For Mark Zuckerberg, perfunctory apologies are part of the business model.
“It was my mistake, and I’m sorry,’’ the Facebook CEO told members of the Senate’s Judiciary and Commerce committees Tuesday. The panel had wanted answers about Cambridge Analytica, a dodgy political consultancy that, thanks to Facebook’s weak data protections, made off with information on more than 87 million users. Zuckerberg also fielded questions about the abuse of his platform by Russian troll-bots and purveyors of made-up clickbait stories. He deeply, profoundly, thoroughly regretted all of it. “I started Facebook,’’ he declared, “I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.’’
It worked. As the hearing wore on, and as senator after octogenarian senator betrayed little understanding of social media, Facebook’s stock surged — a sure sign the company was off the hook.
Still, even by the low standards of the butt-covering corporate apology, Zuckerberg’s contrition was meaningless. It heralds no change of behavior. His company will keep vacuuming up and monetizing user data with as little human supervision as Zuckerberg can get away with providing.
In other words, Facebook will keep doing what it was built to do.
The company, to be sure, offers users the illusion of control. When you post a photo, you can decide which of your co-workers and middle-school classmates get to see it. But Facebook isn’t selling your beach photos for use in tourism ads; it’s selling you — or, rather, what it knows about you from what you post, which bits of content you react to, and where you carry your phone.
Zuckerberg may see Facebook as an “idealistic and optimistic company,’’ but you still have a hard numerical value — specifically, $26.76 per user in the United States and Canada, as of the last quarter of 2017. Facebook may or may not be worth $100 a year to you, but you’re worth $100 to Facebook. (Feel free to ask for your cut.)
If nothing else, when consumers take out a mortgage, agree to medical procedures, or give away their data for nothing, they should understand the terms of deal they’re making. Yet Facebook’s surveillance is obliquely disclosed in terms-of-service language that, Zuckerberg acknowledged, almost nobody reads. As Facebook adds new features, absorbs would-be rivals, and sharpens its data-extraction tools, longtime users are submitting to vastly more e-spying than when they signed on.
When some new manipulation creates an outcry, Facebook makes a show of apologizing. “We really messed this one up,’’ Zuckerberg wrote in 2006, when Facebook caught users off guard by publishing their information in the brand-new News Feed. “We did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it,’’ he blogged a year later, after launching an ill-fated feature that exposed how users were using third-party apps.
In 2014, after the company ran an experiment to see if it could alter the emotions of 700,000 users, it was chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg who apologized. The company’s intention “was poorly communicated,’’ she said, adding that “we never meant to upset you.’’ In November, ProPublica revealed that Facebook’s automated platform was still taking discriminatory housing ads — a year after the company vowed to crack down. “We’re disappointed we fell short of our commitments,’’ a company VP declared.
By stressing its own feelings of regret, Facebook dodges bigger, far more awkward questions — about the duopoly it exercises, alongside Google, in the digital advertising market; about whether its data harvesting should be regulated; about whether Facebook’s ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp violates antitrust norms. Tellingly, when Senator Lindsey Graham asked who Facebook’s biggest competitor was, Zuckerberg briefly stumbled — because there isn’t one.
It didn’t matter — nor did it matter that the questioning in the House Wednesday was a little tougher than in the Senate. Cambridge Analytica won’t be the last scandal, and this week’s contrition tour won’t be Zuckerberg’s last. Facebook will keep apologizing, and then go on doing what it’s been doing all along.
Dante Ramos can be reached at dante.ramos@globe.com. Follow him on Facebook: facebook.com/danteramos or on Twitter: @danteramos.
