Poking around a social media giant's secrets

Facebook is an interesting thing, isn't it? And by interesting, obviously, I mean deeply mysterious.
LEP Columnist Barry FreemanLEP Columnist Barry Freeman
LEP Columnist Barry Freeman

Rising from nowhere to omnipresence in 12 years, more or less every commercial endeavour with an eye on web business is long-established there. Every media outlet for sure, and citizens on every continent, around 1.3bn monthly active users…

Everywhere yet nowhere, a God-like reach into billions of lives. And, as with most deities, prone to a unpredictability. Just this past week, for example, Facebook decided to close down Viz. Still arguably the closest thing this country has to a conscience, Viz has mocked and spoofed British life for more than 30 years, from the foibles of the great and good (in all their guises) to the nitty gritty of our own relentless bodily functions. Facebook, having enjoyed a long and presumably mutually beneficial relationship with the well-subscribed comic, would – you’d have thunk – have developed an understanding of their customer. That they will frequently sail close to the wind but – despite from time-to-time straining this or that code of content – always remain on the side of the angels.

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Not so. In the wee hours of Tuesday some automated process or unnamed operative at Facebook took the hump and POW – a crucial element of the comic’s digital business model was gone. Cue frantic scenes as Viz juggled UK press interviews on the incident (all no doubt scared witless themselves, Facebook being integral to their business too) with entreaties to the $250bn company.

Just before midnight normal service was resumed. A Facebook spokeswoman said: “We want Facebook to be a place where people can express their opinions and challenge ideas, including through satire and comedy.

“Upon further review we found the Viz page had been removed in error.”

Error. Capricious? Oblivious? Impossible to say. Put simply an operation of this scale and nature, managing information in such dizzying quantities, has simply never before existed.

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An error, though, which surely sent shockwaves rattling through the UK media, and will have prompted any number of memos about over-reliance and the need for diversification.

Good luck with that. There’s only one show in town and it is hard to imagine anything coming through to take its place at the top of the bill.

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