A Surveillance System Disguised as a High School Reunion

Last week, Facebook’s stock price lost a staggering $120B in 24 hours, the largest one-day drop in US history. To put that in perspective, that’s more than the entire annual global market for cheese.

While many are attributing this to the increasing recognition of the damage that Facebook’s business model does to society, the reality is that this is a market reaction to their slowed growth. Essentially, saturation has begun in their most profitable markets, and there’s less likely profit to be driven from the remaining markets where there’s still growth potential.

But let’s not forget about that societal harm. John Oliver, as always, cuts to the chase in the video below (warning: some language in there that’s not safe for work, so put on your headphones). Oliver takes on Facebook’s seemingly disingenuous apology ads, noting that Facebook is simply, “doing what it was built for,” which is to be, “history’s most profitable data harvesting machine.”

David Crotty

@davidacrotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.