Facebook: Cracking the Code Page #5

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news company in the world

that hasn't changed

its operations around Facebook

in a real way and I mean that

both in the way

that it produces stories

and approaches stories

and the way that it makes money.

If Facebook is playing

an increasingly important role

in how we understand the world,

its social mood study showed

it affects how we feel about it.

When its researchers explained

how they manipulated

the news feeds

of some 700,000 users,

they were criticized for playing

with people's psychology

without telling them.

And yet it's algorithms do that

every day.

They give us stories

they know we want to see,

to keep us online, and help

advertisers send us more ads.

I don't think we can treat

Facebook as benign.

I think it has

enormous implications

for how we experience our lives,

and how we live our lives,

and I think simultaneously

that's one of the things

that makes that network

and others like it

so phenomenally interesting

and important.

But Mark Zuckerberg's plans

would have Facebook do far more.

He wants its users

to rely on the network

for the way we organize society,

discover the world

and conduct politics.

He wants the community

to inform Facebook,

while Facebook

watches over us.

The philosophy of everything

we do at Facebook

is that our community

can teach us what we need to do

and our job is to learn

as quickly as we can

and keep on getting

better and better

and that's especially true when

it comes to keeping people safe.

In a post on his own profile

in February,

he outlined his plan

for the company -

a kind of manifesto

for the central role

he wants the platform to play

in societies around the world.

We're also gonna focus

on building

the infrastructure

for the community,

for supporting us,

for keeping us safe,

for informing us,

for civic engagement

and for inclusion of everyone.

So it's a document that really

felt like an attempt

to take some responsibility

but it wasn't apologetic.

It was fairly bold

and it seems to suggest

that the solution to Facebook's

problems is more Facebook.

Zuckerberg has great ambition.

"Progress needs humanity

to come together

as a global community",

he writes.

Facebook can help build it.

It wants to

'help fight terrorism',

while it's news service can

show us 'more diverse content'.

He is behaving recently in ways

more befitting

of a politician than a CEO.

There's a lot of speculation

that he may run for office

and to my mind,

if Facebook continues to be

as successful as it is,

not just through Facebook

but through its other products,

through Instagram and WhatsApp,

if it continues to be so central

in people's lives,

he doesn't need

to run for office,

he will be presiding

over platform and a venue

where people conduct

a real portion of their lives.

It seems there is

almost no limit

to Facebook's intrusion

into our lives,

for better or for worse.

I want to thank all of you

for joining us to hear more

about some of the things

we're working on at Facebook

to help keep

our communities safe.

Zuckerberg convened what

he called the Social Good Forum

to help people whose

Facebook posts indicate

that they might be at risk

of harming themselves

or committing suicide.

We're starting to do

more proactive work.

Like when we use

artificial intelligence

to identify things that

could be bad or harmful

and then flag them

so our teams can review them.

Or when someone shares

a post that makes it seem

like they might want

to harm themselves.

Then we give them

and their friends

suicide prevention tools

that they can share

to get the help that they need.

The ability to get big data

and to gather data about us

in all aspects of our lives

creates a particular

type of power among the people

or organizations

that have that data.

So they can say "Oh these are

your daily habits".

There's been some research done

that nearly half of what we do

is just repeating patterns

of what we did the day before.

From that,

you can also predict potentially

how people will behave

in the near future as well.

And that's perhaps

a little bit concerning

for people who care a lot

about their privacy.

You use the word potential harm,

that's a fairly big word.

That's a fairly serious phrase.

What sort of harm do you mean?

There are a couple

of factors here.

The first is the issues

that we know about already.

They are from little things,

such as ad targeting,

giving away what your girlfriend

bought you for your birthday,

and doesn't want you

to know about

through to a 14-year-old boy

who hasn't come out as gay yet,

and his parents

discover the fact

because of the advertising

that's being targeted to him,

through to potential

future harms.

One of the problems

in the privacy realm

is that we only have

one identity,

and we can't take back

what we've already handed over.

Facebook is far more intimately

involved in our lives

than any company

we've ever seen before.

Facebook has a responsibility

to inform people

of what is happening

to their data

and so then there can be

a conversation

also with "the community"

about whether people agree

that this is an appropriate use

and right now

they're not providing

enough information

for that conversation

to take place.

There's no take-back

on private data.

The implications

that are going to occur

in five or 10 years' time,

we need to protect

against that now.

And to an extent,

it almost feels like,

I'm reminded of Einstein's

letter to Eisenhower

warning about

the potential dangers

of nuclear holocaust

or whatever,

with the dangers in uranium -

not to say that

it's that severe,

but we are at the point now,

where we know

that there's danger,

but we don't know

the extent of it

and we don't know the potential

implications of it.

Our lives are now

measured in data.

What we look at, who we talk to,

what we do is all recorded

in digital form.

In handing it to Facebook,

we are making

Mark Zuckerberg's company

one of the most powerful

in history.

And the question is,

at what cost to ourselves?

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