Tech is the Young Adult of non-fiction now. There is an influx of books and readers, and everyone is predicting a catastrophe or two. Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe , the latest to join the club, comes from Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook who also happens to be a venture capitalist and musician.
McNamee was an insider and that adds more value to the concerns he raises in the book.
According to him, one of the major flaws in the business model of Facebook is that the technology giant does not consider itself as a media company but as a platform. This means it is not responsible for the actions of third parties which use the platform to meet their demands. This could also mean that Facebook does not think it shares the blame for all those mighty mishaps — from the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal to the way FB posts played a role in the slaughter of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, of which even the United Nations took note — that prompted many to call it the digital equivalent of a Frankenstein monster.
Why can’t they clean up?
Now the most important question: If these errors are inherent, why can’t Facebook — which means founder Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg and team — rectify it? McNamee wants Facebook to take a cue from the example of Johnson & Johnson when a few bottles of its Tylenol was poisoned by someone in Chicago in 1982. J&J quickly pulled out all the bottles from every store in the region and did not reintroduce Tylenol till it had perfected tamper-proof packaging.
Facebook doesn’t appear to be ready to clean up. Instead, it blames third parties who are cashing in on its own inherent disregard for private data. In short, the problems of Facebook are not a case of “unintended consequences of well-intended strategies.” So it will be very difficult for Facebook to mend its ways because change means demolishing its current architecture and starting afresh. The data-gorging business model of the likes of Facebook and Google do not necessarily allow for that because as McNamee points out, surveillance, the sharing of user data and behavioural modification are the foundation of the success of the tech giants. “Users are fuel for Facebook’s growth and... the victims of it.”
Cut to the chase, the victims must speak up for a better, transparent and inclusive digital experience. In 14 engaging, anecdote-rich chapters and an info-rich and insightful collateral dossier, all of which obviously reflect his personal biases and prejudices, McNamee cobbles up a deeply entertaining account of why we must not take Facebook at face value.
Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe ; Roger McNamee, HarperCollins, ₹599.
