Mark Zuckerberg’s mentor, who was an early investor in Facebook, said that democracy “may never recover” if it doesn’t change.
Roger McNamee was once an advisor to the tech CEO and has since been a staunch critic. He called yesterday for the use of users’ data to become as unethical than child labour.
The businessman, who was friends with Zuckerberg in 2006 said that our fundamental institutions would suffer if the troves of leaked documents and testimonies from Frances Haugen don’t force Facebook to make wholesale changes.
Roger McNamee (pictured on Wednesday at the Lisbon Web Summit) fears that democracy’may never recover unless Facebook changes
He said at the Lisbon Web Summit: “If it doesn’t, democracy and our ability make our own choices may never again recover.”
He said, “Extracting the essence and humanity of our humanity in data form, and then using it for manipulating our behavior is as unethical and as child labor. It should be banned in the same way as child labour was.
McNamee also praised Haugen’s handling of the torrent of allegations against her.
Before revealing her identity in a TV interview, she first disclosed company documents anonymously.
The whistleblower testified before US Senators and UK Parliament, while simultaneously releasing a cache leaked files to various news outlets.
Haugen’s most damning claims include that Facebook places profit over safety, propagates hateful and divisive material, and deliberately manipulates people through its algorithms.
She claims that this has led to increased human trafficking on the platform, as well as failures to crackdown conspiracy theories and hate speech, which has resulted in real world violence.
McNamee, who was previously an advisor to Zuckerberg (pictured), has since become a fierce critic of the company
McNamee stated that McNamee was the first to see that whistleblowing could be done in a variety of situations, including a product announcement or rollout.
‘I would argue that the way she did her whistleblowing was the most effective product rollout since the original iPhone … And I just tip my hat to her. Simply brilliant.
He said that he didn’t show the shark at the beginning when comparing her revelations with Jaws. The anticipation builds nicely and makes the shark’s appearance more effective.
‘The impact of that… literally stopped the conversation and restarted it in a profound way.’
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has denied the claims. Nick Clegg (the company’s vice president for global affairs), stated that their content was mostly based on ‘babies and barbecues and Bar Mitzvahs.
McNamee also praised Haugen’s handling of the torrent of allegations against her tech giant (pictured with German lawmakers on Wednesday).
Chris Cox is Meta’s chief products officer. He said that there are an “important set of questions” to answer. However, he said that people had ‘lost touch’ with the vast sums they have invested in keeping users safe.
McNamee, whose net wealth is estimated at $1billion established a venture capital firm that invested $210m in Facebook shares in 2009-2010.
He later stated that he was beginning to have concerns about its surveillance capitalism model, which collects and aggregates user data to microtarget people and manipulate their behavior.
In 2016, he claimed he suspected that political operatives were using the company’s advertisements to influence outcomes. He said that he visited founder Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and demanded they take action after Brexit.
McNamee said that McNamee started lobbying public officials to regulate social networking sites. He also accused Facebook of allowing Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election result.
He began selling his stock in the company in late 2019 months after he started speaking out against it. He claimed that to do so earlier would have made it look like he was plotting against them.
He is now a member the Real Facebook Oversight Board. This was established in response to Facebook’s own oversight board. Members of the’real’ group claim that it does not have enough teeth for Zuckerberg and other executives to challenge them.
According to the Facebook papers, the company was accused in the new allegations of being used to traffic Middle East women. However, bosses failed even to eradicate this practice despite warnings.
After promising to crackdown, Facebook admitted in internal documents that it was “under-enforcing confirmed abusive activity” that led to Filipina maids complaining about being abused on the social media platform.
The documents also reveal that Mark Zuckerberg personally agreed to requests from Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party to censor anti-government dissidents.
It was warned that Instagram may not be safe for teenagers aged 14 because it can make them addicted and then school bullying follows them home.
Leaked documents revealed this week that Facebook was working to target children as young as 6 years old to expand its consumer base and generate greater profits for the tech titan.
A blog post from the company on April 9 stated that it was hiring employees to re-imagine its entire product range for children aged 6-9 and tweens aged 10-12. The company targets children as young as 13 years old.
The post, titled ‘The internet wasn’t built with young people in mind, but we’re about to change that,’ was among documents released by whistleblower Frances Haugen’s legal team and provided to Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission that has become known as the Facebook Papers.
‘Our company is making a major investment in youth and has spun up a cross-company virtual team to make safer, more private, experiences for youth that improve their and their household’s well-being,’ the blog post read, according to NBC News.
“For many of our products we have historically not designed for below 13.”
It comes after Facebook announced this week it will shut down its controversial face-recognition system and delete the faceprints of more than 1 billion people, citing the concerns the technology has on society.
It will no longer recognize faces in videos or photos, which will have profound implications.
Users will also be unable to use face recognition to suggest a tag to a person in a photograph or video. People will still be able to manually tag posts.
The shock announcement is the company’s second move – after last month’s name change – to rehabilitate itself after a series of privacy scandals.
More than one third of Facebook’s 1.93billion daily active users (equivalent to approximately 640m) have opted into Face Recognition. The end of the system will have an impact on them.
Facebook stated that it will end its face-recognition service and delete the faceprints from more than 1,000,000 users.
“This change will represent one the largest shifts facial recognition usage in technology’s history,” said Jerome Pesenti (vp artificial intelligence, Facebook’s new parent company Meta).
‘More than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted in to our Face Recognition setting and are able to be recognized, and its removal will result in the deletion of more than a billion people´s individual facial recognition templates.’
TechCrunch reports that although it’s not clear how much Facebook spent on facial recognition technology in 2012, Face.com was purchased by the company for less than $100 millions.