Study Hall Digest 5/13/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

How to Solve a Problem Like Facebook?

On Thursday, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes took on the monster he helped create in the pages of the New York Times. Facebook is too big, Zuck has too much power, and the monopoly must be broken up, he argued. In brief:

• Zuck bought out the competition so consumers have nowhere else to turn — he owns Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp and has unmediated control over each (he controls around 60 percent of voting shares on Facebook’s board).
• Facebook dominates the market and outperforms competitors like YouTube and TikTok by a large margin, and uses its monopoly status to stamp out competition.
• Facebook’s outsized status means less accountability on issues like privacy. After all, there’s no competition to spur Facebook to get better.
• Lots of tedious praise for the free market, which if allowed to do its things would apparently yield worthy competitors and reign in Facebook’s influence, plus lots of tedious praise for Zuckerberg, who, “has demonstrated nothing more nefarious than the virtuous hustle of a talented entrepreneur.”
• In fairness to Hughes, he states breaking up Facebook would not be enough to solve its problems and calls for increased government regulation, including the creation of an agency that would pass new privacy laws and impose guidelines for acceptable speech.

But is breaking up the social media giant a real solution, or would it merely be symbolic of efforts to reign in unethical practices? A few dissenting voices:

• Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs and communications, countered Hughes with a Times opinion piece of his own, claiming — SURPRISE — breaking up the company is not the solution. “Success should not be penalized,” he writes, though he does welcome increased government regulation.
• Vox’s Ezra Klein argued that Hughes’ call to action misdiagnoses the problem with Facebook, which is capitalism itself. He points to a contradiction at the core of the piece — the drive to compete and dominate is what made Facebook the monster it is, yet Hughes prescribes healthy capitalistic competition as the antidote. “Perhaps more competition in the social media space would lead to better alternatives,” muses Klein. “But perhaps it would do what it’s done so far: lead to yet fiercer wars for our attention and data, which would incentivize yet more unethical modes of capturing it.”

It should also be noted that as the race for the Democratic nomination heats up, it seems likely we could see politicians come down hard on Facebook. In March, Elizabeth Warren laid out her plan to break apart not only Facebook but also Amazon and Google. Both Kamala Harris and Cory Booker stopped short of that, with Harris stating only that Facebook should be more closely regulated and Booker deriding Warren’s plan to boss tech CEOs around as Trump-like.

The Wing Would Like You to Say Only Nice, Empowering Things About It

Feminist coworking space The Wing is no stranger to controversy, having been criticizedas representing the worst of corporate feminism while promoting an agenda of female empowerment. But its members have always seemed more than happy with the services it provides, even penning glowing coverage in Teen Vogue. Now comes news there may be a reason for that: I was able to look at the terms and conditions agreed to by members, and they include a non-disparagement clause.

• The clause reads in full: “You shall, during and after the Membership Term, refrain from making any statements or comments of a defamatory or disparaging nature to any third party (including via your social media channels) regarding the Company or any of the Company’s officers, directors, employees, personnel, agents, policies, services or products or other members, other than to comply with law.”
• These terms are not readily available to prospective members, but are only provided upon request once your application for membership has been accepted.

Study Hall asked an attorney specializing in employment law, Russell E. Adler, to weigh in on the presence of the clause:

• Clauses of this nature, commonplace in separation agreements, are unusual in a membership contract for a co-working space or club. “A typical non-disparagement clause is in the context of an employment relationship or separation of employment — there is usually some kind of business relationship,” said Adler. “The context is unusual.”
• The clause is unlikely to be enforced because The Wing would have to prove damages, like reputational harm, and that can be tricky. It is likely there just to dissuade members from speaking out, he said. “It sounds to me more like they’re putting it in to keep people from bad-mouthing it and probably keep bad reviews out…to me it is bad form, but it’s not per se illegal,” he said. “The bigger issue is when they actually want to enforce them.”

It seems…counterintuitive for an overtly feminist and woman-centric co-working space to contain such a clause, given the wealth of reporting in recent years on how non-disparagement clauses are used to silence employees, especially women, from speaking out (and in this case, members are not even employees). If you’re a member of The Wing and would like to weigh in (anonymously), let us know: [email protected].

Longread of the Week: N+1 went long on our podcast obsession — do podcasts do us any good, or are we just filling the silence? “We like the internet. And really, we’d be online all the time if it weren’t for our eyes, those sensitive organs…This is why we love podcasts: they are the internet for our ears. Now we can be on the internet all the time.” It’s true! Can’t wait until they can just plant a chip in my brain so I can be on the internet when I sleep!

EVERYTHING ELSE

— More on Facebook: CJR’s Mathew Ingram explores the question of whether the media should sever its relationship with the platform, given the harm Facebook has done to the industry. “Journalists using Facebook tacitly let the platform off the hook, by endorsing its scale as a separate benefit, detached from the harm it does,” he writes.

— Google may be about to make it harder for media companies to be less reliant on advertising: As the company ramps up its e-commerce efforts, it may cut its affiliate marketing links, which publications use to make money (basically: they post a link to a product, if the reader clicks they get a cut).

— Remember when Disney invested $400 million in Vice Media? Boy are they regretting that! Disney says it will most likely not see any return on the investment. Vice, meanwhile, says its “firing on all cylinders” to meet its financial targets. (Of course, firing on all cylinders includes firing hundreds of employees and folding its channels into one site.)

— On that note: Broadly, Tonic and Waypoint all ceased to exist on May 6. In response, the Vice Union urged management to “keep the spirits” of those sites alive as they’re folded into Vice. Let’s hope that fits into their “firing on all cylinders” strategy.

— Andrew Neil got a round of applause for DESTROYING far-right figurehead Ben Shapiro on BBC’s Politics Live (Shapiro pouted and discontinued the interview), but…maybe he shouldn’t have given Shapiro a platform in the first place? Nesrine Malik made this argument in The Guardian: “The whole ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’ argument no longer works. Sunlight simply provides exposure and nourishment. There is no middle ground with bigots, no matter how popular they are.”

— More on egregious invasions of user privacy: Photo storage app Ever got users to upload personal photos with a heartwarming branding strategy, then used those photos to develop its facial recognition software which it offers to sell to other companies and the military. That’s a yikes from me!