The Age of Objectivity in Social Media

Facebook holds substantial control over peer communication channels the world over.

This is due to the nature of information in the digital age, which has winner-takes-all characteristics.

In print media, many independent newspapers would constitute a diversity of opinion. As physical goods, they all have roughly equal orders-of-magnitude distribution. In the digital world, we have many fewer options: Twitter, Facebook, and diminishingly few others.

But, we say, Facebook and Twitter both constitute a diverse set of opinions, and therefore work in the same way as a newspaper ecosystem.

This is not so. The newspaper ecosystem is fundamentally unowned. Facebook is a private corporation.

FB wants content to go viral. That is the cream of their business. However, viral content is often successful exactly because it is shocking and hyperbolic. These memes are in some sense the engine of Facebook’s entire business.

Facebook, and therefore the Facebook feed algorithm, largely allow this content because they aim to honor the diversity of opinions of individuals on the platform. This is because Facebook’s values are to make the world more open and connected.

In spite of this, Facebook remained a perceived neutral during the Presidential election. Therefore, to be logically consistent, one of these things must be true:

Either 1) Facebook, in private, supports Trump;

2) Facebook does not believe Trump is a credible threat to making the world more open and connected, and as such, believes that being perceived as neutral in public is the pragmatic choice;

3) Facebook does believe that Trump is a credible threat to making the world more open and connected, but remains publicly neutral.

Any of these conclusions paints Facebook, at best, as a hypocritical organization.

The reality of 1) is slim, that Facebook supports Trump, especially within Silicon Valley; not to mention that immigration reform is one of Mark’s biggest social issues.

2), that Facebook believes Trump does not threaten the world being more open and connected, may be true. But it would stand in contrast to the speech given at this year’s F8, where Mark talked about building “bridges, not walls,” and then goes on to talk about how Facebook’s mission stands in opposition to this.

That leaves 3), that Facebook does believe Trump is a credible threat to making the world more open and connected, but remains publicly neutral.

You cannot fight intolerance with tolerance. If you believe that your mission is to make the world more open and connected, and you have the means to oppose someone in opposition to that mission, you can’t merely take no action and credibly retain that belief.

Facebook, in remaining publicly neutral on Trump, while believing that their message is being undermined by having him serve, would be doing this.

Through inaction, Facebook chooses to acknowledge that retaining users is more important than its own company mission.

Facebook could argue that practically, keeping the appearance of a neutral platform is the actual goal, which helps maintain users and still allows Facebook to maximize the amount of good it can do. In this case, Facebook is still hypocritical, but only because they’re lying about the reasons behind remaining neutral.

Even discounting this seemingly unavoidable hypocrisy, a Facebook that believes it is too big to have an opinion about an election is in itself a problem.

Facebook is not a government agency. It can have an opinion about politics, and more importantly, it has the power to make change. (Ultimately, Facebook can argue that it doesn’t have the power to influence, but yet this is the same access it sells every day in the form of ads.)

Facebook controls how many Americans consume daily news. Talking about elevating American political discourse by connecting other with diverse perspectives, while simultaneously profiting from an ecosystem which encourages, hyperbolic, divisive, often poorly researched journalism, is a sad, sad state of affairs.

Facebook sits at a point of immense power, and rather than using it for good, it chose apathy, which is the real problem.

Takeaways

How do we improve this?

Facebook, and other corporations, should take a stand for what they believe in and act on their beliefs. It is not enough to have values; you must act in accordance with them.

This is ultimately a side effect of an information economy. There truly are efficiencies in connectedness, but these need to be directed towards fundamentally good aims, not left to a pseudo-neutral “system,” or “algorithm,” least of all our collective limbic system, to sort out what is good or bad.

We also must support quality journalism.

For technologists, we need to a long, critical look past the piles of cash and to the effects of the work we do, and help build communities and shape behaviors for the better.

Disclosure: I used to work for Facebook.