Rich people and companies are very different from you and me

The meteoric rise of Facebook, along with other social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, etc., makes my head spin. Most people created their free Facebook account just 10-12 years ago and now there are excellent arguments for Facebook being the number source of information (or misinformation) for most Americans.

Now we learn, based on thousands of pages of documents a former Facebook employee has shared with the media and various governments, that in 2017 the company adjusted its algorithm to give responses that were emoji's five times the weight of a simple "like."

The company knew that they needed engagement to continue to grow and they had the research to know that getting people angry (or any other strong emotion) produced more shares and more viral posts... and more profits for Facebook.

Here's the damning fact: Facebook leaders also recognized that those angry responses also produced the most suspect comments and spread misinformation. 

They made a simple business decision: Profits over people.

I sometimes imagine a world without social media -- hey, I don't really need to since that world was the one I inhabited for most of my life -- but do understand that the horse is out of the barn, so to speak. We aren't going back, and my deleting my own Facebook account will do little beyond registering my tiny protest against the company. I'm sure they would be devastated.

I have posted several times on the importance of deciding how we measure success, and this latest Facebook scandal grows directly from a choice to constantly increase engagement and NOT invest in effective measures to reduce misinformation, lies, and bigotry.

No wonder the company is looking to change its name and get some sort of "do over" from users.

I am reminded, once again, of why I inherently distrust the super-rich and super-large corporations. They are not on my side in any meaningful way.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald told us, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are."

Mark Zuckerberg was not born super-rich, but it's not that shocking to find that he and other nouveau riche quickly learn to think like the aristocracy.