https://t.co/kOTEiSHZuQ — SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN🗽🤘🏽 (@sivavaid) September 7, 2020
Thanks! Yes! — Shannon Mattern (@shannonmattern) September 7, 2020
A very recent article by @NilChristopher covers this really well! https://t.co/fNVaDCAu9e — Krishna Akhil (@paranoidhydroid) September 7, 2020
I certainly don’t know how Facebook thinks about these things – I’m thinking particularly about the current face-lift – but surely they must put their business front and center. And their business is delivering eyeballs and tracking data to advertising. That means they’ve got to keep as many users on the platform as possible. Thus, to the extent that hate speech, bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories, political scamming, and so forth, drive up audience numbers without, at the same time, driving (too many) others away, that’s all good for business. Some employees and executives may know that this kind of stuff is not healthy for society, but, hey! business is business, amirite? In THAT context, what about unilaterally changing the user interface? It’s tricky. The number of people who are really angry about it, as I am, is probably rather small. But they’ve been through this before and they know that some people won’t like it. So they give you the option of temporarily going back to the old interface, just to show you that they too feel your pain. And of course it is easy for them to frame the change as something they are doing for you, for us, the users. They’re making Facebook a better place. The happier we are, the more eyeballs and tracking data they can deliver to advertisers. The idea is to demonstrate that they own and can control this space, this commons, and that you will comply because, what choice do you have?
* * * * *
See Facebook or freedom, Part 1: Who gave you permission to mess with my mind?
