“Facebook’s fundamental problem is not foreign interference, spam bots, trolls, or fame mongers. It’s the company’s core business model, and abandoning it is not an option.
You cannot fix Facebook without completely gutting its advertising-driven business model.
And because he is required by Wall Street to put his shareholders above all else, there’s no way in hell Zuckerberg will do that.
Put another way, Facebook has gotten too big to pivot to a new, more “sustainable” business model. The company is on track to earn at least $16 billion in profits in 2017. Wherever the number lands (earnings for the year come out later this month), it’s at least 50 percent growth on the year before.”
The complete article by John Battelle can be read here!
Of course, we subscribe to this view. Facebook is not doing evil because of evil people. It is a matter of business. In its drive to ever increase revenue, Facebook is forced to monetise its users. It has one advantage over Google: perfectly personalised data. In order to get an edge in advertising, the company uses this wealth. It is simply not possible to just avoid the “bad” things like Cambridge Analytica. The problem is systemic and can’t be fixed.
