Mark Zuckerberg’s Moral Dilemma
Daplie Connect is the personal server at the center of the decentralizing movement.
Let’s begin with a brief history of North Korea. After Japan surrendered in WWll, the Soviets quickly moved into Korea and took over the North East of the country. Before long, a communist government modeled after the Soviet Union was established above the 38th parallel. A young war hero was installed as leader and a platform of land redistribution, labor law reform and equality for women was born: the worker’s party. I use this example to illustrate the birth of ideologies, and who we put our faith in to manage them. Beginning as a party with the people’s interest, communistic rule in North Korea quickly consolidated into one main power with little or no laws to control it. It transformed from “self-sufficiency first” to “military first” in just two generations.
So what’s the lesson?
Let’s pick on Facebook, although it could be Verizon, or Amazon. Born in a college dorm and touted as the voice of the people, Facebook has become one of the most powerful media voices in the world. Its power has gone largely unchecked, excepting a law just passed in Germany that threatens to fine purveyors of fake news and hate speech. As Facebook has grown it has not only allowed us to connect with old friends, it has become a marketplace, an advertising platform, a sifter of news and a gatherer of human behavior. Will major players like Facebook retain their idealism in their ascent? On January 5th this year, Mark Zuckerberg released the following statement: “…one of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs decentralization. A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in the people’s hands. (The first four words of Facebook’s mission have always been “give people the power.”.) Back in the 1990s and 2000s, most people believed technology would be a decentralizing force.
“But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it.
“There are important counter-trends to this — — like encryption and cryptocurrency — — that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I’m interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.”
Once power has been attained, it’s hard to give back, even when that power was gained on a promise to share it with the people. The moral dilemma for Mark Zuckerberg now is to find a way to decentralize the unmitigated media power of Facebook and allow other voices to rise without giving away too much of his kingdom. No one expects Mark Zuckerberg to leave his palace the way Buddha did in search of enlightenment and a deeper connection to all human beings. But moving from a centralize platform saturated with algorithms that generate profit to the more democratic principles Facebook was founded on could be a start. Power is a jealous mistress. But the ideology of individual freedom, the free exchange of ideas, the collaboration in innovation for the good of the individual…is it’s own reward.
Major players are now less regulated, and therefore free to grow in ways that could prohibit the introduction of new technologies. It begs the question: “will there be room for the new Facebooks and Amazons?”
Decentralizing the power encourages innovation and balances the power. Moving away from public clouds is one way to decentralize power. Controlling your own flow of information and keeping it private allows you to build networks that exchange ideas freely, without algorithms serving up news or ads customized to influence the process.
As we move into this new era of pioneering innovators taking us away from centralized influence, let’s hope some of the players like Mark Zuckerberg remember their roots and foster more than a climate of profit. Freedom is worth so much more.
