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Mark Zuckerberg has found himself on the wrong side of a morality play. In the face of the insanity of January 6, the business model that Facebook has helped perfect is now being rendered as the technology that will end free society. Constant “surveillance” for the purpose of better selling ads — Facebook’s core business model—is claimed to be a recipe for social disaster, because, in the context of news, that business model does best when it renders us most crazy. Newsfeeds are spiked with content designed to drive ever more vigorous engagement. That engagement has a cost, socially, even if it has a benefit for Facebook.
Apple has become the hero in this morality play. Leveraging its power over the iOS platform, it has deployed technologies to bust up the Facebook business model. In every context it can, Apple highlights the dignity cost in this constant surveillance by the “data industrial complex,” as Apple’s Tim Cook has described it. If Apple wins this fight, surveillance-driven advertising will be less profitable everywhere.
There is no doubt that surveillance-driven advertising is socially costly — in some contexts. But equally, without doubt, surveillance-driven advertising is socially beneficial in other contexts. That Netflix understands which movies my family is likely to like is a good thing — even if Netflix “learned” that by “surveilling” us as we watched our movies. The same with Amazon and books. And likewise with advertising as I search the web. It is a good thing that I no longer see ads for diapers. That…
