{"id":196840,"date":"2021-10-11T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=196840"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:08:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:08:29","slug":"facebook-the-largest-autocracy-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/10\/facebook-the-largest-autocracy-on-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook, the Largest Autocracy on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

\u00a9 Provided by The Atlantic Danielle Del Plato<\/p><\/div>\n

27 Sep 2021 – <\/em>In 1947, Albert Einstein, writing in this magazine<\/a>, proposed the creation of a single world government to protect humanity from the threat of the atomic bomb. His utopian idea did not take hold, quite obviously, but today, another visionary is building the simulacrum of a cosmocracy.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg, unlike Einstein, did not dream up Facebook out of a sense of moral duty, or a zeal for world peace. This summer, the population of Zuckerberg\u2019s supranational regime reached 2.9 billion monthly active users, more humans than live in the world\u2019s two most populous nations\u2014China and India\u2014combined.<\/p>\n

To Zuckerberg, Facebook\u2019s founder and CEO, they are citizens of Facebookland. Long ago he conspicuously started calling them \u201cpeople\u201d instead of \u201cusers,\u201d but they are still cogs in an immense social matrix, fleshy morsels of data to satisfy the advertisers that poured $54 billion into Facebook in the first half of 2021 alone\u2014a sum that surpasses the gross domestic products of most nations on Earth.<\/p>\n

GDP makes for a telling comparison, not just because it gestures at Facebook\u2019s extraordinary power, but because it helps us see Facebook for what it really is. Facebook is not merely a website, or a platform, or a publisher, or a social network, or an online directory, or a corporation, or a utility. It is all of these things. But Facebook is also, effectively, a hostile foreign power.<\/p>\n

This is plain to see in its single-minded focus on its own expansion; its immunity to any sense of civic obligation; its record of facilitating the undermining of elections; its antipathy toward the free press; its rulers\u2019 callousness and hubris; and its indifference to the endurance of American democracy.<\/p>\n

[Read: Facebook is a doomsday machine<\/a>]<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some of Facebook\u2019s most vocal critics push for antitrust regulation<\/a>, the unwinding of its acquisitions, anything that might slow its snowballing power. But if you think about Facebook as a nation-state\u2014an entity engaged in a cold war<\/a> with the United States and other democracies\u2014you\u2019ll see that it requires a civil-defense strategy as much as regulation from the Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton told me last year<\/a> that she\u2019d always caught a whiff of authoritarianism from Zuckerberg. \u201cI feel like you\u2019re negotiating with a foreign power sometimes,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s immensely powerful.\u201d One of his early mantras at Facebook, according to Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang in their book, An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook\u2019s Battle for Domination<\/i><\/a>, was \u201ccompany over country.\u201d When that company has all the power of a country itself, the line takes on a darker meaning.<\/p>\n

The basic components of nationhood go something like this: You need land, currency, a philosophy of governance, and people.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re an imperialist in the metaverse, you need not worry so much about physical acreage\u2014though Zuckerberg does own 1,300 acres of Kauai<\/a>, one of the less populated Hawaiian islands. As for the rest of the items on the list, Facebook has them all.<\/p>\n

Facebook is developing its own money, a blockchain-based payment system known as Diem (formerly Libra<\/a>) that financial regulators and banks have feared could throw off the global economy and decimate the dollar.<\/p>\n

And for years Zuckerberg has talked about his principles of governance for the empire he built: \u201cConnectivity is a human right\u201d; \u201cVoting is voice\u201d; \u201cPolitical ads are an important part of voice\u201d; \u201cThe great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers.\u201d He\u2019s extended those ideas outward in a new kind of colonialism\u2014with Facebook effectively annexing territories where large numbers of people weren\u2019t yet online. Its controversial program Free Basics<\/a>, which offered people free internet access as long as Facebook was their portal to the web, was hawked as a way to help connect people. But its true purpose was to make Facebook the de facto internet experience in countries all over the world.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/span> \u00a9 Danielle Del Plato<\/span> <\/span> <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

What Facebook possesses most of all, of course, is people\u2014a gigantic population of individuals who choose to live under Zuckerberg\u2019s rule. In his writings on nationalism, the political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson suggested that nations are defined not by their borders but by imagination. The nation is ultimately imaginary because its citizens \u201cwill never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.\u201d Communities, therefore, are distinguished most of all \u201cby the style in which they are imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg has always tried to get Facebook users to imagine themselves as part of a democracy. That\u2019s why he tilts toward the language of governance more than of corporate fiat. In February 2009, Facebook revised its terms of service so that users couldn\u2019t delete their data even if they quit the site<\/a>. Rage against Facebook\u2019s surveillance state was swift and loud, and Zuckerberg begrudgingly reversed the decision, saying it had all been a misunderstanding. At the same time, he introduced in a blog post the concept of a Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, inviting people to share their feedback\u2014but only if they signed up for a Facebook account.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than 175 million people use Facebook,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIf it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren\u2019t just a document that protect our rights; it\u2019s the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, Facebook\u2019s population has swelled to 17 times that size. Along the way, Zuckerberg has repeatedly cast himself as the head of the nation of Facebook. His obsession with world dominance seems fated in retrospect\u2014his long-standing preoccupation with the Roman empire<\/a> generally and Augustus Caesar specifically, the digital version of Risk he coded as a teenager<\/a>, his abiding interest in human psychology and emotional contagion.<\/p>\n

In 2017, in a winding manifesto about his \u201cglobal community,\u201d Zuckerberg put it this way: \u201cOverall, it is important that the governance of our community scales with the complexity and demands of its people. We are committed to always doing better, even if that involves building a worldwide voting system to give you more voice and control.\u201d Of course, as in any business, the only votes that matter to Facebook are those of its shareholders. Yet Facebook feels the need to cloak its profit-seeking behavior in false pretenses about the very democratic values it threatens.<\/p>\n

Pretending to outsource his most consequential decisions to empty imitations of democratic bodies has become a useful mechanism for Zuckerberg to avoid accountability. He controls about 58 percent of voting shares at the company, but in 2018 Facebook announced the creation of a sort of judiciary branch<\/a> known, in Orwellian fashion, as the Oversight Board. The board makes difficult calls on thorny issues having to do with content moderation. In May it handed down the decision to uphold Facebook\u2019s suspension of Donald Trump<\/a>. Facebook says that the board\u2019s members are independent, but it hires and pays them.<\/p>\n

Now, according to The New York Times<\/i>, Facebook is considering forming a kind of legislative body<\/a>, a commission that could make decisions on elections-related matters\u2014political bias, political advertising, foreign interference. This would further divert scrutiny from Facebook leadership.<\/p>\n

All of these arrangements have the feel of a Potemkin justice system, one that reveals Facebook for what it really is: a foreign state, populated by people without sovereignty, ruled by a leader with absolute power.<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s defenders like to argue that it\u2019s naive to suggest that Facebook\u2019s power is harmful. Social networks are here, they insist, and they\u2019re not going anywhere. Deal with it. They\u2019re right that no one should wish to return to the information ecosystems of the 1980s, or 1940s, or 1880s. The democratization of publishing is miraculous; I still believe that the triple revolution of the internet, smartphones, and social media is a net good for society. But that\u2019s true only if we insist on platforms that are in the public\u2019s best interest. Facebook is not.<\/p>\n

Facebook is a lie-disseminating instrument of civilizational collapse. It is designed for blunt-force emotional reaction, reducing human interaction to the clicking of buttons<\/a>. The algorithm guides users inexorably toward less nuanced, more extreme material, because that\u2019s what most efficiently elicits a reaction. Users are implicitly trained to seek reactions to what they post, which perpetuates the cycle. Facebook executives have tolerated the promotion on their platform of propaganda, terrorist recruitment, and genocide. They point to democratic virtues like free speech to defend themselves, while dismantling democracy itself<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These hypocrisies are by now as well established as Zuckerberg\u2019s reputation for ruthlessness. Facebook has conducted psychological experiments<\/a> on its users without their consent. It built a secret tiered system<\/a> to exempt its most famous users from certain content-moderation rules and suppressed internal research<\/a> into Instagram\u2019s devastating effects on teenage mental health. It has tracked individuals across the web, creating shadow profiles of people who have never registered for Facebook so it can trace their contacts. It swears to fight disinformation and misinformation, while misleading researchers who study these phenomena and diluting the reach of quality news on its platforms.<\/p>\n

[From the May 2012 issue: Is Facebook making us lonely?<\/a>]<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even Facebook loyalists concede that it\u2019s a place for garbage, for hyperbole, for mendacity\u2014but argue that people should be free to manage their intake of such toxins. \u201cWhile Facebook may not be nicotine I think it is probably like sugar,\u201d the longtime Facebook executive Andrew \u201cBoz\u201d Bosworth wrote in a 2019 memo. \u201cLike all things it benefits from moderation \u2026 If I want to eat sugar and die an early death that is a valid position.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Bosworth failed to say is that Facebook doesn\u2019t just have the capacity to poison the individual; it\u2019s poisoning the world. When 2.9 billion people are involved, what\u2019s needed is moderation in scale, not moderation in personal intake. The freedom to destroy yourself is one thing. The freedom to destroy democratic society is quite another.<\/p>\n

Facebook sold itself to the masses by promising to be an outlet for free expression, for connection, and for community. In fact, it is a weapon against the open web, against self-actualization, and against democracy. All of this so Facebook could dangle your data in front of advertisers.<\/p>\n

To one degree or another, this is something Facebook has in common with its subsidiary Instagram and its rivals Google, YouTube (which Google owns), and Amazon. All position their existence as somehow noble\u2014their purpose is, variously, to help people share their life, to provide answers to the most difficult questions, and to deliver what you need when you need it. But of the behemoths, Facebook is most ostentatious in its moral abdications.<\/p>\n

Facebook needs its users to keep on believing that its dominance is a given, to ignore what it is doing to humanity and use its services anyway. Anyone who seeks to protect individual freedom and democratic governance should be bothered by this acceptance of the status quo.<\/p>\n

Regulators have their sights set on Facebook for good reason, but the threat the company poses to Americans is about much more than its monopoly on emerging technology. Facebook\u2019s rise is part of a larger autocratic movement, one that\u2019s eroding democracy worldwide as authoritarian leaders set a new tone for global governance. Consider how Facebook portrays itself as a counterbalance to a superpower like China. Company executives have warned that attempts to interfere with Facebook\u2019s untrammeled growth\u2014through regulating the currency it is developing, for example\u2014would be a gift to China, which wants its own cryptocurrency to be dominant. In other words, Facebook is competing with China the way a nation would.<\/p>\n

[Read: What Facebook did to American democracy<\/a>]<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps Americans have become so cynical that they have given up on defending their freedom from surveillance, manipulation, and exploitation. But if Russia or China were taking the exact same actions to undermine democracy, Americans would surely feel differently. Seeing Facebook as a hostile foreign power could force people to acknowledge what they\u2019re participating in, and what they\u2019re giving up, when they log in. In the end it doesn\u2019t really matter what Facebook is<\/i>; it matters what Facebook is doing.<\/p>\n

What could we do in return? \u201cSocially responsible\u201d companies could boycott Facebook, starving it of ad revenue in the same way that trade sanctions deprive autocracies of foreign exchange. In the past, however, boycotts by major corporations like Coca-Cola and CVS have barely made a ripple. Maybe rank-and-file Facebook employees could lobby for reform, but nothing short of mass walkouts, of the sort that would make the continued operation of Facebook impossible, would be likely to have much effect. And that would require extraordinary courage and collective action.<\/p>\n

Facebook users are the group with the most power to demand change. Facebook would be nothing without their attention. American citizens, and those of other democracies, might shun Facebook and Instagram, not merely as a lifestyle choice, but as a matter of civic duty.<\/p>\n

Could enough people come together to bring down the empire? Probably not. Even if Facebook lost 1 billion users, it would have another 2 billion left. But we need to recognize the danger we\u2019re in. We need to shake the notion that Facebook is a normal company, or that its hegemony is inevitable.<\/p>\n

Perhaps someday the world will congregate as one, in peace, as Einstein dreamed, indivisible by the forces that have launched wars and collapsed civilizations since antiquity. But if that happens, if we can save ourselves, it certainly won\u2019t be because of Facebook. It will be in spite of it.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

This article appears in the November 2021<\/a> print edition of <\/em><\/small>The Atlantic<\/small> with the headline \u201cFacebookland.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – msn.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 Sep 2021 – When a company has all the power of a country itself, it takes on a darker meaning. The basic components of nationhood are land, currency, a philosophy of governance, and people. When you\u2019re an imperialist in the metaverse, you need not worry so much about physical acreage\u2014though Zuckerberg does own 1,300 acres of Kauai, one of the less populated Hawaiian islands. As for the rest of the items on the list, Facebook has them all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":196842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[232,550,555,1007,562,626,610,2502,234,2198,287,2060,1006,1781],"class_list":["post-196840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-capitalism","tag-corruption","tag-elites","tag-facebook","tag-finance","tag-greed","tag-inequality","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-media","tag-post-capitalism","tag-power","tag-profits","tag-social-media","tag-soft-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284690,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196840\/revisions\/284690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}