Mark Zuckerberg denied his 3.5 billion users the ability to get high (er, likes) on Facebook and Instagram for nearly six hours on Monday. But if you believe his configuration story about this outage, you probably believe Donald Trump’s fraud story about the 2020 presidential election.
I think the temperamental Zuckerberg just reacted in a hissy fit over a damning indictment of his corporate soul on 60 Minutes the night before. In other words, he was teaching his critics and users a lesson; you know, like a drug dealer reminding his junkies who’s boss.
That lesson, of course, is think whatever you will of FB, it has just given everyone a glimpse of how disconnected, disoriented, and, yes, depressed the lives of 3.5 billion people would be without it. And you don’t want that… So back off already!
I hope you don’t me saying I warned it would be thus in commentaries like “Facebook Exploiting You ‘Like’ a Pimp Exploits Prostitutes,” December 20, 2018, “Zuckerberg Designed Facebook ‘Like’ an Opioid,” November 13, 2017, and “Facebook ‘Like’ an Infectious Disease,” January 24, 2914.
As it happened, Zuckerberg unwittingly affirmed my take on this outage by posting a video of him sailing on Sunday. After all, firestorm over that 60 Minutes report was already raging. It previewed revelations that FB knowingly endangers the lives of young girls by “configuring” its algorithms to hook them on fake and ultimately depressing views of beauty, success, and happiness.
In short, the juxtaposition of that damning report with his sailing “shenanigans” made Mark Zuckerberg look even more heartless than Melania Trump did when she wore a jacket emblazoned with, “I really don’t care do u?” on the back. No doubt you recall the outrage she incited for wearing it to visit hapless migrant children at the border. But all that was missing from Zuckerberg’s video was a caption of what Melania had emblazoned on her jacket.
Related commentaries:
boycott FB? ha!… Like prostitutes…, like opioids…, like infectious disease…