Meta’s choice does not come out of the blue. Like other Big Tech companies, it is a commercial company that has to make phone number library a profit and adapt to new circumstances. That could be a new competitor, or a changing political wind. In an article I wrote for Frankwatching in 2012, I already stated that “Facebook goes with the flow”. We see this pattern again and again.
Meta has been sharpening its business model over the years to make more profit. Even if that means that consumer confidence or public values come under pressure. As I wrote 13 years ago:
To say that Facebook is no angel
A seems an understatement. In addition to accusations of tax evasion, Facebook has a knack for flouting privacy rules. This includes accusations like a marketplace, decentralized platformsbout facial recognition and the retention of deleted photos. Facebook users are also tracked even after they log out.
We were already shouting en masse that we would turn our backs on the platforms of Big Tech, but that never really happened.
Public values are not a priority
Yet with every new controversial move by Big Tech, there seems to be a kind of collective outrage. Prominent figures from The Hague have now expressed their dissatisfaction with X: Eva Heijblom, Director-General of Digitalisation and Government Organisation at the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, noted that “citizens are not seen as citizens by these platforms, but as instruments for data collection”. Laurens Dassen, chair of the Volt faction, called X “once a village square, now a toxic place” and announced that he would be leaving the platform.
The comparison with citizens on a village square is, however, misplaced. As I wrote in Trouw in early 2023 : “Twitter is not a village china numbers square, just as a bookstore is not a library. Twitter is a private company and pursues commercial goals, not public ones. In the above comparison, Twitter is at most the pub on the village square.”