Adam Thierer's Blog, page 166

Facebook Was the 'Next Google'

Since I contributed $10 to the $23 million The Social Network grossed nationally this weekend, I see no reason not to blog some thoughts on the film.

First of all, the movie, which purports to be a history of the founding of Facebook, succeeds wildly as entertainment. As you may have heard by now, the film basically posits that if its founder, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, had not been dumped by his girlfriend for questioning the academic credibility of her school, Boston University, Facebook may never have existed at all.

Whether or not the film's facts are straight on this is another matter. Nonetheless, it is not my purpose to comment extensively on either the film or its veracity, other than to recommend it highly as long as you ingest the story and characters with the copious grains of salt.

But some facts the film depicts are undeniable. The most significant for my purposes here is that the idea that became Facebook was germinated in the fall of 2003, just six years ago, and, as a website, was launched on the Harvard campus in February 2004.

This coincidentally is the same time I started my work as an analyst in telecom policy circles. In that period, Facebook has gone from a fairly localized Ivy League phenomenon to encompass 500 million "friends" and made social networking a significant dimension to the online experience.

Yet, even now, in the face of this one incredible example, I find myself, as I was six years ago, still challenging the assertion that the telecom industry is re-consolidating into a monopoly and that regulatory policies such as network neutrality are required to ensure innovation thrives for consumers, connectivity grows and applications remain inexpensive or free.

In fact, one of the rallying cries for network neutrality is that it is needed to ensure the viability of the "next Google."

Well, Facebook was the next Google, and what it and its founders have accomplished, completely devoid of Internet regulation, is extraordinary. Moreover Facebook's success is testimony to the free market counterclaim that network neutrality is a government solution in search of a problem.

On the technical side, as the film covers in broad strokes, Facebook's biggest resource requirement was server space. That's what Zuckerberg and his friends need most of their start-up capital for. In the film, as was the case in real life, access to bandwidth, which net neutrality proponents say carriers have monopolized into artificial scarcity, never is an issue.

Despite all the alleged backstabbing and double-crosses the film depicts, at no point does an evil telecom executive show up and demand a king's ransom for the right to use its network. Zuckerberg's biggest fear is a server crash, not the threat of being stuck in an "Internet slow lane." On the contrary, throughout the film, broadband access to Facebook is taken for granted. Broadband wireless connections work flawlessly. When a character says he viewed the video of a regatta on Facebook within minutes of the race's conclusion, the filmmakers assume audiences will accept it without further exposition.

So, while the film presents Facebook's founders as dysfunctional, it does not extend that judgment to the telecom and Internet industry. My enjoyment of the film was enhanced—and I hope yours is, too–by its tacit acknowledgement that, in America, a high-tech idea still can go from a dorm room to household word within six years, and that there is no broadband monopoly bottleneck strangling start-ups, whether or not they are fueled by beer and bad break-ups.

Announcing "The Sin Think Tank" — Now Accepting Applications

Since joining the ranks of the unemployed, a number of folks have sent kind notes wishing me well and asking what's next for me.  Well, now that I finally have the time to pursue my lifelong dream, I'm pleased to announce my new venture: The Sin Think Tank.  The mission of the Sin Think Tank will be to promote prurient interests, gun play, gambling, unhealthy eating, and alcohol and tobacco appreciation.  Some of our positions or programs will include:

The Bob Guccione Fellow in Cultural Studies
The Joe Camel Chair in Environmental Analysis
The Smith & Wesson Institute for Peace
The Jack Daniels Center for Spirited Discussion
The Center for Gambling Promotion
The Dunkin Donuts Nutrition & Nourishment Initiative (aka, the "Feed the World" initiative)
The Hunter S. Thompson Foundation for Free Living & High Times

Our official headquarters — a unique edifice constructed entirely from stacks of Benjamins stuck together with trans fats and extra-sugary kids' gum — will eventually be located in Las Vegas, Nevada, of course.  Job benefits are excellent, especially our Mixed Martial Arts day care center for the kiddies.

Resumes are welcome but personal interviews are preferred and will take place at Gilbert's Indoor Gun Range or at The Brickskeller while applicants are expected to sample 2% of every beer in stock during one sitting.

I welcome ideas for other positions and centers.  [The Sin Think Tank is an Equal Opportunity Offender Employer.]

Faux Urgency

Tech policy polemicist Scott Cleland has hit home with today's "FreePress' Faux Urgency on Net Neutrality."

FreePress' problem is that people have wised up to their repeated hysterical calls to "Save the Internet" from a problem that has never materialized as they recklessly warned. FreePress has failed miserably in finding or defining any real-world problem that needs radical intervention to fix.

Cleland is meaner to the folks at Free Press than I would be, but he's right to note that the problems net neutrality regulation might fix haven't materialized over a long period of, yes, faux urgency.

Joanne McNeil on online introversion and curation

On the podcast this week, Joanne McNeil, a science and technology writer living in Brooklyn, New York, and curator of Tomorrow Museum, a collection of images and speculative essays exploring how technology, science, and economics are affecting the fine arts, discusses online introversion and curation. McNeil discusses realspace introverts turned online extroverts, explains the lack of social media presence of many extroverts and celebrities, and parses the distinction between shyness and introversion. She also talks about Hanoi Wi-Fi and other technology encountered on her recent trip to Southeast Asia and addresses online curation, link blogs, and Tumblr.

Related Links

Caring for Your Online Introvert, by McNeil at Tomorrow Museum
Caring for Your Introvert, by Jonathan Rauch
You Are Not a Curator, New Curator

To keep the conversation around this episode in one place, we'd like to ask you to comment at the web page for this episode on Surprisingly Free. Also, why not subscribe to the podcast on iTunes?

What Privacy Invasion Looks Like

The details of Tyler Clementi's case are slowly revealing themselves. He was the Rutgers University freshman whose sex life was exposed on the Internet when fellow students Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei placed a webcam in his dorm room, transmitting the images that it captured in real time on the Internet. Shortly thereafter, Clementi committed suicide.

Whether Ravi and Wei acted out of anti-gay animus, titillation about Clementi's sexual orientation, or simply titillation about sex, their actions were utterly outrageous, offensive, and outside of the bounds of decency. Moreover, according to Middlesex County, New Jersey prosecutors, they were illegal. Ravi and Wei have been charged with invasion of privacy.

This is what invasion of privacy looks like. It's the outrageous, offensive, truly galling revelation of private facts like what happened in this case. Over the last 120 years, common law tort doctrine has evolved to find that people have a right not to suffer such invasions. New Jersey has apparently enshrined that right in a criminal statute.

The story illustrates how quaint are some of the privacy "invasions" we often discuss, such as the tracking of people's web surfing by advertising networks. That information is not generally revealed in any meaningful way. It is simply being used to serve tailored ads.

This event also illustrates how privacy law is functioning in our society. It's functioning fairly well. Law, of course, is supposed to reflect deeply held norms. Privacy norms—like the norm against exposing someone's sexual activity without consent—are widely shared, so that the laws backing up those norms are rarely violated.

It is probably a common error to believe that law is "working" when it is exercised fairly often, fines and penalties being doled it with some routine. Holders of this view see law—more accurately, legislation—as a tool for shaping society, of course. Many of them would like to end the societal debate about online privacy, establishing a "uniform national privacy standard." But nobody knows what that standard should be. The more often legal actions are brought against online service providers, the stronger is the signal that online privacy norms are unsettled. That privacy debate continues, and it should.

It is not debatable that what Ravi and Wei did to Tyler Clementi was profoundly wrong. That was a privacy invasion.

Eliminating the Fear Factor From Online Privacy Debates

At the Safe Internet Alliance event earlier this week there was a surprising amount of agreement on one aspect of sharing information on the Internet: eliminating the fear factor.

"Facts, not fear" was a meme throughout the event. Rep. Boucher discussed how comprehensive privacy legislation encourages Internet use because consumers don't need to fear how their information is protected. And Josh Gottheimer of the FCC cited a study that shows that one of the main reasons why people don't have broadband is due to, as he called it, the "fear factor."

For increased use and adoption of the Internet and online services, cutting through the fear is key. That's why I stressed why one of the main goals of a group that's discussing privacy-related public policies should be to distinguish between legitimate concerns versus overreactions.

For online safety, there was a period just a year or two ago where we saw a lot of rhetoric, but not a lot of facts, about the real risks and likely threats kids face when online. Today the discussion is less fear-based, and as a result is much more productive for making the Internet safer. The NTIA OSTWG report stressed this fact-based approach.

Today privacy is where the online safety debate was a few years ago. There's a similar danger of overreaction where rhetoric may crowd-out productive solutions. But there's also a risk of being too glib on each side: pro-regulatory privacy advocates may not value the need for legitimate revenue models while businesses may sometimes dismiss legitimate privacy concerns.

Ultimately it may come down to a question of who decides. Whether it's default settings or what is personal information, is it government, companies, or consumers that decide? I'll tip my hand here: I think the key is for consumers to on the one hand understand the decisions they make, and on the other hand be allowed to make decisions.

Fear not, NetChoice looks forward to working with the Safe Internet Alliance and policymakers on privacy issues.

-Braden Cox

Can Telework Work for the Federal Government?

The House and Senate have now both passed bills aimed at encouraging telework in the federal government. As anyone who has had to commute to work in the Washington DC area knows, the national capital area could probably use a good dose of telework to relieve traffic congestion.

According to Joe Davidson's column in the Washington Post, "The inability or unwillingness of supervisors to manage staff members they can't see has long been cited as a major reason" more federal employees don't telework. This fits with what I've heard from some current or former federal managers.  "I have enough trouble getting work out of people when they're in the office," one remarked.

The legislation offers some simple solutions: Tell federal agencies they have to allow all employees to work remotely unless there's some reason a position isn't conductive to telework. And accompany that with training so that managers will be better equipped to manage employees who aren't in the office.

I'm a big fan of telework. But one of the keys to making it work is holding employees accountable for results instead of inputs like time on task or time hanging around the office.  It's possible to do this even when the desired results are hard to measure.  Universities, for example, evaluate professors based on the quality of their teaching and research, not the number of hours they spend preparing for class or writing. This system is hardly perfect, and some places do this better than others. But on balance, it works much better than telling professors they've fulfilled their obligation by showing up at the office 40 hours a week.

So the key question in making telework work in the federal government is, "How well do agencies hold individual employees accountable for results?"  Here, the federal government has a few handicaps to overcome. It's hard to fire people for poor performance.  Pay is set by the federal pay scale, which does not necessarily create a direct link between pay and the value of the employee's accomplishments to taxpayers. And agencies do not always create a clear understanding of how the individual employee's contribution affects the results the agency is supposed to produce.

Granted, the federal government is probably better at dealing with some of these challenges now than it was 20 years ago, especially for the senior executive service. But most federal jobs are still a long way away from at-will employment with clear performance measures tied to the organization's goals. This is a change that requires not just "more training" or "cultural transformation," but also a redefinition of the terms of federal employment.

Given those circumstances, I think federal managers are justified in their concern that giving most employees the automatic right to telework could reduce productivity.  I can think of two ways to make telework work in the current federal employment environment:

1. Make people earn it. Employees who show they can get things done without a lot of supervision in the office are the most obvious candidates to be effective working remotely.

2. Mandate a trial period and evaluation. If you think it's fair to guarantee the opportunity to telework to most employees, mandate only that it must be offered on a trial basis. Continuation depends on performance.

These are, of course, second-best solutions.  And there may be others.

Taxpayers Against Earmarks Debuts

Taxpayers Against Earmarks is a new effort to rid the federal legislative process of some of its most acute horse-trading: earmarks. Find it at the cleverly named URL, EndingSpending.com.

My project WashingtonWatch.com has worked to generate earmark transparency. Here's the earmarks main page, and you should expect to see FY 2011 earmarks there soon.

There's little doubt that many spending earmarks are part of a subtle—or not-so-subtle—quid pro quo in which federal legislators buy votes by directing funds to favored home-state or home-district interests. Taxpayers Against Earmarks has a well-produced web site that invites people to sign up and join the anti-earmark effort.

Earmarked spending is a small part of the overall budget, of course, but earmarking is emblematic of the "favor factory" that Congress has become as the federal budget and federal power have bloated. Federal spending is appropriate in the small number of cases when it provides national public goods that benefit the country as a whole, but refurbishing local museums, funding projects at state universities, and requiring the military to buy from a particular defense contractor do not benefit the general welfare. Taxpayers Against Earmarks is working to begin the process of getting federal spending under control.

Contension Over Privacy in the Cloud? There Shouldn't Be…

I'd like to recommend Sonia Arrison's recent article on the need for updating the Electronic Privacy Communications Act (ECPA). She makes a good case why citizens should feel a bit worried about the ability of government to invade their privacy when they keep data in the cloud. And citizens are customers, so online businesses are worried if people may use less of their services. But here's another angle for why we need to update ECPA…it's to promote online safety. From an excellent analysis by Becky Burr, ECPA reform:

Would establish uniform, clear, and easily understood rules about when and what kind of judicial review is needed by law enforcement to access electronic content; and

Would, by clarifying the applicable rules, enable business to respond more quickly and with greater confidence to law enforcement requests and to avail themselves of hosted productivity technology.

Right now the law is muddled, and online services have a hard time determining legitimate requests from those that are overreaching. When the law is clarified, businesses and law enforcement can (with appropriate legal process) share information that can help find sexual predators and other online miscreants.

PFF Closes Doors after 17-Year Run

I'm sorry to report that the Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) announced today that it was concluding its 17-year run and ceasing all operations immediately. The organization had been through some tumultuous times recently with 5 presidents in 5 years and steadily declining support during that period. Thus, the decision was made to close the doors.

Founded in 1993, PFF's mission was to study the digital revolution and its implications for public policy while advocating a philosophy of limited government, free markets, property rights, and individual sovereignty.  The organization's scholars and researchers penned tens of thousands of editorials, papers, special reports, books, filings, amicus briefs, and blog posts during that stretch.  PFF also convened numerous policy fora, including its nationally recognized annual Aspen Summit, which brought together leading thinkers and policymakers in the field.

It's been a great honor to be with PFF for the past five years and I'm extremely proud of everything the organization has accomplished.  When PFF was formed, it was quite literally the only market-oriented institution focused on the digital revolution. Today, there are dozens of such institutions, many which PFF helped to inspire.  Thus, in a sense, PFF has served its purpose by focusing both intellectuals and policymakers on the need to keep cyberspace free from excessive government control and interference and it's my hope that the impact of PFF's work will live on for many years to come.

As for me, well, as the old country song goes… "it's time to stop thinkin' and start drinkin'."  I'll still be blogging here on occasion, but for now, I think I will enjoy a few weeks of unemployment and fill my time with bourbon, cigars, and marathon video game sessions.  Or maybe I'll get back to writing that book I just can't seem to finish.