NetLingo Blog: Let's Talk Tech

Facebook has weathered its share of scandals lately but this item didn't get much coverage and it really got my goat. At the end of 2018, some 250 pages of internal Facebook emails were released by British lawmakers revealing that executives were "ruthless and unsparing" in their ambition to collect more data from users according to The New York Times. The emails, which spanned 2012 to 2015, a time of tremendous expansion for Facebook, show executives including Mark Zuckerberg, discussing ways to undermine their competitors, obscure their collection of user data, and above all, ensure that their products kept growing.

Most of that sounds well and good (not the obscuring of data part) as our current definition of what a business should do, there's even a NetLingo word for it: moneytizing eyeballs.

Until you get to the part that Facebook engineered a way to collect Android users' data without having to alert them, and Zuckerberg personally approved cutting off a video-sharing app's access to Facebook because it was a competitor to Instagram (which they own). The app, called Vine and loved by many, was eventually forced to shut down. C'mon executives of Big Tech, speak out! Especially you spiritual ones... there's more than enough to go around.