What's To Be Done About Facebook

Social Media Monopolies?

Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, and mentor to Mark Zuckerberg when FB reportedly received a $1 billion buyout offer, has written up the case for dealing with FB's and other social media's monopolistic tendencies.

Here's my very brief characterization of his 8-point case (the full article is available at the link, above):

1.  Have FB contact every recipient of hacker fake news, with an explanation of what was fake and why we know this.  Twitter has just announced steps in that direction.

2.  Call social media bigwigs (Zuckerberg, and the heads of Google, Twitter, etc.) to testify in person before Congress.  Also, ban digital bots that impersonate people.  And no additional acquisitions for FB, Google, etc.,  until these matters have been addressed.

3.  Social media platforms must be transparent about who pays for quasi-political issue ads (aggrieved voice: "Don't let the dogs get away with stealing the cat chow."), as well as overtly political campaign ads (upbeat voice: "I'm the best doggie you'll ever vote for.")

4.  There must be transparency regarding the algorithms used to decide what ads you see; possibly even third party audits.  ("You liked 'The Catacombs of Rome', so we're showing you this ad for 'Dungeon Bikers'")

5.  Relationships between social media corporations and users should be more equitable.  For example, you should be able to opt out of a 'new' version of a platform that you don't want.

6.  A limit on commercial exploitation of your personal data.  Why did Google just buy a huge trove of credit card information?

7.  Consumers, not corporations, should own creative content (writing, photos) and be able to move it to another site if they wish.

8  Discouraging monopolies, on principle, unleashes innovation.

What do I think?  These proposals would probably have half the senate sponsoring them if this was 50 years ago.

My opinion, in more detail:

1.  Since Twitter is notifying victims of fake news, this doesn't sound like too much to ask of FB.  Being shown evidence could be the first inkling some social media users have that they're in an unreal bubble.

2.  If we could ban digital bots, that would be great.  Can it be easily done?  As for limiting acquisitions, that's likely one way to get social media platforms to comply.

3.  This makes sense.  If we could click to see who's behind a weird ad we see, that would be interesting, and might stop some of the worst of it.

4.  This doesn't seem necessary to me, but I'm restrained in what I click on and what I buy, and I ignore most ads.

5.  Ok, though until there's a problem that I can see....

6.  A good idea.

7.  So agree.

8.  This is something I'm usually for and feel strongly about, so I'm inclined to agree.  I'd have to know more, though.

Another article about reining in FB, further back in time.