Blog Post: Question 2

In Facebook’s standpoint, Mark Zuckerberg puts his idea of “connection” to Flichy’s “ideology, myth and utopia” in order to defend the company’s business practices. For Zuckerberg’s point of view, the reason why he creates Facebook is to provide a free service for people. The users can have a free place to connect with others. They want to make Facebook to an open area for people to share and connect more with their family, friends and communities. Therefore, it can be embodied in Flichy’s ideology, myth and utopia. Based on Flichy’s (2007) idea, an ideology is a distortion of the real (p. 8). It is “opposed to a utopia, which constitutes a totally unrealizable phantasmagoria” (Flichy, 2007, p. 8). That is to say, the idea of Facebook is to help people to build a place to share and communicate with strangers, which is to explore the possibilities.

On the other hand, the role of advertisement brings the phenomena of utopia. Through posting relate and relevant ads on the user’s Facebook page, it not only gives users new experience but also benefits the cooperate companies. In Zuckerberg’s perspective, the model for ads is a good way for both users and the cooperators. However, in fact, it will bring the privacy issue. Although he says that the information that they collect is protected, we still can find the news about Facebook leak users’ data. Overall, I do not think this is a model for “Tech for Good”. They do not create the idea of utopia, and they just want to present and show themselves.


Flichy, P. (2007). The Internet Imaginaire. N.p.: The MIT Press.

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 18, 2019 at 2:44 PM

    Great post Chenwei,
    I too said that Zuckerberg's comments were not a model for 'tech for good' based on the language and associations he used.

    I found it interesting how you included the advertisement company's benefits and within the utopia model, Zuckerberg did try to make the best of all situations for all the parties involved, although he might have over looked the privacy component. The fact that three main parties are considered and whom all benefit is defiantly a utopia or sorts.

    My question to you is: where do you think Zuckerberg's position is leaning more toward based on the language used in the article? did you feel he supports the user's benefits more or the advertising companies?

    ReplyDelete

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