Facebook’s next project: American inequality
We don't need more big data studies to figure out what is causing poverty or how to fix it. Poverty in America is caused by:
- real wages decreasing since 1980
- the commoditizing of labor (e.g. janitorial companies, the "sharing economy")
- ever-decreasing investment in infrastructure
- tying wealth to real estate prices
- an educational system that leaves many young people mired in debt
- tying healthcare to employment and the price of healthcare in general. The first kills labor mobility. The second either bankrupts or kills you.
- mass incarceration destroying families and individuals
- regulatory capture allowing big businesses to beat down all the small ones
- a monoculture that tremendously decreases resiliency
I believe this is a PR piece for FB -- in the end, ignoring the details, this piece leaves you feeling that 1) FB cares about people and 2) FB cares about America.
I'm not buying that. Check out how FB had no problem letting Philippines President Duterte get elected by using FB, including sending FB consultants to the Philippines -- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-07/how-rodri...
Facebook is just a giant, very dangerous social experimentation platform where none of the participants get compensated and if the experiment goes horribly wrong, the response from Zuck is "we need to do better."
"Person With 72 Billion Dollars Wonders Why Nobody Else Has Any Money"
This will require lots of study. Mark should probably build another wall around his mansion in order to allow him to concentrate.
They could start by paying every one of their employees a decent salary starting from janitors up. They could also not hire cheap contracting companies for a lot of services but instead hire people directly and pay them well. If they want to understand inequality they just have to look at their own company and see how the higher ups reap most of the benefits.
I would imagine that it's an incomplete data set. There are probably societal factors, at all points in the spectrum, that limit FB use.
Also, will we get a number showing how much addictive FB use correlates to economic status? I have a feeling the corporate benefactor wouldn't allow that.
What was their last big philanthropic project of this scope that was successful?.. If any. I am legitimately curious.
And once they figure out the issues, how many of their billions of dollars will they donate to help solve them? Corporate greed has never once solved inequality, only made it worse. You’ll have to pardon me if I find it hard to believe that a company whose sole purpose is to make money by selling ads is going to finally solve America’s inequality problem, as though Facebook could make the justice system less racist, or the healthcare system less expensive, or the educational system less expensive, or the job market less competitive.
For those interested, Raj Chetty, the young economist leading the study, taught course titled "Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social Problem" that is available on Youtube[1].
The popular course is taught as an introduction to economics for Stanford freshman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqAeKQJcaUU&list=PLDcD0S_1fQ...
In other evidence of Facebook's success in leveraging big data approaches to manage participation in public discourse: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-facebook/fac...
Trying to interpret the message: "Facebook struggles to seize the demographic of T. voters"
Facebook is for old people
Please Mark, Stop doing us any more favors. Democracy has been wounded by Facebooks handling of Russian interference and blind eye, now whats left of the social cohesion we have is next in your sights?