So the spotlight is on Mark Zuckerberg and he’s giving evidence and being quizzed by the Senate and the press are all over him because he’s a multi Billionaire and that gets people interested because they think the US Government is coming down hard on him but I would put forward another possibility:
Is it at all possible that this is a show just for the press with an agreed agenda and practiced lines?
None of the Senators appear to be asking the question “How many times have the US Government or any of it’s Three Letter Acronymed Agencies asked Facebook for information?”
It took MZ a couple of weeks to come forward and begin to comment on the data security situation, do you think that during that time there’s a possibility that he was in talks with the Senate? Do you think they may have been formulating a coordinated response for the media to spread to the globe? I think it’s a possibility.
On the same subject but from a different angle, the people who want total anonymity and data security, 100% privacy etc. You should be careful what you wish for. Have you ever asked yourselves how many crimes are solved and further worse crimes prevented by our security forces, both domestic and abroad, by the use of interrogating the social media friends and posts of criminals and their victims.
The first thing the police do when being told about a missing person is look at their social media, who have they been talking to, what’s their state of mind? Where have they been etc.
Take a moment to think how much of a backwards step it would be if our police didn’t have that availability of data? Privacy comes with a cost and there’s also the argument that if you’re not doing anything wrong, who cares who knows what you do? It’s boring and valueless information, even if they use it to market to you, for a start you’ll have relevant adverts and if you don’t take notice of adverts then they’ll register that too and spend less money marketing at you, targeted marketing and the cost of that marketing comes from your data being available, without out it you might end up with blanket marketing and that’s worse.
So what’s the answer? How can Facebook still operate without the funding of advertising and continue to offer the service it does without the revenue that advertising brings in to pay for it’s premises, staff and availability? It can’t without changing it’s ethos, what is privacy worth?
Maybe MZ will come up with this, but I think a solution is easy. Charge for privacy, charge for an ads free version, $1 a month for complete data privacy, then another $1 a month for the ads free version.
$2 a month and you get the friends and family only experience that we all signed up for. How many users does Facebook have? Answer 2.07Billion! So a few drop off due to the new charging structure, MZ would still be earning over $1billion a month!
Not a bad solution, it’s a win win!
No picture goes with this post so I thought I’d chuck in a nice pic of a boat I took in Weymouth.