Social media’s business model is just plain unethical. In his 2013 book, “Who Owns the Future,” computer scientist Jaron Lanier suggested that their business practices should be illegal and described social media companies as “private spy agencies crossed with ad agencies, which are licensed by us to spy on all of us all the time in order to accumulate billions of dollars by manipulating what’s put in front of us over supposedly open and public networks.
Naturally, social media is the preferred platform to pull off large-scale crimes and scams. Criminals and charlatans have had a field day during the COVID-19 crisis and some American politicians slammed social media companies for not taking responsibility for the disinformation and shenanigans that run rampant on their platforms. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Google and Facebook “amplify the most inflammatory content, no matter how dangerous or false.
The project alleges that those who turn to Google to search out how to access government funds are being shown ads that link to scams, phony sites and spread malware. In its letter to the FTC, the Tech Transparency Project stated: “We found that at least 45 of the 126 ads identified clearly violated Google’s advertising policies, and only 17 linked to government or other official sources.”
The FTC estimates that one in 10 adults in the U.S. will fall victim to fraud every year, and the vast majority of those scams take place online.
Project Veritas just released a new sting video on facebook. Disgusting company.