4June
A lot of learned colleagues have spoken approvingly of Facebook in recent days. Though it looks to be amongst the better websites around at the moment (and at this point, we should mention Stale's recent homage to Netvibes), we're far from convinced that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Let us explain why.
As we've discussed previously, Facebook makes things more public than one might expect. This caused ructions last year, and we're sure that it will do so again. Recent changes equate advertisers with real people, and it is easier than users might think to disclose personal information to them. This is an implementation problem, and is not our core argument.
In order to register for Facebook, and presumably to use the site, it is necessary to run javascript from a site of unknown provenance and unclear security. It is also necessary to sign away all meaningful legal rights, as the company only accepts jurisdiction in Arizona West. Readers may insert the usual note about the export of an alien, corporation-friendly perversion of law here. Again, this is implementation, and is not our main argument.
No, our problem is a philosophical one. Users are putting up huge amounts of useful and innovative content. The reward for their effort is to be marketed at, sold to, and treated as commodities by the Facebook owners. The more one works with the system, the more one is sold at, sold to, and sold on-behalf-of. Users do all the hard work, but it's the owners who get rich. Indeed, what do users get out of this deal? A place where they can do the work that will make the owners even richer. And, er, that's about it.
At heart, Facebook is just like Six Apart, just like Google, just like Wikipedia. They are just like the mill owners from nineteenth century, exploiting their workers in return for a pittance. We don't believe in the sum of all human knowledge hype that Wikipedia puts about, or the organise the world's information bullshit from Google. People's works are being sold, in aggregate, for millions, yet only a pittance is trickling back to the creators. Facebook's owners, and the owners of other web 2.0 companies are seeing their users only in terms of how much money they can bring in, and how rich the owners can become from the work of the users.
This is, of course, a reference back to Marx, who postulated that capitalism works only while workers are plentiful, and the means of production are scarce. In this analysis, let Facebook be the means of production, and the site's users stand as the workers. There is, of course, a limit to how long the owners will be able to get away with this. Change will come, it's in the nature of everything to decay. This change isn't consciously going to come from the users - the vast majority of those under 30 have never seriously considered an alternative to the nakedly aggressive capitalism espoused by every social-networking site. And, no, we're not proposing a socialist-networking site.
No, the revolution will come when a Marxist analysis no longer holds water. It could happen that the supply of willing content-creators dries up - Six Apart's recent U-turn seems to have arisen because its contributors threatened to reduce short-term income and reduce their input in the long term. But it's more likely that the owners will cease to have a monopoly of production.
When there is a de-centralised system of identity and authentication - and we cannot believe that it's more than a few years away - the likes of Facebook and Six Apart will have to radically re-invent themselves. Someone will write the software that allows users to write their own profiles, slap them on their own server, add gubbins the likes of which we can only dream of, and apply granular privacy controls. That person will profit tremendously from web 3.0. But the Facebook will see its role reduce. They may be able to eke out a living as a service to assist people set up their own profiles, but the centralised service will no longer work.
The people of the web will also profit - no longer will their work be sold off by overlords looking to grow fat on their effort. Power will be taken from the few, and returned to the people. This analysis might well explain the gross disappointment we've found from Livejournal, where a perfect communist system (from each according to their means, to each according to their needs) was inscribed in the Social Contract. Then the capitalists stepped in, unilateraly broke that contract (a moral sin, though not a legal one) and turned the system into yet another place where profit was more important than anything. In this example, power was taken from the creators and concentrated in the hands of the server owners. The trend is to do precisely the opposite.
At best, Facebook is a stepping stone. It is not the be-all and end-all of the web. It will be superceded in time; indeed, we'd be surprised if its existing business model were still viable five years from now.
