One quarter of all earthlings use Facebook
I don't support agricultural monocultures, so how come I use Facebook?
Last week, one of my readers responded to my newsletter asking me to take the agricultural monoculture metaphor a bit farther. I truly appreciate her engagement with my writing, as I’d like this newsletter to be an active conversation about these issues.
My reader mentioned Elizabeth Warren’s recently released proposal on how to break up Big Tech. According to the presidential candidate, big tech companies have too much power, which they are using to “bulldoze” competition. Her plan promises to unwind anti-competition mergers, including Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods, Facebook’s acquisition of Whatsapp and Instagram, and Google’s acquisition of YouTube. Companies like Amazon and Apple would have to separate their products from their platforms; as she put it, “Either they run the platform or they play in the store.”
This proposal will have enormous economic impact; according to the author of The Myth of Capitalism in an article for Quartz, between 1940 and 1980, a period of strict antitrust law enforcement, America’s middle class expanded significantly. At this moment in history, entrepreneurship has reached a 40-year low. Some argue that these giant tech companies hold so much power that they can act more like governing bodies, especially considering how little our current government understands about the way these companies function. This lack of understanding translates to lax regulations and ineffective policies.
While I agree with Warren that these monopolies (or monopsonies, in the case of Facebook, as several tech writers have argued) are economically and politically harmful, I’d like to focus on their social effects. In the last section of her proposal, Warren writes:
“Here’s what won’t change: You’ll still be able to go on Google and search like you do today. You’ll still be able to go on Amazon and find 30 different coffee machines […]. You’ll still be able to go on Facebook and see how your old friend from school is doing.”
Basically, as users, our experience wouldn’t change. Warren’s plan wouldn’t diversify the social media landscape. Splitting Facebook from Instagram won’t necessarily make room for other platforms to thrive. Currently, Facebook and YouTube are the most popular social media sites in the world, with a combined 4 billion active monthly users. On the list of top 10 social media platforms, 4 are predominantly geared to Chinese users. The rest are the usual suspects: WhatsApp, Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook Messenger.
Of course the internet is alive with a plethora of social media platforms to choose from; the problem is, you’ve never heard of them. There’s Mastodon, a Twitter-like platform; PeerTube, akin to YouTube; Pillowfort, a Tumblr lookalike; and Friendica, an alternative to Facebook. These platforms differ from the top players in one major way: they’re not companies. Some terms we can use to describe them are self-hosted, copyleft, open source, decentralized, distributed, and peer-to-peer. They do not profit from ad sales and they are run by volunteers, much like Wikipedia.
Although these platforms have only a fraction of users compared to Facebook and Twitter, their membership has been gaining steadily over the last few years. While the big players struggle to find the middle ground when it comes to moderation, some people are migrating to decentralized platforms out of concern about privacy, censorship, and online harassment.
From my research, it seems to me that Twitter and Tumblr users are more engaged in the community itself and therefore, users tend to be more astute when it comes to policy changes. With community comes more investment in the platform itself, making users more concerned about changes to the rules and guidelines that shape the way the community operates.
I remember being a part of a similar online community, LiveJournal, back in high school. Although I used the platform to share with friends and classmates that I knew in real life, the platform encouraged a widening of this community to people that I’d never met IRL. Interestingly, LiveJournal became an alternative for political commentary in the mid 2000’s, specifically against the Russian government, which was cracking down on free speech at that time. Since then, the servers have moved to Russia and several vocal opponents of the government have served prison time for sharing their opinions.
Facebook and Instagram don’t have the same communal feel. Users are there more for individual sharing (or promotion) than they are for community building. Like LiveJournal, Facebook also has groups, and I have witnessed firsthand the challenges that come with keeping the peace in a community of strangers. Most groups have a set of rules that members should follow, but despite dedicated moderators who do their best to enforce the rules, groups can self-destruct and explode into digital smithereens.
I suppose it depends on your needs as a user whether or not you’ll stay on one of the big platforms or make the move elsewhere. The reason why I use Facebook is because nearly everyone I know is on it. It’s like a digital Rolodex. As I go through the world meeting people, I add them to my Rolodex so I know how to keep in touch with them. With over 2 billion monthly average users—a quarter of the earth’s population!—it’s hard to find another platform that works better for my desired goal of keeping in touch with everyone I know. And yet, Facebook’s sheer volume of participants makes it a monoculture: a prevailing culture marked by homogeneity. And so, a dilemma: my social media needs and my values are at odds.