
Facebook and Speech - uptown
https://continuations.com/post/188425562010/facebook-and-speech-its-all-about-power
======
mLuby
This is the _best case for users_ I can think of if social media were forced
to allow APIs:

Different products/companies exist to fulfill each of these roles:

\- host the firehose of tweets/posts/snaps/grams. Likely the husks of
Facebook/Twitter/SnapChat/Instagram.

\- filter/sort firehose for user given their preferences
time/popularity/relevance etc.

\- GUI to display posts to user by Web/Mobile/VR/SMS/Postcard etc. Aggregate
social media readers do (did) this.

\- GUI to (re)post/comment on/react to/edit/delete user content to the
firehose. These already exist: HootSuite/Buffer

\- firehose analysis for marketing, etc.

\- firehose-level moderation/flagging/censorship/tagging

The problem is there is far more user value in vertically integrating some or
all of these functions than there is in keeping them decentralized. Most users
will prefer one product that filter/sorts AND displays posts to two products
where one filter/sorts and the other displays.

~~~
vkou
This will balkanize the user-base, as we see with Mastodon.

You're either going to have every node do redundant work with moderation, or
they'll adopt a common blacklist, thus re-centralizing.

Operators that fail to self-moderate will be blacklisted by operators that
don't, because when 1% of the content broadcast by a node is, say, CP, nobody
in their right mind will think twice before blocking it outright.

~~~
deft
Reading the article and the parent comment I'm pretty sure that's the intent.
By 'balkanizing' the users, the power is reduced and the network as a cohesive
unit of control is dismantled.

~~~
Barrin92
the question is why the end-user would want balkanization, other than for the
abstract reason to limit power, which almost never works (or everyone would be
installing firefox right now).

People seem to be allergic to balkanization. They want the convenience of
typing a search result, a movie title, or a name into the platform instead of
having to jump over ten. Even Mastodon with its hybrid model is unable to
attract a significant amount of users from Facebook or Twitter.

Open APIs probably won't result in significant competition, and even if they
do the privacy concerns exist for small companies as much as for larger ones,
see Cambridge Analytica which with open APIs would basically roam around
freely.

------
collyw
He doesn't say why it's a trap to think about facebook in terms of publisher
versus carrier.

Someone made an insightful comment here the other day saying that they (the
tech companies) chose to play publisher and opened themselves up to whole lot
of legal battles and complaints, when they should have stayed with the carrier
option.

~~~
jakelazaroff
I’d like to know why so many people treat the publisher vs. carrier issue as
some natural law of speech, when it’s actually a fairly recent concept. To me
it seems like a false dichotomy. Arguing from first principles, why should
there be a binary choice between those two options?

~~~
jerf
We need carriers, because we need people to be able to dedicate themselves to
plumbing without having to worry about the terabytes crossing across them. If
they did, the Internet would grind to a halt from all the necessary processing
and blocking and examination.

We want publishers to carry some responsibility, for various obvious reasons.

It seems to me that once someone is being held a little bit responsible,
they're going to be forced to act as being fully responsible and need the
power to block a bit of content, which will then come with the full
corresponding responsibility for blocking that piece of content. What do you
see as a middle ground? (This is an honest question, not an argument.)

~~~
jakelazaroff
The middle ground to me is something like "people should be free to interact,
but if they're going to say something I think is racist they need to do it
elsewhere." (Substitute "racist" with whatever you wish in this scenario).

At that point, the publisher vs. carrier crowd goes "well, that racist thing
wasn't _illegal_ , so now you have to be responsible for _everything_ someone
says." But I don't really _care_ about what most of people say; I just don't
want them to be racist.

This isn't a standard we apply to most businesses. If I run a bar, I can
generally remove a patron for saying something without the conduct I choose to
allow coming under scrutiny.

I agree re: carriers, for the reasons you stated. But to me that's a status
mostly reserved for plumbing-type infrastructure, not a choice services have
to make when they're deciding what type of content to host.

~~~
endtime
> But I don't really care about what most of people say; I just don't want
> them to be racist.

I hope you're ready to be accused of being a sexist and anti-Semite by many
people's definitions. Not to mention that I hope you know that watermelon,
dancing, math, and balloons are racist (according to someone with 1000 Tumblr
followers, probably), and so have no place on your platform. The point being
that determining what is and isn't racist can be a pretty hard problem.

~~~
jakelazaroff
Coming up with an objective and broadly agreeable rubric would indeed be
difficult. But this is _my_ hypothetical service, so the only definition of
racism that really matters is my own. People are free to disagree and
criticize, of course — but ultimately it’s my way or the highway, so to speak.

I’ll also note that this doesn’t really answer my question. What is the reason
for the platform vs. publisher dichotomy? If I choose not to host content I
don’t want to, why does it follow that I should be liable for _any_ content I
host?

~~~
stale2002
> People are free to disagree and criticize, of course — but ultimately it’s
> my way or the highway

No, it is not your way or the highway, though. Because you, as the platform,
are _also_ subject to the opinions of the public, now.

And if you are subject to the opinions of the public, then you might start to
decide to censor more and more things, not because you actually think that
they are bad, but instead because some vocal minority is clammering for it to
be banned.

I don't want you to be subject to that public opinion. Instead, I want to give
platforms an excuse to say "sorry! We can't ban anything at all, because we
are required to act neutrally!".

That way nobody can complain and try and pressure the network into expanding
their definition of bad things more and more.

~~~
jakelazaroff
_Every_ company is subject to the opinions of the public. I avoid Google
products because they don't respect my privacy; I know people who don't use
Apple products because they're too controlling. That is called "doing
business".

And trying to be neutral doesn't even insulate you from those opinions! When I
realized my previous webhost's position was to allow e.g. Nazi content as long
as it was legal, I switched hosts. What do you think that webhost would do if
enough people followed suit?

~~~
stale2002
> Every company is subject to the opinions of the public

When was the last time that the phone company was protested because it refused
to censor certain people?

The answer is that this basically never happens.

> What do you think that webhost would do if enough people followed suit?

Well, if it was illegal for webhosts to refuse service to groups, then I don't
think that these webhosts would be protested, or whatever, for not censoring
certain groups.

> trying to be neutral doesn't even insulate you from those opinions

Which is why I want to give networks an excuse, where they can say "Sorry
everyone! It is completely out of our hands! We can't censor them even if we
wanted to."

> I switched hosts

And if every host is hosting controversial content, then you won't be able to
find any that isn't being neutral.

Have you changed your phone provider, because Nazis are using AT&T to make
phone calls? I doubt it.

~~~
meowface
One important difference is that YouTube carries content to be consumed by the
public, while phone companies are more like the postal service: they send
things from point A to point B, blindly (except for snooping from intelligence
agencies), between private parties. These companies have many common carrier
aspects, but they also have many aspects of regular private enterprises.

I agree that perhaps some degree of regulation could be warranted to adddess
their unique sort-of-carrier status, but saying that they should be forbidden
by the state from disallowing anything that's legal is a slippery slope in the
same way biased censorship is. For example, they may not want any risk of
people seeing extreme gore videos, since that could cause people to use their
service less, even though such videos are typically not illegal to distribute
or view. But with total free reign over a behemoth communication monopoly,
politically biased content curation and removal is also a huge problem. I
think there needs to be a middle ground approach.

------
rubbingalcohol
> In the EU all bank accounts are now required to have an API. This has
> massively reduced the power of incumbent banks, allowing for rapid
> innovation in the banking and payments sector. The same would and could
> happen if platform such as Facebook and Twitter were required to have an
> API.

I agree with the author's assertion of a problem, but this is really
confusing. Both Facebook and Twitter DO have APIs. Granted the APIs are
proprietary and subject to significant restrictions on acceptable use and
functionality. However, providing even a full-featured API doesn't change the
effect of the platforms owning a person's user account and persona, or their
ability to suck people in to waste countless hours watching their ad targeting
feed algorithms.

Only true decentralization of social graph hosting will really address the
core issue of centralized power.

~~~
cameronbrown
Forcing Facebook and Twitter to have truly open APIs would be amazing. We'd
have everything from custom clients, custom News Feed algorithms and much
more.. Heck, they can even require ads to be served, the point is we'd be in a
far better situation than we are now.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Forcing Facebook to have truly open API means forcing them to allow Cambridge
Analytica to vacuum up everyone's data.

~~~
malvosenior
Open API doesn't mean all data available to everyone all the time. You'd still
have ACLs and privacy options. It would just mean that the data and
interactions you as a user already have in Facebook's proprietary walled
garden, would be API callable from 3rd parties.

Today you cannot see my FB page if we're not friends, an open API wouldn't
allow you to access my data either. If we were friends, you could use your
custom FB client to look at my page though, which would be very user friendly.

~~~
traek
> It would just mean that the data and interactions you as a user already have
> in Facebook's proprietary walled garden, would be API callable from 3rd
> parties.

This was precisely the level of access which caused the Cambridge Analytica
scandal.

~~~
gfodor
False, the level of access which caused that scandal and others was the fact
that the early versions of the Facebook API granted access to second degree
nodes in the network once you approved an app. Cambridge did not manage to get
hundreds of millions of people to take their survey, they got access to the
hundreds of millions of friends of those who did.

~~~
traek
> If we were friends, you could use your custom FB client to look at my page
> though, which would be very user friendly.

Yes, this is what used to exist, and this is what Cambridge Analytica
exploited. The level of access I'm talking about, and what people in this
thread are advocating for, is allowing a third party app to see all info an
authenticated user is authorized to see (including their friend's info).

------
jfengel
I don't see what opening Facebook's API would buy us. You'd get different
interpretations of the feed, but you'd still be siloed into whatever feed it
was you accessed. Cambridge Analytica used FB's data to manipulate the feed
and thus the users, but no feed algorithm is going to prevent that. Just the
opposite: people would find it even easier to choose a feed algorithm that
siloed them further. You _could_ jump to a different one -- but would you?

I don't think it would return nearly as much power to users as he imagines. FB
won't make quite the same mistakes as they have in the past, but an enormous
amount of information is still public knowledge -- putting your social life in
public is the whole point of a social network. People enjoy putting themselves
out there and voluntarily, voraciously consume what others put there too. No
tech tweak is going to change that, or limit the consequences.

~~~
moosey
Based on the history of facebook and its news feed, I believe that the news
feed or activity feed in general, unless it is a dumb pipe, should be
considered human psychological experimentation. Under this premise, I would
submit that not facebook, but instead its curated feeds, should be made
illegal.

But then again, the same logic could be applied to advertising/marketing...
well, at least some of it, perhaps most.

------
carapace
I think we are seeing the divergence of humanity into Morlocks and Eloi.

Most people can't begin to understand the kind of power that FB/Google has
accrued due to the enormous and detailed information they are hoovering up.
The vast majority of people are digital serfs.

I don't know what, if anything, to do about it. I do not think requiring
Skynet to have an API will be very helpful though.

------
crustacean
It’s only going to stop when being on Facebook is seen as shameful.

~~~
2sk21
I agree and I think this is going to happen at some point.

------
RodgerTheGreat
I stared in shock as the red mist speckled my glasses. After a few moments I
managed to stammer a response.

"My god, that worker just fell in! Why haven't you stopped the machine? Why
isn't anyone _doing anything_?"

The foreman who was leading my tour made a plaintive gesture and stared into
space for a moment.

"It's complex, you see. The machine is certainly dangerous. That's the third
worker this hour."

"The third?!"

"Every 10 minutes, like clockwork. But on the other hand, the machine is quite
valuable. You must understand. Our competition all has machines just like it,
and if we stopped ours, well, it wouldn't make much of a difference, would it?
They're building more every day and we simply must keep up. That's the
business."

"But those are people- human lives!"

The foreman looked tired. He'd given this speech many times.

"Our workers sign all the necessary releases. They're fully informed. Our
legal team will assure you there's a great deal of paperwork involved, and we
cross every T and dot every I. Totally above-board. I didn't build the damn
machine, I just keep it running, and this is how it's done in the industry.
Now, if you'll all follow me- just step over that mess for now, the cleanup
crew are already on their way- I'll show you the way to our recruiting
department. Turnover is a bit high here, but we've been working on some great
new internship programs with elementary schools..."

~~~
mLuby
Did you write that? It's reminiscent of Kafka's In the Penal Colony.

~~~
Hydraulix989
If you did write that, it's absolutely brilliant, and I hope to read more from
you!

~~~
RodgerTheGreat
Yes, I wrote it. Thank you.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Brilliant. Thanks for sharing it with us!

------
zachguo
TBH, as a Chinese expat, all these utilitarian arguments give me Deja Vu of
how the Chinese government defended GFW.

~~~
wsinks
Can you elaborate on this? I don't know about how they defended the Great
Firewall (had to look up that acronym) And I was thinking about the
utilitarian argument for the world... that argument sides with China on the
surface.

From Webster, "Utiliatarianism" is the aim of action should be the largest
possible balance of pleasure over pain or the greatest happiness of the
greatest number.

China is the largest country by population in the world. A very quick argument
would be 'We have the most people, so anything that's good for our people is
good for the world." That thinking justifies ghettos - the minority would
upset the majority, and the most pleasure for the majority is what
utilitarianism is.

That has me worried - it's a simple argument that is wrong on deeper
inspection. What do you think as a Chinese expat? What was CCP's argument for
the Great Firewall?

Population reference: [https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-by-
percentage-...](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-by-percentage-
of-world-population.html)

------
LordHumungous
> The second trap is misunderstanding network effects.

Network effects, also known as efficiencies of scale, exist in every industry.
This was as true of the railroads and the telephone companies as it is of tech
companies. That's the whole reason corporations tend to become monopolies in
the first place.

------
amelius
The best way to get an open social API may be a "Ship of Theseus" approach,
where users run a scraper that copies their FB data to a new service, and
keeps their FB data synced with the new service. As more people join the new
service, eventually all FB logins will be by the scrapers, and at that point
FB can be dropped.

~~~
mikelyons
Isn't this explicitly against the Facebook terms of service?

~~~
amelius
Probably. But it's still the user's data.

Also compare this to a tool like YouTube-dl which is against YouTube's ToS,
but is still used by many people.

------
kd3
An API in and of itself is not going to prevent censorship if Facebook still
controls the backend.

