The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

The online outage has caused turmoil on the social media platform as it is buried under a heap of criticism in the U.S. Congress. The company is accused of using hatred, misinformation and discontent in order to inflate its audience, i.e., its pockets. At least the tech world is no exception to this particular situation. For giants, the wound is all the more painful when it comes from inside. In this instance, it is inflicted by former female employee. This expert on content distribution rules left Facebook with her files, to better unpack them in front of legislators.

Mark Zuckerberg, once a revered boss, is not going to “like’ this bile-sharing scenario. There are some comparisons that hurt, especially in the United States. With its not so social networks, Facebook is being compared to the tobacco industry, which was expert in addicting young people and in responding with smoke and mirrors on toxicity studies.

Is Facebook, with its cat videos, therefore a monster in the hands of its inventor? The economic creature, at the very least, no longer meets its civic responsibility. It is tempting for it to gorge itself with money by playing on user weaknesses. Anything on the web as long as it pays; denounce American elected officials, eager to bring to an end the laws of the virtual jungle.

When it’s not complicit in the mass siphoning of identity data, the company that claims to have 3.5 billion “clicks” is seen as a tool in the fracturing of society, preferring traffic numbers on the site to theories of individual protection.

For years, there has been one apology after another. But the apologies are sometimes more disastrous than the attacks: Facebook invited unregistered users to open accounts if they wanted to control their profile in cyberspace.

After so many complaints on so many fronts, and now an indictment of the way it operates, the California company swears again it will make amends, like a sorcerer’s apprentice embarrassed after breaking the magic vials. As if he, who seeks to refine his digital potions to prolong their effects, was still believable.