This is hyperbole at best. Facebook does not have an army, weapons, or literally anyone that would be willing to die or even be physically put out to defend it.
I’m no Facebook fan, but let’s not let Facebook hysteria overrun these comments.
“This is hyperbole at best. Facebook does not have an army”
Op was pointing out that power != war with guns
“Facebook is the most powerful private entity on the earth right now”
The comment was how power could be achieved via other methods of warfare-including the ability to shape conversations.
Another word for this would be competition. He has a point.
The ability to shape conversations or to compete is not the same as making war (or you are relying on an idiosyncratic definition of "war").
War (Noun) " - a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism
- a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end
- a struggle to achieve a goal: War (Verb): " - to be in active or vigorous conflict
- to carry on active hostility or contention
"
The point still stands. War is an isomorphism for competition, conflict and tension between parties. One could probably use something like category theory and prove it.
References:
> Data has surpassed oil as the world’s most valuable asset. It’s being weaponized to wage cultural and political warfare. People everywhere are in a battle for control of our most intimate personal details. From award-winning filmmakers Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, THE GREAT HACK uncovers the dark world of data exploitation with astounding access to the personal journeys of key players on different sides of the explosive Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scandal.
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html
Was that an act of war against democratic Russia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook–Cambridge_Analytica_d...
"The governments of India[30][31] and Brazil[32][33] demanded that Cambridge Analytica report how anyone used data from the breach in political campaigning, and various regional governments in the United States have lawsuits in their court systems from citizens affected by the data breach.[34] On April 25, 2018, Facebook released their first earnings report since the scandal was reported. Revenue fell since the last quarter, but this is usual as it followed the holiday season quote. The quarter revenue was the highest for a first quarter, and the second overall.[35] In early July 2018, the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner's Office announced it intended to fine Facebook £500,000 ($663,000) over the data scandal, this being the maximum fine allowed at the time of the breach, saying Facebook "contravened the law by failing to safeguard people's information".[36] In March 2019, a court filing by the U.S. Attorney General for the District of Columbia alleged that Facebook knew of Cambridge Analytica's "improper data-gathering practices" months before they were first publicly reported in December 2015.[37] In July 2019, the Federal Trade Commission voted to approve fining Facebook around $5 billion to finally settle the investigation to the scandal, with a 3-2 vote.[38] Facebook established Social Science One as a response to the event."
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/03/2...
How could anyone besides them prove effectiveness or ineffectiveness of this campaign? I don't think it's possible. At the very least, the side they supported won (Brexit) and they should not be trusted.
Leave.UK was accused of violating electoral law. I believe the Electoral Commission has now dropped its investigation.
Incidentally, to break UK law, you usually have to perform the violating act in the UK (we have a few laws that involve extraterritoriality, but they are far and few).
Faceache barely does anything in the UK. They apparently make no money here; they don't sell stuff (not even advertising - that would be the Republic of Ireland). CA collected data on US citizens; that's legal here (and would have been of very little interest to Brexit campaigners). As far as I know, nothing CA did violated UK or EU law.
You say "the side they supported won (Brexit)". Do you mean that Faceache supported Brexit? I don't think they had a dog in the race at all. Or do you mean CA? It's been argued that CA took money to provide services to Leave.UK, but that's not the same as saying they supported Brexit.
Trying to "swing elections" is legal in the UK. In fact it is encouraged; people who successfully swing elections often get appointed to important positions such as Prime Minister. It's completely legal to hire polling companies to help you better understand the voters. It's completely legal to hire advertising companies to promote the electoral outcome you want promoted.
Now you are speaking of trust; of course, I trust neither CA (now defunct) nor Faceache. But Faceache did not drag my country into wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Faceache did not have that much power. The UK joined those wars largely because of diplomatic pressure from the USA - a much more powerful entity than this rather tedious online advertising company.
From what I have read, and despite their bragging, CA wasn't even helpful to the Leave.UK campaign. Their data wasn't relevant, and anyway Leave.UK didn't have the organisational capacity to make use of whatever data they could offer.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/11/leaveeu-fin...
You are correct that they haven't (been charged with having) broken electoral law in the UK, but they have broken data protection laws in relation to the information which was then used by Cambridge Analytica:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/11/facebook-...
Whether that information was then used by Cambridge Analytica as part of a Brexit campaign is open to more questions.
Facebook is an echo chamber. People don’t go there to be informed; they go there to validate their already held beliefs. Given the large ideological chasm between the two candidates in the 2016 election, it defies logic that even a single voter was swayed or chose not to vote at all based on ads they saw on Facebook.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-elect...
Of course it's impossible to say whether Trump would have won even if he hadn't spent any money on Facebook ads, but we're talking about a campaign that spent hundreds of millions of dollars in total. If this amount of money doesn't include enough to influence 78k people to go out and vote for a specific candidate, then we might as well give up on the very concept of advertising.