Facebook has declared sovereignty; The Washington Post, January 31, 2019

Molly Roberts, The Washington Post; Facebook has declared sovereignty

"That’s a lot of control, as Facebook has implicitly conceded by creating this court. But the court alone cannot close the chasm of accountability that renders Facebook’s preeminence so unsettling. Democracy, at least in theory, allows us to change things we do not like. We can vote out legislators who pass policy we disagree with, or who fail to pass policy at all. We cannot vote out Facebook. We can only quit it.

But can we really? Facebook has grown so large and, in many countries, essential that deleting an account seems to many like an impossibility. Facebook isn’t even just Facebook anymore: It is Instagram and WhatsApp, too. To people in many less developed countries, it is the Internet. Many users may feel more like citizens than customers, in that they cannot just quit. But they are not being governed with their consent.

No court — or oversight board — can change that."

Tech's biggest companies are spreading conspiracy theories. Again.; CNN, February 21, 2018

Seth Fiegerman, CNN; Tech's biggest companies are spreading conspiracy theories. Again.

"To use Silicon Valley's preferred parlance, it's now hard to escape the conclusion that the spreading of misinformation and hoaxes is a feature, not a bug, of social media platforms -- and their business models.

Facebook and Google built incredibly profitable businesses by serving content they don't pay for or vet to billions of users, with ads placed against that content. The platforms developed better and better targeting to buoy their ad businesses, but not necessarily better content moderation to buoy user discourse."