SILICON VALLEY BIG TECH OLIGARCHS MORE HATED BY THE PUBLIC THAN EVER

CEO Oliver Bäte.

Alongside an expanding conflict in the Middle East and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, a plethora of other potential geopolitical flare-ups and a slew of major elections mean that politics is high on the German insurance giant’s risk agenda for 2024.

The Allianz Risk Barometer published this month noted that political risk was already at a five-year high in 2023, with some 100 countries considered at high or extreme risk of civil unrest.

This is expected to deepen in 2024, amid continued economic hardship, particularly in “debt-crisis countries.” Protest groups advocating a range of causes are meanwhile expected to cause greater disruptions.

Asked on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday what he considers the main global risk at present, Bäte pointed to a lack of trust from populations in their governments across major democracies.

“You’ve seen recent elections in the Netherlands, you’ve seen it in France, and societies are polarizing because our leaders are not addressing the needs of the people,” he said.

Last year, mass protests took place in France against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms and the killing of teenager Nahel Merzouk by a police officer, resulting in intense violence and property damage.

The Allianz Risk Barometer report also noted that populist and far-right political forces expanded their influence with electoral success in the Netherlands and Slovakia, reinforcing the emerging trend that started in 2022, when “Italy elected a party with neo-fascist roots, Hungary re-elected Viktor Orbán, and the far-right Sweden Democrats took over 20% of the votes in a general election.”

“We have an increasing detachment of the political elite from the working class and the people that actually go to work every day, and that, I see as the number one risk for our societies,” Bäte said.

“And remember, this year a lot of people are going to vote, so we need to make sure that they vote for the right things and are not just venting anger.”

Alongside the risks surrounding elections in Europe and the U.S., multiple African countries have also erupted into conflict or unrest in recent years, with successful coups occurring in Niger and Gabon in 2023 following the September 2022 regime change in Burkina Faso.

“While these coups have been relatively peaceful, Sudan is rapidly escalating into civil war, mainly in its capital Khartoum,” Srdjan Todorovic, head of political violence and hostile environment solutions at Allianz Commercial, said in the Allianz Risk Barometer report.

“Economic difficulties are challenging many countries, in particular Tunisia, which teetered on the edge of violence as President [Kais] Saied continued to rule through decree and without a Parliament.”

Owners stuck in freezing 'car graveyards' as vehicles won't charge...

Criticism of Google includes concern for tax avoidance, misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others’ intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people’s privacy and collaboration with the US military on Google Earth to spy on users,^[1] censorship of search results and content, and the energy consumption of its servers as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as monopoly, restraint of trade, antitrust, patent infringement, indexing and presenting false information and propaganda in search results, and being an “Ideological Echo Chamber”.

Google‘s parent company, Alphabet Inc., is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products,^[2] and generates profit primarily from advertising through its Google Ads (formerly AdWords) program.^[3][4]

Google’s stated mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”;^[5] this mission, and the means used to accomplish it, have raised concerns among the company’s critics. Much of the criticism pertains to issues that have not yet been addressed by cyber law.

Shona Ghosh, a journalist for Business Insider, noted that an increasing digital resistance movement against Google has grown.^[6]

Tax evasion

Google cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the period of 2007 to 2009 using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and The Netherlands to Bermuda. Afterwards, the company started to send £8 billion in profits a year to Bermuda.^[7] Google’s income shifting—involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich“—helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.^[8][9]

According to economist and member of the PvdA delegation inside the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats in the European Parliament (S&D) Paul Tang, the EU lost, from 2013 to 2015, a loss estimated to be 3.955 billion Euros from Google.^[10] When comparing to other countries outside the EU, the EU is only taxing Google with a rate of 0,36 – 0,82% of their revenue (approx. 25-35% of their EBT) whereas this rate is near 8% in countries outside the EU. Even if a rate of 2 to 5% – as suggested by ECOFIN council – would have been applied during this period (2013-2015), a fraud of this rate from Facebook would have meant a loss from 1.262 to 3.155 billion euros in the EU.^[10]

Google has been accused by a number of countries of avoiding paying tens of billions of dollars of tax through a convoluted scheme of inter-company licensing agreements and transfers to tax havens.^[11][12] For example, Google has used highly contrived and artificial distinctions to avoid paying billions of pounds in corporate tax owed by its UK operations.^[13]

On May 15, 2013, Margaret Hodge, the chair of the United Kingdom Public Accounts Committee, accused Google of being “calculated and […] unethical” over its use of the scheme.^[13] Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has claimed that this scheme of Google is “capitalism”,^[14] and that he was “very proud” of it.^[15]

In November 2012, the UK government announced plans to investigate Google, along with Starbucks and Amazon.com, for possible tax avoidance.^[16] In 2015, the UK Government introduced a new law intended to penalize Google’s and other large multinational corporations’ artificial tax avoidance.^[17]

On 20 January 2016, Google announced that it would pay £130m in back taxes to settle the investigation.^[18] However, only 8 days later, it was announced that Google could end up paying more, and UK tax officials were under investigation for what has been termed a “sweetheart deal” for Google.^[19]

Revenues, profits, tax and effective tax rates, Alphabet Inc. (Google) 2013–2015.^[10]

		Revenue (m EUR)			EBT (m EUR)			Tax (m EUR)			Tax / EBT			Tax / Revenue
		Total	EU	Rest of the world	Total	EU	Rest of the world	Total	EU	Rest of the world	Total	EU	Rest of the world	Total	EU	Rest of the world
Alphabet Inc.(Google)	2013	40 257	18 614	21 643	11 529	343	11 186	1 986	84	1 902	17%	25%	17%	4,93%	0,45%	8,79%
	2014	54 362	19 159	35 203	14 215	285	13 930	2 997	69	2 928	21%	24%	21%	5,51%	0,36%	8,32%
	2015	68 879	25 320	43 559	18 050	586	17 464	3 034	207	2 827	17%	35%	16%	4,40%	0,82%	6,49%

Antitrust

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From the 2000s onward, Google and parent company Alphabet Inc. have faced antitrust scrutiny over alleged anti-competitive conduct in violation of competition law in a particular jurisdiction.^[20] Antitrust scrutiny of Google has primarily centered on the company’s dominance in the search engine and digital advertising markets.^[21][22] The company has also been accused of leveraging control of the Android operating system to illegally curb competition.^[23]

Google has also received antitrust scrutiny over its control of the Google Play store and alleged “self-preferencing” at the expense of third-party developers.^[24][25] Additionally, Google’s alleged discrimination against rivals’ advertisements on YouTube has been subject to antitrust litigation.^[26][27] More recently, Google Maps and the Google Automotive Services (GAS) package have become the target of antitrust scrutiny.^[28]

European Union

The European Commission has pursued several competition law cases against Google, namely:^[29]

• Complaint that Google abused its position as a dominant search engine to favor its own services over those of competitors. In particular, Google operated a free comparison shopping website Froogle, which it abandoned in favor of a paid-placement-only site called Google Shopping. Other comparison sites complained of a precipitous drop in web traffic due to changes in the Google search algorithm, and some were driven out of business.^[30] The investigation began in 2010 and concluded in July 2017 with a €2.42 billion fine against the parent company Alphabet, and an order to change its practices within 90 days.^[29]
• Complaint opened in 2015 that the dominance of the Android operating system was abused to make it difficult for competing third-party apps and search engines to be pre-installed on mobile phones. (See European Union vs. Google.)^[31]
• Complaint opened in 2016 that Google abused its market dominance to prevent competing advertising companies to sell ads to websites already using Google AdSense^[32]
• In June 2023, the EU accused Google of abusing its control of the EU market for buying and selling online advertising to undercut rivals.^[33]

U.S. antitrust issues

In testimony before a U.S. Senate antitrust panel in September 2011, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, said that “the Internet is the ultimate level playing field” where users were “one click away” from competitors.^[34] Nonetheless, Senator Kohl asked Schmidt if Google’s market share constituted a monopoly – a special power dominant – for his company. Schmidt acknowledged that Google’s market share was akin to a monopoly, but noted the complexity of the law.^[35][36]

During the hearing, Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, accused Google of cooking its search results to favor its own services. Schmidt replied, “Senator, I can assure we haven’t cooked anything.”^[34] In testimony before the same Senate panel, Jeffrey Katz and Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executives from Google’s competitors Nextag and Yelp, said that Google tilts search results in its own favor, limiting choice and stifling competition.^[34]

In October 2012, it was reported that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission staff were preparing a recommendation that the government sue Google on antitrust grounds. The areas of concern include accusations of manipulating the search results to favor Google services such as Google Shopping for buying goods and Google Places for advertising local restaurants and businesses; whether Google’s automated advertising marketplace, AdWords, discriminates against advertisers from competing online commerce services like comparison shopping sites and consumer review Web sites; whether Google’s contracts with smartphone makers and carriers prevent them from removing or modifying Google products, such as its Android operating system or Google Search; and Google’s use of its smartphone patents. A likely outcome of the antitrust investigations is a negotiated settlement where Google would agree not to discriminate in favor of its products over smaller competitors.^[37] Federal Trade Commission ended its investigation during a period which the co-founder of Google, Larry Page, had met with individuals at the White House and the Federal Trade Commission, leading to voluntary changes by Google; since January 2009 to March 2015 employees of Google have met with officials in the White House about 230 times according to The Wall Street Journal.^[38]

In June 2015, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on its web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized because of antitrust concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November 2018.^[39][40][41]

In September 2023 Google’s antitrust trial United States v. Google LLC (2020) began at federal court in Washington, D.C.^[42] in which the DOJ accuses Google of illegally abusing its monopoly power as the largest online search tool.

In January 2023, Google was sued by the federal government and several states for its alleged monopoly over digital advertising technology. The complaint alleged that the company had engaged in “anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct” over the previous 15 years.^[43]

Android

On April 20, 2016, the European Union filed a formal antitrust complaint against Google’s leverage over Android vendors, alleging that the mandatory bundling of the entire suite of proprietary Google software, hindered the ability for competing search providers to be integrated into Android and that barring vendors from producing devices running forks of Android both constituted anti-competitive practices.^[44] In June 2018, the European Commission determined a $5 billion fine for Google regarding the April 2016 complaints.^[45]

In August 2016, Google was fined US$6.75 million by the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) under similar allegations by Yandex.^[46]

On April 16, 2018, Umar Javeed, Sukarma Thapar, Aaqib Javeed vs. Google LLC & Ors. resulted in the Competition Commission of India ordering a wider probe investigation order against Google Android illegal business practices. The investigations arm of the CCI should complete the wider probe in the case within 150 days, the order said, though such cases at the watchdog typically drag on for years. The CCI also said the role of any Google executive in the alleged abuse of the Android platform should also be examined.^[47]

“Jedi Blue” advertising market monopolization in collusion with Facebook

According to the group of 15 state attorneys general suing Google for antitrust issues,^[48] Google and Facebook entered into a price-fixing agreement termed Jedi Blue to monopolize the online advertising market and prevent the entry of the fairer header bidding method of advertisement sales on any major advertising platform. The agreement consisted of Facebook using the Google-managed system for bidding on and managing online ads in exchange for preferential rates and priority on prime ad placement. This allowed Google to retain its profitable monopoly over online ad exchanges, while saving Facebook billions of dollars on attempts to build competing systems.^[49][50] Over 200 newspapers have sued Google and Facebook to recover losses incurred by the collusion.^[51]

Google admitted that the deal contained, “a provision governing cooperation between Google and Facebook in the event of certain government investigations.”^[52] Google has an internal team called gTrade dedicated to maximizing Google’s advertising profits, reportedly using insider information, price fixing, and leveraging Google’s relative monopoly positions.^[53]

Criticism of search engine

Possible misuse of search results

In 2006/2007, a group of Austrian researchers observed a tendency to misuse the Google engine as a “reality interface”. Ordinary users as well as journalists tend to rely on the first pages of Google Search, assuming that everything not listed there is either not important or simply does not exist. The researchers say that “Google has become the main interface for our whole reality. To be precise: with the Google interface, the user gets the impression that the search results imply a kind of totality. In fact, one only sees a small part of what one could see if one also integrates other research tools”.^[54]

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in a 2007 interview with the Financial Times: “The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?'”.^[55] Schmidt reaffirmed this during a 2010 interview with The Wall Street Journal: “I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions; they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”^[56]

Numerous companies and individuals, for example, MyTriggers.com^[57] and transport tycoon Sir Brian Souter,^[58] have voiced concerns regarding the fairness of Google’s PageRank and search results after their web sites disappeared from Google’s first-page results. In the case of MyTriggers.com, the Ohio-based shopping comparison search site accused Google of favoring its own services in search results (although the judge eventually ruled that the site failed to show harm to other similar businesses).

Danger of ranking manipulation

PageRank, Google’s page ranking algorithm, can and has been manipulated for political and humorous reasons. To illustrate the view that Google’s search engine could be subjected to manipulation, Google Watch implemented a Google bomb by linking the phrase “out-of-touch executives” to Google’s own page on its corporate management. The attempt was mistakenly attributed to disgruntled Google employees by The New York Times, which later printed a correction.^[59][60]

Daniel Brandt started the Google Watch website and has criticized Google’s PageRank algorithms, saying that they discriminate against new websites and favor established sites.^[61] Chris Beasley, who started Google Watch-Watch, disagrees, saying that Mr. Brandt overstates the amount of discrimination that new websites face and that new websites will naturally rank lower when the ranking is based on a site’s “reputation”. In Google’s world, a site’s reputation is in part determined by how many and which other sites link to it (links from sites with a “better” reputation of their own carry more weight). Since new sites will seldom be as heavily linked as older more established sites, they aren’t as well known, won’t have as much of a reputation, and will receive a lower page ranking.^[62]

In testimony before a U.S. Senate antitrust panel in September 2011, Jeffrey Katz, the chief executive of NexTag, said that Google’s business interests conflict with its engineering commitment to an open-for-all Internet and that: “Google doesn’t play fair. Google rigs its results, biasing in favor of Google Shopping and against competitors like us.” Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief of Yelp, said sites like his have to cooperate with Google because it is the gateway to so many users and “Google then gives its own product preferential treatment.” In earlier testimony at the same hearing, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, said that Google does not “cook the books” to favor its own products and services.^[34]

Portrayals of race and gender

In 2013, Emily McManus, managing editor for TED.com, searched for “english major who taught herself calculus” which prompted Google to ask,  “Did you mean: english major who taught himself calculus?”^[63] Her tweet of the incident gained traction online. One response included a screengrab of a search for “how much is a wnba ticket?” to which the auto-correct feature suggested, “how much is an nba ticket?” Google responded directly to McManus and explained that the phrase “taught himself calculus” appeared about 282,000 times, whereas the phrase “taught herself calculus” appeared about 4,000 times. The company also made note of its efforts to bring more women into STEM fields.^[64]

In 2015, a man tweeted a screengrab showing that Google Photos had tagged two African American people as gorillas.^[65] Google apologized, saying they were “appalled and genuinely sorry” and was “working on longer-term fixes.”^[66] An investigation by WIRED two years later showed that the company’s solution has been to censor searches for “gorilla,” “chimp,” “chimpanzee,” and “monkey.”^[67]

Google Shopping rankings

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2015)

In late May 2012, Google announced that they will no longer be maintaining a strict separation between search results and advertising. Google Shopping (formerly known as Froogle) would be replaced with a nearly identical interface, according to the announcement, but only paid advertisers would be listed instead of the neutral aggregate listings shown previously. Furthermore, rankings would be determined primarily by which advertisers place the highest “bid”, though the announcement does not elaborate on this process. The transition was completed in the fall of 2012.^[68]

As a result of this change to Google Shopping, Microsoft, who operates the competing search engine Bing, launched a public information campaign titled Scroogled.^[69] The ad campaign was developed by leading political campaign strategist Mark Penn.^[70]

It is unclear how consumers have reacted to this move. Critics charge that Google has effectively abandoned its “Don’t be evil” motto and that small businesses will be unable to compete against their larger counterparts. There is also concern that consumers who did not see this announcement will be unaware that they are now looking at paid advertisements and that the top results are no longer determined solely based on relevance but instead will be manipulated according to which company paid the most.^[71][72]

Copyright issues

Google Print, Books, and Library

Google’s ambitious plans to scan millions of books and make them readable through its search engine have been criticized for copyright infringement.^[73] The Association for Learned and Professional Society Publishers and the Association of American University Presses both issued statements strongly opposing Google Print, stating that “Google, an enormously successful company, claims a sweeping right to appropriate the property of others for its own commercial use unless it is told, case by case and instance by instance, not to.”^[74]

China Written Works Copyright Society (CWWCS)

In a separate dispute in November 2009, the China Written Works Copyright Society (CWWCS), which protects Chinese writers’ copyrights, accused Google of scanning 18,000 books by 570 Chinese writers without authorization, for its Google Books library.^[75] Toward the end of 2009 representatives of the CWWCS said talks with Google about copyright issues are progressing well, that first they “want Google to admit their mistake and apologize”, then talk about compensation, while at the same time they “don’t want Google to give up China in its digital library project”. On November 20, 2009, Google agreed to provide a list of Chinese books it had scanned, but did not admit having “infringed” copyright laws. In a January 9, 2010 statement the head of Google Books in the Asia-Pacific said “communications with Chinese writers have not been good enough” and apologized to the writers.^[76]

Links and cached data

Kazaa and the Church of Scientology have used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to demand that Google remove references to allegedly copyrighted material on their sites.^[77][78]

Search engines such as Google’s that link to sites in “good faith” fall under the safe harbor provisions of the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act which is part of DMCA. If they remove links to infringing content after receiving a take down notice, they are not liable. Google removes links to infringing content when requested, provided that supporting evidence is supplied. However, it is sometimes difficult to judge whether or not certain sites are infringing and Google (and other search engines) will sometimes refuse to remove web pages from its index. To complicate matters there have been conflicting rulings from U.S. courts on whether simply linking to infringing content constitutes “contributory infringement” or not.^[79][80]

The New York Times has complained that the caching of their content during a web crawl, a feature utilized by search engines including Google Web Search, violates copyright.^[81] Google observes Internet standard mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled via the robots.txt file, which is another mechanism that allows operators of a website to request that part or all of their site not be included in search engine results, or via META tags, which allow a content editor to specify whether a document can be crawled or archived, or whether the links on the document can be followed. The U.S. District Court of Nevada ruled that Google’s caches do not constitute copyright infringement under American law in Field v. Google and Parker v. Google.^[82][83]

On February 20, 2017, Google agreed to a voluntary United Kingdom code of practice obligating it to demote links to copyright-infringing content in its search results.^[84][85]

Google Map Maker

Google Map Maker allows user-contributed data to be put into the Google Maps service,^[86] similar to OpenStreetMap it includes concepts such as organising mapping parties and mapping for humanitarian efforts.^[87] It has been criticized for taking work done for free by the general public and claiming commercial ownership of it without returning any contributions back to the commons^[88] as their restrictive license makes it incompatible with most open projects by preventing commercial use or use by competitive services.^[89]

Google Pinyin

Google allegedly used code from Chinese company Sohu‘s Sogou Pinyin for its own input method editor, Google Pinyin.^[90]

Where’s the Fair Use?

On February 16, 2016, internet reviewer Doug Walker (The Nostalgia Critic) posted a video about his concerns related to YouTube’s current copyright-claiming system, which was apparently being tipped in favor of claimants rather than creators despite many of those videos being reported as covered under Fair Use laws. The video featured stories of other YouTubers’ experiences with the copyright system, including fellow Channel Awesome producer Brad Jones, who received a strike on his channel for uploading a film review that took place in a parked car and contained no footage from the film itself. In the video, Walker encouraged others to spread the message using the hashtag #WTFU (Where’s the Fair Use?) on social media.^[91] The hashtag spread among multiple YouTubers, who gave their support to Walker and Channel Awesome and relaying their own stories of issues with YouTube’s copyright system, including Dan Murrell of Screen Junkies,^[92] GradeAUnderA, and Let’s Play producers Mark Fishbach (Markiplier) and Seán William McLoughlin (Jacksepticeye).^[91]

Ten days later, on February 26, 2016, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki tweeted a link to a post from the YouTube Help Forum and thanked the community for bringing the issue to their attention. The post, written by a member of the YouTube Policy Team named Spencer (no last name was given), stated that they will be working to strengthen communication between creators and YouTube Support and “improvements to increase transparency into the status of monetization claims.”^[93]

Privacy

Google’s March 1, 2012 privacy change enables the company to share data across a wide variety of services.^[95] This includes embedded services in millions of third-party websites using AdSense and Analytics. The policy was widely criticized as creating an environment that discourages Internet innovation by making Internet users more fearful online.^[96]

In December 2009, after privacy concerns were raised, Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, declared: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines—including Google—do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”^[97]

Privacy International has raised concerns regarding the dangers and privacy implications of having a centrally located, widely popular data warehouse of millions of Internet users’ searches, and how under controversial existing U.S. law, Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. government.^[98] In its 2007 Consultation Report, Privacy International ranked Google as “Hostile to Privacy”, its lowest rating on their report, making Google the only company in the list to receive that ranking.^{[98][99][100]}

At the Techonomy conference in 2010, Eric Schmidt predicted that “true transparency and no anonymity” is the way forward for the internet: “In a world of asynchronous threats it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it.” He also said that “If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go. Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don’t have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You’ve got Facebook photos!”^[101]

In the summer of 2016, Google quietly dropped its ban on personally identifiable info in its DoubleClick ad service. Google’s privacy policy was changed to state it “may” combine web-browsing records obtained through DoubleClick with what the company learns from the use of other Google services. While new users were automatically opted-in, existing users were asked if they wanted to opt-in, and it remains possible to opt-out by going to the Activity controls in the My Account page of a Google account. ProPublica states that “The practical result of the change is that the DoubleClick ads that follow people around on the web may now be customized to them based on your name and other information Google knows about you. It also means that Google could now, if it wished to, build a complete portrait of a user by name, based on everything they write in email, every website they visit and the searches they conduct.” Google contacted ProPublica to correct the fact that it doesn’t “currently” use Gmail keywords to target web ads.^[102]

Google has a US$1.2 billion artificial intelligence and surveillance contract with the Israeli military known as Project Nimbus. According to Google employees, the Israeli military could use this technology to expand its surveillance of Palestinians living in occupied territories.^[103] In what has been described as “retaliation for publicly criticizing the contract,”^[104] Google relocated an outspoken employee overseas. Other Palestinian employees have described an “institutionalised bias” within the company.^[105]

Disha Ravi’s arrest

Google shared environment activist Disha Ravi‘s document on Google Docs with the Delhi police which led to her arrest.^[106]

Censorship

Google has been criticized for various instances of censoring its search results, many times in compliance with the laws of various countries, most notably while it operated in China from January 2006 to March 2010.

Web search

As of December 12, 2012, Google’s SafeSearch feature applies to image searches in the United States. Prior to the change, three SafeSearch settings—”on”, “moderate”, and “off”—were available to users. Following the change, two “Filter explicit results” settings—”on” and “off”—were newly established. The former and new “on” settings are similar and exclude explicit images from search results. The new “off” setting still permits explicit images to appear in search results, but users need to enter more specific search requests, and no direct equivalent of the old “off” setting exists following the change. The change brings image search results into line with Google’s existing settings for web and video search.

Some users have stated that the lack of a completely unfiltered option amounts to “censorship” by Google. A Google spokesperson disagreed, saying that Google is “not censoring any adult content”, and “[wants] to show users exactly what they are looking for—but we aim not to show sexually explicit results unless a user is specifically searching for them.”^[107]

The search term “bisexual” was blacklisted for Instant Search until 2012, when it was removed at the request of the BiNet USA advocacy organization.^[108]

China

Google has been involved in the censorship of certain sites in specific countries and regions. Until March 2010, Google adhered to the Internet censorship policies of China,^[109] enforced by filters colloquially known as “The Great Firewall of China“. Google.cn search results were filtered to remove some information perceived to be harmful to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Google claimed that some censorship is necessary in order to keep the Chinese government from blocking Google entirely, as occurred in 2002.^[110] The company claims it did not plan to give the government information about users who search for blocked content, and will inform users that content has been restricted if they attempt to search for it.^[111] As of 2009, Google was the only major China-based search engine to explicitly inform the user when search results are blocked or hidden. As of December 2012, Google no longer informs the user of possible censorship for certain queries during search.^[112]

Some Chinese Internet users were critical of Google for assisting the Chinese government in repressing its own citizens, particularly those dissenting against the government and advocating for human rights.^[113] Furthermore, Google had been denounced and called hypocritical by Free Media Movement for agreeing to China’s demands while simultaneously fighting the United States government’s requests for similar information.^[114] Google China had also been condemned by Reporters Without Borders,^[114] Human Rights Watch^[115] and Amnesty International.^[116]

In 2009, China Central Television, Xinhua News Agency, and People’s Daily all reported on Google’s “dissemination of obscene information”, and People’s Daily claimed that “Google’s ‘don’t be evil’ motto becomes a fig leaf”.^[117][118] The Chinese government imposed administrative penalties to Google China, and demanded a reinforcement of censorship.^[119]

In 2010, according to a leaked diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, there were reports that the Chinese Politburo directed the intrusion of Google’s computer systems in a worldwide coordinated campaign of computer sabotage and the attempt to access information about Chinese dissidents, carried out by “government operatives, public security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government.”^[120] The report suggested that it was part of an ongoing campaign in which attackers have “broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002.”

In response to the attack, Google announced that they were “no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.”^[121][122] On March 22, 2010, after talks with Chinese authorities failed to reach an agreement, the company redirected its censor-complying Google China service to its Google Hong Kong service, which is outside the jurisdiction of Chinese censorship laws. From the business perspective, many recognize that the move was likely to affect Google’s profits: “Google is going to pay a heavy price for its move, which is why it deserves praise for refusing to censor its service in China.”^[123] However, at least as of March 23, 2010, “The Great Firewall” continues to censor search results from the Hong Kong portal, www.google.com.hk (as it does with the US portal, www.google.com) for controversial terms such as “Falun gong” and “the June 4 incident” (1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre).^{[124][125][126]}

In 2018, Lhadon Tethong, director of the Tibet Action Institute, said there was a, “crisis of repression unfolding across China and territories it controls.” and that, “it is shocking to know that Google is planning to return to China and has been building a tool that will help the Chinese authorities engage in censorship and surveillance.” She further noted that “Google should be using its incredible wealth, talent, and resources to work with us to find solutions to lift people up and help ease their suffering — not assisting the Chinese government to keep people in chains.”^[127]

Turkey

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Google has been involved in censorship of Google Maps satellite imagery countrywide affecting Android and iOS apps using .com, .tr, and .tld automatically. Desktop users can easily evade this censorship by just removing .tr, and .tld from the URL but the same technique is impossible with smartphone apps.

Russia

Google removed the Smart Voting app from the Play Store before the 2021 Russian legislative election. The application, which had been created by the associates of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, offered voting advice for all voting districts in Russia. It was removed after a meeting with Russian Federation Council officials on 16 September 2021. The Wired reported that several Google employees were threatened with criminal prosecution. Google’s actions were condemned as political censorship by Russian opposition figures.^[128]

In March 2022, Google removed an app, designed to help Russians register protest votes against Putin, from its Play Store.^[129]

AdSense/AdWords

In February 2003, Google stopped showing the advertisements of Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting a major cruise ship operation‘s sewage treatment practices. Google cited its editorial policy at the time, stating “Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations.”^[130] The policy was later changed.^[131]

In April 2008, Google refused to run ads for a UK Christian group opposed to abortion, explaining that “At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain ‘abortion and religion-related content.'” The UK Christian group sued Google for discrimination, and as a result, in September 2008 Google changed its policy and anti-abortion ads were allowed.^[132]

In August 2008, Google closed the AdSense account of a site that carried a negative view of Scientology, the second closing of such a site within 3 months.^[133] It is not certain if the account revocations actually were on the grounds of anti-religious content, however, the cases have raised questions about Google’s terms in regards to AdSense/AdWords. The AdSense policy states that “Sites displaying Google ads may not include […] advocacy against any individual, group, or organization”,^[134] which allows Google to revoke the above-mentioned AdSense accounts.

In May 2011, Google cancelled the AdWord advertisement purchased by a Dublin sex worker rights group named “Turn Off the Blue Light” (TOBL),^[135] claiming that it represented an “egregious violation” of company ad policy by “selling adult sexual services”. However, TOBL is a nonprofit campaign for sex worker rights and is not advertising or selling adult sexual services.^[136] In July, after TOBL members held a protest outside Google’s European headquarters in Dublin and wrote to complain, Google relented, reviewed the group’s website, found its content to be advocating a political position, and restored the AdWord advertisement.^[137]

In June 2012, Google rejected the Australian Sex Party‘s ads for AdWords and sponsored search results for the July 12 by-election for the state seat of Melbourne, saying the Party breached its rules which prevent solicitation of donations by a website that did not display tax-exempt status. Although the Sex Party amended its website to display tax deductibility information, Google continued to ban the ads. The ads were reinstated on election eve after it was reported in the media that the Sex Party was considering suing Google. On September 13, 2012, the Party lodged formal complaints against Google with the US Department of Justice and the Australian competition watchdog, accusing Google of “unlawful interference in the conduct of a state election in Victoria with corrupt intent” in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.^[138]

YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing website acquired by Google in 2006. YouTube’s Terms of Service prohibits the posting of videos which violate copyrights or depict pornography, illegal acts, gratuitous violence, or hate speech.^[139] User-posted videos that violate such terms may be removed and replaced with a message stating: “This video is no longer available because its content violated YouTube’s Terms of Service”.

YouTube has been criticized by national governments for failing to police content. For example, videos^[140] have been critically accused for being “left up”, among other videos featuring unwarranted violence or strong ill-intention against people who probably didn’t want this to be published. In 2006, Thailand blocked access to YouTube for users with Thai IP addresses. Thai authorities identified 20 offensive videos and demanded that YouTube remove them before it would unblock any YouTube content.^[141] In 2007 a Turkish judge ordered access to YouTube blocked because of content that insulted Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which is a crime under Turkish law.^[141] On February 22, 2008, Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) attempted to block regional access to YouTube following a government order. The attempt inadvertently caused a worldwide YouTube blackout that took 2 hours to correct.^[142] Four days later, PTA lifted the ban after YouTube removed controversial religious comments made by a Dutch Member of Parliament^[143] concerning Islam.^[144]

YouTube has also been criticized by its users for attempting to censor content. In November 2007, the account of Wael Abbas, a well known Egyptian activist who posted videos of police brutality, voting irregularities and anti-government demonstrations, was blocked for three days.^{[145][146][147]}

In February 2008, a video produced by the American Life League that accused a Planned Parenthood television commercial of promoting recreational sex was removed, then reinstated two days later.^[148] In October, a video by political speaker Pat Condell criticizing the British government for officially sanctioning sharia law courts in Britain was removed, then reinstated two days later.^[149] YouTube also pulled a video of columnist Michelle Malkin showing violence by Muslim extremists.^[150] Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, commented that while, in his opinion, Michelle Malkin disseminates bigotry in her blog, “that does not mean that this particular video is bigoted; it’s not. But because it’s by Malkin, it’s a target.”^[151]

In 2019, YouTube settled for $170 million the FTC and the New York Attorney General for alleged violations of the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which prohibits internet companies from collecting data from kids under 13. YouTube’s enactment of the settlement started in January 2020; this required creators to indicate whether their videos were intended for children, with fines of up to $42,530 per violation of COPPA.^[152] Some features that depend on user data are disabled on videos designated for children, including comments and channel branding watermarks; the ‘donate’ button; cards and end screens; live chat and live chat donations; notifications; and ‘save to playlist’ or ‘watch later’ features. Such channels will also become “ungooglable“.^[152]

In October 2021, YouTube, together with Snapchat and TikTok, participated in a Senate hearing on protecting children online.^[153] The session was prompted by Facebook whistle blower Frances Haugen‘s hearing prior. In the hearing, the social media companies tried to distance themselves from Facebook, to which Senate Commerce consumer protection Chair Richard Blumenthal responded saying “Being different from Facebook is not a defense”, “That bar is in the gutter.”^[154]

Ungoogleable

In 2013, Google successfully prevented the Swedish Language Council from including the Swedish version of the word “ungoogleable” (“ogooglebar ^[sv]“) in its list of new words.^[155] Google objected to its definition (which referred to web searches in general without mentioning Google specifically) and the council was forced to remove it to avoid legal confrontation with Google.^[156] They also accused Google of “trying to control the Swedish language”.^[157]

Other types of censorship

In August 2022, Google closed a person’s account on sharing pictures of his son’s genitals with the doctor, as it was flagged as child abuse by Google’s automated systems.^[158]

Labor practices

Several former Google employees have spoken out about working conditions, practices, and ethics at the company. As the company became more concerned about leaks to the press in 2019, it scaled employee all-hands meetings from weekly to monthly, limiting question topics to business and product strategy.^[159] Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in late 2019 that the company is “genuinely struggling with some issues” including transparency and employee trust.^[160]

On 2 December 2020, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against Google for ‘terminations and intimidation in order to quell workplace activism’. The complaint was filed after a year-long investigation by a terminated employee. He filed a petition in 2019, after that many Google employees carried out internal protests against Google’s work with US Customs and Border Protection.^[161]

Diversity politics

A widely circulated internal memo, written by senior engineer James Damore, Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber, sharply criticized Google’s political biases and employee policies.^[162] Google said the memo was “advancing harmful gender stereotypes” and fired Damore.^[163] David Brooks demanded the resignation of its CEO Sundar Pichai for mishandling the case.^[164][165]

Ads criticizing Pichai and Google for the firing were put up shortly after at various Google locations.^[166] Some have called to boycott Google and its services, with a hashtag #boycottGoogle coming up on Twitter.^[167] A rally against Google alleged partisanship was planned as “March on Google”, but later cancelled due to threats and the Charlottesville mayhem.^[168][169]

Arne Wilberg, an ex-YouTube recruiter, claimed that he was fired in November 2017 when he complained about Google’s new practices in not hiring white and Asian men to YouTube in favor of women and minority applicants. According to the lawsuit, an internal policy document stated that for three months in 2017, YouTube recruiters should only hire diverse candidates.^[170]

In June 2021, Google removed its global lead for diversity strategy and research after being made aware of an antisemitic comment he made in 2007.^[171]

Harassment and discrimination

In February 2016, Amit Singhal, vice president of Google Search for 15 years, left the company following sexual harassment allegations. Google has awarded Singhal $15 million in severance.^[173][174]

On November 1, 2018, approximately 20,000 employees of Google engaged in a worldwide^[175] walkout to protest the way in which the company has handled sexual harassment, and other grievances.^{[176][177][178][179][180]}

In July 2019, Google settled a long-running age discrimination lawsuit brought by 227 over-40 employees and job seekers. Although Google denied it had age discrimination, it agreed to a settlement of $11 million for the plaintiffs, to train its employees not to have age-based bias, and to have its recruiting department focus on age diversity among its engineering employees.^[181][182]

In January 2020, the San Francisco Pride organization voted to ban Google and YouTube from their annual Pride parade due to hate speech on their platforms and retaliation against LBGTQ activists.^[183]

In 2020, HR executive Eileen Naughton joined long-time Chief Legal Counsel David Drummond in stepping down from their positions over a lawsuit naming them and the company founders in accusations of mishandling years of sexual harassment complaints.^[184]

In February 2020, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) opened an investigation into former Google employee Chelsey Glasson‘s allegations of pregnancy discrimination.^[185] Glasson filed a state civil lawsuit while the EEOC investigated, with a trial date set for January 2022.^{[186][187][188]} She settled with the company in February 2022.^[189] She revealed that Google’s legal team obtained therapy notes from her sessions through the company’s Employee assistance program counseling provider, and that the provider dropped her as a client when she filed the lawsuit, which sparked Senator Karen Keiser to introduce a bill in Washington in January 2022 to prohibit private sector providers from disclosing private information typically covered under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act laws.^{[190][191][192]} Also in January 2022, she criticized the company’s use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in testimony to the Washington House of Representatives for whistleblower protection legislature, which she said intimidated her from speaking out about the discrimination she allegedly witnessed and experienced. In response, Google told Protocol that their confidentiality agreements do not prevent current and former workers from disclosing facts pertaining to harassment or discrimination.^[193] Both laws were passed into legislature in March 2022.^[194][195]

Allegations of union busting

The official settlement agreement that Google signed with the NLRB in 2019 includes this notice to be sent to employees:^[196]

“YOU HAVE THE RIGHT to discuss wages, hours, and working conditions with other employees, the press/media, and other third parties, and WE WILL NOT do anything to interfere with your exercise of those rights.”

Google has been criticized for hiring IRI Consultants, a firm that advertises its accomplishments in helping organizations prevent successful union organizing.^[197] Google Zurich attempted to cancel employee-organized meetings about labor rights in June and October 2019.^[198] Some Google employees and contractors are already unionized, including security guards, some service workers, and analysts and trainers for Google Shopping in Pittsburgh employed by contractor HCL.^[199] In 2021 court documents revealed that between 2018 and 2020 Google ran an anti-union campaign called Project Vivian to “convince [employees] that unions suck”.^[200]

As of December 2019, the National Labor Relations Board is investigating whether several firings were in retaliation for labor organizing-related activities.^[201][202] One of the fired employees was tasked with informing her colleagues about Google policy changes, and created a message informing them that they, “have the right to participate in protected concerted activities,” when they visited the IRI Consultants site.^[203][204]

Xinjiang region

In 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute accused at least 82 major brands, including Google, of being connected to forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang.^[205]

Other

Non-alignment with US defense

Former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work in 2018 criticized Google and its employees have stepped into a Moral Hazard for themselves as not continuing Pentagon’s artificial intelligence project, Project Maven,^[206] while helping China’s AI technology that “could be used against the United States in a conflict.” He described Google as hypocritical, given it has opened an AI center in China and “Anything that’s going on in the AI center in China is going to the Chinese government and then will ultimately end up in the hands of the Chinese military.” Work said “I didn’t see any Google employee saying, ‘Hmm, maybe we shouldn’t do that.'” Google’s dealings with China is decrying as unpatriotic.^{[207][208][209]}

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford also criticizes Google as “it’s inexplicable” that it continue investing in China, “who uses censorship technology to restrain freedoms and crackdown on people there and has long history of intellectual property and patent theft which hurts U.S. companies,” while simultaneously not renewing further research and development collaborations with the Pentagon. He said, “I’m not sure that people at Google will enjoy a world order that is informed by the norms and standards of Russia or China.” He urges Google to work directly with the U.S. government instead of making controversial inroads into China.^[210] Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) criticized Dragonfly evidences China’s success at “recruit[ing] U.S. companies to their information control efforts” while China exports cyber and censorship infrastructure to countries like Venezuela, Ethiopia, and Pakistan.^[211]

Energy consumption

Google has been criticized for the high amount of energy used to maintain its servers,^[212] but was praised by Greenpeace for the use of renewable sources of energy to run them.^[213] Google has pledged to spend millions of dollars to investigate cheap, clean, renewable energy, and has installed solar panels on the roofs at its Mountain View facilities.^[214][215] In 2010, Google also invested $39 million in wind power.^[216]

Google bus protests

In late 2013, activists in the San Francisco Bay Area began protesting the use of shuttle buses by Google and other tech companies, viewing them as symbols of gentrification and displacement in a city where the rapid growth of the tech sector has driven up housing prices.^[217][218]

Google Video

On August 15, 2007, Google discontinued its Download-to-own/Download-to-rent (DTO/DTR) program.^[219] Some videos previously purchased for ownership under that program were no longer viewable when the embedded Digital Rights Management (DRM) licenses were revoked. Google gave refunds for the full amount spent on videos using “gift certificates” (or “bonuses”) to their customers’ “Google Checkout Account”.^[220][221] After a public uproar, Google issued full refunds to the credit cards of the Google Video users without revoking the gift certificates.

Search within search

For some search results, Google provides a secondary search box that can be used to search within a website identified from the first search. It sparked controversy among some online publishers and retailers. When performing a second search within a specific website, advertisements from competing and rival companies often showed up together with the results from the website being searched. This has the potential to draw users away from the website they were originally searching.^[222] “While the service could help increase traffic, some users could be siphoned away as Google uses the prominence of the brands to sell ads, typically to competing companies.”^[223] In order to combat this controversy, Google has offered to turn off this feature for companies who request to have it removed.^[223]

According to software engineer Ben Lee and Product Manager Jack Menzel, the idea for search within search originated from the way users were searching. It appeared that users were often not finding exactly what they needed while trying to explore within a company site. “Teleporting” on the web, where users need only type part of the name of a website into Google (no need to remember the entire URL) in order to find the correct site, is what helps Google users complete their search. Google took this concept a step further and instead of just “teleporting”, users could type in keywords to search within the website of their choice.^[224]

Naming of Go programming language

Google is criticized for naming their programming language “Go” while there is already an existing programming language called “Go!“.^{[225][226][227]}

Potential security threats

Google’s Street View has been criticized for providing information that could potentially be useful to terrorists. In the United Kingdom during March 2010, Liberal Democrats MP Paul Keetch and unnamed military officers criticized Google for including pictures of the entrance to the British Army Special Air Service (SAS) base, stating that terrorists might use the information to plan attacks. Google responded that it “only takes images from public roads and this is no different to what anyone could see traveling down the road themselves, therefore there is no appreciable security risk.” Military sources stated that “It is highly irresponsible for military bases, especially special forces, to be pictured on the internet. […] The question is, why risk a very serious security breach for the sake of having a picture on a website?”^[228][229] Google was subsequently forced to remove images of the SAS base and other military, security and intelligence installations, admitting that its trained drivers had failed to not take photographs in areas banned under the Official Secrets Act.^[230]

In 2008, Google complied with requests from The Pentagon to remove Street View images of the entrances to military bases.^[231][232]

Politics

Scope of influence

Despite being one of the world’s largest and most influential companies, unlike many other technology companies, Google does not disclose its political spending. In August 2010, New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio launched a national campaign urging the corporation to disclose all of its political spending.^[233] In the 2010s, Google spent about $150 million on lobbying, largely related to privacy protections and regulation of monopolies.^[234][235]

Google sponsors several non-profit lobbying groups, such as the Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec) in the UK.^[236] Google has sponsored meetings of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute who have had speakers including libertarian Republican and Tea Party member, and Senator for Kentucky, Rand Paul.^[237]

Peter Thiel stated that Google had too much influence on the Obama administration, claiming that the company “had more power under Obama than Exxon had under Bush 43“.^[238] There are many revolving door examples between Google and the U.S. government. This includes: 53 revolving door moves between Google and the White House; 22 former White House officials who left the administration to work for Google and 31 Google executives who joined the White House;^[239] 45 Obama for America campaign staffers leaving for Google or Google controlled companies; 38 revolving door moves between Google and government positions involving national security, intelligence or the Department of Defense;^[240] 23 revolving door moves between Google and the State Department; and 18 Pentagon officials moving to Google.

As of 2018, studies found that employees of Alphabet donated largely to support the election of candidates from the Democratic Party.^[241]

In 2023, Alphabet lobbied on antitrust issues and three particular antitrust bills, spending $7.43 million in the first quarter of 2023, lobbying the federal government and more money in the second quarter of 2023, than in any quarter since 2018.^[42]

Climate change

In 2013, Google joined the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).^[242][243] In September 2014, Google chairman Eric Schmidt announced the company would leave ALEC for lying about climate change and “hurting our children”.^[244]

In 2018, Google started an oil, gas, and energy division, hiring Darryl Willis, a 25-year BP executive who The Wall Street Journal said was intended “to court the oil and gas industry.”^[245] Google Cloud signed an agreement with the French oil company Total S.A., “to jointly develop artificial intelligence solutions for subsurface data analysis in oil and gas exploration and production.”^[246] A partnership with Houston oil investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. was described by the Houston Chronicle as giving Google “a more visible presence in Houston as one of its oldest industries works to cut costs in the wake of the oil bust and remain competitive as electric vehicles and renewable power sources gain market share.”^[247] Other agreements were made with oilfield services companies Baker Hughes and Schlumberger,^[247] and Anadarko Petroleum, to use “artificial intelligence to analyse large volumes of seismic and operational data to find oil, maximise output and increase efficiency,”^[248] and negotiations were started with petroleum giant Saudi Aramco.^[249]

In 2019, Google was criticised for sponsoring a conference that included a session promoting climate change denial. LibertyCon speaker Caleb Rossiter belongs to the CO₂ Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.^[250] In November 2019, over 1,000 Google employees demanded that the company commit to zero emissions by 2030 and cancel contracts with fossil fuel companies.^[251]

In February 2022, the NewClimate Institute, a German environmental policy think tank, published a survey evaluating the transparency and progress of the climate strategies and carbon neutrality pledges announced by 25 major companies in the United States that found that Alphabet’s carbon neutrality pledge and climate strategy was unsubstantiated and misleading.^[252][253]

In April 2022, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Shopify, McKinsey & Company, and Stripe, Inc. announced a $925 million advance market commitment of carbon dioxide removal from companies that are developing the technology over the next 9 years.^[254][255] In January 2023, the American Clean Power Association released an annual industry report that found that 326 corporations had contracted 77.4 gigawatts of wind or solar energy by the end of 2022 and that the three corporate purchasers of the largest volumes of wind and solar energy were Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta Platforms.^[256]

AGreenerGoogle.com

In April 2020, Extinction Rebellion launched “agreenergoogle.com”, a spoof website containing a fake announcement by Google CEO Sundar Pichai claiming that “they would stop funding of organizations that deny or work to block action on climate change, effective immediately”.^[257][258]

YouTube user comments

Most YouTube videos allow users to leave comments, and these have attracted attention for the negative aspects of both their form and content. In 2006, Time praised Web 2.0 for enabling “community and collaboration on a scale never seen before”, and added that YouTube “harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred”.^[259] The Guardian in 2009 described users’ comments on YouTube as:

Juvenile, aggressive, misspelled, sexist, homophobic, swinging from raging at the contents of a video to providing a pointlessly detailed description followed by a LOL, YouTube comments are a hotbed of infantile debate and unashamed ignorance – with the occasional burst of wit shining through.^[260]

In September 2008, The Daily Telegraph commented that YouTube was “notorious” for “some of the most confrontational and ill-formed comment exchanges on the internet”, and reported on YouTube Comment Snob, “a new piece of software that blocks rude and illiterate posts”.^[261] The Huffington Post noted in April 2012 that finding comments on YouTube that appear “offensive, stupid and crass” to the “vast majority” of the people is hardly difficult.^[262]

On November 6, 2013, Google implemented a new comment system that requires all YouTube users to use a Google+ account to comment on videos, thereby making the comment system Google+-orientated.^[263] The corporation stated that the change is necessary to personalize comment sections for viewers, eliciting an overwhelmingly negative public response—YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim also expressed disdain by writing on his channel: “why the fuck do I need a Google+ account to comment on a video?”.^[264] The official YouTube announcement received over 62,000 “thumbs down” votes and only just over 4,000 “thumbs up” votes, while an online petition demanding Google+’s removal gained more than 230,000 signatures in just over two months.^[265][266] Writing in the Newsday blog Silicon Island, Chase Melvin noted: “Google+ is nowhere near as popular a social media network as Facebook, but it’s essentially being forced upon millions of YouTube users who don’t want to lose their ability to comment on videos.”^[267] In the same article Melvin adds:

Perhaps user complaints are justified, but the idea of revamping the old system isn’t so bad. Think of the crude, misogynistic and racially-charged mudslinging that has transpired over the last eight years on YouTube without any discernible moderation. Isn’t any attempt to curb unidentified libelers worth a shot? The system is far from perfect, but Google should be lauded for trying to alleviate some of the damage caused by irate YouTubers hiding behind animosity and anonymity.^[267]

On July 27, 2015, Google announced that Google+ would no longer be required for using various services, including YouTube.^[268][269]

Zero-rating

Google has supported net neutrality in the US, while opposing it in India by supporting zero-rating.^[270]

2016 April Fools’ joke

On April 1, 2016, the Mic Drop April Fools’ joke in Gmail caused damage for users who accidentally clicked the button Google installed on that occasion.^[271]

Think Tank meddling

The New York Times reported that Google has pressured the New America think tank which is supported by it, to remove a statement supporting the EU antitrust fine against Google. After Eric Schmidt voiced his displeasure from the statement, the whole research group involved were sidelined in the New America think tank, which gets funding from Google.^[272][273] Consequently, the Open Markets research group went to open their own think tank, which will not get any funding from Google.^[273]

ANS patent controversy

Wide attention in Polish media has resulted from Google’s attempt to patent video compression application of ANS coding, which is now widely used in products of e.g. Apple, Facebook and Google. Its author has helped Google in this adaptation for three years through public forum, but was not included in the patent application. He was supported in fighting this patent by his employer: Jagiellonian University.^{[274][275][276][277][278]}

Spatial data and the city

Google’s huge share of spatial information services, including Google Maps and the Google Places API, has been criticised by activists and academics in terms of the cartographic power it affords Google to map and represent the world’s cities.^[279] In addition, given Google and Alphabet Inc.’s increasing involvement with urban planning, particularly through subsidiaries like Sidewalk Labs,^[280] this has resulted in criticism that Google is exerting an increasing power over urban areas that may not be beneficial to democracy in the long term.^[281][282] This criticism is also related to wider concerns around democracy and Smart Cities that has been directed to a number of other large corporations.^[283][284]

Breach of court order

On 10 December 2018, a New Zealand court ordered that the name of a man accused of murdering British traveller Grace Millane be withheld from the public (a gag order). The next morning, Google named the man in an email it sent people who had subscribed to “what’s trending in New Zealand”.^[285] Lawyers warned that this could compromise the trial, and Justice Minister Andrew Little said that Google was in contempt of court.^[286][287] Google said that it had been unaware of the court order, and that the email had been created by algorithms.

Electronic pop-up books patent

In 2016, Google filed a patent application for interactive pop-up books with electronics.^[288] Jie Qi noticed that the patent resembled work she had shared when she visited Google ATAP in 2014 as a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab; two of the Google employees listed on the application as inventors had also interviewed her during the same visit. After Qi submitted prior art to the USPTO, the application was abandoned.^[289][290]

Project Nightingale

Project Nightingale is a health care data sharing project financed by Google and Ascension, a Catholic health care system, the second largest in the United States. Ascension owns comprehensive health care information on millions of former and current patients who are part of its system. Google and Ascension have been processing this data, in secret, since sometime in 2018, without the knowledge and consent of patients and doctors. The work they are doing appears to comply with federal health care law which includes “robust protections for patient data.”^{[291][292][293]} However, concerns have been voiced whether the transfer really is HIPAA compliant.^[294] The project is Google’s attempt to gain a large scale foot hold into the healthcare industry.^[291]

YouTube: ads forced on all videos, without revenue-share

In 2020, Google-owned YouTube changed its policy so that it could include ads on all videos, regardless of whether the content-creator wanted them or not. Those who were not part of Google’s Partner Program would receive no revenue for this. To join the program, creators must have more than 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of viewed content in the last 12 months.^[295][296]

Abuse of attorney-client privilege

In March 2022, the Department of Justice and 14 state attorneys general accused Google of misusing attorney–client privilege to hide emails from subpoenas using an employee policy called ‘Communicate with Care,’ which instructs employees to carbon copy (CC) Google’s attorneys on emails and flag them as exempt from disclosure. Employees are directed to add a general request for the attorney’s advice even when no legal advice is needed or sought. Often Google’s lawyers will not respond to such requests, which the Justice Department claimed shows they understand and are participating in the evasion.^[297]

Deletion of inactive accounts

In May 2023, Google announced that deletion of inactive user accounts would occur starting in December 2023, citing security reasons, noting that old and unused accounts are more likely to be compromised. Google claimed that “Forgotten or unattended accounts often rely on old or re-used passwords that may have been compromised, haven’t had two factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks by the user,” while saying that Google “has no plans to delete YouTube videos”.^{[298][299][300]}

The decision to delete inactive accounts has sparked some criticism and backlash. The cited security rationale behind such decision was ridiculed and was compared to a hypothetical scenario where a bank should be burned down if it is not secure against robbers.^[301] Moreover, the Anonymous hacktivist collective has protested against the decision to delete inactive accounts multiple times, describing them as “harsh” and saying that the decision will “destroy history”.^{[302][303][304]}

See also

• Criticisms of software and websites
• DeGoogle
• Don’t be evil
• Filter bubble
• Google litigation
• Google Search
• Googlization
• High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation
• History of Google
• Ireland as a tax haven
• Stochastic parrot
• Surveillance capitalism
• The Creepy Line
• Who Owns the Future?

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Facebook (and parent company Meta Platforms) has been the subject of criticism and legal action. Criticisms include the outsize influence Facebook has on the lives and health of its users and employees, as well as Facebook’s influence on the way media, specifically news, is reported and distributed. Notable issues include Internet privacy, such as use of a widespread “like” button on third-party websites tracking users,^[1][2] possible indefinite records of user information,^[3] automatic facial recognition software,^[4][5] and its role in the workplace, including employer-employee account disclosure.^[6] The use of Facebook can have negative psychological and physiological effects^[7] that include feelings of sexual jealousy,^[8][9] stress,^[10][11] lack of attention,^[12] and social media addiction that in some cases is comparable to drug addiction.^[13][14]

Facebook’s operations have also received coverage. The company’s electricity usage,^[15] tax avoidance,^[16] real-name user requirement policies,^[17] censorship policies,^[18][19] handling of user data,^[20] and its involvement in the United States PRISM surveillance program and Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal have been highlighted by the media and by critics.^[21][22] Facebook has come under scrutiny for ‘ignoring’ or shirking its responsibility for the content posted on its platform, including copyright and intellectual property infringement,^[23] hate speech,^[24][25] incitement of rape,^[26] violence against minorities,^[27][28][29] terrorism,^[30][31] fake news,^[32][33][34] Facebook murder, crimes, and violent incidents live-streamed through its Facebook Live functionality.^[35][36][37]

The company and its employees have also been subject to litigation cases over the years,^{[38][39][40][41]} with its most prominent case concerning allegations that CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke an oral contract with Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra to build the then-named “HarvardConnection” social network in 2004, instead allegedly opting to steal the idea and code to launch Facebook months before HarvardConnection began.^[42][43][44] The original lawsuit was eventually settled in 2009, with Facebook paying approximately $20 million in cash and 1.25 million shares.^[45][46] A new lawsuit in 2011 was dismissed.^[47] Some critics point to problems which they say will result in the demise of Facebook. Facebook has been banned by several governments for various reasons, including Syria,^[48] China,^[49] Iran^[50] and Russia.

Censorship

While Facebook operates transparent policies around certain types of content moderation—such as the removing of hateful speech and images which contain sex or violence—the company has been criticized for selectively censoring information in nontransparent ways. Some examples of this include:

Censorship of criticism of Facebook

Newspapers regularly report stories of users who claim they’ve been censored on Facebook for being critical of Facebook itself, with their posts removed or made less visible. Examples include Elizabeth Warren in 2019^[51] and Rotem Shtarkman in 2016.^[52]

In the context of media reports^[53] and lawsuits^[54] from people formerly working on Facebook content moderation, a former Facebook moderator (Chris Gray) has claimed that specific rules existed to monitor and sometimes target posts about Facebook which are anti-Facebook or criticize Facebook for some action, for instance by matching the keywords “Facebook” or “DeleteFacebook”.^[55]

Facebook’s search function has been accused of preventing users from searching for certain terms. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has written about Facebook’s possible censorship of “Ron Paul” as a search term. MoveOn.org‘s Facebook group for organizing protests against privacy violations could for a time not be found by searching. The very word privacy was also restricted.^[56]

Censorship around global politics

In 2015, it was reported that Facebook has a policy to censor anything related to Kurdish opposition against Turkey, such as maps of Kurdistan, flags of Kurdish armed terrorist groups (such as PKK and YPG), and criticism of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of Turkey.^[57][58]

In 2016, Facebook banned and also removed content regarding the Kashmir dispute.^[59]

During a podcast, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook suppressed all the coverage of Joe Biden‘s son’s email leaks during the 2020 United States elections due to a general request from the FBI.^[60] The censored news claimed that the son of Joe Biden, who was vice-president in Obama’s administration, used his father’s influence to fix a deal with a Ukrainian businessman.

Censorship in line with US foreign policy

In 2021, Facebook was accused of censoring messages critical of Israel and supportive of Palestine.^[61] During conflict over the Sheikh Jarrah property dispute in 2021, Facebook was accused of deleting hundreds of posts critical of Israel. Senior Facebook officials apologized to the Palestinian Prime Minister for censoring pro-Palestinian voices.^[62]

In October 2021, a secret blacklist of “dangerous individuals and organizations” maintained by Facebook was discovered by The Intercept, which revealed censorship in the MENA region was stricter than in USA. Critics and scholars have argued the blacklist and the guideline stiffles free discussion, as well as enforcing an uneven enforcement of the rules.^[63][64]

Privacy issues

Facebook has faced a number of privacy concerns; for instance, in August 2019, it was revealed that the company had enlisted contractors to generate transcripts of users’ audio chats. The contractors were tasked with re-transcribing the conversations in order to gauge the accuracy of the automatic transcription tool.^[65][66][67] In part these concerns stem from the company’s revenue model that involves selling information about its users, and the loss of privacy this could entail. In addition, employers and other organizations and individuals have been known to use Facebook data for their own purposes. As a result peoples’ identities have sometimes been revealed without their permission. In response, pressure groups and governments have increasingly asserted the users’ right to privacy and to control their personal data.

Psychological/sociological effects

In addition to noting with evolutionary biologist George C. Williams in the development of evolutionary medicine that most chronic medical conditions are the consequence of evolutionary mismatches between a stateless environment of nomadic hunter-gatherer life in bands and contemporary human life in sedentary technologically modern state societies (e.g. WEIRD societies),^[68] psychiatrist Randolph M. Nesse has argued that evolutionary mismatch is an important factor in the development of certain mental disorders.^[69][70][71] In 1948, 50 percent of U.S. households owned at least one automobile.^[72] In 2000, a majority of U.S. households had at least one personal computer and internet access the following year.^[73] In 2002, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported having a mobile phone.^[74] In September 2007, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported having broadband internet at home.^[75] In January 2013, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported owning a smartphone.^[76]

Facebook addiction

The “World Unplugged” study, which was conducted in 2011, claims that for some users quitting social networking sites is comparable to quitting smoking or giving up alcohol.^[77] Another study conducted in 2012 by researchers from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in the United States found that drugs like alcohol and tobacco could not keep up with social networking sites regarding their level of addictiveness.^[78] A 2013 study in the journal CyberPsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking found that some users decided to quit social networking sites because they felt they were addicted. In 2014, the site went down for about 30 minutes, prompting several users to call emergency services.^[79]

In April 2015, the Pew Research Center published a survey of 1,060 U.S. teenagers ages 13 to 17 who reported that nearly three-quarters of them either owned or had access to a smartphone, 92 percent went online daily with 24 percent saying they went online “almost constantly”.^[80] In March 2016, Frontiers in Psychology published a survey of 457 post-secondary student Facebook users (following a face validity pilot of another 47 post-secondary student Facebook users) at a large university in North America showing that the severity of ADHD symptoms had a statistically significant positive correlation with Facebook usage while driving a motor vehicle and that impulses to use Facebook while driving were more potent among male users than female users.^[81]

In June 2018, Children and Youth Services Review published a regression analysis of 283 adolescent Facebook users in the Piedmont and Lombardy regions of Northern Italy (that replicated previous findings among adult users) showing that adolescents reporting higher ADHD symptoms positively predicted Facebook addiction, persistent negative attitudes about the past and that the future is predetermined and not influenced by present actions, and orientation against achieving future goals, with ADHD symptoms additionally increasing the manifestation of the proposed category of psychological dependence known as “problematic social media use“.^[82]

In October 2023, court documents in the US alleged Meta of designing its platforms deliberately to develop addiction in children using them. The company knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. According to whistleblower Frances Haugen, the company intentionally targets children below the age of 18.^[83][84]

Self-harm and suicide

Research shows that people who are feeling suicidal use the internet to search for suicide methods. Websites provide graphic details and information on how to take your own life. This cannot be right. Where this content breaches the policies of internet and social media providers it must be removed.

— Matt Hancock, Health Secretary of the United Kingdom^[85]

I do not think it is going too far to question whether even you, the owners, any longer have any control over [the sites’] content. If that is the case, then children should not be accessing your services at all, and parents should be aware that the idea of any authority overseeing algorithms and content is a mirage.

— Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England^[86]

In January 2019, both the Health Secretary of the United Kingdom, and the Children’s Commissioner for England, urged Facebook and other social media companies to take responsibility for the risk to children posed by content on their platforms related to self-harm and suicide.^[86]

Envy

Facebook has been criticized for making people envious and unhappy due to the constant exposure to positive yet unrepresentative highlights of their peers. Such highlights include, but are not limited to, journal posts, videos, and photos that depict or reference such positive or otherwise outstanding activities, experiences, and facts. This effect is caused mainly by the fact that most users of Facebook usually only display the positive aspects of their lives while excluding the negative, though it is also strongly connected to inequality and the disparities between social groups as Facebook is open to users from all classes of society. Sites such as AddictionInfo.org^[87] state that this kind of envy has profound effects on other aspects of life and can lead to severe depression, self-loathing, rage and hatred, resentment, feelings of inferiority and insecurity, pessimism, suicidal tendencies and desires, social isolation, and other issues that can prove very serious. This condition has often been called “Facebook Envy” or “Facebook Depression” by the media.^{[88][89][90][91][92][93]}

In 2010, Social Science Computer Review published research by economists Ralf Caers and Vanessa Castelyns who sent an online questionnaire to 398 and 353 LinkedIn and Facebook users respectively in Belgium and found that both sites had become tools for recruiting job applicants for professional occupations as well as additional information about applicants, and that it was being used by recruiters to decide which applicants would receive interviews.^[94] In 2017, sociologist Ofer Sharone conducted interviews with unemployed workers to research the effects of LinkedIn and Facebook as labor market intermediaries and found that social networking services (SNS) have had a filtration effect that has little to do with evaluations of merit, and that the SNS filtration effect has exerted new pressures on workers to manage their careers to conform to the logic of the SNS filtration effect.^[95]

A joint study conducted by two German universities demonstrated Facebook envy and found that as many as one out of three people actually feel worse and less satisfied with their lives after visiting the site. Vacation photos were found to be the most common source of feelings of resentment and jealousy. After that, social interaction was the second biggest cause of envy, as Facebook users compare the number of birthday greetings, likes, and comments to those of their friends. Visitors who contributed the least tended to feel the worst. “According to our findings, passive following triggers invidious emotions, with users mainly envying happiness of others, the way others spend their vacations; and socialize”, the study states.^[96]

A 2013 study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that the more people used Facebook, the worse they felt afterwards.^[97][92][93]

Narcissistic users who show excessive grandiosity give negative emotion to viewers and cause envy, but as a result, that may cause viewers’ loneliness. Viewers sometimes need to terminate relationships with them to avoid this negative emotion. However, this “avoidance” such as “terminate relationships” would be reinforcement and it may lead to loneliness. The cyclical pattern is a vicious circle of loneliness and avoidance coping, the study states.^[98]

Divorce

Social networks, like Facebook, can have a detrimental effect on marriages, with users becoming worried about their spouse’s contacts and relations with other people online, leading to marital breakdown and divorce.^[99] According to a 2009 survey in the UK, around 20 percent of divorce petitions included references to Facebook.^{[100][101][102][103]} Facebook has given us a new platform for interpersonal communication. Researchers proposed that high levels of Facebook use could result in Facebook-related conflict and breakup/divorce.^[104] Previous studies have shown that romantic relationships can be damaged by excessive Internet use, Facebook jealousy, partner surveillance, ambiguous information, and online portrayal of intimate relationships.^{[105][106][107][108][109]} Excessive Internet users reported having greater conflict in their relationships. Their partners feel neglected and there’s lower commitment and lower feelings of passion and intimacy in the relationship. According to the article, researchers suspect that Facebook may contribute to an increase in divorce and infidelity rates in the near future due to the amount and ease of accessibility to connect with past partners.^[104] The use of Facebook can cause feelings of sexual jealousy.^[8][9]

Stress

Research performed by psychologists from Edinburgh Napier University indicated that Facebook adds stress to users’ lives. Causes of stress included fear of missing important social information, fear of offending contacts, discomfort or guilt from rejecting user requests or deleting unwanted contacts or being unfriended or blocked by Facebook friends or other users, the displeasure of having friend requests rejected or ignored, the pressure to be entertaining, criticism or intimidation from other Facebook users, and having to use appropriate etiquette for different types of friends.^[110] Many people who started using Facebook for positive purposes or with positive expectations have found that the website has negatively impacted their lives.^[111]

Next to that, the increasing number of messages and social relationships embedded in SNS also increases the amount of social information demanding a reaction from SNS users. Consequently SNS users perceive they are giving too much social support to other SNS friends. This dark side of SNS usage is called ‘social overload’. It is caused by the extent of usage, number of friends, subjective social support norms, and type of relationship (online-only vs offline friends) while age has only an indirect effect. The psychological and behavioral consequences of social overload include perceptions of SNS exhaustion, low user satisfaction, and high intentions to reduce or stop using SNS.^[112]

Narcissism

In July 2018, a meta-analysis published in Psychology of Popular Media found that grandiose narcissism positively correlated with time spent on social media, frequency of status updates, number of friends or followers, and frequency of posting self-portrait digital photographs,^[113] while a meta-analysis published in the Journal of Personality in April 2018 found that the positive correlation between grandiose narcissism and social networking service usage was replicated across platforms (including Facebook).^[114] In March 2020, the Journal of Adult Development published a regression discontinuity analysis of 254 Millennial Facebook users investigating differences in narcissism and Facebook usage between the age cohorts born from 1977 to 1990 and from 1991 to 2000 and found that the later born Millennials scored significantly higher on both.^[115] In June 2020, Addictive Behaviors published a systematic review finding a consistent, positive, and significant correlation between grandiose narcissism and the proposed category of psychological dependence called “problematic social media use“.^[116] Also in 2018, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff noted in The Coddling of the American Mind that former Facebook president Sean Parker stated in a 2017 interview that the Like button was consciously designed to prime users receiving likes to feel a dopamine rush as part of a “social-validation feedback loop“.^[117]

“Conspicuous compassion” is the practice of publicly donating large sums of money to charity to enhance the social prestige of the donor, and is sometimes described as a type of conspicuous consumption.^[118][119] Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff argued that microaggression training on college campuses in the United States has led to a call-out culture and a climate of self-censorship due to fear of shaming by virtue signalling social media mobs with users who are often anonymous and tend to deindividuate as a consequence.^[120] Citing February 2017 Pew Research Center survey data showing that critical Facebook postings expressing “indignant disagreement” were twice as likely to receive likes, comments, or shares (along with a similar finding for Twitter posts published in PNAS USA in July 2017),^[121][122] Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell cite the phrase “moral grandstanding” to describe how having an audience on social media forums converts much of its interpersonal communication into a public performance.^[123]

Following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the subsequent protests in his name, Civiqs and YouGov/Economist polls showed that while net support for Black Lives Matter among White Americans increased from –4 points to +10 points in early June 2020 (with 43 percent in support) it fell to –6 points by early August 2020,^[124] and by April 2021, further Civiqs polls showed that support for Black Lives Matter among White Americans had reverted to roughly its level of support prior to George Floyd’s murder (37 percent in favor and 49 percent opposed).^[125] In a February 2021 interview on Firing Line, journalist Charles M. Blow criticized a minority of young white protestors in the George Floyd protests in the United States whom he argued were using the protests for their own personal growth to substitute for social rites of passage (e.g. prom) and summertime social gatherings (e.g. attending movie theaters or concerts) that were precluded by COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing measures, noting that as lockdowns began to be relaxed and removed, support for Black Lives Matter among whites began to decline.^[126]

In February 2021, Psychological Medicine published a survey reviewing 14,785 publicly reported murders in English language news worldwide between 1900 and 2019 compiled in a database by psychiatrists at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Columbia University Irving Medical Center that found that of the 1,315 personal-cause mass murders (i.e. driven by personal motivations and not occurring within the context of war, state-sponsored or group-sponsored terrorism, gang activity, or organized crime) only 11 percent of mass murderers and only 8 percent of mass shooters had a “serious mental illness” (e.g. schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder), that mass shootings have become more common than other forms of mass murder since 1970 (with 73 percent occurring in the United States alone), and that mass shooters in the United States were more likely to have legal histories, to engage in recreational drug use or alcohol abuse, and to display non-psychotic psychiatric or neurologic symptoms.^{[127][128][129]}

Survey coauthor psychiatrist Paul S. Appelbaum argued that the data from the survey indicated that “difficulty coping with life events seem more useful foci for prevention [of mass shootings] and policy than an emphasis on serious mental illness”,^[130] while psychiatrist Ronald W. Pies has suggested that psychopathology should be understood as a three-gradation continuum of mental, behavioral and emotional disturbance with most mass shooters falling into a middle category of “persistent emotional disturbance”.^[131] In 2015, psychiatrists James L. Knoll and George D. Annas noted that the tendency of most media attention following mass shootings on mental health leads to sociocultural factors being comparatively overlooked.^[132] Instead, Knoll and Annas cite research by social psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell on narcissism and social rejection in the personal histories of mass shooters, as well as cognitive scientist Steven Pinker‘s suggestion in The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) that further reductions in human violence may be dependent upon reducing human narcissism.^[133][134]

Non-informing, knowledge-eroding medium

Facebook is a Big Tech company with over 2.7 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2020 and therefore has a meaningful impact on the masses that use it.^[135] Big data algorithms are used in personalized content creation and automatization; however, this method can be used to manipulate users in various ways.^[136] The problem of misinformation is exacerbated by the educational bubble, users’ critical thinking ability and news culture.^[137] Based on a 2015 study, 62.5% of the Facebook users are oblivious to any curation of their News Feed. Furthermore, scientists have started to investigate algorithms with unexpected outcomes that may lead to antisocial political, economic, geographic, racial, or other discrimination. Facebook has remained scarce in transparency of the inner workings of the algorithms used for News Feed correlation.^[138] Algorithms use the past activities as a reference point for predicting users’ taste to keep them engaged. However, this leads to the formation of a filter bubble that starts to refrain users from diverse information. Users are left with a skewed worldview derived from their own preferences and biases.^[139]

In 2015, researchers from Facebook published a study indicating that the Facebook algorithm perpetuates an echo chamber amongst users by occasionally hiding content from individual feeds that users potentially would disagree with: for example the algorithm removed one in every 13 diverse content from news sources for self-identified liberals. In general, the results from the study indicated that the Facebook algorithm ranking system caused approximately 15% less diverse material in users’ content feeds, and a 70% reduction in the click-through-rate of the diverse material.^[140][141] In 2018, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff argued in The Coddling of the American Mind that the filter bubbles created by the News Feed algorithm of Facebook and other platforms are one of the principal factors amplifying political polarization in the United States since 2000 (when a majority of U.S. households first had at least one personal computer and then internet access the following year).^[142][73]

In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), philosopher Edmund Burke observed “We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.”^[143] In The Signal and the Noise (2012), statistician Nate Silver noted that IBM had estimated that the world was generating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day (more than 90 percent of which was created in the previous two years), and that the increase in data was analogous to increases in book production as a consequence of the invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg as well as the effect of the increase in book production in causing the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and the European wars of religion.^[144]

Citing Burke, Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell suggested in The Atlantic in December 2019 that because the proportion of most of the information that Generation Z receives due to regular social media usage is information created primarily within the past month (e.g. cat videos, tabloid gossip about celebrities, sensationalistic hot takes on news items) rather than information created in decades or centuries past, members of Generation Z are less familiar with the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of humanity (e.g. great ideas, great books, history) than generations past, and as a consequence, are more prone to embrace misguided ideas that bring them greater esteem and prestige within their immediate social network (noting the declining faith among Generation Z in democracy across the ideological spectrum in polling data alongside renewed interest in socialism, communism, and Nazism that is reflective of ignorance of the history of the 20th century).^{[123][145][146]}

Facebook has, at least in the political field, a counter-effect on being informed: in two studies from the US with a total of more than 2,000 participants, the influence of social media on the general knowledge on political issues was examined in the context of two US presidential elections. The results showed that the frequency of Facebook use was moderately negatively related to general political knowledge. This was also the case when considering demographic, political-ideological variables and previous political knowledge. According to the latter, a causal relationship is indicated: the higher the Facebook use, the more the general political knowledge declines.^[147] In 2019, Jonathan Haidt argued that there is a “very good chance American democracy will fail, that in the next 30 years we will have a catastrophic failure of our democracy.”^[148] Following the 2021 United States Capitol attack, in February 2021, Facebook announced that it would reduce the amount of political content in users News Feeds.^[149]

Other psychological effects

It has been admitted by many students that they have experienced bullying on the site, which leads to psychological harm. Students of high schools face a possibility of bullying and other adverse behaviors over Facebook every day. Many studies have attempted to discover whether Facebook has a positive or negative effect on children’s and teenagers’ social lives, and many of them have come to the conclusion that there are distinct social problems that arise with Facebook usage. British neuroscientist Susan Greenfield stuck up for the issues that children encounter on social media sites. She said that they can rewire the brain, which caused some hysteria over whether or not social networking sites are safe. She did not back up her claims with research, but did cause quite a few studies to be done on the subject. When that self is then broken down by others by badmouthing, criticism, harassment, criminalization or vilification, intimidation, demonization, demoralization, belittlement, or attacking someone over the site it can cause much of the envy, anger, or depression.^{[150][151][152]}

Sherry Turkle, in her book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, argues that social media brings people closer and further apart at the same time. One of the main points she makes is that there is a high risk in treating persons online with dispatch like objects. Although people are networked on Facebook, their expectations of each other tend to be lessened. According to Turkle, this could cause a feeling of loneliness in spite of being together.^[153]

Between 2016 and 2018, the number of 12- to 15-year-olds who reported being bullied over social media rose from 6% to 11%, in the region covered by Ofcom.^{[86][better source needed]}

User influence experiments

Academic and Facebook researchers have collaborated to test if the messages people see on Facebook can influence their behavior. For instance, in “A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence And Political Mobilization”, during the 2010 elections, Facebook users were given the opportunity to “tell your friends you voted” by clicking on an “I voted” button. Users were 2% more likely to click the button if it was associated with friends who had already voted.^[154]

Much more controversially, a 2014 study of “Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks” manipulated the balance of positive and negative messages seen by 689,000 Facebook users.^[155] The researchers concluded that they had found “some of the first experimental evidence to support the controversial claims that emotions can spread throughout a network, [though] the effect sizes from the manipulations are small.”^[156]

Unlike the “I voted” study, which had presumptively beneficial ends and raised few concerns, this study was criticized for both its ethics and methods/claims. As controversy about the study grew, Adam Kramer, a lead author of both studies and member of the Facebook data team, defended the work in a Facebook update.^[157] A few days later, Sheryl Sandburg, Facebook’s COO, made a statement while traveling abroad. While at an Indian Chambers of Commerce event in New Delhi she stated that “This was part of ongoing research companies do to test different products, and that was what it was. It was poorly communicated and for that communication we apologize. We never meant to upset you.”^[158]

Shortly thereafter, on July 3, 2014, USA Today reported that the privacy watchdog group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) had filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission claiming that Facebook had broken the law when it conducted the study on the emotions of its users without their knowledge or consent. In its complaint, EPIC alleged that Facebook had deceived users by secretly conducting a psychological experiment on their emotions: “At the time of the experiment, Facebook did not state in the Data Use Policy that user data would be used for research purposes. Facebook also failed to inform users that their personal information would be shared with researchers.”^[159]

Beyond the ethical concerns, other scholars criticized the methods and reporting of the study’s findings. John Grohol, writing for Psych Central, argued that despite its title and claims of “emotional contagion“, this study did not look at emotions at all. Instead, its authors used an application (called “Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count” or LIWC 2007) that simply counted positive and negative words to infer users’ sentiments. He wrote that a shortcoming of the LIWC tool is that it does not understand negations. Hence, the tweet “I am not happy” would be scored as positive: “Since the LIWC 2007 ignores these subtle realities of informal human communication, so do the researchers.” Grohol concluded that given these subtleties, the effect size of the findings are little more than a “statistical blip”.

Kramer et al. (2014) found a 0.07%—that’s not 7 percent, that’s 1/15th of one percent!!—decrease in negative words in people’s status updates when the number of negative posts on their Facebook news feed decreased. Do you know how many words you’d have to read or write before you’ve written one less negative word due to this effect? Probably thousands.^[160]

The consequences of the controversy are pending (be it FTC or court proceedings) but it did prompt an “Editorial Expression of Concern”^[161] from its publisher, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as a blog posting from OkCupid titled “We experiment on human beings!”^[162] In September 2014, law professor James Grimmelmann argued that the actions of both companies were “illegal, immoral, and mood-altering” and filed notices with the Maryland Attorney General and Cornell Institutional Review Board.^[163]

In the UK, the study was also criticized by the British Psychological Society which said, in a letter to The Guardian, “There has undoubtedly been some degree of harm caused, with many individuals affected by increased levels of negative emotion, with consequent potential economic costs, increase in possible mental health problems and burden on health services. The so-called ‘positive’ manipulation is also potentially harmful.”^[164]

Tax avoidance

Facebook uses a complicated series of shell companies in tax havens to avoid paying billions of dollars in corporate tax.^[165] According to The Express Tribune, Facebook is among the corporations that “avoided billions of dollars in tax using offshore companies.”^[166] For example, Facebook routes billions of dollars in profits using the Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich tax avoidance schemes to bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad concluded from the Paradise Papers published in late 2017 that Facebook pays “practically no taxes” worldwide.^[167]

For example, Facebook paid:

• In 2011, £2.9m tax on £840m profits in the UK;
• In 2012 and 2013 no tax in the UK;
• In 2014 £4,327 tax on hundreds of millions of pounds in UK revenues which were transferred to tax havens.^[168]

According to economist and member of the PvdA delegation inside the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats in the European Parliament (S&D) Paul Tang, between 2013 and 2015 the EU lost an estimated €1,453m – €2,415m to Facebook.^[169] When comparing to others countries outside the EU, the EU is only taxing Facebook with a rate of 0.03% to 0.1% of its revenue (around 6% of its EBT) whereas this rate is near 28% in countries outside the EU. Even had a rate between 2% and 5% been applied during this period – as suggested by the ECOFIN Council – a fraud of this rate by Facebook would have meant a loss to the EU between €327m and €817m.^[169]

Revenues, profits, tax and effective tax rates, Facebook Inc. 2013–2015.^[169]

		Revenue (m EUR)			EBT (m EUR)			Tax (m EUR)			Tax / EBT			Tax / Revenue
		Total	EU	Rest of the world	Total	EU	Rest of the world	Total	EU	Rest of the world	Total	EU	Rest of the world	Total	EU	Rest of the world
Facebook Inc.	2013	5,720	3,069	2,651	2,001	(4)	2,005	911	3	908	46%	n.a	45%	15.93%	0.10%	34.25%
	2014	10,299	5,017	5,282	4,057	(20)	4,077	1,628	5	1,623	40%	n.a	40%	15.81%	0.09%	30.73%
	2015	16,410	8,253	8,157	5,670	(43)	5,627	2,294	3	2,291	40%	6%	41%	13.98%	0.03%	28.09%

On July 6, 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a petition in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, asking for a court order to enforce an administrative summons issued to Facebook, Inc., under Internal Revenue Code section 7602,^[170] in connection with an Internal Revenue Service examination of Facebook’s year 2010 U.S. Federal income tax return.^[171][172]

In November 2017, the Irish Independent recorded that for the 2016 financial year, Facebook had paid €30 million of Irish corporation tax on €12.6 billion of revenues that were routed through Ireland, giving an Irish effective tax rate of under 1%.^[173] The €12.6 billion of 2016 Facebook revenues routed through Ireland was almost half of Facebook’s global revenues.^[174] In April 2018, Reuters wrote that all of Facebook’s non–U.S. accounts were legally housed in Ireland for tax purposes, but were being moved due to the May 2018 EU GDPR regulations.^[175]

In November 2018, the Irish Times reported that Facebook routed over €18.7 billion of revenues through Ireland (almost half all global revenues), on which it paid €38 million of Irish corporation tax.^[176]

Treatment of employees and contractors

Moderators

Facebook hires some employees through contractors, including Accenture, Arvato, Cognizant, CPL Resources, and Genpact, to serve as content moderators, reviewing potentially problematic content posted to both Facebook and Instagram.^[181] Many of these contractors face unrealistic expectations, harsh working conditions, and constant exposure to disturbing content, including graphic violence, animal abuse, and child pornography.^[177][178] Contractor employment is contingent on achieving and maintaining a score of 98 on a 100-point scale on a metric known as “accuracy”. Falling below a score of 98 can result in dismissal. Some have reported post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stemming from lack of access to counseling, coupled with unforgiving expectations and the violent content they are assigned to review.^[177]

Content moderator Keith Utley, who was employed by Cognizant, experienced a heart attack during work in March 2018; the office lacked a defibrillator, and Utley was transported to a hospital where he died.^[179][182] Selena Scola, an employee of contractor Pro Unlimited, Inc., sued her employer after she developed PTSD as a result of “constant and unmitigated exposure to highly toxic and extremely disturbing images at the workplace”.^[183] In December 2019, former CPL employee Chris Gray began legal action in the High Court of Ireland, claiming damages for PTSD experienced as a moderator,^[184] the first of an estimated 20+ pending cases. In February 2020, employees in Tampa, Florida filed a lawsuit against Facebook and Cognizant alleging they developed PTSD and related mental health impairments as a result of constant and unmitigated exposure to disturbing content.^[185]

In February 2020, the European Union Commissioners criticized the plans that Facebook has for dealing with the working conditions of those who are contracted to moderate content on the social media platform.^[186]

Facebook agreed to settle a class action lawsuit for $52 million on May 12, 2020, which included a $1,000 payment to each of the 11,250 moderators in the class, with additional compensation available for the treatment of PTSD and other conditions resulting from the jobs.^{[187][188][189]}

Employees

Plans for a Facebook-owned real estate development known as “Willow Village” have been criticized for resembling a “company town“, which often curtails the rights of residents, and encourages or forces employees to remain within an environment created and monitored by their employer outside of work hours.^[190] Critics have referred to the development as “Zucktown” and “Facebookville” and the company has faced additional criticism for the effect it will have on existing communities in California.

The operational manager at Facebook as of March 2021, along with three former candidates of the Facebook hiring process complained to the EEOC of racial bias being practiced at the company against Black people. The current employee, Oscar Veneszee Jr. accused the firm of conducting subjective evaluations and pushing the idea of racial stereotypes. The EEOC has labeled the practice as “systemic” racial bias and has initiated an investigation.^[191]

Misleading campaigns against competitors

In May 2011, emails were sent to journalists and bloggers making critical allegations about Google’s privacy policies; however, it was later discovered that the anti-Google campaign, conducted by PR giant Burson-Marsteller, was paid for by Facebook in what CNN referred to as “a new level skullduggery” and which Daily Beast called a “clumsy smear”. While taking responsibility for the campaign, Burson-Marsteller said it should not have agreed to keep its client’s (Facebook’s) identity a secret. “Whatever the rationale, this was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined”, it said.^[192]

In December 2020, Apple Inc. announced an initiative of Anti-Tracking measures (opt-in tracking policy) to be introduced to their App Store Services. Facebook quickly reacted and started to criticise the initiative, claiming the Apple’s anti-tracking privacy focused change will have “harmful impact on many small businesses that are struggling to stay afloat and on the free internet that we all rely on more than ever”. Facebook also launched a so-called “Speak Up For Small Businesses” page. Apple in their response stated that “users should know when their data is being collected and shared across other apps and websites – and they should have the choice to allow that or not”. Apple was also backed up by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who stated that “Facebook touts itself in this case as protecting small businesses, and that couldn’t be further from the truth”.^[193]

In March 2022, The Washington Post revealed that Facebook had partnered with Republican consulting firm Targeted Victory to orchestrate a campaign to damage the public reputation of competitor TikTok.^[194]

Copying competitors’ products and features

Beyond acquiring competitors in the social and messaging space with strong potential, Facebook often simply copies products or features to get to the market faster. Internal emails have shown that Facebook’s leadership, including Mark Zuckerberg were frustrated by the time the company spends on prototyping, and suggested to explore copying entire products like Pinterest. “Copying is faster than innovating” – admitted an employee on the internal email thread, which continued: “If you gave the top-down order to go ahead, copy e.g. Pinterest or the gaming dynamics on Foursquare … I am sure [a] very small team of engineers, a [product manager], and a designer would get it done super quickly.”^[195][196]

Many Facebook employees seem to be questioning Facebook’s approach of cloning competitors. According to leaks, a top quoted question in Facebook’s internal all-hands was: “What is our next big product, which does not imitate already existing products on the market?”^[197]

Snapchat

In June 2014, Facebook launched Slingshot, an app for sending ephemeral photos like Snapchat does. In August 2016, the company released Facebook Stories, which is a copy of Snapchat’s most popular feature.^[198]

TikTok

In August 2020, Facebook built Instagram Reels, a feature that functioned and looked similar to TikTok.^[199]

Pinterest

For several months, Facebook was experimenting with an app called Hobbi, which took many cues from Pinterest.^[200]

Clubhouse

In the summer of 2021, Facebook started to roll out Live Audio Rooms, which resembles Clubhouse.^[201]

Content

Facebook or Meta Platforms has been criticized for its management of various content on posts, photos and entire groups and profiles. This includes but is not limited to allowing violent content, including content related to war crimes, and not limiting the spread of fake news and COVID-19 misinformation on their platform, as well as allowing incitement of violence against multiple groups.

Technical

Real-name policy controversy and compromise

Facebook has a real-name system policy for user profiles. The real-name policy stems from the position “that way, you always know who you’re connecting with. This helps keep our community safe.”^[17] The real-name system does not allow adopted names or pseudonyms,^[202] and in its enforcement has suspended accounts of legitimate users, until the user provides identification indicating the name.^[203] Facebook representatives have described these incidents as very rare.^[203] A user claimed responsibility via the anonymous Android and iOS app Secret for reporting “fake names” which caused user profiles to be suspended, specifically targeting the stage names of drag queens.^[204] On October 1, 2014, Chris Cox, Chief Product Officer at Facebook, offered an apology: “In the two weeks since the real-name policy issues surfaced, we’ve had the chance to hear from many of you in these communities and understand the policy more clearly as you experience it. We’ve also come to understand how painful this has been. We owe you a better service and a better experience using Facebook, and we’re going to fix the way this policy gets handled so everyone affected here can go back to using Facebook as you were.”^[205]

On December 15, 2015, Facebook announced in a press release^[206] that it would be providing a compromise to its real name policy after protests from groups such as the gay/lesbian community and abuse-victims.^[207] The site is developing a protocol that will allow members to provide specifics as to their “special circumstance” or “unique situation” with a request to use pseudonyms, subject to verification of their true identities. At that time, this was already being tested in the U.S. Product manager Todd Gage and vice president of global operations Justin Osofsky also promised a new method for reducing the number of members who must go through ID verification while ensuring the safety of others on Facebook. The fake name reporting procedure will also be modified, forcing anyone who makes such an allegation to provide specifics that would be investigated and giving the accused individual time to dispute the allegation.^[208]

Deleting users’ statuses

There have been complaints of user statuses being mistakenly or intentionally deleted for alleged violations of Facebook’s posting guidelines. Especially for non-English speaking writers, Facebook does not have a proper support system to genuinely read the content and make decisions. Sometimes the content of a status did not have any “abusive” or defaming language, but it nevertheless got deleted on the basis that it had been secretly reported by a group of people as “offensive”. For other languages than English, Facebook until now is not able to identify the group approach that is used to vilify humanitarian activism. In another incident, Facebook had to apologize after it deleted a free speech group’s post about the abuse of human rights in Syria. In that case, a spokesman for Facebook said the post was “mistakenly” removed by a member of its moderation team, which receives a high volume of take-down requests.^[209]

Enabling of harassment

Facebook instituted a policy by which it is now self-policed by the community of Facebook users.^[when?] Some users have complained that this policy allows Facebook to empower abusive users to harass them by allowing them to submit reports on even benign comments and photos as being “offensive” or “in violation of Facebook Rights and Responsibilities” and that enough of these reports result in the user who is being harassed in this way getting their account blocked for a predetermined number of days or weeks, or even deactivated entirely.^[210]

Facebook UK policy director Simon Milner told Wired magazine that “Once the piece of content has been seen, assessed and deemed OK, (Facebook) will ignore further reports about it.”^[211]

Lack of customer support

Facebook lacks any form of live customer support beyond “community” support pages and FAQ’s which offer only general troubleshooting advice, often making it impossible to resolve issues that require the services of an administrator or are not covered in the FAQs. The automated emailing system used when filling out a support form often directs users back to the help center or to pages that are outdated and cannot be accessed, leaving users at a dead end with no further support available. A person who lost access to Facebook or does not have an account has no easy way to contact the company directly.

Downtime and outages

Facebook has had a number of outages and downtime large enough to draw some media attention. A 2007 outage resulted in a security hole that enabled some users to read other users’ personal mail.^[212] In 2008, the site was inaccessible for about a day, from many locations in many countries.^[213] In spite of these occurrences, a report issued by Pingdom found that Facebook had less downtime in 2008 than most social-networking websites.^[214] On September 16, 2009, Facebook started having major problems loading as people signed in. This was due to a group of hackers deliberately trying to drown out a political speaker who had social networking problems from continuously speaking against the Iranian election results. Just two days later, on September 18, Facebook went down again.^[215]

In October 2009, an unspecified number of Facebook users were unable to access their accounts for over three weeks.^{[216][217][218][219]}

On Monday, October 4, 2021, Facebook and its other apps – Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger, Oculus, as well as the lesser-known Mapillary – had an hours-long DNS-related global outage.^{[220][221][222]} The outage also affected anyone using “Log in with Facebook” to access third-party sites.^[223] The downtime lasted approximately five hours and fifteen minutes, from approximately 15:50 UTC to 21:05 UTC, and affected roughly three billion users.^[224] The outage was caused by a BGP withdrawal of all of the IP routes to their Domain Name (DNS) servers, which were all self-hosted at the time.^[225][220]

Tracking cookies

Facebook has been criticized heavily for ‘tracking’ users, even when logged out of the site. Australian technologist Nik Cubrilovic discovered that when a user logs out of Facebook, the cookies from that login are still kept in the browser, allowing Facebook to track users on websites that include “social widgets” distributed by the social network. Facebook has denied the claims, saying they have ‘no interest’ in tracking users or their activity. They also promised after the discovery of the cookies that they would remove them, saying they will no longer have them on the site. A group of users in the United States have sued Facebook for breaching privacy laws.^[226]

As of December 2015, to comply with a court order citing violations of the European Union Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications – which requires users to consent to tracking and storage of data by websites, Facebook no longer allows users in Belgium to view any content on the service, even public pages, without being registered and logged in.^[227]

Email address change

In June 2012, Facebook removed all existing email addresses from user profiles, and added a new @facebook.com email address. Facebook claimed this was part of adding a “new setting that gives people the choice to decide which addresses they want to show on their timelines”. However, this setting was redundant to the existing “Only Me” privacy setting which was already available to hide addresses from timelines. Users complained the change was unnecessary, they did not want an @facebook.com email address, and they did not receive adequate notification their profiles had been changed.^[228] The change in email address was synchronized to phones due to a software bug, causing existing email addresses details to be deleted.^[229] The facebook.com email service was retired in February 2014.^[230]

Safety Check bug

On March 27, 2016, following a bombing in Lahore, Pakistan, Facebook activated its “Safety Check” feature, which allows people to let friends and loved ones know they are okay following a crisis or natural disaster, to people who were never in danger, or even close to the Pakistan explosion. Some users as far as the US, UK and Egypt received notifications asking if they were okay.^[231][232]

End-to-end encryption

In February 2021, the National Crime Agency of the UK expressed its concerns that the installation of end-to-end encryption methods would result in the spread of child pornography going undetected.^{[233][234][235]} Facebook representatives had previously told a UK Parliament committee that the use of these stronger encryption methods would render it easier for pedophiles to share child pornography on Facebook’s networks.^[233][236] The US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that around 70% of reports to law enforcement regarding the spread of child pornography on Facebook would be lost as a result of the implementation of end-to-end encryption.^[236]

In May 2021, Facebook came under fire from Ken McCallum, the Director-General of MI5, for its plans to introduce end-to-end encryption into its Messenger and Instagram services.^[233][237] McCallum stated that the introduction of such encryption methods would prevent security organizations from viewing communications related to ongoing terrorist plots and that the implementation of end-to-end encryption would block active counter-terrorism investigations.^{[233][237][238]}

Third-party responses to Facebook

Government censorship

Several countries have banned access to Facebook, including Syria,^[239] China,^[240] and Iran.^[241] In 2010, the Office of the Data Protection Supervisor, a branch of the government of the Isle of Man, received so many complaints about Facebook that they deemed it necessary to provide a “Facebook Guidance” booklet (available online as a PDF file), which cited (amongst other things) Facebook policies and guidelines and included an elusive Facebook telephone number. This number when called, however, proved to provide no telephone support for Facebook users, and only played back a recorded message advising callers to review Facebook’s online help information.^[242]

In 2010, Facebook reportedly allowed an objectionable page, deemed by the Islamic Lawyers Forum (ILF), to be anti-Muslim. The ILF filed a petition with Pakistan‘s Lahore High Court. On May 18, 2010, Justice Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry ordered Pakistan’s Telecommunication Authority to block access to Facebook until May 31. The offensive page had provoked street demonstrations in Muslim countries due to visual depictions of Prophet Mohammed, which are regarded as blasphemous by Muslims.^[243][244] A spokesman said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority would move to implement the ban once the order has been issued by the Ministry of Information and Technology. “We will implement the order as soon as we get the instructions”, Khurram Mehran told AFP. “We have already blocked the URL link and issued instruction to Internet service providers yesterday”, he added. Rai Bashir told AFP that “We moved the petition in the wake of widespread resentment in the Muslim community against the Facebook contents”. The petition called on the government of Pakistan to lodge a strong protest with the owners of Facebook, he added. Bashir said a PTA official told the judge his organization had blocked the page, but the court ordered a total ban on the site. People demonstrated outside court in the eastern city of Lahore, Pakistan, carrying banners condemning Facebook. Protests in Pakistan on a larger scale took place after the ban and widespread news of that objectionable page. The ban was lifted on May 31 after Facebook reportedly assured the Lahore High Court that it would remedy the issues in dispute.^{[245][246][247]}

In 2011, a court in Pakistan was petitioned to place a permanent ban on Facebook for hosting a page called “2nd Annual Draw Muhammad Day May 20th 2011”.^[248][249]

Organizations blocking access

Ontario government employees, Federal public servants, MPPs, and cabinet ministers were blocked from access to Facebook on government computers in May 2007.^[250] When the employees tried to access Facebook, a warning message “The Internet website that you have requested has been deemed unacceptable for use for government business purposes”. This warning also appears when employees try to access YouTube, MySpace, gambling or pornographic websites.^[251] However, innovative employees have found ways around such protocols, and many claim to use the site for political or work-related purposes.^[252]

A number of local governments including those in the UK^[253] and Finland^[254] imposed restrictions on the use of Facebook in the workplace due to the technical strain incurred. Other government-related agencies, such as the US Marine Corps have imposed similar restrictions.^[255] A number of hospitals in Finland have also restricted Facebook use citing privacy concerns.^[256][257]

Schools blocking access

The University of New Mexico (UNM) in October 2005 blocked access to Facebook from UNM campus computers and networks, citing unsolicited emails and a similar site called UNM Facebook.^[258] After a UNM user signed into Facebook from off campus, a message from Facebook said, “We are working with the UNM administration to lift the block and have explained that it was instituted based on erroneous information, but they have not yet committed to restore your access.” UNM, in a message to students who tried to access the site from the UNM network, wrote, “This site is temporarily unavailable while UNM and the site owners work out procedural issues. The site is in violation of UNM’s Acceptable Computer Use Policy for abusing computing resources (e.g., spamming, trademark infringement, etc.). The site forces use of UNM credentials (e.g., NetID or email address) for non-UNM business.” However, after Facebook created an encrypted login and displayed a precautionary message not to use university passwords for access, UNM unblocked access the following spring semester.^[259]

The Columbus Dispatch reported on June 22, 2006, that Kent State University‘s athletic director had planned to ban the use of Facebook by athletes and gave them until August 1 to delete their accounts.^[260] On July 5, 2006, the Daily Kent Stater reported that the director reversed the decision after reviewing the privacy settings of Facebook. As long as they followed the university’s policies of online conduct, they could keep their profiles.^[261]

Closed social networks

Several web sites concerned with social networking, such as Salesforce have criticized the lack of information that users get when they share data. Advanced users cannot limit the amount of information anyone can access in their profiles, but Facebook promotes the sharing of personal information for marketing purposes, leading to the promotion of the service using personal data from users who are not fully aware of this. Facebook exposes personal data, without supporting open standards for data interchange.^[262] According to several communities^[263] and authors^[264] closed social networking, on the other hand, promotes data retrieval from other people while not exposing one’s personal information.

Openbook was established in early 2010 both as a parody of Facebook and a critique of its changing privacy management protocols.^[265]

FB Purity

Fluff Busting Purity, or FB Purity for short (previously known as Facebook Purity) is a browser extension first launched in 2009 to allow users to remove annoyances such as spam from their feed and allow more individual control over what content is displayed.^[266] In response, Facebook banned its developer from using the platform and blocked links to the extension.^[267]

Unfollow Everything

Unfollow Everything is a browser extension designed to help Facebook users reduce their time spent on the platform by mass unliking to reduce the clutter in their news feed. The extension, together with its creator, has been banned by Facebook and subject to legal warnings.^{[268][269][270]}

Litigation

Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook, Inc., has been involved in many lawsuits since its founding in 2004.

Lobbying

Facebook is among the biggest spenders on lobbying among tech companies; in 2020, it was the highest spender.^[271] It spent more than $80 million on lobbying in the 2010s.^[272][273] This funding may serve to weaken privacy protections.^[274]

In March 2019, HuffPost reported that Facebook paid lawyer Ed Sussman to lobby for changes to their Wikipedia articles.^[275][276]

In December 2021, news broke on The Wall Street Journal pointing to Meta’s lobbying efforts to divide US lawmakers and “muddy the waters” in Congress, to hinder regulation following the 2021 whistleblower leaks.^[277] Facebook’s lobbyist team in Washington suggested to Republican lawmakers that the whistleblower “was trying to help Democrats,” while the narrative told to Democratic staffers was that Republicans “were focused on the company’s decision to ban expressions of support for Kyle Rittenhouse,” The Wall Street Journal reported. According to the article, the company’s goal was to “muddy the waters, divide lawmakers along partisan lines and forestall a cross-party alliance” against Facebook (now Meta) in Congress.^[278]

In March 2022, the Washington Post reported that Meta had hired the Republican-backed consulting firm Targeted Victory to coordinate lobbying and negative PR against the Chinese-owned video app TikTok via local media outlets, including concurrent promotion of corporate initiatives conducted by Facebook.^[279]

Terms of use controversy

While Facebook originally made changes to its terms of use^[280] or, terms of service, on February 4, 2009, the changes went unnoticed until Chris Walters, a blogger for the consumer-oriented blog, The Consumerist, noticed the change on February 15, 2009.^[281] Walters complained the change gave Facebook the right to “Do anything they want with your content. Forever.”^[282] The section under the most controversy is the “User Content Posted on the Site” clause. Before the changes, the clause read:^{[280][non-primary source needed]}

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

The “license granted” refers to the license that Facebook has to one’s “name, likeness, and image” to use in promotions and external advertising.^[280] The new terms of use deleted the phrase that states the license would “automatically expire” if a user chose to remove content. By omitting this line, Facebook license extends to adopt users’ content perpetually and irrevocably years after the content has been deleted.^[281]

Many users of Facebook voiced opinions against the changes to the Facebook Terms of Use, leading to an Internet-wide debate over the ownership of content. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) prepared a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. Many individuals were frustrated with the removal of the controversial clause. Facebook users, numbering more than 38,000, joined a user group against the changes, and a number of blogs and news sites have written about this issue.^[281]

After the change was brought to light in Walters’s blog entry, in his blog on February 16, 2009, Zuckerberg addressed the issues concerning the recently made changes to Facebook’s terms of use. Zuckerberg wrote “Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with.”^[283] In addition to this statement Zuckerberg explained the paradox created when people want to share their information (phone number, pictures, email address, etc.) with the public, but at the same time desire to remain in complete control of who has access to this info.^[284]

To calm criticism, Facebook returned to its original terms of use. However, on February 17, 2009, Zuckerberg wrote in his blog, that although Facebook reverted to its original terms of use, it is in the process of developing new terms to address the paradox. Zuckerberg stated that these new terms will allow Facebook users to “share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand.” Zuckerberg invited users to join a group entitled “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” to give their input and help shape the new terms.

On February 26, 2009, Zuckerberg posted a blog, updating users on the progress of the new Terms of Use. He wrote, “We decided we needed to do things differently and so we’re going to develop new policies that will govern our system from the ground up in an open and transparent way.” Zuckerberg introduces the two new additions to Facebook: the Facebook Principles^{[285][non-primary source needed]} and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.^{[286][non-primary source needed]} Both additions allow users to vote on changes to the terms of use before they are officially released. Because “Facebook is still in the business of introducing new and therefore potentially disruptive technologies”, Zuckerberg explains, users need to adjust and familiarize themselves with the products before they can adequately show their support.^[287]

This new voting system was initially applauded as Facebook’s step to a more democratized social network system.^[288] However, the new terms were harshly criticized in a report by computer scientists from the University of Cambridge, who stated that the democratic process surrounding the new terms is disingenuous and significant problems remain in the new terms.^[289] The report was endorsed by the Open Rights Group.^[290]

In December 2009, EPIC and a number of other U.S. privacy organizations filed another complaint^[291] with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding Facebook’s Terms of Service. In January 2011 EPIC filed a subsequent complaint^[292] claiming that Facebook’s new policy of sharing users’ home address and mobile phone information with third-party developers were “misleading and fail[ed] to provide users clear and privacy protections”, particularly for children under age 18.^[293] Facebook temporarily suspended implementation of its policy in February 2011, but the following month announced it was “actively considering” reinstating the third-party policy.^[294]

Interoperability and data portability

Facebook has been criticized for failing to offer users a feature to export their friends’ information, such as contact information, for use with other services or software. The inability of users to export their social graph in an open standard format contributes to vendor lock-in and contravenes the principles of data portability.^[295] Automated collection of user information without Facebook’s consent violates its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,^{[296][non-primary source needed]} and third-party attempts to do so (e.g., Web scraping) have resulted in litigation, Power.com.

Facebook Connect has been criticized for its lack of interoperability with OpenID.^[297]

Lawsuits over privacy

Facebook’s strategy of making revenue through advertising has created a lot of controversy for its users as some argue that it is “a bit creepy … but it is also brilliant.”^[298] Some Facebook users have raised privacy concerns because they do not like that Facebook sells user’s information to third parties. In 2012, users sued Facebook for using their pictures and information on a Facebook advertisement.^[299] Facebook gathers user information by keeping track of pages users have “Liked” and through the interactions users have with their connections.^[300] They then create value from the gathered data by selling it.^[300] In 2009 users also filed a lawsuit for Facebook’s privacy invasion through the Facebook Beacon system. Facebook’s team believed that through the Beacon system people could inspire their friends to buy similar products, however, users did not like the idea of sharing certain online purchases with their Facebook friends.^[301] Users were against Facebook’s invasion of privacy and sharing that privacy with the world. Facebook users became more aware of Facebook’s behavior with user information in 2009 as Facebook launched their new Terms of Service. In Facebook’s terms of service, Facebook admits that user information may be used for some of Facebook’s own purposes such as sharing a link to your posted images or for their own commercials and advertisements.^[302]

As Dijck argues in his book that, “the more users know about what happens to their personal data, the more inclined they are to raise objections.”^[300] This created a battle between Facebook and Facebook users described as the “battle for information control”.^[300] Facebook users have become aware of Facebook’s intentions and people now see Facebook “as serving the interests of companies rather than its users.”^[303] In response to Facebook selling user information to third parties, concerned users have resorted to the method of “Obfuscation“.^[304] Through obfuscation users can purposely hide their real identity and provide Facebook with false information that will make their collected data less accurate.^[304] By obfuscating information through sites such as FaceCloak, Facebook users have regained control of their personal information.^[304]

Better Business Bureau review

As of December 2010, the Better Business Bureau gave Facebook an “A” rating.^[305][306]

As of December 2010, the 36-month running count of complaints about Facebook logged with the Better Business Bureau is 1136, including 101 (“Making a full refund, as the consumer requested”), 868 (“Agreeing to perform according to their contract”), 1 (“Refuse [sic] to adjust, relying on terms of agreement”), 20 (“Unassigned”), 0 (“Unanswered”) and 136 (“Refusing to make an adjustment”).^[305]

Security

Facebook’s software has proven vulnerable to likejacking. On July 28, 2010, the BBC reported that security consultant Ron Bowes used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles to collect data of 100 million profiles. The data collected was not hidden by the user’s privacy settings. Bowes then published the list online. This list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user’s profile, their name and unique ID. Bowes said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook claimed it was already public information.^[307]

In early June 2013, The New York Times reported that an increase in malicious links related to the Trojan horse malware program Zeus were identified by Eric Feinberg, founder of the advocacy group Fans Against Kounterfeit Enterprise (FAKE). Feinberg said that the links were present on popular NFL Facebook fan pages and, following contact with Facebook, was dissatisfied with the corporation’s “after-the-fact approach”. Feinberg called for oversight, stating, “If you really want to hack someone, the easiest place to start is a fake Facebook profile—it’s so simple, it’s stupid.”^[308]

Rewards for vulnerability reporting

On August 19, 2013, it was reported that a Facebook user from Palestinian Autonomy, Khalil Shreateh, found a bug that allowed him to post material to other users’ Facebook Walls. Users are not supposed to have the ability to post material to the Facebook Walls of other users unless they are approved friends of those users that they have posted material to. To prove that he was telling the truth, Shreateh posted material to Sarah Goodin’s wall, a friend of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Following this, Shreateh contacted Facebook’s security team with the proof that his bug was real, explaining in detail what was going on. Facebook has a bounty program in which it compensates people a $500+ fee for reporting bugs instead of using them to their advantage or selling them on the black market. However, it was reported that instead of fixing the bug and paying Shreateh the fee, Facebook originally told him that “this was not a bug” and dismissed him. Shreateh then tried a second time to inform Facebook, but they dismissed him yet again. On the third try, Shreateh used the bug to post a message to Mark Zuckerberg’s Wall, stating “Sorry for breaking your privacy … but a couple of days ago, I found a serious Facebook exploit” and that Facebook’s security team was not taking him seriously. Within minutes, a security engineer contacted Shreateh, questioned him on how he performed the move and ultimately acknowledged that it was a bug in the system. Facebook temporarily suspended Shreateh’s account and fixed the bug after several days. However, in a move that was met with much public criticism and disapproval, Facebook refused to pay out the 500+ fee to Shreateh; instead, Facebook responded that by posting to Zuckerberg’s account, Shreateh had violated one of their terms of service policies and therefore “could not be paid”. Included with this, the Facebook team strongly censured Shreateh over his manner of resolving the matter. In closing, they asked that Shreateh continue to help them find bugs.^{[309][310][311]}

On August 22, 2013, Yahoo News reported that Marc Maiffret, a chief technology officer of the cybersecurity firm BeyondTrust, is prompting hackers to help raise a $10,000 reward for Khalil Shreateh. On August 20, Maiffret stated that he had already raised $9,000 in his efforts, including the $2,000 he himself contributed. He and other hackers alike have denounced Facebook for refusing Shreateh compensation. Maiffret said: “He is sitting there in Palestine doing this research on a five-year-old laptop that looks like it is half broken. It’s something that might help him out in a big way.” Facebook representatives have since responded, “We will not change our practice of refusing to pay rewards to researchers who have tested vulnerabilities against real users.” Facebook representatives also claimed they’d paid out over $1 million to individuals who have discovered bugs in the past.^[312]

Environmental impacts

In 2010, Prineville, Oregon, was chosen as the site for Facebook’s new data center.^[313] However, the center has been met with criticism from environmental groups such as Greenpeace because the power utility company contracted for the center, PacifiCorp, generates 60% of its electricity from coal.^{[314][315][316]} In September 2010, Facebook received a letter from Greenpeace containing half a million signatures asking the company to cut its ties to coal-based electricity.^[317]

On April 21, 2011, Greenpeace released a report showing that of the top ten big brands in cloud computing, Facebook relied the most on coal for electricity for its data centers. At the time, data centers consumed up to 2% of all global electricity and this amount was projected to increase. Phil Radford of Greenpeace said “we are concerned that this new explosion in electricity use could lock us into old, polluting energy sources instead of the clean energy available today”.^[318]

On December 15, 2011, Greenpeace and Facebook announced together that Facebook would shift to use clean and renewable energy to power its own operations. Marcy Scott Lynn, of Facebook’s sustainability program, said it looked forward “to a day when our primary energy sources are clean and renewable” and that the company is “working with Greenpeace and others to help bring that day closer”.^[319][320]

In April 2022, Meta Platforms, Alphabet Inc., Shopify, McKinsey & Company, and Stripe, Inc. announced a $925 million advance market commitment of carbon dioxide removal from companies that are developing the technology over the next 9 years.^[321][322] In January 2023, the American Clean Power Association released an annual industry report that found that 326 corporations had contracted 77.4 gigawatts of wind or solar energy by the end of 2022 and that the three corporate purchasers of the largest volumes of wind and solar energy were Meta Platforms, Amazon, and Alphabet Inc.^[323]

Advertising

Click fraud

In July 2012, startup Limited Run claimed that 80% of its Facebook clicks came from bots.^{[324][325][326]} Limited Run co-founder Tom Mango told TechCrunch that they “spent roughly a month testing this” with six web analytics services including Google Analytics and in-house software.^[324] Click fraud (Allege reason) Limited Run said it came to the conclusion that the clicks were fraudulent after running its own analysis. It determined that most of the clicks for which Facebook was charging it came from computers that were not loading Javascript, a programming language that allows Web pages to be interactive. Almost all Web browsers load Javascript by default, so the assumption is that if a click comes from one that is not, it’s probably not a real person but a bot.^[327]

Like fraud

Facebook offers an advertising tool for pages to get more “likes”.^{[328][non-primary source needed]} According to Business Insider, this advertising tool is called “Suggested Posts” or “Suggested Pages”, allowing companies to market their page to thousands of new users for as little as $50.^[329]

Global Fortune 100 firms are increasingly using social media marketing tools as the number of “likes” per Facebook page has risen by 115% globally.^{[clarification needed][330]} Biotechnology company Comprendia investigated Facebook’s “likes” through advertising by analyzing the life science pages with the most likes. They concluded that at as much as 40% of “likes” from company pages are suspected to be fake.^[331] According to Facebook’s annual report, an estimated 0.4% and 1.2% of active users are undesirable accounts that create fake likes.^[332]

Small companies such as PubChase have publicly testified against Facebook’s advertising tool, claiming legitimate advertising on Facebook creates fraudulent Facebook “likes”. In May 2013, PubChase decided to build up its Facebook following through Facebook’s advertising tool, which promises to “connect with more of the people who matter to you”. After the first day, the company grew suspicious of the increased likes as they ended up with 900 likes from India. According to PubChase, none of the users behind the “likes” seemed to be scientists. The statistics from Google Analytics indicate that India is not in the company’s main user base. PubChase continues by stating that Facebook has no interface to delete the fake likes; rather, the company must manually delete each follower themselves.^[333]

In February 2014, Derek Muller used his YouTube account Veritasium to upload a video titled “Facebook Fraud”. Within three days, the video had gone viral with more than a million views (it has reached 6,371,759 views as of December 15, 2021). In the video, Muller illustrates how after paying US$50 to Facebook advertising, the “likes” to his fan page have tripled in a few days and soon reached 70,000 “likes”, compared to his original 2,115 likes before the advertising. Despite the significant increase in likes, Muller noticed his page has actually decreased in engagement – there were fewer people commenting, sharing, and liking his posts and updates despite the significant increase in “likes”. Muller also noticed that the users that “liked” his page were users that liked hundreds of other pages, including competing pages such as AT&T and T-Mobile. He theorizes that users are purposely clicking “like” on any and every page to deter attention away from the pages they were paid to “like”. Muller claims, “I never bought fake likes, I used Facebook legitimate advertising, but the results are as if I paid for fake likes from a click farm”.^{[334][better source needed]}

In response to the fake “likes” complaints, Facebook told Business Insider:

We’re always focused on maintaining the integrity of our site, but we’ve placed an increased focus on abuse from fake accounts recently. We’ve made a lot of progress by building a combination of automated and manual systems to block accounts used for fraudulent purposes and Like button clicks. We also take action against sellers of fake clicks and help shut them down.^[329]

Undesired targeting

On August 3, 2007, several British companies, including First Direct, Vodafone, Virgin Media, The Automobile Association, Halifax and Prudential pulled advertising in Facebook after finding that their ads were displayed on the page of the British National Party, a far-right political party.^[335]

Facilitation of housing discrimination

Facebook has faced allegations that its advertising platforms facilitate housing discrimination by means of internal functions for targeted advertising, which allowed advertisers to target or exclude specific audiences from campaigns.^{[336][337][338]} Researchers have also found that Facebook’s advertising platform may be inherently discriminatory, since ad delivery is also influenced by how often specific demographics interact with specific types of advertising – even if they are not explicitly determined by the advertiser.^[339]

Under the United States’ Fair Housing Act, it is illegal to show a preference for or against tenants based on specific protected classes (including race, ethnicity, and disabilities), when advertising or negotiating the rental or sale of housing. In 2016, ProPublica found that advertisers could target or exclude users from advertising based on an “Ethnic Affinity” – a demographic trait which is determined based on a user’s interests and behaviors on Facebook, and not explicitly provided by the user. This could, in turn, be used to discriminate based on race.^[340] In February 2017, Facebook stated that it would implement stronger measures to forbid discriminatory advertising across the entire platform. Advertisers who attempt to create ads for housing, employment, or credit (HEC) opportunities would be blocked from using ethnic affinities (renamed “multicultural affinities” and now classified as behaviors) to target the ad. If an advertiser uses any other audience segment to target ads for HEC, they would be informed of the policies, and be required to affirm their compliance with relevant laws and policies.^[341]

However, in November 2017, ProPublica found that automated enforcement of these new policies was inconsistent. They were also able to successfully create housing ads that excluded users based on interests and other factors that effectively imply associations with protected classes, including interests in wheelchair ramps, the Spanish-language television network Telemundo, and New York City ZIP codes with majority minority populations. In response to the report, Facebook temporarily removed the ability to target any ad with exclusions based on multicultural affinities.^[336][338]

In April 2018, Facebook permanently removed the ability to create exclusions based on multicultural affinities. In July 2018, Facebook signed a legally binding agreement with the State of Washington to take further steps within 90 days to prevent the use of its advertising platform for housing discrimination against protected classes.^[342] The following month, Facebook announced that it would remove at least 5,000 categories from its exclusion system to prevent “misuse”, including those relating to races and religions.^[343] On March 19, 2019, Facebook settled a lawsuit over the matter with the National Fair Housing Alliance, agreeing to create a separate portal for HEC advertising with limited targeting options by September 2019, and to provide a public archive of all HEC advertising.^[344][345]

On March 28, 2019, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) filed a lawsuit against Facebook, having filed a formal complaint against the company on August 13, 2018. The HUD also took issue with Facebook’s tendency to deliver ads based on users having “particular characteristics [that are] most likely to engage with the ad”.^[346][337]

Fake accounts

In August 2012, Facebook revealed that more than 83 million Facebook accounts (8.7% of total users) are fake accounts.^[347] These fake profiles consist of duplicate profiles, accounts for spamming purposes and personal profiles for business, organization or non-human entities such as pets.^[348] As a result of this revelation, the share price of Facebook dropped below $20.^[349] Furthermore, there is much effort to detect fake profiles using automated means, in one such work, machine learning techniques are used to detect fake users.^[350]

Facebook initially refused to remove a “business” page devoted to a woman’s anus, created without her knowledge while she was underage, due to other Facebook users having expressed interest in the topic. After BuzzFeed published a story about it, the page was finally removed. The page listed her family’s former home address as that of the “business”.^[351]

User interface

Upgrades

September 2008

In September 2008, Facebook permanently moved its users to what they termed the “New Facebook” or Facebook 3.0.^[352] This version contained several different features and a complete layout redesign. Between July and September, users had been given the option to use the new Facebook in place of the original design,^[353] or to return to the old design.

Facebook’s decision to migrate their users was met with some controversy in their community. Several groups started opposing the decision, some with over a million users.^[354]

October 2009

In October 2009, Facebook redesigned the news feed so that the user could view all types of things that their friends were involved with. In a statement, they said,^[284]

your applications [stories] generate can show up in both views. The best way for your stories to appear in the News Feed filter is to create stories that are highly engaging, as high quality, interesting stories are most likely to garner likes and comments by the user’s friends.

This redesign was explained as:^[284]

News Feed will focus on popular content, determined by an algorithm based on interest in that story, including the number of times an item is liked or commented on. Live Feed will display all recent stories from a large number of a user’s friends.

The redesign was met immediately with criticism with users, many who did not like the amount of information that was coming at them. This was also compounded by the fact that people could not select what they saw.

November/December 2009

In November 2009, Facebook issued a proposed new privacy policy, and adopted it unaltered in December 2009. They combined this with a rollout of new privacy settings. This new policy declared certain information, including “lists of friends”, to be “publicly available”, with no privacy settings; it was previously possible to keep access to this information restricted. Due to this change, the users who had set their “list of friends” as private were forced to make it public without even being informed, and the option to make it private again was removed. This was protested by many people and privacy organizations such as the EFF.^[355]

The change was described by Ryan Tate as Facebook’s Great Betrayal,^[356] forcing user profile photos and friends lists to be visible in users’ public listing, even for users who had explicitly chosen to hide this information previously,^[355] and making photos and personal information public unless users were proactive about limiting access.^[357] For example, a user whose “Family and Relationships” information was set to be viewable by “Friends Only” would default to being viewable by “Everyone” (publicly viewable). That is, information such as the gender of the partner the user is interested in, relationship status, and family relations became viewable to those even without a Facebook account. Facebook was heavily criticized^[358] for both reducing its users’ privacy and pushing users to remove privacy protections. Groups criticizing the changes include the Electronic Frontier Foundation^[355] and American Civil Liberties Union.^[359] Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, had hundreds of personal photos and his events calendar exposed in the transition.^[360] Facebook has since re-included an option to hide friends lists from being viewable; however, this preference is no longer listed with other privacy settings, and the former ability to hide the friends list from selected people among one’s own friends is no longer possible.^[361] Journalist Dan Gillmor deleted his Facebook account over the changes, stating he “can’t entirely trust Facebook”^[362] and Heidi Moore at Slate’s Big Money temporarily deactivated her account as a “conscientious objection”.^[363] Other journalists have been similarly disappointed and outraged by the changes.^[356] Defending the changes, founder Mark Zuckerberg said “we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it”.^[364] The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada launched another investigation into Facebook’s privacy policies after complaints following the change.^[365]

January 2018

Following a difficult 2017, marked by accusations of relaying fake news and revelations about groups close to Russia which tried to influence the 2016 US presidential election (see Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections) via advertisements on his service, Mark Zuckerberg, announced in his traditional January post:

“We’re making a major change to how we build Facebook. I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions”.

— Mark Zuckerberg

Following surveys on Facebook users,^[366] this desire for change will take the form of a reconfiguration of the News Feed algorithms to:

• Prioritize content of family members and friends (Mark Zuckerberg January 12, Facebook:^[367] “The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups”.)
• Give priority to news articles from local sources considered more credible

The recent changes of the News Feed algorithm^[367] (see content : News Feed#History) are expected to improve “the amount of meaningful content viewed”.^[368] To this end, the new algorithm is supposed to determine the publications around which a user is most likely to interact with his friends, and make them appear higher in the News Feed instead of items for example from media companies or brands. These are posts “that inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to”.^[369] But, as even Mark Zuckerberg admitted,^[367] he “expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down. But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable”. The less public content a Facebook user sees on their News Feed, the fewer brands are able to reach consumers. That’s unarguably a major lose for advertisers^[370] and publishers.

This change which seems to be just another update of the social network, is widely criticized because of the heavy consequences it might lead to “In countries such as the Philippines, Myanmar and South Sudan and emerging democracies such Bolivia and Serbia, it is not ethical to plead platform neutrality or to set up the promise of a functioning news ecosystem and then simply withdraw at a whim”.^[371] Indeed, in such countries, Facebook was the promise of a reliable and objective platform on which they could hope for raw information. Independent media companies tried to fight censorship through their articles and were promoting in a way the right for citizens to know what is going on in their countries.

The company’s way of handling scandals and criticism over fake news by diminishing its media company image is even defined as “potentially deadly”^[371] regarding the poor and fraught political environments like Myanmar or South Sudan appealed by the “free basics” programme of the social network. Serbian journalist Stevan Dojcinovic goes further by describing Facebook as a “monster” and accuses the company of “showing a cynical lack of concern for how its decisions affect the most vulnerable”.^[372] Indeed, Facebook had experimented with withdrawing media companies’ news on user’s newsfeed in few countries such as Serbia. Stevan Docjcinovic then wrote an article explaining how Facebook helped them “to bypass mainstream channels and bring [their] stories to hundreds of thousands of readers”.^[372] The rule about publishers is not being applied to paid posts raising the journalist’s fears about the social network “becoming just another playground for the powerful”^[372] by letting them for example buy Facebook ads. Critics are also visible in other media companies depicting the private company as the “destroyer of worlds”. LittleThings CEO, Joe Speiser states that the algorithm shift “took out roughly 75% of LittleThings” organic traffic while hammering its profit margins”^[373] compelling them to close their doors because they were relying on Facebook to share content.

Net neutrality

“Free Basics” controversy in India

In February 2016, TRAI ruled against differential data pricing for limited services from mobile phone operators effectively ending zero-rating platforms in India. Zero rating provides access to a limited number of websites for no charge to the end user. Net-neutrality supporters from India (SaveTheInternet.in) brought out the negative implications of the Facebook Free Basic program and spread awareness to the public.^[374] Facebook’s Free Basics program^[375] was a collaboration with Reliance Communications to launch Free Basics in India. The TRAI ruling against differential pricing marked the end of Free Basics in India.^[376]

Earlier, Facebook had spent US$44 million in advertising and it implored all of its Indian users to send an email to the Telecom Regulatory Authority to support its program.^[377] TRAI later asked Facebook to provide specific responses from the supporters of Free Basics.^[378][379]

Treatment of potential competitors

In December 2018 details on Facebook’s behavior against competitors surfaced. The UK parliament member Damian Collins released files from a court ruling between Six4Three and Facebook. According to those files, the social media company Twitter released its app Vine in 2013. Facebook blocked Vine’s Access to its data.^[380]

In July 2020, Facebook along with other tech giants Apple, Amazon and Google were accused of maintaining harmful power and anti-competitive strategies to quash potential competitors in the market.^[381] The CEOs of respective firms appeared in a teleconference on July 29, 2020, before the lawmakers of the United States Congress.^[382]

Influence on elections

In what is known as the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Facebook users were targeted with political advertising without informed consent in an attempt to promote right-wing causes, including the presidential election of Donald Trump.^[383] In addition to elections in the United States, Facebook has been implicated in electoral influence campaigns in places like Argentina, Kenya, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, as discussed in the 2019 documentary The Great Hack.^[384][385]

Blocking wildfire news

In response to the Online News Act, Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook, began blocking access to news sites for Canadian users at the beginning of August 2023.^[386][387] This also extended to local Canadian news stories about the wildfires,^[388] a decision that was heavily criticized by Trudeau, local government officials, academics, researchers, and evacuees.^{[389][390][391]}

Ollie Williams of Yellowknife’s Cabin Radio said that users had to resort to posting screenshots of news stories, as posting news directly would result in the link getting blocked.^[391][388]

Meta responded to these criticisms by stating that Canadians “can continue to use our technologies to connect with their communities and access reputable information […] from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organizations,” and encouraged them to use Facebook’s Safety Check feature.^[389][392]

See also

References

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• “Meta starts blocking news in Canada over law on paying publishers”. Reuters. August 1, 2023. Archived from the original on August 22, 2023. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
• Lindeman, Tracey (August 4, 2023). “‘Disaster’: warning for democracy as experts condemn Meta over Canada news ban”. The Guardian. Archived from the original on August 26, 2023. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
• Ljunggren, David (August 18, 2023). “Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing”. Reuters. Archived from the original on August 24, 2023. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
• Woolf, Marie; Walsh, Marieke; Smith, Alanna (August 21, 2023). “Trudeau accuses Facebook of prioritizing profits by blocking news access during wildfires”. The Globe and Mail. With a report from The Canadian Press. Archived from the original on August 24, 2023. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
• Gillies, Rob (August 21, 2023). “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau slams Facebook for blocking Canada wildfire news”. Associated Press. Archived from the original on August 25, 2023. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
• Evans, Pete (August 18, 2023). “N.W.T. wildfire evacuees say Facebook’s news ban ‘dangerous’ in emergency situation”. CBC News. Archived from the original on August 24, 2023. Retrieved August 24, 2023.

Further reading

• Mims, Christopher (June 1, 2011). “How Facebook Leveraged Publishers’ Desperation to Build a Web-Wide Tracking System”. Technology Review. Archived from the original on February 9, 2012. Retrieved June 1, 2011.
• “Facebook: Friend or Foe?”. LifeIvy. May 15, 2013
• Funk, McKenzie (November 19, 2016). “The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz”. The New York Times. Retrieved January 25, 2017.
• How Facebook’s tentacles reach further than you think (May 26, 2017), BBC
• Lanchester, John (August 2017), “You Are the Product”, London Review of Books, 39 (16): 3–10
• Oremus, Will (April 2018), “Are You Really the Product? The history of a dangerous idea”, Slate, 39 (16)
• Greenspan, Aaron (January 24, 2019), Reality Check:Facebook, Inc.

External links

• Media related to Criticism of Facebook at Wikimedia Commons