The way I understand Meta’s involvement in the social web is as the “DMA-ification of social media.” Personally, I feel like it’s a *much better application* of the EC’s logic by which the DMA is applied than the App Store is, and Meta is anticipating it and changing proactively.
Like the iPhone in the EC’s imaginary monopoly over... iPhones, Meta’s apps are too big to fail in social media. I’m sorry, but you know it’s true. The vast majority of humanity will always be there. (cont’d) 1/
As Meta has already seen and dramatically — horribly, inhumanely — failed to adapt to many times over, the world is too complex for communications infrastructure to be provided by a single company.
Furthermore, there is a growing appetite in national governments to restrain the power of multinational private entities over technical infrastructure because they both cause legitimate harms and threaten governments in ways a dispassionate observer may or may not care about. (cont’d) 2/
So, in “pivoting to infrastructure” — a thing at which Meta is exceedingly competent and which has a much narrower scope than moderating ALL PUBLIC HUMAN (and computer) SPEECH — Meta brings to bear its capacity to comply with regulations and creates a new business in which it can charge “local” (in many senses of the word) social web providers for the convenience of push-button compliance.
Now, what does “compliance” mean in this world, and also what about muh freedoms? (cont’d) 3/
Well, I feel it’s about time that Internet People started to really reconsider their views of what content belongs in public, because that’s what’s actually at issue here.
The Fight for the Decentralized Federated Social Web is a fight with governments over which private entities are allowed to host publicly available information and software, and how they are to do it. The answer to that is always going to be “the ones that comply with the law” and “by complying with the law.” (cont’d) 4/
That will be ever-shifting, ever-tightening terrain, subject to the winds of politics and perverse incentives, ever-improving (or at least ever-increasing) surveillance, and it is also ever-increasingly entangled with the market economics of the entire Earth.
Do *you* want to deal with that? No. I don’t either. Meta has to, because approximately everyone on Earth communicating via public internet messages is already doing so on their infrastructure.
Is that good? No. But it’s true. (cont’d) 5/
So now the global baseline for posting — *in public*, remember, meaning on services accessible by theoretically anyone — is using services hosted on compliant infrastructure.
Enter DMA-ification.
In order to live in the new world, Meta has to at least *allow* other providers to be interoperable, have their own business models, and compete on *consumer-facing* differences. Features. Experiences. From the *user’s perspective*, that’s the world we want. Pick your app, and so forth. (cont’d) 6/
Which would you rather have:
• A world in which social web *infrastructure* is concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies no one likes, whose business is complying with the whims of governments and allowing their *customers* to host whatever (compatible) social web *applications* they want, including ones they roll themselves?
• Or a world in which social web infrastructure has to fly under the radar, which is impossible, and then regimes will crush it?
Now. PRIVATE. (cont’d) 7/
What worries many people I talk to about World A is that the more concentrated *mumbles* is, the more *mumbles* will CENSOR THE INTERNET! What follows is likely an explanation of Big Tech’s history of blocking or taking down content ranging from true and legal to kookoo-for-cocoa-puffs.
Well, something I’ve been ineffectually yelling about for a long time is that I’m really, deeply, intensely doubtful that posting anything remotely sensitive on social media is EVER warranted. (cont’d) 8/
People have this goofball idea that social media is The People’s Medium, and that it’s Essential for Civic Discourse, and stuff. And there is, like, 0.75 examples of that having ever been true in practice, which people will cite. And so, these people contend, if there is any danger of being rounded up by the Bad Men for posting in public, we’re living in a totalitarian nightmare scenario.
First of all, that danger will always exist. But much more importantly, (cont’d) 9/
SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT THE PEOPLE’S MEDIUM!
You know what the people’s medium is? WhatsApp. Yes, an app Meta owns and operates. There are two significant differences between it and the social web, though. One is that it’s an app for *private messaging*, not posting on the web. The other is that it’s *end-to-end encrypted*.
I assure you, *this* is where distribution of sensitive information is going. Search for terms like “dark forest” and “cozy web” if you don’t believe me. (cont’d) 10/
The regulatory and infrastructural considerations here are TOTALLY different, and if there’s anywhere I’m throwing my body into the gears of the machine to stop the spread of tyranny, it’s in the efforts to break encrypted messaging. THAT is the threat to freedom and democracy and so on.
Posting posts? No. That’s for funsies and advertising. (cont’d) 11/
So personally, the social web I hope to see realized is one where big tech’s lowest-common-denominator experience — which, again, approximately everyone will always use — is interoperable with other providers who can make *good* apps that compete on *quality*, and those providers can rely on a company like Meta — or others! — whose entire jobs are to do the stuff that’s too onerous for small groups or individuals.
It’s just posting. If you need to actually communicate, there are ways.
~ FIN ~