A year ago, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, I wrote a feature about facebook as a dual use technology - amazingly useful in many ways for both its users and for social scientists, but also open to staggering dangers, such as the manipulation of elections.
Since then, the dangers have remained at the forefront of the news agenda. The recent mass shooting in New Zealand, which the attacker live-streamed on facebook for a quarter of an hour, was a new example how "connecting people" can backfire. Just yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg met Emmanuel Macron and appeared on French television to defend his record, but the concerns are only growing as the network's coverage continues to expand.
So the feature is still as relevant as it was a year ago, and it is now freely accessible:
Watching two billion people
PS (14.5.2019): another day, another facebook related crisis, this time it's the security of WhatsApp, and some troubling revelations of the capabilities that the app has (I'm rather glad I'm not using it).
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