Facebook is treated across three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show as the representative social media platform — Bob Zadek repeatedly calls it a surrogate for the industry — and as the site of a dispute over private content moderation, the economics of multi-sided platforms, and proposals to regulate or break up large technology firms.
Algorithmic curation and the limits of outside knowledge
In the 2019-04-24 episode, Zadek asked what mechanical devices Facebook uses to affect the quality of information subscribers receive, and what tools it uses without telling users to keep certain points of view from them Social Media Censorship (2019). Bill Ottman answered that the hard part is that users do not know what is in that toolbox; they can guess, but have no access to the blueprints or source code. He described an algorithm based on thousands of variables, using machine learning and AI, driving toward whatever will engage a user most based on behavior, location, and the language used in private and public messages. All data input on a phone, he said, is used to target material in the newsfeed, which is not chronological and has no obvious logic. Ottman called it dangerous for society not to have access to that information, because billions of people communicate on these platforms and their thoughts are molded by newsfeeds they check daily. He added that Facebook has done repeated experiments proving it can affect people’s moods and behavior by feeding them certain types of content.
Antitrust, self-policing, and the market alternative
In the 2019-06-20 episode, Zadek described Facebook as tending left-leaning in its corporate worldview, like much of Silicon Valley, and said it began making right-wing postings less available — de-platforming — without publicizing it, so that a user thought he was posting to the Facebook community at large when in reality only his son could read it Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019). Zadek framed Facebook as a surrogate for all social media. Frank Buckley said the act in question had been amended to block sites carrying listings for prostitutes, and that the sexual decency part preceded the political concern; he said some sites moved offshore, to Holland or elsewhere, and that this did not accomplish much.
Buckley called proposals to break up the platforms nonsense, taking Facebook as his example. Splitting it up would have to be done by friends, by people on Facebook, which he compared to gas lines in the 1970s turning on whether a social security number ended in an even or odd digit. Users would instantly try to rejoin, and there is only room for one, so it would immediately reunite. He said Facebook is kind of self-policing, invoking an argument he attributed to either Gary Becker or Milton Friedman about free markets dissolving racial prejudice because prejudice carries an economic cost. By the same logic, if Facebook saw danger of splitting up, it would police the ultra-liberals working in its basements who purge conservatives. Buckley said Facebook is really two companies, that most of his friends share his political views on Facebook, and that it would not be hard to create a new Facebook for conservatives — so if Facebook pushed this, it would split into one for liberals and one for conservatives. Facebook, he said, recognizes this and has a market incentive not to do crazy stuff to conservatives.
The multi-sided platform and the advertising model
In the 2020-07-10 episode, Zadek began with the basics: Facebook is a for-profit corporation, owned by shareholders, managed by a board of directors elected by shareholders, which hires officers, who hire employees Why Government Regulation of Tech Censorship is Undesirable (2020). He said Facebook is representative of social media in the broadest sense and is a platform, a word with a technical and important meaning. John Samples explained that economists talk about multi-sided and two-sided platforms, and that many new Silicon Valley businesses fit the model. Facebook does not produce a product and sell it to customers; it provides a service that attracts people to use it, and their data and online behavior are used to direct advertising to them. What appears in the newsfeed is the heart of the business. The platform connects users on one side and advertisers on the other; without users there is no revenue, and without as many users as possible the firm is not meeting its obligation to maximize shareholder value.
Samples said it follows that if Facebook does not moderate content — more harshly put, exclude some things — it will have trouble attracting users, because some users are repelled. He cited sites with low moderation, including some subreddits on Reddit, which he said has never been a big money maker, and 8chan, as examples of what might happen without moderation. Zadek offered network television as an analogy: free content draws eyeballs, which are then delivered to advertisers, with demographics attached. He said Facebook has mastered this and can be very granular, offering the service free to users who voluntarily disclose a great deal about their lives, which Facebook organizes and delivers to advertisers. Samples called it the best form of directing advertising in the history of the world, able to speak to small groups; he said the number was in the past as small as 500, and that he had received an advertisement on Facebook with his name in it, directed at perhaps 500 or 1,000 people.
Bias claims, Section 230, and the Oversight Board
Later in the same episode, Samples described his friend Arnold Kling’s idea of FOOL — Fear of Others’ Liberty — with the left fearing the right’s dangerous speech on Facebook and the right fearing left-wingers who want to suppress its speech, tied up at the congressional level with politicians worrying about elections. Zadek asked what suspicion drives the political class. Samples said there is a widely held belief, particularly on the right, that Facebook takes down conservative speech in a biased way, disproportionately, while left speech stays up; on the left, the belief is that dangerous speech stays up because of the business model or because Zuckerberg is a secret Trumpy, and that it should be taken down as a threat to democracy. What those views share, he said, is that Facebook, pursuing its business model, cannot provide an independent and fair judgment of what should stay up and what should go down.
Zadek said that even if Facebook is suppressing speech and denying conservative spokespeople access to voters, there is per se nothing wrong with it; it may jeopardize the business model, but that is Facebook’s issue, not the government’s. Samples agreed that for the libertarian the analysis stops there: signing on to Facebook is an agreement, a bargain in which the user gets access and agrees to abide by the rules, including rules about what cannot be said, with judgment reserved to Facebook. He said Facebook has a right under Section 230 to make those rules as it sees fit. The real question, he said, is whether Facebook is so ubiquitous that it is the public square or, as it looks legally and otherwise, a private business; he compared it to the Cato Institute, which can exclude people from the Hayek Auditorium and select who fits its mission.
Zadek said that under Section 230 Facebook is permitted to exercise editorial discretion and content moderation for harassing or too sexually explicit comment under community standards without crossing the line to becoming a publisher, and that catch-all language — “or otherwise objectionable” — gives it great latitude. He said there is suspicion that Facebook edits content so a user interested in conservative points of view might be denied it without knowing, and that the threat of government regulation, hearings, and attention to Josh Hawley led to the formation of the Oversight Board, which he characterized as defensive and as a way for Facebook to say it is self-regulating. Samples said a social media site like Facebook cannot be a publisher, contrasting it with Cato, where a book manuscript is edited and checked before publication; on Facebook all comers consent to the rules and start doing things without prior permission or editorial control. Content moderation is after the fact, and the problem is making it legitimate when people will be upset about what is taken down.
Samples said Facebook went through an expensive and complex legal structure, setting up a trust, and laid down $130 million for the first six years that cannot be taken back; board members cannot have their salary reduced or be removed for their judgments, creating an independent space. He said this is ultimately so people believe in the product and reconcile the business mission with the board, though the board does not worry about quarterly returns or business decisions. Zadek said Facebook wants the public to believe a system is in place even if line employees carry a bias, and that the appeal process is extra-Facebook, with employees having no say. He compared Samples’s structural independence to the CFPB, which he said is despised by libertarians, and framed the choice for users as between Samples and his colleagues or Josh Hawley and his colleagues.
Across episodes: what changed
The excerpts show no development in the treatment of Facebook across the three episodes; each approaches the same firm from a different angle. The 2019-04-24 episode, through Bill Ottman, addresses algorithmic opacity and experiments on mood and behavior; the 2019-06-20 episode, through Frank Buckley, addresses antitrust breakup and market self-policing; the 2020-07-10 episode, through John Samples, addresses the multi-sided advertising model, Section 230, bias claims, and the Oversight Board. Zadek’s framing as Facebook being a surrogate for social media generally is consistent across the episodes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Facebook’s founding date, its headquarters city, or the name of any statute beyond Section 230. They do not describe the outcome of any specific moderation decision, the text of the Oversight Board’s rulings, or the identity of the board members beyond Samples. The 2020-07-10 excerpt ends mid-sentence at a section heading, and the sources do not carry the discussion further.