ZadekpediaFacebook is a for-profit corporation owned by its shareholders and managed by a board of directors elected by those shareholders; the board hires officers, and the officers hire employees. It is a platform, and in the technical sense used by economists a multi-sided one: it does not make a product and sell it to customers but provides a free service that attracts users, whose data and online behavior are then used to direct advertising to them. Users sit on one side, advertisers on the other, and the newsfeed is the heart of the business. Why Government Regulation of Tech Censorship is Undesirable (2020)
The algorithmic feed
Bill Ottman said the hard part is that outsiders do not know what is in Facebook’s toolbox: there is no access to the blueprints or the source code. The algorithm rests on thousands of variables and uses 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 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, since billions of people communicate on these platforms and their thoughts are molded by newsfeeds they check every day; he added that Facebook has run repeated experiments proving it can affect users’ moods and behavior by feeding them certain content. Social Media Censorship (2019)
Moderation, bias and the case against breakup
Bob Zadek framed Facebook as a surrogate for social media generally, describing corporate policy in Silicon Valley as left-leaning and saying Facebook began making right-wing postings less available — de-platforming — without publicizing it, so that a user might believe he had posted to the whole community when in fact only his son read it. Frank Buckley noted that the statute in question had been amended to block sites carrying listings for prostitutes, and that those sites largely moved offshore, so that effort accomplished little; the concern then shifted from sexual decency to political content. Buckley rejected the antitrust remedy: splitting Facebook would have to be done by friends, and users would instantly rejoin, so there is only room for one. He argued Facebook is self-policing, invoking the idea associated with Gary Becker or Milton Friedman that free markets tend to dissolve racial prejudice because prejudice carries an economic cost, and said Facebook has a market incentive not to do crazy things to conservatives lest it split into one network for liberals and one for conservatives. Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019)
Consent, Section 230 and the Oversight Board
John Samples described the bargain a user makes on signing on: access to Facebook and its services in exchange for abiding by its rules, with judgment about violations reserved to Facebook, and said Facebook has a right under Section 230 to make those rules as it sees fit. He raised the question of whether Facebook is so ubiquitous as to be the public square or, as it looks legally, a private business, comparing its right to exclude to the Cato Institute’s right to select who fits its mission. Bob Zadek put the libertarian conclusion: even if Facebook is suppressing and censoring speech, it is a private actor, and that is Facebook’s economic problem rather than a political one. Why Government Regulation of Tech Censorship is Undesirable (2020)
Samples, a member of the Oversight Board, said a social media site cannot be a publisher: at Cato a manuscript is edited before publication, whereas on Facebook all comers consent to the rules and start posting without prior editorial control. Content moderation is therefore after the fact, and legitimacy requires an institution separate from Facebook. He described a trust structure, $130 million laid down for the first six years that cannot be taken back, and board members whose salaries cannot be reduced and who cannot be removed for their judgments. Zadek characterized the board as structurally independent, likening it to the CFPB, and argued it exists to preempt government regulation — the choice being between Samples and his colleagues and Josh Hawley and his colleagues. Why Government Regulation of Tech Censorship is Undesirable (2020)
Across episodes: the same question, differently argued
The recurring question is whether Facebook’s power over speech is a problem and what, if anything, should be done. In April 2019 Ottman pressed the opacity of the algorithm and the danger of unaccountable curation; in June 2019 Buckley argued that the market, not antitrust, disciplines Facebook, and that a breakup would fail; in July 2020 Samples and Zadek reframed the issue around consent, Section 230 and the Oversight Board as a private alternative to regulation. The later treatment adds the institutional answer — an independent board — that the earlier episodes do not discuss, while the earlier episodes supply the algorithmic and antitrust arguments the later one does not revisit.