Since my previous burst of blogging in September I edited this story at The Intercept where we published Facebook's blacklist of banned people and groups and dove into how this list works and more importantly how it affects people not on the list (you can't praise certain people on the list, but the list itself has been secret).#
Since that came out, I've been talking to people internally and externally about this story and (of course) about Facebook more generally , including the recent group journalism project around some secret Facebook documents released by a whistleblower who used to work at the company.#
One theme that comes up over and over is that it's frustrating people have to care so much about how Facebook behaves, including its rules on what it bans and allows, and how well or poorly it enforces those rules, and about its privacy practices, etc etc.#
We have to care because the open web has not caught up to Facebook (~17 years after its founding), which is to say, we as a society have not, in an open and sustainable way, caught up to Facebook. People feel trapped on Facebook, or trapped into talking about and caring about Facebook, and it becomes like pressure in an Instant Pot. It's a huge powerful thing, which causes people to get worked up about it.#
Key point, if there were enough competition for Facebook, and if there were more open formats and systems for sharing information across social networks, and standards that made it easier to build new social networks, and maybe if there were some laws ensuring we could control and transport our personal data in an interoperable way — in this fantasy world, so many people wouldn't need to get so exercised about Facebook. I honestly don't want anyone telling a private company (or nonprofit, or group of friends, or church, or bowling league, or whatever) who they should be banning or even (most of the time) who they should not be banning.#
I agree with the critics who say that journalists as a group have been way too eager to egg on censorship on Facebook and other platforms, and reductive in talking about how Facebook is used. The solution will never come from Facebook, or from focusing on Facebook. It will come from all of us collectively — at the level of policy, technology, and civil society, at minimum.#
Since my previous burst of blogging in September I edited this story at The Intercept where we published Facebook's blacklist of banned people and groups and dove into how this list works and more importantly how it affects people not on the list (you can't praise certain people on the list, but the list itself has been secret).#
Since that came out, I've been talking to people internally and externally about this story and (of course) about Facebook more generally , including the recent group journalism project around some secret Facebook documents released by a whistleblower who used to work at the company.#
One theme that comes up over and over is that it's frustrating people have to care so much about how Facebook behaves, including its rules on what it bans and allows, and how well or poorly it enforces those rules, and about its privacy practices, etc etc.#
We have to care because the open web has not caught up to Facebook (~17 years after its founding), which is to say, we as a society have not, in an open and sustainable way, caught up to Facebook. People feel trapped on Facebook, or trapped into talking about and caring about Facebook, and it becomes like pressure in an Instant Pot. It's a huge powerful thing, which causes people to get worked up about it.#
Key point, if there were enough competition for Facebook, and if there were more open formats and systems for sharing information across social networks, and standards that made it easier to build new social networks, and maybe if there were some laws ensuring we could control and transport our personal data in an interoperable way — in this fantasy world, so many people wouldn't need to get so exercised about Facebook. I honestly don't want anyone telling a private company (or nonprofit, or group of friends, or church, or bowling league, or whatever) who they should be banning or even (most of the time) who they should not be banning.#
I agree with the critics who say that journalists as a group have been way too eager to egg on censorship on Facebook and other platforms, and reductive in talking about how Facebook is used. The solution will never come from Facebook, or from focusing on Facebook. It will come from all of us collectively — at the level of policy, technology, and civil society, at minimum.#
Copyright 2021, Ryan Tate
Last update: Monday November 8, 2021; 12:42 PM EST.