From day one, Mark Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to become a social
utility. He succeeded. Facebook is now a utility for many. The
problem with utilities is that they get regulated.
Yesterday, I ranted about Facebook
and “radical transparency.” Lots of people wrote to thank me for
saying what I said. And so I looked many of them up. Most were on
Facebook. I wrote back to some, asking why they were still on Facebook
if they disagreed with where the company was going. The narrative was
consistent: they felt as though the needed to be there. For work, for
personal reasons, because they got to connect with someone there that
they couldn’t connect with elsewhere. Nancy Baym did a phenomenal job
of explaining this dynamic in her post on Thursday: “Why,
despite myself, I am not leaving Facebook. Yet.”
Every day. I look with admiration and envy on my
friends who have left. I’ve also watched sadly as several have returned.
And I note above all that very few of my friends, who by nature of our
professional connections are probably more attuned to these issues than
most, have left. I don’t like supporting Facebook at all. But I do.And here is why: they provide a platform through which I
gain real value. I actually like the people I went to school with. I
know that even if I write down all their email addresses, we are not
going to stay in touch and recapture the recreated community we’ve built
on Facebook. I like my colleagues who work elsewhere, and I know that
we have mailing lists and Twitter, but I also know that without Facebook
I won’t be in touch with their daily lives as I’ve been these last few
years. I like the people I’ve met briefly or hope I’ll meet soon, and I
know that Facebook remains our best way to keep in touch without the
effort we would probably not take of engaging in sustained one-to-one
communication.
The emails that I received privately to my query elicited the same
sentiment. People felt they needed to stay put, regardless of what
Facebook chose to do. Those working at Facebook should be proud:
they’ve truly provided a service that people feel is an essential part
of their lives, one that they need more than want. That’s the
fundamental nature of a utility. They succeeded at their mission.
Throughout Kirkpatrick’s “The
Facebook Effect”, Zuckerberg and his comrades are quoted repeated
as believing that Facebook is different because it’s a social utility.
This language is precisely what’s used in the “About Facebook” on
Facebook’s Press Room page.
Facebook never wanted to be a social network site; it wanted to be a
social utility. Thus, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Facebook
functions as a utility.
And yet, people continue to be surprised. Partially, this is
Facebook’s fault. They know that people want to hear that they have a
“choice” and most people don’t think choice when they think utility.
Thus, I wasn’t surprised that Elliot
Schrage’s fumbling responses in the NYTimes emphasized choice, not
utility: “Joining Facebook is a conscious choice by vast numbers of
people who have stepped forward deliberately and intentionally to
connect and share… If you’re not comfortable sharing, don’t.”
In my
post yesterday, I emphasized that what’s at stake with Facebook
today is not about privacy or publicity but informed consent and choice.
Facebook speaks of itself as a utility while also telling people they
have a choice. But there’s a conflict here. We know this conflict
deeply in the United States. When it comes to utilities like water,
power, sewage, Internet, etc., I am constantly told that I have a
choice. But like hell I’d choose Comcast if I had a choice. Still, I
subscribe to Comcast. Begrudgingly. Because the “choice” I have is
Internet or no Internet.
I hate all of the utilities in my life. Venomous hatred. And because
they’re monopolies, they feel no need to make me appreciate them. Cuz
they know that I’m not going to give up water, power, sewage, or the
Internet out of spite. Nor will most people give up Facebook,
regardless of how much they grow to hate them.
Your gut reaction might be to tell me that Facebook is not a utility.
You’re wrong. People’s language reflects that people are depending on
Facebook just like they depended on the Internet a decade ago. Facebook
may not be at the scale of the Internet (or the Internet at the scale of
electricity), but that doesn’t mean that it’s not angling to be a
utility or quickly becoming one. Don’t forget: we spent how many years
being told that the Internet wasn’t a utility, wasn’t a necessity… now
we’re spending what kind of money trying to get universal broadband out
there without pissing off the monopolistic beasts because we like to
pretend that choice and utility can sit easily together. And because
we’re afraid to regulate.
And here’s where we get to the meat of why Facebook being a utility
matters. Utilities get regulated. Less in the United States than in
any other part of the world. Here, we like to pretend that capitalism
works with utilities. We like to “de-regulate” utilities to create
“choice” while continuing to threaten regulation when the companies
appear too monopolistic. It’s the American Nightmare. But generally
speaking, it works, and we survive without our choices and without that
much regulation. We can argue about whether or not regulation makes
things cheaper or more expensive, but we can’t argue about whether or
not regulators are involved with utilities: they are always watching
them because they matter to the people.
The problem with Facebook is that it’s becoming an international
utility, not one neatly situated in the United States. It’s quite
popular in Canada and Europe, two regions that LOVE to regulate their
utilities. This might start out being about privacy, but, if we’re not
careful, regulation is going to go a lot deeper than that. Even in the
States, we’ll see regulation, but it won’t look the same as what we see
in Europe and Canada. I find James Grimmelmann’s argument that we think
about privacy
as product safety to be an intriguing frame. I’d expect to see a
whole lot more coming down the line in this regards. And Facebook knows
it. Why else would they bring in a former
Bush regulator to defend its privacy practices?
Thus far, in the world of privacy, when a company oversteps its hand,
people flip out, governments threaten regulation, and companies back
off. This is not what’s happening with Facebook. Why? Because they
know people won’t leave and Facebook doesn’t think that regulators
matter. In our public discourse, we keep talking about the former and
ignoring the latter. We can talk about alternatives to Facebook until
we’re blue in the face and we can point to the handful of people who are
leaving as “proof” that Facebook will decline, but that’s because we’re
fooling ourselves. If Facebook is a utility – and I strongly believe
it is – the handful of people who are building cabins in the woods to
get away from the evil utility companies are irrelevant in light of all
of the people who will suck up and deal with the utility to live in the
city. This is going to come down to regulation, whether we like it or
not.
The problem is that we in the tech industry don’t like regulation.
Not because we’re evil but because we know that regulation tends to make
a mess of things. We like the threat of regulation and we
hope that it will keep things at bay without actually requiring
stupidity. So somehow, the social norm has been to push as far as
possible and then pull back quickly when regulatory threats emerge. Of
course, there have been exceptions. And I work for one of them. Two
decades ago, Microsoft was as arrogant as they come and they didn’t balk
at the threat of regulation. As a result, the company spent years
mired in regulatory hell. And being painted as evil. The company still
lives with that weight and the guilt wrt they company’s historical
hubris is palpable throughout the industry.
I cannot imagine that Facebook wants to be regulated, but I fear that
it thinks that it won’t be. There’s cockiness in the air. Personally,
I don’t care whether or not Facebook alone gets regulated, but
regulation’s impact tends to extend much further than one company. And I
worry about what kinds of regulation we’ll see. Don’t get me wrong: I
think that regulators will come in with the best of intentions; they
often (but not always) do. I just think that what they decide will have
unintended consequences that are far more harmful than helpful and this
makes me angry at Facebook for playing chicken with them. I’m not a
libertarian but I’ve come to respect libertarian fears of government
regulation because regulation often does backfire in some of the most
frustrating ways. (A few weeks ago, I wrote a letter to be included in
the COPPA hearings outlining why the intention behind COPPA was great
and the result dreadful.) The difference is that I’m not so against
regulation as to not welcome it when people are being screwed. And
sadly, I think that we’re getting there. I just wish that Facebook
would’ve taken a more responsible path so that we wouldn’t have to deal
with what’s coming. And I wish that they’d realize that the people
they’re screwing are those who are most vulnerable already, those whose
voices they’ll never hear if they don’t make an effort.
When Facebook introduced the News Feed and received a backlash from
its users, Zuckerberg’s first blog post was to tell everyone to calm
down. When they didn’t, new features were introduced to help them
navigate the system. Facebook was willing to talk to its users, to
negotiate with them, to make a deal. Perhaps this was because they were
all American college students, a population that early Facebook
understood. Still, when I saw the backlash emerging this time, I was
waiting and watching for an open dialogue to emerge. Instead, we got PR
mumblings in the NYTimes telling people they were stupid and blog
posts on “Gross
National Happiness.” I’m sure that Facebook’s numbers are as high
as ever and so they’re convinced that this will blow over, that users
will just adjust. I bet they think that this is just American techies
screaming up a storm for fun. And while more
people are searching to find how to delete their account, most will
not. And Facebook rightfully knows that. But what’s next is not about
whether or not there’s enough user revolt to make Facebook turn back.
There won’t be. What’s next is how this emergent utility gets
regulated. Cuz sadly, I doubt that anything else is going to stop them
in their tracks. And I think that regulators know that.
Update: I probably should’ve titled this
“Facebook is trying to be a utility; utilities get regulated” but I
chopped it because that was too long. What’s at stake is not whether
or not we can agree that Facebook is a utility, but whether or not
regulation will come into play. There’s no doubt that Facebook wants to
be a utility, sees itself as a utility. So even if we don’t see them
as a utility, the fact that they do matters. As does the fact that some
people are using it with that attitude. I’d give up my water company (or
Comcast) if a better alternative came along too. When people feel as
though they are wedded to something because of its utilitarian value,
the company providing it can change but the infrastructure is there for
good. Rather than arguing about the details of what counts as a
utility, let’s move past that to think about what it means that
regulation is coming.
