1) Regulations - Social media could/should be regulated:
It was a main theme from senators from both parties that social media should be regulated. Zuckerberg seemed to be in favor of “the right regulation”. An advantage of regulated social media is that something like what happened in the 2016 presidential election won’t happen. Fake news won’t propagate as easy as it did. That sounds good until you realize that such regulation will cement Facebook’s dominance in the social media market. Regulations will make it harder for small companies to enter the social media market and kill their chance to compete with Facebook. Furthermore, social media is a free speech platform and regulating that might indirectly infringe on First amendment rights.2) Social media is a platform for innovation in technology:
Facebook is more than a social media company. The following is an excerpt from an exchange between Senator Graham and Zuckerberg:Graham: Who’s your biggest competitor?
Zuckerberg: Senator, we have a lot of competitors.
Graham: Who’s your biggest?
Zuckerberg: Mmm… I think the categories of… do you want just one? I’m not sure I can give one. But can I give a bunch?
Graham: Mmhm.
Zuckerberg: So there are three categories I would focus on. One are [sic] the other tech platforms, so Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, we overlap with them in different ways.
Graham: Do they do, do they provide the same service that you provide?
Zuckerberg: Um, in different ways, different parts of it yes.
Graham: Let me put it this way. If I buy a Ford and it doesn’t work well and I don’t like it, I can buy a Chevy. If I’m upset with Facebook, what’s the equivalent product that I can go sign up for?
Zuckerberg: Ah well, the second category that I was going to talk about was…
Graham: I’m not talking about categories. I’m talking about is there real competition you face. Because car companies face a lot of competition. If they make a defective car, it gets out in the world, people stop buying that car, they buy another one. Is there an alternative to Facebook in the private sector?
Zuckerberg: Yes Senator, the average American uses 8 different apps…
Graham: OK.
Zuckerberg: …to communicate with their friends and stay in touch with people, ranging from text to email.
Graham: OK, which is the same service that you provide.
Zuckerberg: Well, we provide a number of different services.
Graham: Is Twitter the same as what you do?
Zuckerberg: It overlaps with a portion of what we do.
Graham: You don’t think you have a monopoly?
Zuckerberg: (long pause) Ah, it certainly doesn’t feel like that to me! (laughter)
The implication here is that Facebook consider itself a competitor to Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Facebook considers itself a technology company. Thinking about it, I noticed that Facebook competes with Google and Amazon on digital advertisement. It competes with Amazon in online retail to some extent – think Marketplace. And lastly, it competes with Microsoft’s LinkedIn social media platform. Facebook has created not just a business model around social media but also a technological innovation platform. Image processing, video streaming, cloud computing, data center technology, virtual and augmented reality, gaming, and e-commerce are just a few examples that were stimulated by Facebook’s social media network. This is something very remarkable!
3) Who owns the user data?
Besides possessing a technological edge and a great business model for generating revenue, Facebook’s power is in the data it hosts. No other social media platform has the depth or breadth of Facebook’s user data. Keep in mind that Facebook owns Facebook.com, Instagram, and WhatsApp with over 2 Billion users – that’s one third the world’s population. Zuckerberg claims that Facebook’s user privacy agreement states that users own the data the post on Facebook. However, the Cambridge Analytica scandal has shown us otherwise. It is true that users can remove, edit, add, and modify their personal data, but users cannot delete their activity history such as Likes, Shopping, browsing history, Apps, ..etc. That data is certainly owned by Facebook and they can monetize it however they wish.
Long ago, and I more than likely cannot find a link to it, but it was stated then that Facebook was created to allow the company to amass a collection of images that can be used to compete against Getty Images, which at the time was the company that owned media images. With the fall of newsprint, the landscape has changed.
ReplyDeleteHello Lee,
DeleteI thought something very similar, that Facebook owns all of your images. It turns out that it is not true – the user has copyright of all images posted.
- Wesley
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Delete-- first post removed due to being in the wrong comment string. I am not having a lot of luck with the comment section of this platform.
ReplyDeleteHello Safa,
Excellent and detailed post! One thing that stuck out to me was the senator’s response, or more likely an attempt, to compare Facebook to cars. I am neither for nor against Facebook, but it was interesting to see how the comparisons were “old school”. A car is a car – it has four wheels and gets people to where they need to go. But that analogy does not work with how the world is today. There are different markets, different technology, and a more IT focus towards how we address everyday life. Facebook does have a number of competitors because it found a niche market and expanded from there.
Thanks for the post.
- Wesley
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ReplyDeleteHi Wesley,
ReplyDeleteIt seemed from the questions that the senators asked that they are out of touch with what Facebook is about as a company and a website. One of the senators even asked how facebook maked money!!!
Safa