While many are calling for regulation of Facebook and other social media platforms, getting there might be unrealistic, said David Kirkpatrick, author of "The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That is Connecting the World.”
“The problem is, this is a company that operates in over 190 countries, in probably 90 to 100 languages. And governments themselves are abusing it in many of those countries, so who do you allow to regulate it?” Kirkpatrick explained in an interview with Cheddar Friday.
“The other thing is...exactly how you’d interface with these moment-to-moment decisions, many of them being made by algorithms. That’s just something that hasn’t been invented yet.”
Last week, news broke that data company Cambridge Analytica harvested information on 50 million Americans off Facebook and sold it to President Trump’s campaign team during the 2016 election.
Ever since, Facebook has been in the hot seat for allowing this kind of breach on its platform and not being transparent about this problem, which it reportedly learned about years ago.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence on Wednesday after days of silence, saying -- among other things -- that the company would be open to government oversight.
While Zuckerberg’s statement and public appearance may have been a step in the right direction, it did not do enough to quell user concern, said Kirkpatrick.
For a CEO, “you don’t wait five days to come out when you have a crisis.”
“They really don’t get it even now,” said Kirkpatrick. “I honestly think that Facebook is embarrassing the entire tech sector.”
Kirkpatrick said that much of the company’s overall tone deaf approach to the crisis is derived from an arrogance that runs through the company.
“They just think they’re better than everybody else,” he said. “They’re more successful than anybody else, they think that they are doing better for the world than anybody else, and they’re definitely richer than anybody else.
“And what that leads them to conclude is that the rest of us just don’t get it...That is the way they think inside Facebook, and it’s really causing them to make a series of very wrong strategic decisions about how to handle this crisis.”
Facebook shares were down nearly 14 percent this week, their biggest drop since July 2012.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/future-of-facebook).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
