Facebook Blames China for Its Own Failure
When it started, Facebook’s motto was to ‘move fast and break things.’ That bias for action made the company a leader – an innovator – in the social media space, with a value in the billions of dollars. Now it has changed its name to ‘Meta’ – and with it, Facebook has also changed its focus.
No longer looking to move fast or disrupt and innovate, the new Meta-Facebook is seeking to leverage government interference to slow down other companies that move into the social media realm. Facebook has moved away from markets and invention to a corporatist approach to weaken its competitors. Such cronyism – influencing government to stifle competition – is a sign of corporate malaise and a lack of imagination. Meta-Facebook is confronting an uncertain future as it loses value and is “in a pitched fight” against other social media platforms.
Rather than compete in the market, Meta-Facebook is employing lobbyists to manipulate federal regulatory policy. “Facebook parent company Meta is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok,” The Washington Post reported last year. It added that Meta’s attacks “have become increasingly noticeable within a tech industry where companies vie for cultural relevance and come at a time when Facebook is under pressure to win back young users.”
Special interest lobbyists may be able to influence policy on Capitol Hill and in political bureaucracies, but younger users are voting with their thumbs (so to speak). Those young users are moving fast (like Facebook used to do) to other platforms and breaking things (including their links to Facebook). It doesn’t take a tech guru to notice that Gen Z culture is overwhelmingly turning to TikTok.
Exhausted by its competition and unable to compete on innovation, Facebook is offering up a play-fake – that is, Facebook is feigning a concern over national security and foreign-influenced propaganda. It’s difficult to take Facebook’s concerns seriously. This is the same company that colluded with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in silencing speech during the pandemic. How can we forget that throughout the Covid crisis, the CDC was in continuous communication with Facebook, vetting what users were allowed to say on the social media site. How can we trust them now?
Because TikTok is a Chinese company, former members of Congress are waving the American flag on behalf of Meta. “Maintaining our country’s technological edge in the global marketplace is not merely a matter of preserving America’s prosperity, but of preserving America’s principles,” write former U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp and former U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, the co-chairs of the Meta-funded American Edge Project. “And so, the Biden administration must work with diligence and determination to ensure the United States remains the place of free expression and where the world’s foremost technology companies call home.”
It is a bit humorous that Meta is holding itself up as a fighter for free expression. Not long ago, it was caught selectively censoring millions of American users. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform is looking into Facebook’s activities during the runup to the 2020 election. The committee notes that Mark “Zuckerberg admitted Facebook reduced the circulation of the New York Post’s explosive story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop following guidance from the FBI.”
Facebook wasn’t too excited about your right to free speech if you wanted to share a particular news item. No wonder the ‘news’ in various Facebook feeds seem not quiet up-to-date – We know – everyone knows – that Facebook is no stranger to using algorithms to manipulate its users. Rather than pointing to TikTok and China, Meta-Facebook could do a little work on its news feeds to boost its market share of users?
The Committee on Oversight appears to be properly focused on Big Tech censorship, not TikTok as a looming threat to America’s security. “We have seen in recent months how some in government have sought to use Big Tech to censor divergent viewpoints and silence opposing political speech. Government-driven and Big Tech-implemented censorship suppresses freedom of speech and free thought online in ways that harm public discourse,” committee members write. And, on censorship, Meta-Facebook is no innocent bystander.
Still, Congress has found that TikTok can be leveraged to score political points with one’s base and – at the same time – poke the Chinese Communist government. Nothing wrong with a poke here and there. Politicians will be politicians. It becomes dangerous for innovators, though, when such politics is leveraged to gain regulatory advantage to stifle competition in the marketplace. Here is where Meta-Facebook needs to be exposed. Meta doesn’t value freedom of expression or the exchange of ideas (remember what it did during Covid). Meta doesn’t value facts or truth in our public discourse (remember how it suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to an election). No, Meta-Facebook cares for itself and its bottom line.
Caring for one’s corporate self-interest is fine but spare us the ‘those guys want to undermine America’ claptrap. TikTok is popular and has captured youth culture. That’s why Meta-Facebook is worried.
Back in the days when it was still breaking things and innovating, Meta-Facebook would have found a way to out-invent TikTok. If those days are truly gone, the government – no matter the regulatory intervention – will not bring them back.
