How we outsmarted Mark Zuckerberg
Injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others.
The WSJ is paid subscription only. You're able to see the intro and if you click the link, you can listen to the opening of the series. The point is well made below. Take a bow, everyone.
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By Jonathan Rose
Last week the Wall Street Journal published a five-part expose of Facebook, based upon the company's internal reports and documents. Among other things, the WSJ revealed that corporate executives knew well that Instagram could be addictive and psychologically damaging for young people, particularly teenage girls.
But readers of AoA will be especially interested to know that this behemoth corporation, valued at a trillion dollars, bent every effort to suppress any critical examination of vaccines -- and failed. Although Zuckerberg has occasionally offered half-hearted defenses of free expression, he never meant to extend that right to "antivaxxers". But although he commanded a vast army of human and algorithmic censors, technically far more sophisticated than anything George Orwell imagined, Facebook lost to a ragtag guerilla army of amateurs (i.e., us). In the marketplace of ideas, "misinformation" (i.e., timely warnings) attracted nearly four times as many views as "authoritative information" (i.e., misinformation). The executives at Facebook were baffled and infuriated that the machine they devised actually did what it was designed to do: allowed ordinary people around the world to freely communicate with each other.
How Facebook Hobbled Mark Zuckerberg’s Bid to Get America Vaccinated
Company documents show antivaccine activists undermined the CEO’s ambition to support the rollout by flooding the site and using Facebook’s own tools to sow doubt about the Covid-19 vaccine
In mid-March, Mark Zuckerberg used his Facebook page to announce a goal that was both ambitious and personal. He wanted his company to use its formidable resources to push 50 million people toward Covid-19 vaccines.
In a post and a press release, the chief executive discussed Facebook Inc.’s initiatives to promote vaccines. He unveiled collaborations with global health organizations. And he touted that his company had “already connected more than 2 billion people to authoritative
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