Facebook at 15 and the future: Where to next?
By Felicity Duncan
Facebook is 15 years old this February. Its first 15 years have been nothing short of jaw-dropping. Operating under the mantra "Move fast and break things," the company has built an advertising juggernaut that vacuums up enormous reams of personal information about its users and deploys that data in the service of advertisers. If you're looking to sell T-shirts to middle-income, racist, rugby-loving men in the Eastern Cape, Facebook has you covered.
But in the process, Facebook has broken things. Lots of things. Important things. Like electoral systems, which proved to be fatally vulnerable to the spread of fake news and false outrage, or health systems, as highlighted by the spread of anti-scientific anti-vaccine propaganda that has played a role renewed outbreaks of deadly childhood diseases like measles.
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