Facebook has become an integral part of life for people from any age or background. For some, Facebook is a sort of addiction, while for some, they use it to a certain limit, and some have not let Facebook associate in their lives as of yet. Truly, decisions differ and it’s natural. Facebook is huge, it contains 99.9% of the nation and there is one notable person behind the creation of Facebook, and formulation of policies for the ones using it. Mark Zuckerberg.
Speaking during an interview at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam, Peter Sunde said that there is “no democracy” online. He said, “People in the tech industry have a lot of responsibilities but they never really discuss these things. Facebook is the biggest nation in the world and we have a dictator, if you look at it from a democracy standpoint, Mark Zuckerberg is a dictator. I did not elect him. He sets the rules.” Peter Sunde is a left winger, co-founder of the notorious file sharing site, The Pirate Bay, due to which he served a five month sentence in jail in 2014.
Also Read: Why did Zuckerberg fail to fool India using Free Basics?
This is not the first time when Sunde has shared his views on the centralization on the power of internet. In his interview, he claimed that there is “no democracy” online. Last winter Sunde referred Facebook and Google as “Monopolistic Capitalists”, and to trust these popular sites as a reliable mode to spread democracy is “like trusting the enemies to do the good deeds.”
Peter Sunde not only made a statement regarding the domination of Facebook, and eventually by Mark Zuckerberg, but cited an example of when German chancellor, Angela Merkel confronted Mark Zuckerberg at United Nations about the anti-immigration posts on Facebook. Sunde points,”That’s kind of what it comes to. We send major leaders of Europe to ask him to stop interfering with our local culture. How did we end up in a situation like this?” According to Peter Sunde, we should not let Facebook interfere with the country’s cultural aspects and there should be a control on Facebook’s “dictatorship”.
Having said that he proposed one solution which is to censor Facebook, but agreeing to the fact that it is going to be difficult. Sunde in his interview accepts,”You can’t opt out of Facebook. I’m not on Facebook but there are a lot of drawbacks in my offline world. No party invitations, no updates from my friends, people stop talking to you, because you’re not on Facebook. So it has real life implications.”
Facebook policy which requires people to use their real name also has a major drawback, since they get persecuted easily and cannot organize political movements effectively. “The reason for the real name policy is Mark Zuckerberg wants to make another dollar.” From this point it is quite distinct that Sunde feels that Mark Zuckerberg does not want to leave an attempt to earn more than the much.
Facebook has declined to comment on this interview. Not commenting isn’t an issue. What we need is ways by which the users get more control on their content, and are liberal in true sense when it comes to “this online nation”. Facebook has already started working on ways to let user customize what they see on app, ultimately giving them more control.
Last year, it released a new privacy policy which made it easier for people to decide which posts will be made public and which ones will be made private. And WhatsApp, which Facebook owns, recently introduced full encryption.
Either you wait or quit or continue. Choice is yours. You are definitely free to decide. Permission from Facebook is not required here.
Rashika Daga
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