This sign says 'facebook'.

The last thing Facebook needs is more publicity but this is mainly what we get in the lame  one hour BBC documentary presented by Emily Maitlis.

When not displaying her range of chic leisure wear, Maitlis seems starstruck by being in the presence of Mark Zuckerberg. When she’s shown around the Facebook offices she is introduced to Zuckerberg’s chair : “that’s his hoodie” she gushes.

The ‘rare interview’ with the man itself is brief and unrevealing. He tells us how ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’ the social network is and doesn’t have to deal with any awkward questions.

She interviews colleagues and supporters and visits connected businesses. These all  confirm the awesomeness of Facebook .

Maitlis’s shallow analysis of what has made the company so popular includes telling us how easy it is the make friends and ‘like’ global companies (as if we didn’t know).

There are practically no dissenting voices aired so it is for the most part any darker aspects of the company’s meteororic  growth are glossed over. Only near the end of the show does Maitlis show that she retains a few critical faculties. She asks Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s Vice President of Public Policy about the ethics of the advertising policy whereby users are unwittingly co-opted into giving  a human face to  corporate businesses based only on the fact that they ‘like’ a particular product. You’re asking a difficult philosophical question about  how you define advertising is the gist of Shrage’s response and his inability  to come up with a convincing answer illustrates that Facebook have not given any serious consideration to this issue.

Facebook’s policy with regard to corporate advertising is either morally bankrupt or hopelessly naive; I suspect it lies somewhere in the middle.  Zuckerberg’s refusal to sell the company to the highest bidders gives him a certain credibility but his image of the altruistic geek is already seriously threatened by those unscrupulous global businesses who are already using Facebook for purely commercial ends. The BBC  documentary only scratches the surface of this aspect of the company but, to my mind, it’s not a case of if there will a major backlash against Facebook but when.

Related links:
I learned more about Emily Maitlis’s wardrobe than Facebook (Daily Mail)
Inside Facebook – review (The Independent)
Daily Telegraph review