The Facebook Age
Data is the new oil
For quite some time I’ve been wanting to write this piece, I’m pretty sure this post will get confusing and I’ll fail on my edition of it. I debate how deep into the hole I was intending to go with this piece. I decided to shoot all over the place and without going too deep on my conceptualization.
On trying to get a sense of where I’m going, I tried to split the conversation on by issues. I may throw some references of concepts or authors of concepts. I recommend you to at least google or wiki them, since I won’t be linking anything, because I’m not sure how familiar the reader is with any of it.
Note when I say Facebook I mean the company not the platform, Instagram may have more power over it’s users. Following complex system theory: Facebook is the result not only of Mark Zuckerberg, but our society; and our society it’s in part a result of Facebook. If it wasn’t Facebook another social network would had filled the void, but it is Facebook the one with the billions of users, so…
Let’s dive in.
Privacy
I think Steve Jobs state it better before anyone else — “Privacy means let people know what are they signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly.” — And Facebook for the most part seems to have been trying to fix it. The issue exists with their business model, which it’s at odds with media (and public) privacy expectations. Privacy breaches sells well for media publications, and most of the issues in my view has been overblown, it’s easy to pick on the big bad corporation. This publications fail to notice that there’s a lot of well intentioned people (and yes, may be some bad systematic capitalist apples) trying to do their best to achieve Facebook’s mission — “Make the world more open and connected.” —
Data is the new oil and Facebook’s case that’s not only your usage behavior but your personal information as well, but let’s not be naive here, whatever you put in there was on purpose, so you are not really exposing anything that you didn’t want to expose in the first place. That’s the price you pay for the usage of the network and the communication tools that Facebook offers for free.
I really fail to see what’s the huge concern around privacy, even after reading Sherry Turkle’s opinions. For the most part you really are just a couple of data nodes. You are not getting naked here. You simply are being pinpointed by targeted ads or publications, like you had been even before Edward Bernays published his concepts on propaganda.
Corporation
I think this is a global problem but the biggest issue exits on American soil. Our current economic model it’s based on growth, nothing more, so it’s no surprise to find Facebook doing whatever it can to maximize it’s odds at keeping up the momentum. That means growing their MAUs by bringing internet (and Facebook) to new users at any price.
But in places like Burma where Facebook comes for free preinstall on the phones, where it’s synonym with internet, it’s also a tool used to legally discriminate minorities. But how much are you willing to do with something like this when it’s growth your Key Performance Metric (KPI), like on every other major corporation. Facebook it’s not doing anything different from other big companies, it’s avoiding to pay the most taxes, lobbying and doing just about the same (even less than others). The difference with Facebook it’s that pushing for their growth results not on climate, or economic impact, but on social influence and changes, which can drive a bigger change in the end.
Same thing happens with their regulation, Facebook it’s not doing anything different than any other corporation, in fact I see less resistance to be regulated than many big corporations. And this issue in particular, seems to affect less mature nations and the US. The EU looks to have a better grasp on how to regulate the tech industry, which it’s not easy due to its fast evolving nature. Authoritarian countries that by nature are highly regulated seem to be faring relatively well too (or at least by their standards, since they keep control of public opinion).
Users
Here’s a shootout to all designers working on the platform, and here’s where complex system theory it’s very important, having— Move fast and break things — as a motto didn’t help Facebook values. It happens to often with humanity, we are so focused on wether we can, that we forget if we should. And don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty sure I would’ve made many of the same mistakes. It totally makes sense to focus on engagement and user satisfaction, if people is using more our platform it certainly means we are doing it right. Right?
With that comes a couple of human traits: our organism favor stimulus, optimized effort, avoids troubles and we are highly social. Mostly because those were traits that protected us from the harsh environment we had to face 50,000 years ago when stimulus was hard to come by, because of our diet we had to be smart where did we spend our efforts, troubles often result on injury or worse so we avoid them, and our urge to fit socially help to made us necessary individuals of our tribes.
Just like sugar products were perfectly designed to satisfied and exceed our primal needs of glucose, they are also super effective at fucking up our organism. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, are perfectly optimized portals that release dopamine to our brains, it allow us to temporary escape our realities, and resonates with our social needs. Social networks had been steadily reducing our effort to get what we want. Resulting on shortening human attention span, giving more satisfaction on smaller sets of time. We started with blog posts, then it came the Facebook post, the YouTube video no longer than 3 minutes, then the photo and the comment, and now we are at the stage where you get ‘stories’ in what? 3 seconds?
News
I won’t dive much into Fake News and Echo Chambers, a lot has been said on the topic. But here as well, the focus on feeding what the user wants has result on the absurd rise of people believing on a flat earth, which is an American luxury and a waste of human resources. I’ve seen some honest indicatives from Facebook to fight against it. And about Russia even the FBI and many international agencies failed to foresee the power of social networks as an military intelligence weapon, Facebook as well was ill prepared for this type of attack. Also there’s the debate if it was Orson Welles’ overblown, but that’s not the point here.
First of all, let’s not forget it’s an algorithm who serves what I’m most likely to click, won’t feed me something that’s going to change my opinion. The echo chamber it’s an known issue of social recommendation engines, and it’s accelerating (not creating) social and political divide instead of connecting the world. Radicalized political and religious views has existed well before Facebook. France election may look like a win on the battle against Fake News from Facebook, but in reality it simply tells the state of the country. Like in the rest of the world, it seems to be a duel between nationalism and globalism. Our views are affirmed, rarely informed and any debate it’s death before it even started.
Another factor comes with the news, media companies, just like Facebook have to bring clicks, views or subscribers to fuel their growth. There are a few publications that are trying to do what’s best, but it’s hard to do long journalistic researches or voice opinions not aligned with your target audience. Every media company it’s fighting for attention, just like the social networks. Journalism it’s no longer a public service, it’s a business. And that’s a problem.
Connections
A key component of civilization has been communication, the Roman Empire had it clear, and all the Imperialism was based on controlling comercial and communication routes, the US took off once European investments was able to flow thanks to the telegram. We used to recoil at the sight of sensationalist posts, now we are eager to know what is the latest scandal. This is a tough problem to solve, specially for Facebook, an algorithm has proven to not be enough, too pragmatic to notice it’s creating echo chambers. Human edition used to be a key component of Newspapers, but the power that Facebook could hold if it decides to use their own editors would be too big (it certainly doesn’t help its history).
Should Facebook become like public utility and relinquish some control and edition controls to the governments? I don’t know but it’s a conversation worth having. If we all leave Facebook, we would need a new platform to do the same. Last time I’ve heard Mark, he said, and repeatedly that he’s in favor of regulations, granted he always added — as long at they made sense — , and I agree. Lately, it seems the US government have been focusing on applying federal pressure just to feel we are making progress and not necessarily achieving any, that’s why the hearing was a joke for the tech community.
I truly believe on making the world more open and connected, and I’m pretty sure many folks at Facebook do too. The problem is that there’s a layer, and html mask that lowers human empathy, and fueled by our own echo chambers that makes it nearly impossible to have a civilized discourse on a comment section or any form of public thread. We are finding the hard way, that’s way easier to burn a bridge than to build one.
Awareness
Press always have had the power to shape public opinions, but just like most media companies nowadays, Facebooks favors clicks and engagement over their public duty, like most neoliberal companies of today. Are we going to keep letting an algorithm shape public opinion, and if so, is this algorithm going to favor user engagement above all else? Again, it’s easy to blame the big bad corp, but we need connections, we need information, if Facebook doesn’t provide it another platform it’s going to fill the void and it’s going to have to solve the same problems, just like Weibo is doing in Asia. Just be careful what you wish for, and never try to simplify complex issues.
Our industry it’s going to keep innovating exponentially, but I dare to say that the digital revolution it’s over. We are now entering an Awareness age, were we demand a more councious approach from our food, our services, our governments and ourselves. Should Designer’s Care? Yes, good user experiences aren’t enough, we need to design Ethical Experiences— EX — .
