[kictanet] Fwd: Why Facebook is the 'greater devil' of the moment

[Ali Hussein]

Listers

Interesting conversation. Regulators in the West have their eyesights on
Facebook, Google and Amazon (aka BigTech). This will be interesting to
watch.

Read email thread below.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

*Principal*

*Hussein & Associates*



Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: FORTUNE Data Sheet <fortune at email.fortune.com>
Date: Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 4:06 PM
Subject: Why Facebook is the 'greater devil' of the moment
To: ali at hussein.me.ke


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September 18, 2017

Last week I suggested the long knives are out for Facebook
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from multiple corners. Regulators, politicians, the social media company’s
publisher-partners, its own advertiser customers: They are all increasingly
fed up with Facebook.

It’s not just Facebook, of course. The same groups are annoyed to a greater
or lesser degree with Google
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And Twitter has done its fair share to poison the well of civil
discourse—the corollary to the glory of free speech. But Facebook is the
greater devil of the moment, relative to Google, and Twitter elicits more
pity than enmity right now.

Here are a things to read on the state of play to start your week:

* *The Wall Street Journal* published an illuminating article
<https://click.email.fortune.com/?qs=2ed78315f5b4ee2e341dbb842be8d0f630be7d7d86d7f4eb88e60dd2e30e94131c66369e7279ea5b86500d86cade64ce763660bf84b48971>
over the weekend that details how Silicon Valley’s “darling” status has
more or less ended in Washington, D.C. It would be tempting to read this as
an ideological shift from the Democratic Obama administration to the
Republican Trump administration. I think that would be a mistake. Rancor
over a concentration of power and a realization that “the Internet
industry” no longer needs the protection accorded a fledgling is an
increasingly bipartisan emotion.

* Also over the weekend, the conscientious Mike Allen of Axios
articulated Facebook’s
perspective
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on all this. Why his take matters: Facebook is fully aware they have a
political hot potato on their hands.

* The intelligentsia is all in on going after Big Tech. Exhibit A is the
new book by former *New Republic* Editor Franklin Foerr, *World Without
Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech
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Exhibit B is the oft-quoted Jonathan Taplin’s book *Move Fast and Break
Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined
Democracy
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Exhibit C is this penetrating opinion piece
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that recently came to my attention by University of Chicago professors
Luisi Zingales and Guy Rolnik that argues for the legislation of the
transfer of ownership all user-generated data from the social media
companies to the users who created the data.

Happy reading.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
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adam_lashinsky at fortune.com
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.
NEWSWORTHY

*Not public yet*. The fast-growing workplace messaging app *Slack* raised
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$250 million from investors, including SoftBank's Vision Fund, at a
valuation of just over $5 billion, the *Financial Times* reports. With
revenue still on pace to more than double annually, CEO Stewart Butterfield
says: "If it was 10 years ago we'd be public by now." Expect that debut
next year instead, he adds.

*Fourth to market*. The autonomous car push at *General Motors* is
progressing well and the unit, Cruise Automation, will soon open a
ride-hailing service for people outside the company, Reuters reports
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Only Alphabet's Waymo, Uber, and startup nuTonomy have reached that
milestone.

*Stamp out the hate.* *Facebook* and *Google* moved to quash
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the controversy over the ability to use hateful terms to target advertising
on their networks. Facebook had to turn off one of its automated
advertising suggestion tools. Google stopped its main ad system for search
from suggesting offensive phrases.

*Can you hear me now*. After T-Mobile decided to give its unlimited data
plan customers free Netflix, which followed AT&T's free HBO offer for its
unlimited customers, *Verizon* may have something similar in the offing.
CEO Lowell McAdam says
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the company is putting together its own content deals and will likely
announce one by the end of the month.

*Nuttiness premium.* Pre-orders for the new *Apple* iPhone 8 and 8 Plus
started Friday and the smartphones quickly sold out for first day delivery
on September 22. Apple's web site now shows a one to two week delay. Over
on eBay, a dozen crazies paid
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up to $1,989 to buy phones from early pre-orderers.

*Not so clean*. Hackers hid a *malware* program in legitimate copies of the
popular PC maintenance app *CCleaner* from Avast Software for about a
month, possibly infecting
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up to 4 million computers. The hack looks to have been an inside job,
according to security firm Cisco Talos, which discovered the hidden program.

*Internet rules.* The Emmys were big again for online streaming services.
*Netflix* won 20 total awards, more than any other outlet except HBO which
won 29. *Hulu* won 10 awards, including for best drama series, and *Amazon*
won two. "Yet another year that broadcast TV appears irrelevant," BTIG
analyst Rich Greenfield quipped
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to CNN's Brian Stelter.
.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT

*Computer scientist Alan Kay* helped conceptualize or invent many of the
most popular innovations of our high tech world, including the graphical
user interface and the tablet computer. But in an interview with *Fast
Company*, Kay is concerned
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about the impact of smartphones, which may be dumbing down the world.

If people could understand what computing was about, the iPhone would not
be a bad thing. But because people don't understand what computing is
about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad
as the illusion that Guitar Hero is the same as a real guitar. That's the
simple long and the short of it. What's interesting is, the computational
ability of an iPhone is far beyond what we need to do good computing. What
you wind up with is something that has enough stuff on it and is connected
to enough stuff, so it seems like the entire thing.

.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

*Google Sued by Gab, the Twitter for People Banned from Twitter
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*by
David Z. Morris*

*What You Should Do This Weekend to Protect Your Credit From the Equifax
Data Breach
<https://click.email.fortune.com/?qs=2ed78315f5b4ee2ea7064e7908113babf7012cf371934bff2540c463d42e55b86a4e52bbd038f38f24aadaadf71ad82fa3ed1bb49b1a08d7>*
*by
John Patrick Pullen*

*Nvidia Stock Jumps After Analyst Says It Will Add $40 Billion in Value
Over the Next Year
<https://click.email.fortune.com/?qs=2ed78315f5b4ee2e3c229b880e4f670b99944b0d0876ea64368b052bb1c01e0ce45ba5c69ce9e831567cea396e65b0e9ccdb114c9d8b291b>*
*by
Lucinda Shen*

*Spotify's New iMessage App Makes it Easier to Text Songs to Friends
<https://click.email.fortune.com/?qs=2ed78315f5b4ee2e8cae480317ae090f88b1fbf138524044b782f0c6b6c2dab6eeed58051cefba23b00743c180d44a5d3a83a5c8841efe37>*
*by
Tom Huddleston, Jr.*

*A Longtime Hardware Exec Steps Down at Dell Technologies
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*by
Barb Darrow*

*Social Capital's CEO Aims to Get Billion-Dollar Startups ‘Liquid Sooner'
<https://click.email.fortune.com/?qs=2ed78315f5b4ee2e8ddaafbee42e19ffe8a277160c645dbb03082c83e8311d4b1df3dc3a5fad3db4eb16e9c404961b268c3d64affa21e15a>*
*by
Polina Marinova*

*Starbucks Will Support Apple iPhone 8 and iPhone X Charging—Eventually
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*by
Don Reisinger*
.
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.
BEFORE YOU GO

*Smartphones and computers* may have shaken up our culture but the impact
is even more stark in the Amish community. The *New York Times* had a
masterful profile
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of how the technologies are infiltrating even this society that has
resisted the trappings of the modern world for so long.
*This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman
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Find past
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EMAIL Adam Lashinsky <adam_lashinsky at fortune.com>
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