The numbers of ads on Facebook and Google need to be limited, and those clicking these should also be paid something.

Sir, Rana Foroohar, with respect to those services we supposedly receive free from Goggle, Facebook and similar for free, correctly writes “free is not free when you consider that we are not paying for these services in dollars, but in data, including everything from our credit card numbers to shopping records, to political choices and medical histories. How valuable is that personal data?” "Big tech makes vast gains at our expense", September 18

Indeed, more than 10 years ago I wrote you a letter in which I said: “Clearly a search engine should mostly be valued in terms of the services it offers to the searchers but in this case it is actually the searchers that become the searched and this leads to some very strange signalling effects”.

And since then I have been all over the web promoting among others the possibility that we should be able to get an intellectual property right over our own preferences, in order to have sometRhing to negotiate with… and then on how we could enter into agreements with ad-blockers that could help us exploit those IPRs.

But lately what has also come to concern me, is how our very limited attention span is being overexploited, leaving us too little time for reflection on our own realities.

Would it not be great if Google or Facebook, or any such similar social media service we get hooked on, and which has over a million members, could only send each member ten adds per day, and that these would receive 50% of any ad revenues collected as a result of having clicked on the ad?

Under no circumstances should we humans allow the marginal cost of bothering us to be zero.

I believe that could benefit all parties involved. Even Google, Facebook and alike would be less harassed by the besserwisser. Don’t you think so Sir?

@PerKurowski

To those who argued Geocentrism, Heliocentrism would have represented fake news.

Sir, Timothy Garton Ash writes: “The real challenge for the craft and business of journalism is to bring those facts to people who have fallen prey to emotionally appealing populist narratives — and may not even be interested in learning the boring truth.” “What to do when the truth is found to be lies” December 24.

Indeed, Garton Ash is right, but let us not forget that quite often there are also those very interested in that the truth is not learned.

For instance in apportioning the blame for the 2007-08 crisis, how much has been laid on bankers and how much on regulators, 95% - 5%? What would then happen to a post that argues, as I truthfully do, that regulators, by setting up irresistible temptations, were more to blame than bankers? Would it be banned as fake-news? Of course you could argue that is an opinion, not news, but the frontier between these is not that clear.

Sir, trying to sort between truth and falsehood, puts us on a slippery road, but must of course anyhow be tried. One possibility would be to ask social media to refrain from linking to any news not signed by a real person; or to any site that specializes in obvious scandalous news. But to ask much more from social media would be naïve, since these derive a lot of their income precisely from generating ad-clicks. I mean just as naïve as when bank regulators allowed banks to calculated their own risk-weighted capital requirements.

@PerKurowski

How many billions would Facebook lose, were there no false or outrageously misleading news that attracts ad-clicks?

Sir, I refer to your “Face up to responsibility, Facebook and friends” November 16.

Indeed, Facebook, Google and friends, must now come to terms with how to manage fake news that are there only to attract ad-clicks. Clearly since they are also in the business of ad-clicks, and probably benefit on those clicks attracted by false news, they face serious, I would hold unmanageable, conflicts of interests.

To put the burden of this responsibility on Facebook and similar, would be something akin as having the banks calculating their own risk weighted capital requirements, like naïve bank regulators allow them to do.

I believe the most expedient way to resolve this issue, in a way that benefits most of us, is not to try to establish the veracity of any individual news, but to go after those sites that make it their business to attract ad-clicks by means of false or outrageously misleading news. 3 lunacies that have attracted more than 100 clicks, should suffice for a one month suspension.

Recognizing my human weaknesses I recently twitted: “Help, I can’t resist. More than an ad-blocker, I need a blocker of stupid/outrageous only designed to be clicked on stories”

PS. As a gentle reminder, in reference to the thousands of letter I have written to you on the distortions that risk-weighted capital requirements for banks cause, to withhold important information that could be true is, for a news organization like Financial Times, basically the same as presenting fake information.