asked me, a colleague a few days ago, if I not something to 15. Birthday of Facebook wanted to write, I Clearly said:”!” A little look back at the history of the company, Zuckerberg, and Sandberg, a bit of Tech-green currently-nostalgia, the great crisis of the past two years: Easy. I would be Emperor of the packaging in a congratulatory letter to Mark Zuckerberg: “congratulations, Mr. Zuckerberg, but … “, with a title à la: “Dear child.” Locker. Fuzzy. A bit of an admonition. So I let then be.

Because everything that has to do with Facebook to, no longer curly. And certainly not flaky. And when I look back on the past 15 years, I can no longer do so, as this group was a “friend”, I just nice, friendly and well-meaning congratulations. To powerful this Facebook, with its billion users, with its intentions and methods often to grip. The Russian election helper for Trump? Fake News? The brown hatred from so many Posts welled and swells? Cambridge Analytica? The strange Lobby policy? None of this can like.

“one of the Biggest frauds of all time”

rip-off allegations against Zuckerberg: every second Facebook Account a Fake?

endure no, I do not believe it is with Robert Habeck and entleibe me with the Grand gesture of network technically. Also, I think, we must manure the digital source end already usually endure. The Internet reveals also so much Human, what we do not have only not seen, because it was simply not visible. It is a regulars ‘ table, with many social advantages, and many of the nasty disadvantages and a host is always more doubt.

So, not a cheerful congratulations. For whoever congratulates a tobacco company or a gun manufacturer or who is congratulated with a pure heart of the Soviet Union? Yes, Yes, I know, I follow the news. Facebook now wants to do everything differently, better, of course. The new chief lobbyist, Nick Clegg, is now, after the scandals everywhere, good weather promises. The man can, he is a former Vice-Premier in the UK.

Facebook had “undoubtedly a mistake”, said Clegg at the beginning of last week in Brussels. But now the company step into “a new Phase of Reform, responsibility and change”. It sounds like Markus Söder, the renounces, more recently, all Schmutzeleien in the policy. The new Facebook so, in the year 16: Reform? Responsibility? Change? Hooray. But that is credible? I doubt it.

Tracy,

is The money for Facebook is the most Important, and the money starts rolling in again. In the past six months, Facebook has lost a third of its market value, but in the fourth quarter of 2018, then so much the money earned. Six billion euros to Profit, 61 percent more than in the same quarter of the previous year. Have you announced last week. And in Europe, where users pay slightly back left, could Facebook grow even scandals. What was there?

Before the scandals will all be forgotten again, it seems to make little sense, Mark Zuckerberg’s face with a bouquet of flowers – that’s right a bunch of criticism and laws. And the question: Why did you let this happen?

social network

anger on the head of Apple? Mark Zuckerberg prohibits Facebook managers the iPhone

By Malte Mansholt Facebook’s spring

But slowly. And the series after. Because, admittedly, Zuckerberg has already done a Huge. As Facebook on 4. In February 2004, was officially founded in, the Harvard graduates 19. 19! Madness. And today, 1.8 billion people use the thing daily, in Germany, there are around 30 million each month.

there is a founding myth. In a time, in the middle of the zero years, many believed that the Internet is an Instrument of liberation, it enables a new Form of togetherness, created Zuckerberg a novel compound tool, a platform on which all could meet. He wanted to make the world more open, “more open”, and better connected, “more connected”. Cool was. And also good, as it were, an act of charity.

Facebook is presenting itself as the voice of free been Language, whether in the West or in the Arab spring. Even my grandfather was suddenly in Facebook. (Now, several years after his death, he shows up with a picture in my profile, a friendly, nice greeting from the Beyond.) As the Google employee Wael Ghonim 2011 created the Facebook page “We are all Khaled Saeed”, was that, on the streets of Egypt, a Revolution sparked a Facebook Revolution, as it were, with the Hammer and sickle from the Silicon Valley. And Facebook grew. And grew.

The child Emperor, relentlessly

That Zuckerberg is not a well-meaning Fool, but, above all, an entrepreneur, in addition to all of the Hoodies, grey T-Shirts were already at that time – his trademark – and Sneakers not hide the fact. Much of the Zuckerberg character that Jesse Eisenberg 2010 was in the movie “The Social Network”, may have been overstated. But the portrait had a core of truth: Zuckerberg, the child-Emperor of a larger Empire, it can prevail, hartleibig, and sometimes even relentless.

As a Manager he has done in a long time everything correctly, as the aim was to transform Facebook into a money making machine. In 2007, he brought Sheryl Sandberg of Google, and you let the business with the advertising build up. Personal data, collected at any price, were transformed from now on personalized advertising in Gold, in an incredible amount of Gold. The advertising market, Facebook and Google have captured so within a decade simply. Currently Amazon comes in, with the same methods.

A trial by fire stock Zuckerberg, when it came to the mobile Revolution. Suddenly, after the invention of the iPhone, had all the users of smartphone’s, the Internet was increasingly on small screens in Hand, always less on computers on desks. Zuckerberg recognized early, and heaved his company, put everything on “mobile first” – faster, more consistent and also more successful than others.

patrons in a grey T-Shirt

As he brought up Facebook in may 2012, the stock exchange made him its share from 17 percent to reward immensely rich. Today, Zuckerberg, according to Forbes, with around 49 billion euros, the fourth-richest person in the world. Jeff Bezos is rich, well, the Zuckerberg worms. But nevertheless, you can buy for the money a lot of gray T-Shirts, and generosity you can also. In San Francisco, just North of Silicon Valley, have you named as a thanks for a donation of a whole hospital, according to Zuckerberg. And together with his wife Priscilla, Zuckerberg has set up a Foundation to eventually donate the bulk of his fortune.

Facebook-in-chief

Mark Zuckerberg in the cross-examination: “did You do enough things broken – now fix it!”

By Christoph Fröhlich

envy? Hardly appropriate. Zuckerberg has been making with his company within a few years, not only money, but the everyday lives of insane many people changed often, also, to the Good. And he has armed his company with brilliant acquisitions, Instagram, Whatsapp for the future, he has invested early in the development of Artificial intelligence, the new miracle tool. Zero numbers like the VR Startup Oculus is not covered at all in the weight. The founder, the entrepreneur, the success, the long-lasting popularity. All of this belongs to the bright side of Facebook.

“The ugly truth”

Only there is also a dark. And has become in the past few years, becoming more and more visible. Because apparently, Zuckerberg and his assistants have not understood that it also comes with responsibilities, if you manage a kind of private super-state, with billions of citizens. You have not understood that despite all their Power, despite all their glory and all the money then but not the ruler over the world and their society.

It is one of the great contradictions of this social network, that its makers are acting in the core, antisocial, indifferent to social developments, political – and, therefore, irresponsible. The idea was to provide you with long debt, you to arrange, in some Form, with something like policy, the policy must bend. Why? We are the United Nations of Facebook, we are on the Internet? We determine the rules.

surveillance capitalism

How could this come to it to the extent that the policy could allow for a long time, is not to be as easy to explain as easy. Currently, it is the American author Shosana Zuboff, a former Harvard Professor, analyzes in her book “The age of surveillance capitalism” phenomena like Facebook – and, consequently, the causes of sugar mountain’s hubris – very bright-sighted. “Monitoring capitalists”, they argued, among other things, make their money, by exploiting the private behavior of their users. And it is these capitalists don’t care what for data the. The “monitoring capitalists”, according to the Thesis, review of nothing morally. You rate it is not even politically. The main thing is that, you get data.

in other words: Whether you love poetry or sedition, whether autocrat or a Communist, Tahir square or Chemnitz – Facebook, so the Thesis is, in principle, no matter what happens on its platform. The main thing, something happens. That would explain why Facebook was also happy to despots such as the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte the digital tools available in the core to be apolitical. Because only when something is stirred, you can earn money.

Irritating is that these companies DNA was formulated in the case of Facebook, at least internally. In 2016, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, one of Zuckerberg’s most important managers, wrote in an internal Memo: “We connect people. This can be bad if you do it negatively. Maybe the someone cost the lives, if he is exposed to a bully. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack that was coordinated with our tools. The ugly truth is that we believe so firmly in mind, to connect people, that everything that allows us to connect to people more often ‘de facto’.”

Monster Facebook

Connect to each price. Data. Bosworth formulated the Facebook principle in stunning clarity. The pulls through. Facebook has created over the years, problems that are socially relevant, for the Manager not even always scolded. Bullying? Looking for? The dissolution of the Personal? All are phenomena on the Internet extremely, because technically, suddenly, a different, a lot of times the spread is possible.

it is Crucial, how to deal as a company in terms of how you react to it. Facebook has often played down, denied, delayed. And so Zuckerberg, Sandberg and people like Bosworth from your company have made with the joyful, liberating message of a Monster. And this Monster no longer wanted to control them, apparently self – or could not. And as you noticed, have you placated, belittled. It was a “pretty crazy idea,” wrote Zuckerberg, shortly after the U.S. presidential election, that Fake News should have affected the outcome of the election. We? Responsibility? Your business principle, have defended Zuckerberg and his Manager to the last by all means.

Stall, promise, dilute

and this is another contradiction of Facebook, has shown Facebook a long time never face, especially in Germany. Stall, promise, misting, sometimes a hug. The Facebook-principle is always been in dealing with criticism, with media, with policy. Superficially the criticism was always taken seriously, then organized in “conversations”, in case of doubt, with a kind of diffuse civil society – and if it went well, had Facebook gained so much time that the original criticism is actually anyone interested – and, above all, no one had the energy to put Facebook seriously limits.

dealing with the criticism of hate-soaked, part of seditious Posts in the late summer and fall of 2015, so in the midst of the refugee crisis, is instructive. A detail I noticed at the time. Facebook came under pressure, because it was said: Who is working with you actually, the complaints? How many people have you got there? Speak the English? First, the group’s spokesman in Hamburg, supported the requests of the word that we tried to let the words drown in the sea. However, Facebook flew a handful of journalists in the European Facebook headquarters in Dublin. Also, I was there. Take a look at, I thought at the time, the need to open and do that too. I was powerful in addition.

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Facebook hearing in Brussels

How the Pro Zuckerberg, the Amateurs of the EU

Florian Güßgen

abkocht educate Because instead of calling Numbers, Facebook, also in Dublin, in the Approximate, held, verharmloste, foggy. It was a Farce, the illuminated flashy, how closed Facebook is, in fact, like Facebook Nebelkore throws, to lead astray. This attitude is also part of the Facebook DNA.

Sit out instead of tackle

in 2018, the year of the scandals, I may with a senior Manager speak, he said: people have been reluctant, at first, the images we upload. Then you have to reluctant that they need to be clearly called name. But at some point you have to get used to everything. It’s all a matter of time. So, speculated it’ll be this time, when the data scandal.

Eventually would get used to people, Facebook will give data to App developers.

The man is now at his Post. But maybe still, he had a right, perhaps, Facebook calculated correctly, if it’s betting on blunting. Because Facebook likes to the class of the data encoder – us – yields suck. But first, the not hurts us. On The Contrary. The convenience that Facebook offers us, stunned us pleasantly. Look at there Pics on Instagram! Cool, right? Or the fixed, direct message on Whatsapp! There’s more Comfortable as a family group? And the families–exhibitionism of the former schoolmates may seem strange, but the private voyeur wins but idealism and at every Post the complete pictures gallery is then clicked through.

bitter sweetes Facebook. Resistance, so real? Only Hardcore activists go against Facebook on the road. The majority of remaining upset, shrugs his shoulders and continues. BAA.

there Is a turning point?

It is perhaps the most exciting question of this year whether this will change now, seriously, in the public consciousness, in the policy. There is, after all the scandals as something of a turning point? There’s sign of it. For me, the network enforcement act (NetzDG) in Germany was an important step, in the summer of 2017 with the last power of the Big coalition the Big coalition. The law provides that it is manifestly illegal content must be deleted within a short period of time. It also provides that large networks of reception must designate authorized contacts in Germany, Responsible.

Actually, all of them were against this law, associations of Journalists. What do you mean “obviously”? Is Facebook überblocken? To decide really basically a private judge? The law was pretty cobbled hastily together, right. Nevertheless, I’m glad it was decided. Because it was a law that the Facebook-lobbyists for the first time made it clear: at some point, with your Hinhalterei. Then you will not get away with the mist candles. Then the policy takes over. Because the Say. That was the important Signal.

The same message sent by a much more important law: The European data protection basic regulation (DSGVO). The strengthened – against massive resistance of the data groups the user against the arbitrariness of the data giants. And, moreover, strengthens a remarkable role distribution: Because when it comes to companies like Facebook to identify boundaries, then the Europeans are the pioneers. Although there are in the United States, in the meantime, a flow of competition law, the so-called “Hipster Antitrust,”flow, which is in favour of the digital companies – whether Facebook, Amazon or Google to split. But the decisions hurt the companies seriously, fines, laws, hitherto almost only from Europe.

And there are interesting ideas for further regulation: Whatsapp, for example, could be forced to open up its interface to other messaging services, Facebook could be forced to the data-anonymized to make available to the Public. Also, there are plans for the profits about Facebook, with all the taxes to absorb it, such as under discussion in the EU digital tax.

6.5 million? For Facebook, the crumbs of Peanuts

What really? I don’t know it. It depends on how much the policy is Facebook’s charm succumbs to Offensive. As Facebook continues to pursue its very successful strategy is to promise improvement, to embrace the critics – or to pay you even. The heads of Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and more recently Clegg have now changed all the Pitch.

In January occurred Sherlyl Sandberg also at the digital conference DLD in Munich, and has announced that Facebook, the Technical University of Munich, gives approximately 6.5 million euros, in order to allow an institution to deal with ethical questions of Artificial intelligence. We are the message, not the Problem, but part of the solution. And still super cheap. 6.5 Million Euros? In Facebook’s world, the crumbs of Peanuts. But they are, nevertheless, well spent. Because Facebook is in the boat.

Sandberg, and also Clegg have another seemingly reassuring message: We are not against regulation and laws. It must just be the right laws. Let’s talk about it.

And so Mark Zuckerberg in the year 16 after the establishment of Facebook in the for him perhaps the most important debate: the politics and the society. In the US Congress, he occurred last year, also in the EU Parliament in Brussels. He has a new face and said: I’ll do it. Trust me. The child Emperor wants to tame his Monster self, and the secular princes. One can only hope that he succeeds no longer. In this sense: Happy birthday!