In an article titled “Can Facebook Fix It’s Own Worst Bug?”
author Farhad Manjoo poses the question, “Mark Zuckerberg now
acknowledges the dangerous side of the social revolution he helped
start. But is the most powerful tool for connection in human history
capable of adapting to the world it created?”
The author met with Zuckerberg to discuss Facebook and the many
issues that the company faces. At one point, Zuckerberg discussed the
need for the development of social infrastructure in order for humanity
to “get to the next level.”
“There’s a social infrastructure that needs to get built for modern
problems in order for humanity to get to the next level,” he stated.
“Having more people oriented not just toward short-term things but
toward building the long-term social infrastructure that needs to get
built across all these things in order to enable people to come together
is going to be a really important thing over the next decades.”
Zuckerberg highlighted Facebook’s “safety check” feature which allows
users to publicly acknowledge that they’re safe during dangerous
events. Zuckerberg later expanded on this, describing a “global
superstructure to advance humanity.” Zuckerberg stated, “we’re getting
to a point where the biggest opportunities I think in the world …
problems like preventing pandemics from spreading or ending terrorism,
all these things, they require a level of coordination and connection
that I don’t think can only be solved by the current systems that we
have.”
The author of the article states, “What’s needed, he argues, is some global superstructure to advance humanity.”
Manjoo goes on to describe Zuckerberg’s idea as not a particularly
controversial one, but his position as unelected CEO of a company and
not an elected government official makes his proposal troubling. “This
is not an especially controversial idea,” the author writes, “Zuckerberg
is arguing for a kind of digital-era version of the global
institution-building that the Western world engaged in after World War
II. But because he is a chief executive and not an elected president,
there is something frightening about his project.”
The author argues that Zuckerberg is purposefully positioning himself
as a key figure in the future: “He is positioning Facebook — and,
considering that he commands absolute voting control of the company, he
is positioning himself — as a critical enabler of the next generation of
human society. A minor problem with his mission is that it drips with
megalomania, albeit of a particularly sincere sort.”
Manjoo notes that Zuckerberg acts in quite a casual manner about his
plans to transition from the current infrastructure of the world into
his newest vision. “Zuckerberg is often blasé about the messiness of the
transition between the world we’re in and the one he wants to create
through software,” he notes. “Building new ‘social infrastructure’
usually involves tearing older infrastructure down. If you manage the
demolition poorly, you might undermine what comes next. In the case of
the shattering media landscape, Zuckerberg seems finally to have at
least noticed this problem and may yet come up with fixes for it. But in
the meantime, Facebook rushes headlong into murky new areas, uncovering
new dystopian possibilities at every turn.”
Given Facebook’s recent decision to hire partisan left-leaning fact checkers such as ABC News, Snopes, Politifact, and even the George Soros-funded Correctiv to police “fake news” on their platform, many would question the type of “global superstructure” that Mark Zuckerberg wishes to architect. Breitbart
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