There has been so much discussion recently about the Internet, Facebook in particular, and individual privacy that I thought I would discuss this from the viewpoint of a scientist who sometimes gets involved with advances in technology.

I will focus on Facebook, since that is something that most people are familiar with, and something I have quite a bit of experience with. For curiosity I downloaded the file with my information on it – this is what companies buy from Facebook. My file was over 60 Megabytes compressed (that is a lot of data). In looking through it on a superficial basis I could see how they could easily determine who I voted for in the last election, how strongly I supported my choice, and all sorts of other personal information – much of it from private messages I had sent to friends. In deciding which types of political ads or stories should be sent to me, I can see that with today's technology their computers could make those decisions in a few seconds at most. The whole system is very ingenious.

An article in one of last month's Washington Post compared what Zuckerberg's Facebook has done for/to society is comparable to what Gutenberg's printing press did. In each case, the intent was to improve society. In each case, there were some really bad unforeseen consequences.

The article struck a chord with me as a scientist because we focus so much on what we can discover and rarely look at possible consequences. We generally consider anything we can discover as being "good" for humanity. While what Zuckerberg and Gutenberg did was not science, it is very much a parallel to science, an idea, a discovery, and an implementation. We usually stop there except in very rare cases. The "atom bomb" is an example where many scientists involved in its development had serious reservations about its use. After it was used, they became very active in attempting to stop its further use.

I would argue that the same thoughts should be considered with respect to Facebook and its "cousins'. We have seen that incorrect or subversive use of it can lead to devastating results – for example, people being harassed through its use by extremists, or people's thoughts being manipulated by unscrupulous organizations – Russia, White Supremacist groups, etc. According to the Post article, Gutenberg's press has been accused by historians as causing great unrest in Europe after it came into extensive use. Facebook has obviously been causing problems in our democracy.

Listening to Zuckerberg's testimony to Congress the other day left me very concerned. My first impression was that our congress people want to pretend that they actually understand what is happening. They don't. Given the lack of understanding in Congress, how can they regulate/protect? As Zuckerberg said, he is in a cat and mouse game, as he builds protections, the other side is working around them. He already has around 10,000 employees working on protection; that is a lot of money. The simple problem of blocking bullying or untrue stories quickly is extremely difficult but important. It is my opinion that the government actually needs to step in and help with this problem, possibly using the NSA expertise to help.

The magnitude of the problem is large. I don't know how many times I've seen a story or post that I really liked or disliked. I've had the sense to do some fact checking only to find out the story is false. There are fairly simple methods that can be used to check a story or post and determine its veracity. However, the automatic implementation is expensive and most people don't seem to be sufficiently critical of what they read.

For Zuckerberg or Gutenberg to have been able to predict these unintended consequences before they occurred is totally unreasonable. His apologies are not required. As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. Seeing into the future is not so good. Hopefully, a reasonable solution to these unintended consequences will be found soon, because they are very serious. For now, it would be very helpful if people thought critically about what they read . . . and do some fact checking.