A turning point for Facebook?

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: This Tech Tent examines allegations that Facebook knew about harms on its platform but failed to respond adequately, the business case and risks of virtual worlds, and a UK initiative to make cultural collections searchable online. It also covers the EU’s proposed common phone charger and Lithuania’s warnings about security concerns in some Chinese-made handsets.

Main Topics: Facebook’s internal knowledge and accountability: A Wall Street Journal investigation and a Rhode Island pension fund lawsuit raise questions about whether Facebook prioritised its reputation and growth over addressing harms. David Kirkpatrick argues the company’s global scale outstripped its capacity and motivation to respond, while noting that its oversight board is beginning to challenge it. Improbable and the promise of the metaverse: Founder Herman Narula argues that shared virtual worlds can meet needs for social interaction and self-expression. He presents Improbable as a business-to-business technology enabler moving toward profitability, while the discussion questions whether demand and revenue will justify expectations and whether virtual spaces can avoid offline harms. Digitising and connecting cultural collections: The UK’s Towards a National Collection programme aims to use machine learning, knowledge graphs, natural-language processing and computer vision to let people search across museums, galleries, archives, libraries and historic records, including material not normally on public display. Proposed universal phone charger in the EU: The EU proposal would require smartphones sold in the bloc to use USB-C, aiming to reduce electronic waste and make existing chargers reusable. Apple objects that mandating a connector could hinder innovation; the proposal would take years to come into effect. Security concerns about Chinese-made phones: Lithuania urged consumers to avoid or discard Chinese-made phones after a national cybersecurity report identified censorship capability in a Xiaomi handset and a concern involving third-party app stores on a Huawei model. Xiaomi disputed that it censors users, and the programme notes the study was small and politically contextualised.

Key Arguments: Kirkpatrick argues that Facebook’s public-company incentives and Zuckerberg’s growing wealth coincided with a company becoming too large and globally complex to manage its harms effectively. Facebook’s effort against misinformation was unevenly distributed: Kirkpatrick cites internal documents indicating that only 13% of the work took place outside the US, despite most of the company’s users being outside the country. The podcast treats the newly public internal documents and apparent employee leaks as significant because they reveal company operations and focus scrutiny increasingly on Mark Zuckerberg, not just on Facebook’s public statements. Narula argues that virtual worlds can provide forms of shared presence, social interaction and self-expression that ordinary video or social media cannot. He says Improbable is a business-to-business enabler rather than a consumer platform, and claims it is on a path to break-even. The metaverse’s social risks remain unresolved: Jane Wakefield points to harmful behaviour found in games and argues that virtual spaces are unlikely to be immune to prejudice and hate found offline. A cross-institutional digital collection would make dispersed cultural material easier to discover and reveal connections between objects, art and historical records that are difficult to find through one institution at a time. The EU charger proposal is presented as a practical waste-reduction measure, while the competing argument is that imposing one connector could constrain technological development.

Data Points: Facebook users: 350 million when Kirkpatrick’s book first appeared; just over 500 million in 2011; over 3 billion across its services at the time of the interview - Kirkpatrick used the growth figures to illustrate how Facebook’s scale had changed since his sympathetic account of the company. Facebook misinformation work outside the United States: 13% of the work; about 90% of users were outside the United States - Kirkpatrick cited internal documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal to argue that resources did not match the global distribution of users. Employee hours devoted to misinformation: About 3 million employee hours in 2020 - Kirkpatrick said this figure, from the internal documents, should be considered alongside the small share of work conducted outside the US. Facebook Oversight Board funding: More than $100 million - Kirkpatrick said Facebook had funded the board and could not take that funding back, as the board increasingly challenged the company. Improbable investment and valuation: $500 million investment in 2017; company valued at over $1 billion - The investment came from Japan’s SoftBank, when Improbable had very little revenue and no profits. Improbable customers and embedded developers: More than 60 major publishers as customers; over 250 developers embedded with partner companies - Narula used these figures to describe Improbable’s business-to-business role. Improbable projected growth and profitability: Revenue growth of 70%, with another 70% projected for the following year; break-even projected across technology and games services the following year - These were company projections given by Narula during the interview, not independently verified results. Phone charger types in the EU: About 50% USB micro-B, 29% USB-C, and 21% Apple Lightning - A 2019 European Commission study cited in the discussion on the proposed common charger. Potentially censorable terms on a Xiaomi phone: 449 terms - Lithuania’s National Cyber Security Center said a Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G handset had the capacity to detect and censor these terms; the capability was reportedly turned off but could be remotely activated. Machine-learning task for cultural collections: Work that could take 100 years manually - Rebecca Bailey described using automated methods to build links across large collections at scale.

Pivotal Quotes: "They're not really motivated to do anything to remediate the harms, unfortunately, at scale." — David Kirkpatrick: His assessment of Facebook’s response to harms revealed in the Wall Street Journal’s reporting. "The value of a virtual experience comes from its ability to fulfil our psychological needs." — Herman Narula: His central case for why people might choose shared virtual-world experiences. "We want to get to a point where people can search right across those collections." — Rebecca Bailey: The goal of the UK programme to make collections across cultural institutions searchable together.

Implications: Platforms and virtual worlds face growing pressure to demonstrate that their governance matches their reach and ambitions. Meanwhile, common charging standards could reduce waste, and connected digital archives could widen access to culture—though neither online access nor immersive experiences replace the value of physical institutions.