Facebook is used to being the cool kid. But now it’s eating lunch alone: Companies are trying to figure out how to be as un-Facebook-like as possible. Several tech companies, including Apple, IBM and Salesforce, have publicly differentiated themselves from Facebook. Now that lawmakers are getting more interested in regulating tech, other companies are considering launching their own campaigns to stay as far away as possible from Facebook's privacy drama.
he pithiness that makes “you are the product” so quotable risks obscuring the complex pact between Facebook and its users, in ways that make social media’s problems seem inevitable and insoluble. They’re not—but if we want to fix them, the first thing we need to do is redefine our relationship. To the extent that our personal data has become a product, it’s because we—and our representatives in government—have allowed it to happen. If we don’t like how Facebook is treating us, we shouldn’t throw up our hands and call ourselves the product of a system over which we have no control.
You’re reading the Benton Foundation’s Weekly Round-up, a recap of the biggest (or most overlooked) telecommunications stories of the week. The round-up is delivered via e-mail each Friday.
Round-Up for the Week of April 23-27, 2018
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