Abuse and cruelty isn't in the business model.

While listening to the wireless in the car this morning, they were interviewing Nick Clegg - the former British deputy Prime Minister, ex-leader of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK, and now PR person (title, head of global affairs) for Facebook.

He came across badly to begin with, being asked questions about the use of Whatsapp to exfiltrate data from Jeff Bezos phone, apparently not having significant technical understanding and offering 'nuffin to do wiv us' answers. When quizzed about proposed taxation of internet companies by the UK, the grease oozed and the politician surfaced, suggesting piecemeal taxation would be ineffective and that any money obtained would be just a tiny amount compared to the taxes normally taken by the UK.

And then he earned his money with a bit of real insight.

The interviewer moved on to online material posted that encouraged children & vulnerable adults to self-harm or even committ suicide, wanting to know why it wasn't being stopped, with an undercurrent suggesting that this was something the business actually wanted on their platform. In a way she set up the situation for Clegg's answer, but at this point he became much more serious, much less obfuscatory. It seems it's a real problem for them too - the advertisers don't like it - and it *sounds* like they're doing all they can  to 'fix' the problem.

So where does this stuff come from, and why can't they fix it?

As a kid at school, life was frequently deeply unpleasant. The smarter bullies would set up situations where you were given choices that either ended up in public humiliation or getting physically abused in some way in order to show their superiority (while surrounded by their gangs) while the less bright ones would just threaten and punch. When the weaker children were picked on they would attempt to divert the attention of the bullies on to other, weaker or more vulnerable children. Some of the kids I knew at the age of 13-14 were already talking about getting into protectionism when they left school (and they had few choices apart from a local sweet factory, since they were disruptive and unlikely to get qualifications).

At the age of  16 I went to work in another 11-14 school as a lab tech, and I saw exactly the same kind of behaviour again.

To me, the problems in Facebook, Instagram etc are all about ordinary people. I've been lucky to work with generally well educated people, though have seen a reasonable number of bullies, liars and the odd nut job over time. It has sometimes made me forget that ordinary people camn often be extremely unpleasant. It also makes me ask whether I've been like that at times without realising it.

The problem isn't Facebook as such. The problem is giving everyone a public voice.