Everyone loves to hate Facebook these days. Unfortunately it seems, for all the wrong reasons.
Let me start by saying I really like Facebook. This nifty little invention lets me keep in contact with friends and relatives I would otherwise not chat with regularly, keep folks updated with daily changes to The Socratic Review, and entertains me during various slow points during my day - all this for the whopping price of nothing.
Of course, I also fully understand that nothing is free, and that Mr. Zuckerberg and his stockholders make a mint on everything I click, and sell that information as fast as they can compile it. Good for them! I also fully understand that no one should be surprised by this for two reasons. One - Alvin Toffler started writing about this phenomenon (before it ever existed) in 1970 with his brilliant book, Future Shock (currently free on Kindle) and even more specifically in Powershift (also available for sale via Amazon) in 1990. And two... it's what we signed-up for when we opened a Facebook account.
The recent whistleblower interview (Read: disgruntled snitch interview) though salacious, offered me not one iota of information I did not already know or suspect. Perhaps most amusing was the headline that percolated through the airwaves and cyberspace immediately thereafter, that "Facebook put profits before safety," as if Mark Zuckerberg were an errant slumlord not fixing a leaking sprinkler system, rather than a somewhat clever mathematician who devised a cunning way to mine valuable demographic and marketing data. Hello folks - what part of your Facebook terms and conditions mentions anything about factuality? I for one have no interest in Mark Zuckerberg being held libel for an ex who shaved three years off their real age, how about you?
The problem I think stems from the two faces people perceive of the company, neither of which are remotely correct. The first face is the one seen by the"public forum" camp. These are the folks who feel Facebook is some sort of public square where free speech holds sway above all else. Personally, I view Facebook as a neighborhood bar with all that entails. When I see heated exchanges over politics or sports on Facebook for example, it has less in common with a public hearing, and more in common with six guys downing their seventh beer.
In this respect, Mark Zuckerberg has every right to refuse service to anyone who doesn't play by the rules of his bar; just like any other bar owner. Want to pick a fight over Yankee pitching and threaten to punch someone in the face? Call the bouncer and take it outside - outside in this case being private messages or another platform. Just like you are free to leave the bar and carry your argument to a competing bar (or the back alley) so is it with Facebook, or for that matter, any other social media platform.
To carry this analogy further, let's talk about factuality of information in that same bar. If I'm sitting at the bar overhearing a conversation that I perceive as true (or more often than not, confirms my erroneous belief that something is true that others might think is bonkers) does that bar owner have an obligation (let alone right) to interfere in this propagation of falsehood? Whereas that may have made an interesting episode of Cheers, where Sam tell Cliff he's a loon and tosses him out into the snow, few barkeeps would be so stupid, and few patrons (regardless of their beliefs) would want to spend much leisure time unwinding in such a place.
Which leads us to the second face problem of Facebook - looking at Facebook as a publishing enterprise or worse yet - a journalistic enterprise.
I won't even get into the obviousness that the connection between "journalism,""facts" and "publishing" as sacred entities (which was never very stable in orthodoxy from the start) are now utterly back to the late 19th/early 20th Century standards. Even the major networks operate on a level barely a step above Edwardian "Penny Dreadfuls". If Facebook were to pursue a foray into publishing, the entire structure of their company would have to be revamped, and to be frank, what would be in it for Mark Zuckerberg or his stockholders? To be a publishing company he would have to employee reporters and fact-checkers and readers and editors (the whole hierarchy of editors) and so on. Not to mention reconsidering the whole monetization of his enterprise. Why would his stockholders have any interest in pursuing that? Those who invested in Facebook bought stock in a data mining company not a publishing company. Why would the board not be on him like a duck on a June bug?
With these two faces perceived, a whole lot of people choose to criticize Mr. Zuckerberg for entirely the wrong things; and the fact that he has the personality of a rancid dishrag doesn't help his case any either. But this doesn't mean there are not valid reasons to look into Facebook and offer room for improvement.
The first thing I would be concerned with is not the information disseminated by Facebook but the hold Facebook has over a large swath of general communications. Whatsapp and Messenger have become integral means of primary communication for businesses and individuals. If you want to look at any area where Facebook might be forced to the wall over some regulation, this is the baton. We have precedent (and reason) for governing and ensuring stable telecommunications, and whether Facebook realized this or not when they embarked upon a career in telecommunications, that's where they are now. And whereas we cannot make threats or false claims over the telephone or through the mails, Mr. Zuckerberg should be held to no less of a standard in these two areas, than any other like provider. Of course, this accountability should be by civil action not broad government involvement, other than perhaps legislation that puts transient electronic communications into the same category as mail, cellular, and landline communications.
But many other concerns voiced by many other critics fall short both logically and practically. Blaming Facebook for the bad nature of people is one of them. It's unfortunate that some folks are obnoxious whether it's in a bar or on Facebook, but this is not behavior created by Facebook. As users of social media, we should be governed by common courtesy let alone commonsense. Blaming a platform for tolerating such ethereal and transient concepts as "hate speech" or "racism" or "anarchy" is as disingenuous as the concepts they champion are fluid. It's up to users to determine what they will or will not tolerate, and the best method for doing that is to avoid using Mr. Zuckerberg's product if you don't like it.
Of course that solution has two faces as well. Those who curse the messenger while begging for the message, and the ones who hate the commercialism while gladly consuming the product. At least poor old Mark's in good company. Whether we the mobs realize this or not is quite another question.
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