Those who want to strictly regulate Facebook or indeed Google or Amazon are baying at the moon.

Take the example of Facebook.

Yesterday we had the spectacle of Zuckerberg donning sackcloth and ashes before Congress.

But this Facebook scandal will be a nine day wonder…

1> Facebook is so stickily enmeshed in so many lives that the users, content providers and advertisers simply can’t afford to be fussy about playing in the Facebook environment, or for that matter in the Google, Amazon or Apple gatekept gardens.

2> Facebook’s AI resource under Yann Le Cun, and its world ranking data center infrastructure mean that it still has many branching options into the future off its huge and largely sticky user base.

3> Only Facebook, Google and Amazon can develop the algorithms required to censor themselves and indeed tame an internet run wild. They, not government or even university faculties, at least outside China, are the commanding Math and Data Science Houses.

4> Facebook also benefits from compounding data aggregation, which is the internet equivalent of compounding interest.

5> At base, the business of the Facebook, Amazon, Google is enabling advertisers or themselves to show us things we want, before we know we want them, to induce us to don our buying boots. So scale mood and opinion manipulation experiments using advanced AI, are inevitable, though worrying.

6> To enhance its basic business Facebook, more than either Google or Amazon, gives us a series of ‘dopamine fixes’, notably now through Instagram.

In fact maybe the investment community should classify Facebook as a SIN stock along with tobacco and alcohol?

After all, it creates and nurtures addicts many of whom develop mental illnesses.

Provisional conclusion: the Facebook scandal will be a nine day wonder and for good or ill the next Facebook will be Facebook, at worst with its growth and profit potential very lightly regulated.

If you’d like to read an in-depth report on Facebook and its stretch goals for AI, then drop me an email – michael@signumintel.co.uk

Best,

Michael

Signum Intel

At Signum, we investigate and advise on how technology is reshaping the global economy: looking at the stretch goals, stacks, platforms, scarce resources, risks, threatening clusters, cascading errors and unintended consequences of our bargain with technology. All information in this briefing is provided in good faith and is accurate to the best of my knowledge. This document is for information purposes only and does not impart financial advice. We recommend you do further due diligence before taking action based on the information in this report.