An Ugly Truth

An Ugly Truth offers a critical look at Facebook and its administrators, who foster a gaslighting environment and a controversial social media platform that can easily become a danger for its users both virtually and in real life due to its immense power and influence on our society.

As the social media platform turned into a giant corporation, it became the target of many competitors. It also became the supreme tool of news companies. Articles that appeared in the media were reaching wider audiences using Facebook. And the companies behind them were happy to increase their traffic, authority, and margins.

Now, the corporate social responsibility principle states that enterprises must also consider the social and environmental aspects of their actions. Instead, Facebook got involved with censorship and political favoritism. As of 2016, the company was searching for employees who were reporting embarrassing inside stories on the popular Gizmodo blog to fire them.

They even had employees for it! Sonya Ahuja was one of the ratcatchers. But she couldn’t cover election-related scandals. Its algorithm favored news with high engagement rates. Unfortunately, these were also the ones with inflammatory content. This is why the company introduced a feature called trending topics. Gizmodo claimed that they were using this tool to block right-wing perspectives.

The administration has publicly waived these accusations. But then the Cambridge Analytica scandal took off. This company acquired information on up to 87 million users and sold it to members of Donald Trump’s political campaign. With all this data at their disposal, the future president’s campaign team created one of the most effective online ad campaigns in election history and managed to win.

Similar to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook was involved in numerous political and legal public misconduct. Still, the company seems to be better than ever. The financial statements and stock prices are stable and growing. Meanwhile, the platform keeps attracting new users and monetizing the old ones. So how does Facebook do it? What is it that makes this company so profitable? The answer is data. Clive Humby, a UK mathematician, once called data the new oil. And this popular analogy is clearer than ever. Ever since its beginning, Facebook was uniquely suited for the online environment. The amount of information it has on its users is incredible. With it, the company can target ads specifically to each type of customer, generating billions in revenue. Moreover, the platform is made in such a way that people share advertisements and data with each other, generating significant insights to be monetized. For example, in 2009, Facebook introduced the like button. With this new feature, it could see what it is that users prefer and sell just that. The…