Könnt Ihr euch erinnern, dass Social Media mal schön war?
Nein?
Gut, ich auch nicht.
Das Gefühl besteht schon länger. Facebook war schon länger nicht mehr spannend, am längsten hat Twitter gehalten. Schon mit dem Kauf von Whatsapp und allerspätestens mit Instagram ist bei Facebook klar gewesen, worum es geht: Daten von Benutzern zu erfassen. Irgendwo dazwischen gab es „The Circle“ von Dave Eggers, einem Roman in dem eine Exfreundin einen Digitalverweigerer für Ihren Job in den Untergang treibt. Ja, lustig.
Seit der Um-firmierung zu „Meta Inc.“ ist dann auch die letzte Liebe zur Digitalisierungserfolgsgeschichte verfolgen gewesen – der Auftrag, das Mandat ist verloren gegangen, aller Beteuerungen ein sozialeres Netzwerk schaffen zu wollen zum trotz, Meta ist nun ein Konzern geworden, der eine Zukunft braucht. Die Kunden sind dafür unerheblich geworden.
Jenseits der privaten Kanäle von Whatsapp und der Wohlfühltapete von Instagram aus der man seinen Content auch nicht so richtig wieder rauskriegt, ist Corporate Social Media nun auch kein Thema mehr. Das Facebook-Konto ist, nach jaherlangem Ignorieren, nun endlich gelöscht, der Twitter-Client nicht mehr auf dem Telefon. Mastodon läuft schon irgendwie.
We know Facebook has big plans for the Metaverse. The company even rebranded as Meta to underline it’s ambition. On Labstalk, we almost spent the entire season discussing benefits and goals of the technology, alongside with all the other tech topics in the same space, like Web3, NFTs and DOAs.
Back to Meta (the company) and the Metaverse: among others, one of the foundational use-cases the company re-imagines – to make it attractive to the promising B2B market: virtual or remote meetings.
And if you ever get to see any of the promotional images: At first glance, these that really look like a meeting in a 3D Room can be a viable alternative. In the pandemic the corporate workforce first came from plenty of travel and got force-used to Zoom and Teams meetings, only to develop even worse meeting fatigue because in-person required travel. Now after almost three years of pandemic, the audience is eager for something new and the time seems right for a different format.
Alone: the hype doesn’t materialise.
Parmy Olson from Bloomberg reports that Accenture, among other companies that are reference customers to Facebook/Meta’s Occulus platform, bought plenty of gear, 60k devices, some as long as 2 years ago. To use these devices for new hire orientation. AstraZeneca, another major customer, wouldn’t even comment.
The virtual conference room needs to die. VR is better used for fun and building relationships.
A major reason for the lack of momentum I can confirm from own experiences is the bad reputation Facebook/Meta has for their perspectives on privacy and handling of sensitive data. The ‘surveillance capitalism’ approach the company takes with this new technology and economy bet becomes apparent in the pricing strategy for these Occulus devices. The Facebook/Meta (or ‘surveillance’)-free version of the device, that appears technically identical, is about 30% more expensive, according to sources in well informed circles.
Personally, I believe in the concept but can re-affirm these concerns and understand the restraints that come alongside the curiosity. While the investments that Meta makes in the technology help the hardware make necessary progress towards user-acceptance, other players need to step in and provide applications to help solve corporate acceptance.
Seeing Meta’s Instagram and Facebook platforms to allow users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion is one of the most dystopian news of the past months. The company has been criticised for fueling hatred and hate speech, even with previous policies.
Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy.
Signal, the company offering secure and private messaging, tried to advertise on Facebook. Naturally, the company tried to drive their value in privacy. They chose to point out the implications Facebook’s businesmodel has for these values.
Off Facebook Activity is a tool, that let’s Facebook users see which sites they used outside of Facebook. The tool is as creepy as you would think it would be. Facebook, through it’s like buttons and other embeds, has sheer unlimited insight into personal browsing behaviour.
Facebook Company Logo / Wordmark
In an attempt by the company to create more transparency, it discloses how much curiosity in a negative sense is driving the social network in trying to understand their audience. And actually sell this gained knowledge to their customers.
The release of Off Facebook Activity a reminder we are living in an increasingly connected world that is watching us. There is entirely no point for any company to collect this type of data outsire of making us a product.
The Washington Post writes about how creepy and scary this feature is, and even more important, how to work with privacy settings. While the article deals with Facebook internal settings alone, the amout of data transferred to Facebook won’t stop. At this point, you may want to consider personal privacy tools like uMatrix (for Firefox or Chrome). Or, to leverage protection for the entire network, e.g. for your family, Pi-Hole is worth taking a look, too.
Just in time for Xmas, Facebook dropped a huge package of user data.
Mark Zuckerberg
More than 260 million U.S. Facebook users’ IDs, phone numbers, and names were exposed to an online database that could potentially be used for spam and phishing campaigns. Comparitech reports that before the database was taken down, it was found on a hacker forum as a downloadable file.
“What could go wrong?” is exactly the right question one would ask over the feature Facebook announced. Facebook has been facing criticism not only recently over enabling filter bubbles and fueling extremist echo chambers. “Strengthen Democracy” is a clear attempt to whitewash from accusations to actually hurt the same. Digital Trends has more details.
Facebook News Tab
Facebook is launching a dedicated news tab amid growing criticism for the social network. Facebook News uses articles from a list of publishers meeting a set of standards and includes a section curated by journalists. But is that enough for a platform criticized for fake news?
Again, it’s Facebook, that made news with a data breach. TechCrunch reported first about midnight Euroean time, but it’s all over the news by today, noon. It’s time to realize social media is a mistake.
Facebook had a rough 2018 and 2019 didn’t really start too well either, when Instagram leaked passwords. Meanwhile, Amazon’s Alexa had it’s own scandal when it turned out that not machines but humans listened to their customers commands. With all of this combined, it doesn’t sound like a great idea to offer more surface for these kind of events. Still, Facebook seems to plan to release a voice assistant of its own.
There’s no indication that it will extend outside Facebook’s own hardware—yet.
