Alan Jacobs

getting real about Facebook

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Nikhil Sonnad:

The solution, then, is for Facebook to change its mindset. Until now, even Facebook’s positive steps — like taking down posts inciting violence, or temporarily banning the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones — have come not as the result of soul-searching, but of intense public pressure and PR fallout. Facebook only does the right thing when it’s forced to. Instead, it needs to be willing to sacrifice the goal of total connectedness and growth when this goal has a human cost; to create a decision-making process that requires Facebook leaders to check their instinctive technological optimism against the realities of human life.

Absent human considerations, Facebook will continue to bring thoughtless, banal harm to the world. The 2.5 billion people who use it, as part of their real lives, won’t put up with that forever.

My reply:

  1. Facebook will not “change its mindset.” Ever.
  2. Facebook’s “goal” is not “total connectedness,” it is the monopolization and monetization of your attention.
  3. “Facebook will continue to bring thoughtless, banal harm to the world.” Period. There are no “human considerations,” nor will there ever be.
  4. Billions of people will indeed “put up with that forever.”
I really cannot see the point of these arguments that assume the possibility that Facebook will radically reconfigure its corporate ethics. That’s like building hen houses with the hope that the local foxes will become vegetarians. The “what to do about Facebook” question must begin with the understanding that Facebook will (a) try to buy off its fiercest legislative critics and (b) make only such changes as it must to avoid being legally constrained.