
The Internet and the Third Estate - theNJR
https://stratechery.com/2019/the-internet-and-the-third-estate/
======
rayiner
> “China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is
> now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries. Until
> recently, the internet in almost every country outside China has been
> defined by American platforms with strong free expression values. _There’s
> no guarantee these values will win out._ A decade ago, almost all of the
> major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are
> Chinese.”

(Quoting Zuckerberg)

I’m pleasantly surprised to hear Zuckerberg articulate this thought. It’s
something I’ve thought about a lot over the past decade or so. At one time it
seemed investable that key American values like free speech would become
universal. We thought our engagement with China and the Middle East would
hasten adoption of our culture and values. That future is far from certain
now. Americans need to think really hard about what kind of world they want
their kids to grow up in.

~~~
vkou
> I’m pleasantly surprised to hear Zuckerberg articulate this thought.

I'm pleasantly surprised that people are waking up to this problem, but
disappointed as hell that what they are waking up to is not the problem - but
rather, the disruption of the status quo.

To the rest of the world, American values, media, culture, etc, being the
dominant shaping force on the internet (And before that, through literature,
television, film, etc) was cultural imperialism, that has shifted discourse,
starved local culture, and, in short, was Americanizing the world. [1]

Americans now feel threatened by China's cultural weight being thrown around
in this space. Okay. You don't like China using the same mechanisms that you
used in the past, to broadcast and spread your mono-culture.

But instead of taking a moment to self-reflect, about whether it is good for
the world to have an 800-pound cultural gorilla warping discourse, culture,
and media around the world...

... We are upset that _we_ stopped being that gorilla! It's more than a little
hypocritical and peevish.

[1] Talk to a Canadian sometime, and ask them about Canadian culture, versus
American culture - in the media sense. You'll find there to be very little of
the former left, despite the government's best efforts to promote, and develop
it.

~~~
ivl
The difference is that with American cultural values the freedom to criticize
them remains. The option exists to say "I don't care for the US's culture or
values".

I fear the concept of an internet where posts are censored and police arrive
at your door for the wrong opinion.

~~~
vkou
The option also exists to say "I don't care for China's culture of values",
you just have to not worry about selling your media there.

You're speaking from an incredible position of privilege - from the point of
view of a net exporter of culture. Countries that were net importers of
culture never had this concern.

Nobody in Germany would care about this sort of thing, for instance, because,
I am sorry to say, nobody outside of Germany consumes German culture. Nobody
in Germany needs to tailor their speech to not offend China, because nobody in
China cares to listen to what they, their films, or their sports teams have to
say.

This whole thing is uniquely an American problem - and you're discovering what
it feels like to have your culture be shaped by the orthodoxies of a foreign
set of values. It sucks, but that's how the rest of the world has had to
operate for a long, long time.

~~~
harryh
_nobody outside of Germany consumes German culture_

Everyone in the world that listens to electronic music would like to disagree
with you.

~~~
monocasa
House and Techno are from Chicago and Detroit respectively.

~~~
harryh
Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter would like to have a word with you.

~~~
jpadkins
electronic music != house or techno. kraftwerk early stuff does not sound like
house or techno.

------
oflannabhra
Thompson has recently been on a tear. Two of his recent articles (this and
China Cultural Clash [0]) are some of his best writing yet. Actually, I'd say
they are some of his best _thinking_ yet.

Whether you agree with him or not, I think it is clear that he is asking the
right questions, at a time when most people are not. More than even asking the
right questions, I think he is seeing much more clearly, and forwardly, than
is common.

I'm not sure I agree with all of his framing. For example, I'm not sure I
agree that the invention of the printing press directly lead to nation states
450 years later. However, there is definitely more than a nugget of truth in
his framing of the future, here. I think hindsight will judge him quite well,
in more than just technology.

[0] - [https://stratechery.com/2019/the-china-cultural-
clash/](https://stratechery.com/2019/the-china-cultural-clash/)

------
NotSammyHagar
Another great piece. The world is changing, in the same way that the printing
press caused change, people to break away from the control of the church. For
many years it has been American views of freedom of the press that had a lot
of sway in the world.

> And then China is building its own internet focused on very different
> values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other
> countries. ... There’s no guarantee [American notions of free speech] ...
> values will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet
> platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese.

> We’re beginning to see this in social media. While our services, like
> WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong
> encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing
> quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in
> the US.

Scary to think that China can force censorship here via TikTok. I'm not a
tiktok user, but that's terrifying. Hidden, defacto commercial censorship.

(edited to remove the > on the last thing above, that was my comment)

~~~
newfangle
There is hidden and overt censorship. I actually find it absurd that we allow
our children to use social media software developed by a hostile foreign
power.

------
dmvinson
Ben Thompson continues to amaze. Pointing out the pointlessness of controlling
the impact of tech by limiting Facebook's influence is important.
Authoritarian China's biggest advantage is its ability to pick winners and
multiply their impact by leveraging how decisive their decision making can be.
Where this fails is at finding local maximums. The winners China picks will be
the best of what's available right now, which for a while has often been a
Chinese clone of what's working in America, adapted to local preferences.

America's startup culture and competitiveness is our biggest advantage, and so
I wish the US and EU would do more to force tech. companies to fight it out
instead of picking winners by regulating the industry and controlling what
Facebook and Google can do. Instead of just putting cumbersome regulations
like the GDPR around user data, also dictate companies above a certain size
have to have open APIs and easily exportable/programmatically accessible user
data. Obviously this must be balanced by granular controls, but how can
upstarts be incumbents when the data moats are so large. The APIs of Google,
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. are pretty abysmal and continue to become
worse with no punishment. Yet, that programmatic access to data is probably
the only way an upstart could compete outside of a complete paradigm shift.

~~~
aidenn0
> America's startup culture and competitiveness is our biggest advantage

It's not an advantage against China though when they can do both of:

\- Block US apps from the Chinese market \- Encourage wholesale copying of the
best features from US companies

If I were to start a FB clone of <insert any social app> in the US, it would
fail miserably. China can ban the US version and simultaneously fund a clone
for the Chinese market. Combined with the fact that Chinese networks (e.g.
TikTok) have full access to the US market, this makes competition very
asymmetric.

------
dredmorbius
The "fifth estate" usage as referencing bloggers long predates any recent
social media apologia.

Wikipedia article history shows the reference already by 2009:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fifth_Estate&oldi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fifth_Estate&oldid=308845816)

It cites Stephen D Cooper (2006). _Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the
Fifth Estate_. Marquette Books. ISBN 0922993475.

It's possible that there are yet other estates to be discovered:

[https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/102989723532565277](https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/102989723532565277)

And of course there was the 2013 film of the same title:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Estate_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Estate_\(film\))

------
40acres
Generally I think Zuckerberg is correct, Facebook is very powerful no doubt.
But that power is vested upon by it's users.

There clearly was a lot of misinformation going around during the 2016
election and at some point we have to look back on ourselves and ask: "why are
we so gullible"? There is a balance between Facebook moderating it's platform
and controlling speech and I think we are near that line.

Labeling articles as misleading or doing some fact checks along with making
sure that there are no bots and extreme hate speech is near the limit of my
expectations of what a platform should do in terms of moderation.

------
Tomte
> Europe’s Three Estates

Wikipedia says the same in the context of the press as the fourth estate, and
I think it's wrong, at least from a German point of view.

While it is correct that the medieval Estates (or "Stände") were the nobility,
the clergy and the people, nobody has ever called the press the fourth
"Stand".

The press is the fourth "Gewalt" (or "Power"), and that is a clear reference
to the three powers in the state: the legislature, the executive and the
legislature.

It's interesting how those two trinities mix with the press in different
languages and societies.

~~~
Torwald
> nobody has ever called the press the fourth "Stand".

Because unlike in the UK, the press as a Gewalt in a political system with
Gewaltenteilung (division of power), appeared only after the society divided
in estates (Ständegesellschaft) ceased to be. It's a timeline issue.

------
reilly3000
I find it incredibly ironic that Mark Zuckerberg claims that the 5th estate he
helped create has no gatekeepers. In fact, Facebook finds itself the largest
gatekeeper of speech the world has ever known. How our society deemed it fair
and prudent to allow a private corporation to 'moderate' and prioritize
billions of communications a day... that I'll never understand.

------
dredmorbius
There's a glaring issue with Ben Thompson's essay, in that so far as I'm aware
there is _no_ independent US tradition of "estates" independent of either
Continental or British European formulation. Rather, there are the three
_Constitutional_ branches of government, the legislative, executive, and
judicial. One can find informal references to fourth (and occasionally higher)
_branches of government_. But not "estates" as such, within the US.

Otherwise, you _will_ find frequent usage of "fourth estate" in the
traditional European sense, almost always referencing the press.

See:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government)

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22united+states%22+%22fourth+esta...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22united+states%22+%22fourth+estate%22&ia=about)

I'm trying to decide if this is a major or minor flaw with Thompson's essay.
Either way, the claim without reference suggests a sloppyness or lack of
diligence, which calls into question his larger points.

And there are certainly questions to be asked. The claim that the so-called
Fifth Estate is free of gatekeepers is specious, as Jon Evans pointed out at
TechCrunch (posted yesterday to HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21306086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21306086)):
Facebook isn’t free speech, it’s algorithmic amplification optimized for
outrage.

Whether the gatekeeping is one of blocking specific types of content, or
amplifying others to the point that unwanted messages are completely drowned
out really doesn't much matter. Attention, individual or collective, is
finite, and whatever means are used to deny it, the end effect is the same: a
message is lost.

------
bovermyer
That's an excellent read and gives me much to think about. In particular, I
need to reassess my understanding of Facebook's role in political discourse.

------
juped
>It’s also a framing that is, appropriately enough, uniquely American; in the
United States, the first three estates are commonly thought to be the three
branches of government: the executive, legislative, and judicial.

The author of this article may have misunderstood it this way but I guarantee
that this is not commonly thought in the United States.

~~~
dredmorbius
In the US, the press is occasionally referred to as the _fourth branch of
government_ (after the legislative, executive, and judiciary). Occasionally
others are proposed: lobbyists, special interests, the intelligence services.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government)

~~~
juped
That's a different term used to mean entirely different things.

~~~
dredmorbius
My point is that Ben Thompson seems to have confused the terms "fourth branch"
and "fourth estate" in his essay.

Which is not among his better ones.

The usage of "branches of government", the three Constitutional ones (leg,
exec, judicial), and various others generally posited as a fourth, or
occasionally higher, branch. See:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government)

I'm entirely unfamiliar with a notion of _estates_ in the US independent of
Continental or British traditions. That seems to be a novel creation, or mis-
remembering, of Thompson.

DDG finds nothing aside from the European usage under fourth/fifth estate,
specific to the US:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q="united+states"+"fourth+estate"&ia...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q="united+states"+"fourth+estate"&ia=about)

~~~
juped
Estates are real and they aren't branches of government - more like divisions
of society. I agree regarding the confusion in the essay.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates_of_the_realm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates_of_the_realm)

------
ajudson
The discussion of the press reminds me of the propaganda model of media
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model)

------
cowpig
> The third concern is what has dominated the news cycle as of late:
> Facebook’s decision to not fact-check any posts or ads from politicians.
> This is largely being framed as aiding President Trump in particular, which
> is probably both true and also an unsurprising complaint from the Second
> Estate used to having monopoly control over fact-checking.

Does he mean the American second estate, i.e. the legislative branch? Or does
he mean the Nobility?

And what does he mean by Monopoly Control?

And what is he trying to imply with the word "unsurprising" here?

~~~
naringas
I think he means the European second state, the one after the church-backed
monarch state, i.e. nation state. (I also think his use of the nth-state
analogy is slightly is confusing).

I think he is referring to the media establishment's (i.e. TV news) monopoly
over fact checking. and it's unsurprising because of course they would like to
keep that same power they had before the internet

~~~
cowpig
Isn't the media the fourth estate?

I can't find any way to interpret this excerpt such that it makes sense.

How does anyone have "monopoly control over fact checking"?

And I also can't think of a way to favorably interpret that statement, given
that I consider fact-checking to be an integral component of any information
dissemination system.

Like many of Ben Thompson's articles, I find his ideas here compelling, but I
also find myself feeling like he's an industry apologist and it clouds his
thinking/makes him myopic.

~~~
dmvinson
I think he made a logical leap based around the US political parties and
wealthy elites' influence over the fourth estate - sanctioned political
debates on CNN, sources of information with perceived authority such as Fox
News, etc. While I also think it's explained poorly, there may be a connection
here to his point about the largest advertisers (politician and large
corporations) who fund the media which is meant to check them.

~~~
cowpig
That seems like a lot of hand-waving to me.

> this was the context for Edmund Burke’s remarks in 1787 that “There are
> Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there
> sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.”

There's this quote early in the article about the Fourth Estate being the most
powerful, and yet by the end I'm supposed to assume all these things to accept
this claim that "monopoly control" of the Second Estate exists on fact-
checking?

What I actually see is an article where someone started with a conclusion
(that some sort of free-market/libertarianism/lassaiz-faire/whatever brand of
let tech companies do whatever they want is The Way) and then spent a lot of
time thinking about how to reach it.

------
icodestuff
> The third concern is what has dominated the news cycle as of late:
> Facebook’s decision to not fact-check any posts or ads from politicians.
> This is largely being framed as aiding President Trump in particular, which
> is probably both true and also an unsurprising complaint from the Second
> Estate used to having monopoly control over fact-checking.

> The broader issue is that the third concern and first concern are so clearly
> in direct opposition to each other. If Facebook has the potential for
> immense influence on politics, why on earth would anyone want the company
> policing political speech?

Maybe because they're fact-checking lots of other things to promote themselves
as a platform you can find facts on? I don't know, I'd think if there was any
ostensible non-partisan shared value in a democracy, it'd be a desire for
factual information. Spun and biased, sure, but fundamentally factual. (In
reality, I don't think this is true anymore, at least from the head of the
executive branch and his sycophants, but this shared value is not irreparably
broken nationwide.) If Facebook isn't going to fact-check anything, then
that's one thing, but if they're going to fact-check some things, it's far
from unreasonable for them to fact-check political ads.

