Facebook Inc.: Providing a Good, Beautiful, Cost-Free Service?

Who would think that a company offering a good, beautiful, even cost-free service could possibly exist in the United States, the most advanced country in the world in capitalist terms? What is it that makes Facebook so hugely wealthy that the company is worth thousands of millions of dollars, to date $150 trillion?

The 21st century so far has seen the so-called social networks revolutionize the way we think and become a necessity for millions of people all over the world. Facebook, a company which has achieved in a few years what the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was unable to do in decades, is currently the most popular network in the world, with over a billion users.

Two years ago Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said that if you have a Gmail account, a Facebook account or a Blackberry, you have pretty much had it. What he was suggesting is that social networks are actually rather more than just social networks. The more cynical among us believe that Facebook exceeds the scope of a social network and is more of an “intelligence service that uses every single trace left by users in order to make money from them,” a “CIA project,” an “information predator,”* a “universal marketing vacuum,”* a “planetary data-cruncher,” a “spy’s dream come true,” “the most appalling spy machine that has ever been invented.”

The source of the network’s enormous wealth is its users’ privacy, and the more Facebook can find out about its users, the more money it can make. People offer their personal information to Facebook and put their trust in it. In return, Facebook allows people to be a part of the network and enjoy all its benefits. Users can quietly socialize to their hearts’ content while Facebook sells, stores and converts their personal information into profit, using the private lives of millions to the network’s financial gain.

Without a doubt, Facebook functions as a means of exchange of information: It is used as a platform where activists and progressive organizations very often carry considerable weight and influence, as a place where entire societies amuse themselves and become interconnected. Users keep up with the news, connect with their loved ones, express their likes, their frustrations, their emotions, their political views.

At the same time, the world is in danger of losing ground as far as privacy and genuine freedoms are concerned. We are at risk of turning a person into little more than a product, of allowing machines — individualist in their essence, with light and shade at their heart, and fundamentally interested in making money — to shape the way we think.

Good, beautiful, and even cost-free. Too beautiful to be true.

*This quote, accurately translated, cannot be verified.