regular delivery of cheese. Soon, the press pack was tipped off and Rockefeller had to flee on a boat down the Hudson.
Regulators got Standard Oil in the end, forcing it to split into three separate companies. But Rockefeller had the last laugh. The demerger made him richer than ever and for all we might mock his cheese habit, he made it to the age of 97. Gouda enough.
The neurotic billionaire of our time, Donald Trump, says he does not want to come to London to open the new American embassy, and complains that the move from Grosvenor Square to Nine Elms, south London, is an Obama-inspired “bad deal”. If the recent Michael Wolff book about him is to be believed, however, Mr Trump retires to bed everyday at 6.30pm with a cheeseburger and three blaring TV screens to lull him to sleep. Like other tycoons, he has his habits and does not travel well. Perhaps this is the real reason he doesn’t want to come to London just, as he tweeted, “to cut ribbon”. FOLLOW Juliet Samuel on Twitter @Citysamuel; READ MORE at telegraph. co.uk/opinion