Happy Nice Mall

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection past columns.

In Facebook’s major scandals over the past five years, some frightening details or breathtaking results have been grounded. But each one brought us closer to the basic facts about how Facebook has impacted our lives.

biggest fear in 2016, Forest fire of Russian propaganda He convinced a group of Americans on Facebook to vote for Donald Trump. In 2018, people spun the threads with which political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica brainwashed us. Data they collect from Facebook users. Not exactly correct.

Too much credit may have been given to the Kremlin, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook in the firestorms – and too little credit to human free will.

And it started on Facebook’s crisis du jour allegations of an informant Some nuances that the company has repeatedly chosen short-term corporate interests over the good of humanity are probably lost. Instagram’s internal research on the app’s impact on teen girls’ mental health is what some researchers have told me and NPR reported.

So yes, we all got something wrong about Facebook. The company, the public, and those in power have at times oversimplified, sensationalized, misdiagnosed problems, or failed solutions. We focused on how Facebook allows Macedonian youth. attracting the attention of Americans with fake news, and did less to address why so many people believe it.

Any public embarrassment for Facebook, however, is a building block that makes us a little more knowledgeable about the impact these relatively new internet technologies have on our lives. The real power of scandals is the opportunity to ask the question: Wow, what is Facebook? to do to us? And what are we doing to each other?

Kate Clonick, a law school professor told me when he started his PhD. While a student at Yale Law School in 2015, he was told that internet companies’ interest in online conversation management was not the subject of serious legal research and publications. He explained that online life is not considered real life. In the following years, Russian election propaganda, Cambridge Analytica and other Facebook news changed this perception.

Dr. “These stories did something huge: They started to get people to take the power of tech companies seriously,” Klonick said.

This is something different about this Facebook episode than anything that came before. We are smarter. And we are ready. There’s a coterie of ex-technologists and outside professionals who’ve worked on Facebook and other tech superpowers for years, and they’re armed. with suggested fixes for damages caused by these companies.

Another difference in 2021 is the presence of Frances Haugen, former product manager of Facebook, who seems to be the right messenger with the right message at the right time.

I want to resist the comparisons that some make senators and Facebook critics made between the company and the cigarette manufacturers. The products are not analogue. But the comparison is appropriate in a different way.

There have been warnings about the harmful effects of smoking for decades, and the big tobacco companies are covering it up. in the 1990s, informant Jeffrey S. Wigand, a former executive of Brown & Williamson Tobacco, clarified and confirmed years of doubts and compelled US government officials to take action.

Haugen, like Wigand, went public with goddamn first-hand information and documentation and a compelling story to tell to a public ready to hear it. This magic formula can change everything for a company or industry.

“Impressed by the stories” Erik Gordonsaid a professor at the University of Michigan business school. “Facts don’t have to be bulletproof. They should be enough to give credibility to a good story.”

I don’t know if this is Facebook’s Big Tobacco moment. Haugen was not first previous Facebook insider who audible alarms about company. After Wigand’s explosive statements, it took a few more years for the US government’s crackdown on the tobacco industry to materialize. And of course, people still smoke.

Blaming is a blunt tool, but at every Facebook junction we learn to use blame more sensibly. Facebook and other online companies are not responsible for the evils of the world, but they have made some of them worse. Now we get it.

The answers aren’t easy, but Haugen directs our attention to Facebook’s molten core: its corporate culture, organizational incentives, and designs that bring out the worst in humanity. And he says Facebook can’t fix itself. A smarter public should step in.

Before you go …

• Imagine that your colleagues’ salaries and performance reviews are public: Years of data from the popular live streaming site Twitch, leaked online recently. The data included the website’s computer code and payments it made to people who streamed by playing video games, my colleague Kellen Browning reported. Deputy News explains What worries Twitch streamers.

• How to protect yourself from online garbage products: A Washington Post writer shares research techniques and tips to separate the good from the bad in the sea of ​​goods online. (Subscription may be required.)

• Why is it best to listen to books: “Audiobooks don’t cheat,My New York Times Opinion colleague Farhad Manjoo writes. Some books “resonate through the spoken word, which their texts alone cannot fully provide.”

hug this

This dog in Istanbul loves to travel on public transportand officials tracked down her favorite suburban haunts.

We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you would like us to discover. You can contact us at. ontech@nytimes.com.

If you have not yet received this newsletter in your inbox, please register here. You can also read History in technology columns.