Tech Giants, Once Seen as Saviors, Are Now Viewed as Threats
Mr. Galloway, whose new book, "The Four," analyzes the power of Facebook, Amazon, Google
and Apple, said the social media network was still fumbling its response.
Mr. Galloway said that This war, like so many wars, is going to start in Europe,
"Facebook is a very powerful tool that I continue to use every day, just with more mindfulness." If social media is on the defensive, Mr. Zuckerberg is particularly on the spot — a rare event in a golden career
that has made him, at 33, one of the richest and most influential people on the planet.
In a 2012 manifesto for investors, he said Facebook was a tool to create "a more honest
and transparent dialogue around government." The result, he said, would be "better solutions to some of the biggest problems of our time." Now tech companies are under fire for creating problems instead of solving them.
Matthew Prince said that Increasingly tech companies are going to be put into the position of making these sorts of judgments,
Ross Baird, president of the venture capital firm Village Capital, noted
that when ProPublica tried last month to buy targeted ads for "Jew haters" on Facebook, the platform did not question whether this was a bad idea — it asked the buyers how they would like to pay.
