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The analysis of the economic realities of today and the position of Facebook within it seems pretty on point in this article. I look around Steemit and I definitely get see the evidence that content is infinite and thus worth less than we maybe like to think. My own posts are definitely worth less than I would perhaps value them but as this is a marketplace I know that my position in that market is as an unknown.
At least we actually can vote on each other's post here, that it means something and we can put a value on them. It isn't simply a bunch of likes, personal information or other metrics that translates into hard value in a completely unknown way.
Zuckerberg for president?
But will Mark Zuckerberg run for president? Would he even be able to?
For me the more relevant question is whether or not people actually want that. And I guess I don't just mean people I mean people in power. There are already moves to curtail Facebook's influence and the absolute hammering it's getting in the media now pretty much turns that into something that is a daily international topic of discussion. My last few robot podcasts have been on it.
Personally I don't think that private companys' aims are significantly aligned with the public interest. I don't think that the profit seeking motive is the motive that ends up with a good society. However I'm definitely not making the claim that companies are a bad thing. But I think it's becoming clearer and clearer that advertising should not be left unchecked to influence social arrangements. It's a bold statement but I think we should have done say in the algorithms which affect our daily lives.
This is all to say that Zuckerberg is at the helm of a company which cannot be assumed to have the best interests of society at heart.
This kind of stuff is always interesting for a non US citizen because there are far more people on Facebook that are not US citizens than are. In fact it disgusts me that I'm so overly concerned with politics in the US but it's not surprising considering the massive cultural influence that it had on the small island of Ireland and increasingly so in the past few technologically oriented decade. Ireland is pretty much a tax haven for American companies who want a foot in the EU because of the low corporation tax, and in case you didn't know Facebook's Eu headquarters are in Dublin. So as a small nation of about 6 million people with as many again abroad it's not surprising that we're outward-looking. Anyway it does annoy me slightly but you need to know about that stuff because it'll probably affect your life.
I'm someone who believes in political sovereignty so when I think about Facebook's potential influence in the UK Brexit referendum for example I wonder what their influence is in Irish politics as well. To be sure it's far far smaller but if Zuckerberg does become US president I could see that influence ramping up significantly.
Aggregation economy
From an economic theory perspective I find the aggregator as monopolist argument quite persuasive. I've actually struggled for some time to understand why AirBnB, Uber, and so on are so successful. On the one hand it's obvious they use communication infrastructure to put together people who want to bypass complex fragmented or inefficient middlemen and swap them out for a friendlier easier to use technological middleman. Probably the main thing is that customers like the interfaces and the ease of transactions.
But that just describes a pretty good business model, not necessarily the kind of business I can take over entire industries. That is exactly what has happened. This analysis of an aggregation economy with extremely low cost and extremely high levels of available content to make available to people makes a lot of sense to explain it.
Antitrust
I think I like the antitrust suggestions the author makes. Number 1: disallow one social network company to buy another social network. Number 2: to require open API four social graph via standards. I also agree agree with the reservation on regulation. No one really wants regulation but it's one of those things that is needed basically in order for things done in secret to be done in public and things done by the strong for the strong to be constrained to allow for the weak and vulnerable to not be subjected to their tyranny.
That last point is up for debate, I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on that. Also I think I'll give Facebook a rest for a bit! Move on to more interesting topics.
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