
An Unelected Monarch Is Shaping Our Public Life. His Name Is Mark Zuckerberg - duck
https://onezero.medium.com/an-unelected-monarch-is-shaping-our-public-life-his-name-is-mark-zuckerberg-d7c571bd42d2
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keenmaster
This reminds me of a comment I made a while ago on Facebook and the necessity
of moderation:

"~Thought exercise~: Let's say you were the mayor of a large city. There are
multiple areas in the city where you can shout whatever you want during
certain hours. Would you let someone hook up an internet-connected megaphone
in each area and pipe in hate speech everywhere simultaneously? And what if we
were in a future where there were physical bots indistinguishable from humans
that crowded into those public spaces, vociferously indicated their agreement,
and cheered him on?

That future is now.

In reality, Facebook owns those public spaces. No one actually goes to that
spot in the park anymore. Mark Zuckerberg is the mayor. Oh, and it's not just
one city, he's everyone's mayor, everywhere. If you don't use Facebook but
you're on Whatsapp, you're still in his jurisdiction. As for the "during
certain hours" part? Nope, those internet-connected megaphones are blasting
24/7\. Those bots are nodding their heads 24/7\. Our mayor also collects
megaphone usage fees for himself. He gives you dopamine points, likes, and
social validation each time you come back for more. Freedom, yeah."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22206155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22206155)

~~~
Deely123123
Ok. Lets enlarge youre analogy. So, its ok to censorship any public speach?

~~~
keenmaster
That's a big jump from what I said.

Here's an expansion of what I said, in my own words. The only people who
wielded the "massive megaphone everywhere" before the advent of social media
were traditional media organizations (and organizations with disproportionate
access to traditional media). These media organizations were relatively
professional, with relatively high standards for reporting. They undoubtedly
had biases which led to problematic filtering and distortion of the
information that they presented. However, with the democratization of media
comes to new problems. We no longer have a professional class synthesizing and
filtering the information that we see.

Any one of us can wield the massive megaphone now, but there is a huge
heterogeneity in that usage. The most passionate partisans, the most nefarious
nation states, the Dunningest of Dunning-Krugers,...will use the megaphone the
most. Since most people are at least somewhat impressionable, this presents a
problem. Whereas before the media would impress upon people with (somewhat
problematically) filtered information, now social media is impressing upon
people with radically unfiltered garbage misinformation.

We have to admit that this is an existential problem for our democracy. Only
then can we begin to solve it. I am not asking for mass-censorship. I am
asking for the system of social media to be redesigned in such a way to
mitigate the above problems.

~~~
meowface
This is the inevitable, unavoidable course of human progress. Letters to
telegram to telephone to TV to email to blogs to social media. Eventually
we'll all have some wearable device and constantly sharing one-to-many in that
way, and later it'll be driven by neural implants.

The more you connect people and enable one-to-many communication and
information distribution, the more you increase the chance of "viral" ideas
propagating, be they (in one's view) good or bad ones. The harm imposed by
Facebook mostly has to do with the fact that they're a for-profit company, and
particularly a for-profit company that doesn't charge users, causing them to
acquire revenue in ways that are extremely prone to perverse incentives.

More people gaining the capability to be exposed to more information from more
people isn't the problem. I mean, sure, it causes problems and isn't what
we're evolved to properly handle, but it's not inherently a bad thing or
something that necessitates megamayors policing the distribution streams.
(Barring some exceptions in extreme scenarios where death has a high chance of
being imminent.)

At some point we'll probably have at least one popular decentralized P2P
communication medium / social media platform, backed by cryptography, and
there'll be no central authority able to control communication in any way,
besides governments arresting people or taking other security measures.
Zuckerberg-like figures will be irrelevant in these systems, but they'll still
exhibit the same properties you describe. It won't be possible for anyone to
redesign these systems to mitigate what you see are issues inherent to
unrestricted democratization of communication and information.

Shouldn't we prepare for this eventuality and accept that this is the
asymptote of human civilization, rather than asking gatekeepers to clean
things up during this interregnum where the gatekeepers happen to hold a lot
of power? It's like growing up with helicopter parents you cling onto despite
the fact that you're going to have to face the world on your own when you turn
18.

~~~
keenmaster
"At some point we'll probably have at least one popular decentralized P2P
communication medium / social media platform thing, backed by cryptography,
and there'll be no central authority able to control communication in any way"

There's not a chance that would ever get traction with a majority of people.
The "normies" would be revolted by what they find on there, and trolls would
have no one to troll but other trolls. Only the biggest trolls enjoy trolling
other trolls. That's what 4chan is for. What you described is a more
sophisticated version of 4chan which will have such gruesome content that half
of 4chan's userbase would turn away in shock.

~~~
meowface
Will it happen in the next 10 years? Probably not. But will something like
this exist within 100 years, especially as the public grows increasingly wary
of shady for-profit social media companies? I think it probably will, and I
think it'll probably be used by at least 30% of the population, and perhaps
much more.

I'm not suggesting this would function like an anonymous imageboard (though
there'll still be plenty of things like those for people who want them),
either. Imagine using the app Signal without having to rely on Signal's
servers or having to own a mobile phone. You'd use it just like you do now;
there'd just be no middlemen between you and the people you talk to. The same
can be true of Twitter or anything else. People would still have some control
over what they see and don't see; they're not going to see everything from
everyone at all times, unless they specifically decide to use such an app. We
just need to wait a few decades for those alternatives to become much more
polished and user-friendly for the average person.

The trend towards mesh-like, blockchain-like, decentralized, distributed, P2P
networking seems pretty clear. I think the majority of things will probably
still remain centralized even in a century, since there are many advantages to
centralization, but these alternative mesh worlds are only going to get bigger
and bigger.

It's definitely a complex issue, and many of these future decentralized apps
may end up re-implementing some aspects of centralization through elections of
volunteer moderators or some other kind of democratized system, but in those
cases at least the mayors will actually be elected and have limited terms and
could be recalled, unlike Zuckerberg.

~~~
keenmaster
I think we can both agree that we can't shoehorn all discussion regarding
social media's current flaws into a "Free speech vs. Censorship" paradigm. The
amplification of post-truthy discussion, whether nefarious or otherwise, is
problematic. If you were the CEO of a corporation and you found that some of
your employees were addressing corporate work in a post-truthy way, you would
want to promptly address the issue. A company run in a post-truth way wouldn't
be in business for long. Facebook is no exception.

Imagine the following discussion between Zuckerberg and his director of
engineering:

Zuckerberg: "Hey why did we miss the deadline for making a new Tiktok-style
app?"

Director: "well, we were going to code it in React Native, but then I realized
that React Native is Illuminati George Soros trash so we started from scratch
again. Also, deadlines are just a construct, you can never truly know how long
it will take to complete something"

Zuckerberg: "have you lost your mind? This company played a large part in
creating React Native and it has always worked well for us. And deadlines are
indeed a construct, but they are a very useful one!"

Director: "I'm not sure you deserve to be CEO. I believe you are a satanist."

Zuckerberg: "Watch your mouth."

Director: "Free speech, I can do what I want. You said so."

Zuckerberg: "You're fired."

Director: "Am I really fired? I can't be fired by an invalid CEO."

Zuckerberg: "I can tell you what's real: Those guards behind you whom will
escort you out of the building. The money you will no longer make. And the
restraining order I will file if you report back for your now non-existent
job. Goodbye."

If only Facebook tolerated pervasive post-truth for its userbase to the same
degree that it tolerates post-truth in Menlo Park...

~~~
meowface
Reddit staff probably aren't sharing porn with each other all day, but their
users are, and that's not an issue. If I were CEO of Facebook and a director
was playing Farmville all day instead of working, I would fire them, but it
wouldn't matter at all if users were doing the same thing. Reddit and Facebook
are platforms, not publications. How their customers use their product to talk
to others has no relation to how they might run themselves.

Additionally, it shouldn't be their job to nanny their users and judge what
things they say are true or untrue and remove the untrue things, unless
something's both untrue and likely to cause direct and imminent harm (like
saying drinking bleach is proven to prevent COVID-19). Allowing third-party
fact checkers to add commentary to consequential political posts is a
reasonable and balanced compromise on Zuckerberg's part.

"Post-truth" is meaningless and completely subjective; impartial analysts
should be able to address potentially true or false claims based on the
evidence. "Post-truth" is "whatever you claim to be true and I claim to be not
true". Truth isn't subjective, but judgment of truth is. One can cherry-pick
cases where some surrogate says something clearly false and defends it with
"we have a different view of what the facts are", but in the general case,
having different views of the facts is the natural state of humanity and
discourse.

I like Snopes, but I definitely do not want Zuckerberg to start acting like
he's Snopes or enforcing what content can exist based on what Snopes says. I
think (99.9% of) conspiracy theories are absurd and a scourge of society, but
I don't think they should be classified as thoughtcrime or removed. I would
fire an employee who was a zealous conspiracy theory proponent, but I would
never sanction a user for being one, or for holding any other view I disagreed
with or considered ridiculous. Snopes' voice should be given exposure but
opposing voices shouldn't be kept from exposure unless there are extreme
circumstances.

In my opinion, we should be asking ourselves how we could possibly improve the
general public's epistemological faculties and approaches, rather than trying
to tug-of-war-style yank their epistemological conclusions away from them. The
former will help unite the US and the latter will continue to further divide
it. Let's work at the meta level instead of the object level.

------
pritovido
Well, he has been elected, people has chosen to use facebook.

I don't use facebook because I don't want all my private info controlled by an
external company.

But most people has chosen to use it, and have chosen to continue using it
because the pros outweigh the cons for them.

The first monarch is usually elected. The offspring are the unelected.

------
ceilingcorner
I deleted Facebook years ago and Zuckerberg has had little effect on my life
since. I don’t seem to remember citizens being able to unsubscribe from Louis
XVI or the Romanovs.

~~~
teachrdan
True. But, if you're a US citizen, you live in a country where the President
is elected in no small part due to his efforts.

~~~
anm89
Congratulations, you've discovered the existence of media in a society with
free speech.

------
jldugger
Surely, it's not a monarchy until he hands the company over to his eldest son.
This is just vanilla plutocracy.

~~~
anm89
Yes, surely any time the owner of a company hands their ownership to their
heirs,we are all living in an oppressive monarchy.

~~~
jldugger
Well no, there's obviously a hierarchy here. If zuckerberg is king, then your
family business is the holdings of a minor barony.

------
CincinnatiMan
A lot of words to convey that Zuck has a lot of power due to his ultimate
oversight on content presented on Facebook. Interesting concept at least. Kind
of scary.

------
tobltobs
Everybody who is dumb enough to use his crap is electing him. Monarchs do
force you to obey, nobody is forced to use FB.

------
Skeletor
Well, we all vote when we use Facebook (or don't use Facebook)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
What is interesting is how much power the owners of the newspapers in the past
had. William Randolph Hearst of "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the
war" literally got America involved in the Spanish-American War.

More recently, the NY Times was a big proponent and probably helped drive a
lot of the consensus that got America involved in the war in Iraq.

Compared to these, where Zuckerberg is not actually pushing an opinion but
refusing to censor opinions, Zuckerberg is an amateur.

I think a lot of the hate that Facebook gets is from the old media that are
seeing their influence wane and are blaming Zuckerberg.

~~~
clairity
while i don't immediately agree with everything you said, you raise an
interesting point about the power dynamics of old and new media, and i find it
disheartening that it's being buried rather than discussed. at least you spent
more than 2 seconds formulating a response, which is more than most on this
thread.

------
mc32
Oddly, we don't hear about the other "monarch": Dorsey.

~~~
war1025
Twitter is a much more niche product in my experience.

Everyone and their literal grandmother is on Facebook.

Twitter is mostly restricted to news junkies and the tech crowd.

~~~
mc32
In terms of shaping public perceptions though, because the media feed from its
trough it has oversized influence --I think bigger than facebook. Like, you
don't hear about outrage mobs from Facebook as you do from Twitter.

------
ykevinator
All monarchs are unelected

~~~
quotemstr
Not true.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy)

------
anm89
It's amazing how words work. If you use a word to mean a thing that is
directly in opposition to its original meaning, you can form sentences that
sound bad without worrying about reality.

------
ben_w
Been thinking about this in various contexts recently: if corporations wield
enough power to be country-like [0], would it be fair to say they can only be
democratic if the workers have the power to elect and replace the board of
directors?

[0] not necessarily in all regards: “monopoly on violence” will be absent, but
having the power to define rules and ban sub-communities or to _actually_
negotiate with governments rather than just do what they are told

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> if corporations wield enough power to be country-like [0], would it be fair
> to say they can only be democratic if the workers have the power to elect
> and replace the board of directors?

That seems like the wrong model. The power that we are worried about them
exercising is over their users and the general public, not their workers. Your
statement is like saying government workers should be able to vote who runs
government because it is so powerful. The people we are worried about is the
general public, not the workers.

~~~
clairity
anti-suffragists tried to make those kinds of arbitrary distinctions too. a
democracy doesn't need to be narrowly defined by its workers. as a company
grows, its stakeholders grow to encompass more and more of the public. so
especially for large companies, that distinction is immaterial. a democracy
should be composed of the affected, not just some aribirarily-defined in-
group.

------
freeopinion
Zuckerberg was elected in one of the most democratic processes possible.

Voting is a very fascinating topic. If a person publicly endorses the mayor of
Miami (or the CEO of Pepsi, or the President of Ohio State University) for
President of the US 2020, many will criticize that person for throwing away
their vote. Then half the country laments what terrible leadership we have,
and how did these bozos get elected? It's always the fault of the other half.

Well, you have more liberty to vote about Facebook than you have to vote
US2020. Just log off and never go back. Otherwise, don't complain about not
getting a vote. If you did log off and never went back, complaining is kinda
like always blaming the other half for the bozos in office.

