Facebook: Cracking the Code

In 2014, Facebook scientists published the results

of one of the biggest psychological experiments

ever conducted.

They took almost 700-thousand Facebook profiles

and deliberately skewed their news feeds

to be either more positive or more negative.

Then, they used the company's sophisticated algorithms

to measure any shift in people's mood.

Their findings? The more positive the feed,

the happier Facebook users seemed to be.

The more negative, the more depressed they became.

It proved the power of Facebook to affect what we think

and how we feel.

Facebook has very cleverly figured out

how to wrap itself around our lives.

It's the family photo album.

It's your messaging to your friends.

It's your daily diary. It's your contact list.

It's all of these things wrapped around your life.

This is the story of how one of the World's biggest

and most powerful private corporations

is turning our lives and our data into vast profits,

and in ways we have no control over.

They are the most successful company

arguably in human history at just gathering people's time

and turning that time into money.

Like his company,

Facebook's founder hardly needs introducing.

Mark Zuckerberg started the social media platform

13 years ago when he was just 19

as a site for Harvard undergraduate students.

When we first launched,

we were hoping for maybe 400 to 500 people.

Harvard didn't have a Facebook

so that was the gap that we were trying to fill

and now we're at 100,0000 people

so who knows where we are going next.

Within its first month,

more than half the students had joined, setting the trend

for the membership explosion that followed.

Now, almost a quarter of the world's population

has signed on.

It is bigger than any country.

Facebook is now a global colossus.

It is one of the world's most valuable corporations,

worth over 400 billion dollars.

Mark Zuckerberg is an international powerbroker

in his own right.

He's like a king, right? He's like a monarch.

He's making decisions about your life on Facebook,

what the rules are, and he's a benevolent dictator.

You can't say this is accountable governance

or a participatory governance in any particular way.

But almost two billion users still isn't enough for Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg is aiming for the next billion.

There is a limit to how much they can grow

in established markets like North America and Australia.

But the 32-year-old businessman

sees huge potential in the developing world.

There are a billion people in India

who do not have access to the internet yet

and if what you care about is connecting everyone in the world

then you can't do that when there are so many people

who don't even have access to basic connectivity.

There's a term that's being used

by folks connected to Facebook and Google

called the last billion where they're basically trying

to figure out a way to spread internet access,

but the internet that they're going to spread

is an internet that's shaped by Facebook and Facebook's agendas.

That's actually part of the long game here.

Most people in a lot of the developing world

are accessing the internet through their mobile phones

and there are these programs that are known as zero rating

or Facebook Zero so when you get you smartphone,

you get free data if you're using Facebook

and so people stay on Facebook.

They don't go anywhere else,

so that their whole world on the internet

becomes very much the same as, you know...

they don't know any other kind of internet.

Facebook is a free service,

but that's because Zuckerberg has learned

how to turn our data into dollars. Lots of dollars.

Last year his company earned 27-and a half billion US,

just under 16 dollars for each user,

and he's buying even more internet real estate.

Clearly there's one topic we have to start with.

You bought WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars.

Why did you do it and what does it mean?

You can look at other messaging apps

that are out there, whether it's Cacao or Line or WeChat

that are already monetizing

at a rate of two to three dollars per person

with pretty early efforts and I think that shows

if we do a pretty good job at helping WhatsApp to grow

that is just going to be a huge business.

Facebook has WhatsApp, Facebook has Instagram.

Facebook has Oculus Rift, not necessarily mainstream

but these are very big corners of the internet.

Should we be concerned about a monopoly?

We should always be concerned about monopoly.

We should always be concerned about concentration of power.

We should always be concerned about that

and we need to hold their feet to the fire at all times.

Facebook is all about community,

what people all around the world are coming together to do -

connecting with friends and family,

informing these communities.

Facebook presents itself as a digital platform,

a neutral stage upon which life plays out.

2016: we all went through it together

It says it is a company that develops digital technology,

not social engineering.

For all the talk about community,

Facebook is neither democratic nor transparent.

Any place we go to that is not truly open,

that's not governed by us as users,

that's not governed by some democratic accountability,

is actually a place that is not truly ours.

It's a place that we can use,

it provides great value in many ways,

don't get me wrong, to its users.

But it's incorrect to see it as a neutral place.

It can do things like a government

and indeed it has inherited some government-like functions,

but I don't think that passes the smell test

to imagine that Facebook or any online platform

is truly democratic, they're not.

If we tell the computer to look at two numbers

and compare them and put the larger number on one side

and the smaller one on the other then,

with a series of steps we will be able to reorder it.

To understand how Facebook works,

we need to understand what goes on under the hood.

The engine that drives the system is built on algorithms -

sets of instructions that Facebook's engineers use

to determine what we see in our News Feed.

Dr Suelette Dreyfus, an information systems expert,

demonstrates how a basic algorithm works.

Typically, an algorithm might be for processing some data

or doing some arithmetic, summing something for example,

or it might be to try and recreate

the decision-making process

that we use in our human brain on a more sophisticated level.

Facebook's algorithms were originally configured

to help Harvard University students

stay in touch with one another.

They exploited the way the students had

a small group of close friends,

and a wider, looser social circle.

The algorithms are now vastly more complex,

but exactly how they work

is a closely guarded commercial secret.

We do know that they are designed with one aim in mind -

to keep us online for as long as possible.

The algorithms are designed to be helpful

and give us information that's relevant to us,

but don't for a minute assume that

the algorithms are just there to help us.

The algorithms are there to make a profit for Facebook.

And that is Facebook's genius.

It is a giant agency that uses its platform

to deliver us advertising.

By tracking what we do, who we associate with,

what websites we look at,

Facebook is able make sophisticated judgements

about the stories we see,

but also advertising that is likely to move us to spend.

We will probably always live in a world

with old fashioned display ads.

Times Square simply wouldn't be the same without it.

But these ads nudge towards products

with all the subtlety of a punch in the nose.

Facebook on the other hand uses

the extraordinary amounts of data that it gathers

on each and every one of us to help advertisers reach us

with precision that we've never known before.

And it gives anybody in the business of persuasion

power that is unprecedented.

Depending on what we post at any given moment,

Facebook can figure out what we are doing and thinking,

and exploit that.

Facebook's very well aware of you know our sentiment,

our mood and how we talk to people

and it can put all that data together

and start to understand like who our exes are

and who our friends are and who our old friends are

and who our new friends are and that's how it really works

to incentivise another post.

What you're saying is Facebook has the capacity

to understand our moods?

Yes.

Could that be used to influence our buying behaviours?

Of course it can be used to influence our behaviour

in general, not just buying.

You can be incredibly hyper targeted.

Can I give you an example?

We don't always act our age

or according to our gender stereotypes.