Will Mark Zuckerberg destroy the internet?

The article is a translation from the "I can't just stand by and watch Zuckerberg destroy the internet" post on medium, demonstrating the author's concern about an exclusive Facebook capable of replacing the internet in one day. not far.

"With great power comes great responsibility" – Uncle Ben

Mark Zuckerberg – CEO Facebook – is probably the most powerful name on the planet today.

Normally, the US president was considered the most powerful person on Earth. Anyway, President Obama controls the most powerful army on the planet, and has a strong influence on the US economy worth 18 billion dollars.

But President Obama is still attached to a system that limits his authority: parliament and the supreme court, term limits (he will be forced to retire in January), and the decision of the university American tri.

Mark Zuckerberg did not suffer from such restrictions. His power comes from Facebook, the seventh largest corporation in the world by market capitalization, in which he owns 18% of shares and 60% of voting rights.

At the age of 32, he can continue to be Facebook's CEO for about 50 years.

But finance is only part of Facebook's ultimate power. Here are some ways Facebook dominates human attention:

  1. More than a billion Facebook users every day. 1/4 of the total time on the internet is used to access Facebook.
  2. For many people Facebook is the whole internet. It is the first place people come to when they announce their wedding, give birth to a baby, someone is too life or any great savings in life.
  3. Facebook is where people increasingly consume more media types.

Through the Free Basics program, Facebook truly became the internet for literally poor people in the world (those who have to pay to access websites outside of Facebook).

Facebook also uses monopoly on people's attention to control which information will show to anyone , implicitly influencing public opinion.

And Facebook knows more about humanity, and each individual person, than any company or government in the world. With 500 terabytes of personal data flowing into Facebook every day.

So far, Zuckerberg still primarily uses the power of Facebook to expand itself. He acquired two of Facebook's most formidable opponents: Instagram and WhatsApp; and are competing with YouTube about video and Twitter about real-time communication.

He even created AI and launched satellites ( despite the first attempt to explode on the launcher ).

But as Facebook is getting closer to its goal of becoming the largest corporation that ever existed, Zuckerberg's plan for the company could change.

Although he promised to give up 99% of his Facebook shares until the end of his life, Mark will still be in control of his committee. And his power does not come from billions of dollars, but comes from our ability to access the interest and data of all of us.

Mark's role in humanity is so important that a group of university professors record and analyze almost everything Mark said , hoping to understand the dynamics and future plans of he.

From now until the end of his life, Mark will be able to bring Facebook's frightening power to any goal he wants.

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But is he responsible?

Below is Mark's recent post about what he is doing to stop fake news on Facebook, in which he says "the final conclusion is: we've done too much fake information."

And next to Mark's post, there are two false posts again .

Fake information can make a big contribution to US election results, and many recent voting events .

Even the wrong header lines, often used to trick viewers into clicking unrelated products, also cause immeasurable harm. The title is the only part in a piece that many people "crave" to look at. The title, even if it is alone, can easily change the opinion.

And fake news is not the only controversial point of Facebook this month.

Yesterday, there was a hand in Facebook revealing to the New York Times that Facebook is investing in a sophisticated search engine.

Mark's goal is clearly to re-enter the Chinese market, where Facebook has been blocked since 2009.

Is Mark's use of strong resources and a strong engineering army from his company to improve China's internal situation? Or just to acquire more market share?

Facebook anytime, anywhere

Facebook has always been available on our phones and computers, annoying with all kinds of notifications.

For example, Facebook Messenger jumps over anything you're doing whenever someone sends a message.

If you try to turn off noti on Facebook Messenger, here's what you get:

That's right, the only way to turn off these annoying noti is only 24 hours each time you manipulate.

Which Mark will not stop only by covering our existence. He wants Facebook to turn into our existence.

The following is a demo video of Facebook Social VR, built on the background of Oculus, a company he bought in 2014:

The intimacy of this demo is really appealing. Can you go anywhere and do anything, but instead hurry up to your living room to take a selfie with a dog? Seems a bit off topic.

Mark was very clear about what he wanted to create, then commercialized: artificial scarcity (scarce artificial product). He draws a future in which you can pay more to get a better seat in a VR-based sports event.

The number of top seats with VR, theoretically, should be endless. Stands in VR experience are not tied to irregular rules. But you will have to pay extra to the avatar heads do not cover your vision with the match below.

And more, with VR ads can be placed anywhere. With eye tracking, you won't be able to avoid your eyes.

And with Facebook's huge and growing data flow around you, and the mission to maximize the value of its shareholders, but this model will be even more frightening.

Facebook is a threat to the open web environment

Facebook will not let anything like it emerge in Facebook itself. And the same tools only exist in each web environment to conceive.

However, Facebook still has clear ambitions (can include Free Basic) to destroy the open web environment.

Google co-founders, Sergey Brin, once warned about Facebook, and found that Google could not succeed in the "walled garden" that Facebook was creating:

“You have to play by their rules, the rules are very strict. The kind of environment that we have to develop Google in, the reason why we developed the current search engine, is because the web is open. When you have too many rules, that will squeeze the initiative. ”

With the tightening of the web environment, Facebook is not only absorbing more and more hours of human consciousness and work, but also reading this great knowledge well.

The organizations that should have gradually emerged to embrace Facebook's dominance, will never find fertile ground to take root from the beginning and die in the bud.

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What can you do to avoid this dictatorship?

Everyone's instinctive response is to delete the Facebook account and ignore it.

Unfortunately, deleting a Facebook account will not help anyone. That only leads to fewer and fewer people thinking correctly on Facebook.

Like it or not, those who need to hear your sincere opinions are still there, wandering on Facebook.

It's your relatives and friends, and they're still bathing in false emotions every day and fake information enriching Facebook every day.

Here are some ways to make your Facebook environment more secure:

  1. Part trending full of advertising and false information. You can block them and many other ad boxes on Facebook with Facebook Purity Chrome extension.
  2. Please refuse to access Facebook's personal information. Don't let them know your phone number or gmail address. And do not use Facebook verification to log in to the website and the app.
  3. Think carefully before sharing personal information. You can post funny pictures, but don't record or live stream angry words or your "love hour".

Finally, find out how the web environment works, why is it so important ….

ITZone via Medium

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