Tag: Jaron Lanier

Wrangling With the Facebook Problem

With Mark Zuckerberg set to testify today on Capitol Hill, and revelations last week that the Cambridge Analytica data breach is now estimated to have affected nearly 90-million users (up from around 50 million), there seems to be no shortage of theories as to how to solve the “Facebook problem.” Congress will ask Zuckerberg what Facebook’s leadership knew about the abuse of its data, when they knew it, and what the company plans to do going forward to protect consumers. Regulatory solutions have their limits, of course, and may even exacerbate a problem if legislators fail to properly grasp the underlying issues. Still, the conversation is long overdue on themes like how much data is being gathered, by which corporations, and for what purposes.

For the past few weeks, Zuckerberg has been contrite, even self-flagellating, which is admittedly a refreshing change from the standard arrogance of Silicon Valley executives. But that’s mostly theater. At best, Congress can do what Congress does, which is to tell Facebook to clean up its act, or they’ll clean it up for them. Meanwhile, there seems to be general consensus among experienced technologists and tech writers that there are limits to how much Facebook can be repaired. “We cannot have regulators trim a beast as if they were barbers and call that change,” writes Jaron Lanier in an editorial advocating the wisdom of those willing to delete Facebook from their lives.

Many responses and proposals to the Facebook fallout have been variations on the theme that the internet (as if it were a conscious being) must return to some idealized, pre-commercial set of values people seem to believe were present 20+ years ago. One might even say that these voices insisting we “make the internet great again” are guilty of a related, ahistorical folly that cannot sensibly answer what again quite means in that sentiment. For instance, a recent article by Tim Wu for The New York Times manages to criticize Facebook while alluding to a familiar refrain of cybernetic idealism at the same time. He writes …

“From the day it first sought revenue, Facebook prioritized growth over any other possible goal, maximizing the harvest of data and human attention. Its promises to investors have demanded an ever-improving ability to spy on and manipulate large populations of people. Facebook, at its core, is a surveillance machine, and to expect that to change is misplaced optimism.”

It’s not that I disagree with that description—it’s irrefutable—so much as it is perplexing to imagine that anyone ever believed there might have been another “possible goal” Facebook was going to pursue. While Zuckerberg was still in middle school, I was in meetings where major ad execs were counting on exactly the kind of consumer-specific targeting that was finally made possible when Google and Facebook figured out how to get us to share gigabytes worth of personal information without minding. The “surveillance machine” was the golden goose investors were banking on from the moment the internet became publicly accessible.

Wu’s answer to the problem is good old-fashioned competition. Asserting that the web’s tendency to foster monopolies is not a matter fate, he states …

“…the real challenge is gaining a critical mass of users. Facebook, with its 2.2 billion users, will not disappear, and it has a track record of buying or diminishing its rivals (see Instagram and Foursquare). But as Lyft is proving by stealing market share from Uber, and as Snapchat proved by taking younger audiences from Facebook, ‘network effects’ are not destiny.”

While I think Wu is right to say that a competitor could theoretically do Facebook better (e.g. be better stewards of our data), I remain skeptical that “network effects” are not inevitable when it comes to certain types of platforms. Because if New Facebook came along offering the same features, plus new consumer-protection benefits, we’re all—I mean all of us—migrating to the new platform, leaving Old Facebook to go drink with MySpace.

Of course, with 2.2 billion users and a market cap of nearly $460 billion, the company in the best position to become New Facebook is Facebook. Regardless, most of us only need one time-sucking, data-gathering, cyber-water-cooler in our lives—if we really need any at all—so I still believe certain internet monopolies are inevitable.

If mitigating data abuse by means of competition is what Wu is truly advocating, his references to Lyft and Snapchat seem to sidestep some very tough questions. For instance, a ride-hailing app/service is not remotely comparable to a social media platform. Lyft and Uber are transaction facilitators, and the consumer only benefits by having multiple players compete to provide one service—a ride—on an as-needed basis. That model is simply not analogous to the reasons users spend time and effort contributing all of the content on a social platform.

As for Snapchat, it’s true that my teenager tells me she and her friends are there because “Facebook is for old people,” but at 150 million users, the platform is hardly proof that Facebook’s network effect is not inevitable. Meanwhile, I personally think it’s anybody’s guess what this next generation of users is going to expect or want from social media as they become young adults. This includes growing bored with the whole enterprise and bailing.

Competition is a good thing, but Wu’s generalized appeal to market forces as a response to the “Facebook problem” echoes rhetorical allusions that have been made at various times in the context of copyright enforcement online. For instance in mid-2016, during hearings about the DMCA, critics of any proposal to introduce a “takedown/staydown” provision insisted that the cost of implementation would be so high that it would entrench, for instance, YouTube as the monopolistic social video platform.

This line of reasoning has always lacked integrity for completely ignoring the various market forces, including the network effect, that sustain YouTube’s dominance. I suspect Wu is making a similar error in this case, perhaps oversimplifying the challenge. As just one prosaic example, I am very much drawn to Lanier’s sentiment when he writes, “…those who have had accounts and then deleted them are true pioneers. They will see things and learn things that are new in the world.” Indeed. But if I’m being honest, I discovered his article because a friend shared it on Facebook.

Disruptive Behavior

Bullshit and buzzwords go together like pick-up lines and Jagermeister.  And the bullshit buzzword of our times it seems is disruption.  Being disruptive used to get your mom called into school for a conference with the teacher; but ever since Clay Christensen published The Innovator’s Dilemma in 1989, we’ve been fascinated by the disruptive kids, especially the ones who play with tech toys — even when they fail.  In fact, as Jill Lapore points out in this piece in The New Yorker, Christensen’s study of disruption (and she points to some flaws in his work) is a study of business failure.  In her summary, Lapore writes, “Disruptive innovation is a theory about why businesses fail. It’s not more than that. It doesn’t explain change. It’s not a law of nature. It’s an artifact of history, an idea, forged in time; it’s the manufacture of a moment of upsetting and edgy uncertainty. Transfixed by change, it’s blind to continuity. It makes a very poor prophet.”

The first thing to hate (or at least distrust) about buzzwords is that their meanings are diluted because they are buzzwords.  I remember when MTV’s reality programming was a relatively new thing and video producers working in New York would ask a shooter or an editor to make something edgy.  But if every project is edgy, then we lose any context for what edgy actually means, and so it means whatever edginess looks like to whoever is in charge.  Cameramen and editors would smile and nod, thinking, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if you’re happy, and I get paid, we’re good.”

The word disruptive has produced an aroma of ambiguity to say the least.  In fact, I’d say the term is getting rather gamey the more it is applied to just about any proposal (i.e. tech startup) that breaks convention, even if we maybe don’t want the convention broken.  For instance, we probably do not hope to foster a culture in which, say, armed robbery is reframed as “disruptive finance.”   Admittedly, Kickstarter is a virtuous example of disruptive finance, although it may be too soon to say for sure that crowd-funding is here to stay.  As Jaron Lanier points out in Who Owns the Future, “Kickstarter continues to produce some wonderful success stories and a huge ocean of doomed or befuddled proposals. Maybe the site will enter into an endless game with scammers and the clueless, as it scales up, and render itself irrelevant.”  And as if on cue, I see in my news feed that a young man has raised about ten thousand dollars on Kickstarter to make potato salad.  Not life-saving potato salad.  Just potato salad.

In truth, I’m not picking on Kickstarter; I hope the site continues to evolve as a positive force, and so does Lanier.  But I am also by nature skeptical of religion, even apparently secular religions that see magic in technology and the social engineering promoted by its entrepreneurs.  And in the words of the silicon prophets, we will one day all be entrepreneurs. And it will be good.  A new venture in robotics may one day disrupt truck drivers out of their jobs, but not to worry because other disruptive innovations like Uber and Lyft offer a new way to make a living in transportation, right?  In reality, only sort of, and for a select few individuals in certain markets. And these few are likely making supplementary rather than primary income. Meanwhile, as we cheer for disruption sector by sector, and get a little buzz off the initial cool factor and implicit independence of an entrepreneurial society, we overlook the fact that we’re disrupting accountability, liability, and a network of social safety nets that were largely constructed in the late 20th century.  These include everything from insurance and pension funds to environmental regulations.

If you think you’re angry that certain investment bankers didn’t go to prison after the housing crisis, stand by.  It can get worse  in a market that disrupts thousands or millions of jobs into obsolescence with the false promise that we can all be networked entrepreneurs.  And again, as Lanier points out, many of these disruptive innovations built on networked systems he calls Siren Servers rely on making the servers unaccountable.  So, when we consider the larger implications of unregulated taxi services, for instance, it isn’t as simple as labeling such caution mere stodginess begging for unfettered disruption.

It is tempting these days to get high on the narcotic of tearing down systems and apparent empowerment of taking what feels like control via networked servers.  We forget, however, that these networked servers are not necessarily designed with said empowerment in mind despite what the marketing messages say.  They are designed to make money right now for the relatively small number of individuals whom we revere for being disruptive innovators.  But networked systems want efficiency, while democratic societies that support the well being of a majority of its population are notoriously inefficient. And that’s not always a bad thing.

Jaron Lanier warns against “digital passivity”

Once again, computer scientist, author, and musician Jaron Lanier passionately addresses ways in which digital age toys and apps offer illusions of empowerment and greater freedom while in fact limiting both.  This article was shared by reader Mike Katell, who also offered a thoughtful comment in response to my post as to why I’m not losing sleep over the revelations of Edward Snowden.  Some misinterpreted that post as advocating apathy about government surveillance, but that wasn’t the point at all.  As echoed in this editorial by Lanier, the post was about questioning an overreaction to perceived government surveillance while simultaneously volunteering ourselves to surveillance through fun gadgets linked to large, corporate-owned computers.

From Lanier’s article:

“To be free is to have a private zone in which you can be alone with your thoughts and experiments. That is where you differentiate yourself and grow your personal value. When you carry around a smartphone with a GPS and camera and constantly pipe data to a computer owned by a corporation paid by advertisers to manipulate you, you are less free. Not only are you benefiting the corporation and the advertisers, you are also accepting an assault on your free will, bit by bit.”

 Read full article at the New York Times here.