In Facebook’s Farmville, All Animals Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others

The outrage du jour is that a firm that worked on the Trump Campaign, Cambridge Analytica, had sucked up, and then retained, Facebook data on 50 million users.  The sucking up apparently occurred with Facebook’s approval and knowledge, the retention not.

I am highly confident that this is being treated as Armageddon primarily because of CA’s work for Trump.  Why am I so confident?  Because the 2012 Obama campaign did as much, or worse (a) with Facebook’s knowledge and support, and (b) without attracting anything close to the same criticism.  Indeed, quite the opposite: the Obama campaign’s supposedly innovative use of Facebook data to shape its strategy was the subject of fawning, slobbering praise from virtually the entire media.  Privacy, shmivacy! It helped Obama, so it’s good!  And besides, it proved how much more hip and with it those cool Obama people were, as compared to those fuddy-duddy Republicans.

And as I say, the Obama effort was massive, and occurred with Facebook’s knowledge.

Just like Orwell wrote in Animal Farm: All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

As it turns out, the Cambridge Analytica effort was less decisive than previously reported, and was arguably irrelevant to the outcome of the campaign.  Perhaps the Obama campaign’s use of Facebook was similarly overhyped.  Not that we’ll ever know, given the media’s clear preference to give the Sainted One’s administration tongue baths, rather than critical coverage.

The rah-rahs that Facebook gave to the Democrats sucking up of its entire “social graph,” and  Sheryl Sandberg’s email exchange with John Podesta in which he said that he looked forward to “working with you” to elect Hillary, and she replied that she wanted Hillary to “win so badly” raise serious concerns about how in Facebook’s political Farmville, Democratic animals are much more equal than others.  This in turn makes it worthwhile to revisit an idea that I mooted many moons ago, and which has subsequently gained some traction: regulating Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other social media.  It relates directly to my proposal to regulate them as common carriers, subject to a non-discrimination requirement.

It is clear that these companies have a political agenda, and that that agenda is relentlessly left and pro-Democrat.  Well, so does the New York Times and the rest of the “elite” media, so why just regulate Facebook et al?

Two reasons.  The first is the one I gave in the earlier post.  That unlike traditional media, due to network effects these companies have market power.  They fit very well into the common carrier framework in that regard.

The recent events bring out another reason.  Whereas the NYT or CNN blatantly broadcast their bias, and it is there for all to see, the same is definitely not true of Facebook, Google, and Twitter.  They can readily engage in partisanship in very insidious ways that are virtually impossible to detect.  The algorithms that Facebook uses to push content, or now censor content; that Google uses to slant search results; and Twitter uses to censor, ban, and shadow block, are utterly opaque to outsiders.  Meaning that whereas if I feel particularly masochistic and decide to read the NYT or watch CNN, I can identify and correct for the bias, I cannot readily do so when interacting with the social media and search platforms.

The second point means that a common carrier-like non-discrimination requirement is not sufficient, given the opacity of the platforms: unlike, say, price discrimination by a railroad, political discrimination by Facebook is unlikely to be observable to those who are adversely affected.  To be effective, therefore, common carrier status would have to be accompanied by a more or less intrusive means of auditing these platforms and their algos.

As a classical liberal, I do not advance this proposal with glee, although as I noted in my earlier post the idea of common carrier regulation is rooted in classical liberal jurisprudence and thought.  But the deep politicization of powerful network industries, and their Animal Farm ethos, pose a serious threat to the political system.  Life is about trade-offs, and the perfect is the enemy of the good.  These platforms are subject to little economic competition, and pose a grave threat to political competition.  They need to be constrained, before they do even more damage.