If there was ever a moment to capture the existential crisis in Facebook, It was the last couple of weeks.
On Wednesday, CEO and founder, mark Zuckerberg, testified before the house Committee on energy and Finance, where he faced fierce questioning about the role of Facebook in a number of crimes — from the ethnic genocide in Myanmar, the election intervention.
While Zuckerberg has faced failures in his company were more than 30,000 Oklahoma teachers rally at the Capitol to demand higher wages and funding to fight the schools of their state. It was the eighth day of the teachers strike. And one of the most notable things about the strike as related to passed Facebook as an organizational tool is something that is true for teachers strike in other States.
With public approval on Facebook all-time low, public school teachers are one of the few who sees the potential of social media as a catalyst for real change. They credit the platform for the launch of one of the most significant mass movement of labour in recent years.
“I don’t think [the strike] would not have happened without the Facebook group,” Samantha Freeman, a kindergarten teacher in the area of Oklahoma city, told VOX.
Such groups Facebook recently helped people who have a common cause to find each other. In #Metoo gaining momentum on Facebook; victims of sexual violence, former Olympics gymnastics Dr. Larry Nassar has been able to connect through the platform; the occupy wall Street movement has spread across the country through local Facebook groups.
But these bright spots do not negate the reasons why the company is under such reasonable suspicion because of his role in the Russian intervention in the 2016 elections in the United States for its handling of user data, and how he communicated any of these problems to the public. He’s also faced criticism for providing its platform to be used to organize violence, including in Myanmar, where ethnic cleansing is covered the use of Facebook.
The question for Facebook is, ultimately she will be able to overcome their problems, become a platform that can launch successful movements, like those in Oklahoma and West Virginia, where teachers consider the products necessary for their efforts.
Teachers strike show the potential of Facebook to build community
In 2017 the Manifesto on the future of Facebook, Zuckerberg all his ambitious vision of the company:
Movement of teachers is a small confirmation that idealized vision. Over the past few months, teachers in a number of States from West Virginia to Oklahoma-city, AZ were mounting mass demonstrations and strikes to protest the stagnation of wages and reduction of the school budget.
According to teachers, these actions, social networks, especially Facebook — has contributed to the explosive growth of their movement.
The teachers ‘ strike in West Virginia was the spark for this local conflict. The frustration among the teachers in the state has been brewing for many years, as legislators repeatedly slashed business and income taxes and, in turn, cut back benefits and pay of public servants. The trade unions in the state have little influence in public policy, so it wasn’t until two teachers have created a closed group Facebook in February that the idea of the strike gaining momentum.
“Facebook has contributed to the feeling that all in this together,” said buzzfeed’s Emily comer, master, which is on the West Virginia public employees organization Facebook group. Ryan Frankenberry, organizer with the progressive working families party of West Virginia, described it this way:
Teachers in other States were modeled on the West Virginia. Private Oklahoma Teacher strike Facebook group plays a Central role in the mobilization of teachers. Alberto Morejon, eighth grade social studies teacher, said the nine-Day teachers strike in West Virginia inspired him to create an Internet group.
The Facebook group has 75 000 members, and teachers use the platform to disseminate information about the logistics of their protest to discuss their demands from legislators, and encourage each other not to give up. About 30 000 teachers in Oklahoma rallied at the state Capitol on Monday, and the strike on the eighth day.
Teachers Arizona also started its own hub Facebook to organize protests and come up with a list of demands to present to state legislators. They are now discussing the date of his strikes.
Not every connection is a good connection
In an interview with VOX’s Ezra Klein, Zuckerberg acknowledged that the company didn’t spend enough time thinking about the downside potential connection of billions of people around the world. Zuckerberg said, “there is no doubt that our duty is to strengthen the good that people can do when they join, and to mitigate and prevent the bad things that people can do to try not to offend each other”.
Facebook has failed to prevent many of these bad things. In Myanmar, government forces carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, a group of Muslims in the country are in the minority. Anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya memes and propaganda disseminated through Facebook, incitement to violence and undermine support for the position of the Rohingya. Public accounts of the checked state and military leaders and highly influential accounts of nationalist Buddhist monks included false and inflammatory posts about Rohingya, the new York times reported in October.
Silicon Valley tech giant under fire, allowing Russian groups to buy political advertising on the network distribution of inflammatory and conflicting reports during the election of 2016. Last month, the backlash intensified when news broke that the trump-according to the political consulting group Cambridge Analytics and collect personal information obtained from millions of users of Facebook without their permission.
Each story demonstrated how vulnerable the network is to malicious manipulation.
But in the case of a teachers strike and a few other popular movements such as Occupy wall street and Metoo# platform showed that it can enable civic engagement and strengthen communities that were weak or nonexistent. As the company provides more recent and stamps from the former will be one of the biggest problems with which he will face in the coming years.
In his speech Wednesday before the house Committee on energy and Finance, Zuckerberg realize that.
“It’s not enough to just connect people, we must ensure that these relationships are positive. It’s not enough to just give people the right to vote; we need to make sure that people don’t use it to hurt people or to spread misinformation”, he said.
He then continued to explain what steps the company is taking to make it more difficult for developers to access users ‘ information and to limit foreign governments from buying political advertising in particular.
The biggest question is whether these steps — and Zuckerberg’s vow to change the company — will be enough to solve the problem.
Sourse: vox.com
