Of course it's a shady corp run by a shady guy using pretty much all the dirty tricks and techniques in the book. But the only thing that facebook had for itself was the use of actual names instead of pseudonyms even on previous similar websites such as myspace or friendster.
By the time zuckerberg launched the facemash website using people pictures without permission, google had been pioneering surveillance and centralizing for a long time (and getting a copy of the human genome among many many other very creepy things).
Google turned into an enemy of the internet when it became an ad network, but google had to balance things out as it needed the web and to appear friendly to web users.
But the story starts before google came into existence, there's the internet's original sin[1]. There was also this giant corporation trying to kill and replace the web with its own network called MSN, the microsoft network, supposed to be the "internet killer" which came preinstalled in windows 95. Let's not forget this pioneer in tracking users also launched in 1995 to sell books online under the name amazon.
The turning point starting the path leading to nowadays surveillance capitalism was may 1995 when the ban on commercial activities was lifted.
I do agree that facebook is a major offender and plays a role, but this is the case because the roots of surveillance as a business model were established and a large portion of the population who doesn't know better had now internet access.
Of course it's a shady corp run by a shady guy using pretty much all the dirty tricks and techniques in the book. But the only thing that facebook had for itself was the use of actual names instead of pseudonyms even on previous similar websites such as myspace or friendster.
By the time zuckerberg launched the facemash website using people pictures without permission, google had been pioneering surveillance and centralizing for a long time (and getting a copy of the human genome among many many other very creepy things).
Google turned into an enemy of the internet when it became an ad network, but google had to balance things out as it needed the web and to appear friendly to web users.
But the story starts before google came into existence, there's the internet's original sin[1]. There was also this giant corporation trying to kill and replace the web with its own network called MSN, the microsoft network, supposed to be the "internet killer" which came preinstalled in windows 95. Let's not forget this pioneer in tracking users also launched in 1995 to sell books online under the name amazon.
The turning point starting the path leading to nowadays surveillance capitalism was may 1995 when the ban on commercial activities was lifted.
I do agree that facebook is a major offender and plays a role, but this is the case because the roots of surveillance as a business model were established and a large portion of the population who doesn't know better had now internet access.
[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/adver...