Facebook is a like a dump, not just because it’s full of other people’s trash but because, while everyone agrees anything else what needs to be done about it, no one seems to know for sure. However, the common ground of most (American) commentators is where they look for answers: the progressive and distrust movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when activists activists and politicians disrupt the harmful concentration of economic power in everything from oil to railroads. . Applying antitrust protections to Facebook has been discussed to the death; so got the idea of Facebook as a public Utilities—As a socially responsible resource like water and electricity.
The first issue in this debate is whether Facebook should be considered a public utility. WIRED reporter Gilad Edelman take the view that it is not. Susan Crawford also argue that it is not, or shouldn’t, largely because (paraphrasing) she feels the infrastructure it provides is not central enough to society it is in a utility.
Others argue about treating Facebook as a public utility but disagree on what that means. Dipayan Gosh, in Harvard Business Review, say it isand responses must regulate the company’s data handling, consolidation, and approaches to advertising and hate speech. This position perfectly fits the position of Danah boyd, who proposed framing Facebook as a utility way back in 2012, with the important difference that Gosh sees the public utility approach as a panacea; something must be done instead of any other action.
I happen to think that some of Facebook’s services are important enough to consider it part of the social infrastructure and We would say that the right response for the company, much needed is regulation. But the bigger problem is that treating Facebook as a public utility requires not only answering the question of whether it is a utility, but also to which “public” it is accountable — and that is. is a much more difficult problem.
Favorite Tech Companies to claim that they are innovative, disruptive, and bring us unprecedented perspectives — but when it comes to sociopolitical dynamics, Facebook and its problems are old. Like, old 19th century. Before American society was reshaped by the internet, it was reshaped by railroads, electric companies, water providers, and a host of other new industries and resources — all privately controlled. highly centralized and controlled and ultimately a huge amount of political power.
The 19th-century solution took two forms: breaking the monopoly and reshaping them. “Disruption” is an antitrust law that views monopolies as bad on their own and actively seeks to force the breakup of the companies that hold them. The “reshaping” is for situations where monopolies are not a problem in their own right. Rail, electricity, water: There are some pretty obvious public benefits to having these standardizations, as they all lose a great deal of practical usefulness if the rail meter or the electrical standard Pressure changes every hundred miles (or hundreds of houses).
In such a situation, Louis Brandeis and the Progressives more broadly advocated a model of “public utility”. Companies and industries with “natural monopolies” – where concentration in some respects is part and parcel of the product premise itself – are not segregated but are instead forced to abide by rules different rules and systems of public accountability.
