Social Media Is Not the Printing Press

If I read one more op/ed or article where social media is compared to the printing press, I’m going to barf. The latest one is in the NYT, and quotes a number of published important people about the inevitability of all of this. That it’s a fundamental technological change, like the printing press. And who would want the printing press stopped? Sure, it helped fuel hundreds of years of brutal religious wars, but look at where we are today. Mark Zuckerberg is on par with Johannes Gutenberg. We just have to accept the misinformation (also spread by the printing press), libelous material (also spread by the printing press), and the hundreds of years of brutal, bloody, and barbaric religious wars between illiberal regimes to get to something good.

First, let’s get some of the printing press mythology out of the way. Johannes Gutenberg did not invent the printing press. There were presses before Gutenberg, but they were based on techniques such as carving into wood to create images. To publish anything more than pictures with that technology was hard and expensive. Gutenberg’s innovation was to create type from cheap lead and make that type movable (settable) on the page. It was too expensive to make the lettering out of bronze or brass. Lead is plentiful, cheap, and easy to work. If the letters wear down, you melt the lead and stamp more letters using the bronze or brass stamps. It made publishing a book, using a press instead of monks and quills, a commercially viable project.

The internet itself may be the more correct printing press analog. But social media is not. Social media, unlike the invention of movable type, is a creation of law. Prior to the passage of section 230 in 1996, a site like X would have been effectively impossible. Why? Because X would have been held liable for the content of the posts, regardless of the author. Thanks to section 230, X can promote social media posts that libel, slander, threaten, defame, intimidate, or harass individuals with little or no legal exposure. If you want to go after the perpetrator, you have to go after an army of dimwits, hidden behind a degree of anonymity that makes prosecution difficult, if not practically impossible.

Yet many intelligent people confuse this legal loop-hole as a change in fundamental technology. What if the New York Times suddenly started printing non-factual, slanderous content? They would be sued. What if the Washington Post just printed screen shots from the Wall Street Journal as news? They would be sued. What if People magazine suddenly started telling teens that no one likes them and that suicide was a good thing? They would rightfully get sued and maybe criminally investigated. We dealt with this problem long ago with print publishers. It’s not insane to think a place publishing a piece of content or information is liable for that content or information.

But isn’t social media just the stuff regular people post? No, you ignorant fool, it is not. If you believe that lie, you are willfully ignorant of the reality around you. It is a mere fraction of what the rubes and the simpletons post. A large portion is the product of professionals who use features of the platforms to promote ideas. These range from intelligence agencies creating chaos to people trying to sell cosmetics. What you see as the product of ‘just regular folks,’ is a highly curated feed. Imagine a print publication that took submissions from anyone. Then those people vote on the submissions and the print publication goes forward with the issue. Their goal is to aggregate content that gets folks to pick up a copy and look at the ads. They don’t really care what’s in their published material. And the headline is something like ‘Donald Trump has Butt Baby with Satan.’ They would be sued. Because it’s print. If you print it on paper, you are a publisher.

But if you do it on social media, it’s not a problem. X or Facebook can run the exact same headlines. They can promote those same stories for the exact same reason, to push ads (and collect data to better target you in the future). Yet they have a pass. Intelligent people are confused by this, as if there is something inherent in some technology that makes X or Facebook incapable of being stopped. That whatever we do today, we would just wind up with new companies tomorrow. The internet would allow for the passage of information, but it’s the legal structures that have allowed for the creation of these massive, multi-trillion dollar companies that are poisoning democracy with the goal of shoving one more ad in front of your face.

If you took the stance that Facebook is acting as a publisher, with its algorithm to select and promote content, the same way the New York Times acts as a publisher, Facebook would cease. If they could get sued because your grandma re-posted a libelous story, they would not let your Nana do that. And if your rejoinder is that it’s not employees of Facebook that generate the content, well, not all the content in the NYT is a product of its employees. They may pay for Op/Ed pieces, where the person is not a staff writer. Okay, if you don’t pay for it, then it’s user contributed? Social media companies do compensate their “creatives” or “content providers.” X and YouTube, for example, have allowed people to build influence businesses by (in part) direct payments. So the social media companies are paying people for content, selecting which content to show, and collecting money through ad impressions. I really fail to see the legal difference between the NYT and Facebook from a liability perspective, except for the invented shield of section 230.

But revoking section 230 would throw a lot of baby out with the bathwater. What about a small, mom-and-pop site in the American Heartland just hosting Bible verses and some miscreant missuses it for nefarious purposes. You would shut them down? That’s the false choice we are presented. Either continue forward as is, or create legal quagmires on every main street between San Diego and Portland, Maine. We could amend section 230 to put the legal responsibility back on to what are essentially publishers. Or maybe we should amend other laws so genuine mistakes or oversights are not criminalized. We already don’t arrest UPS drivers and executives because they deliver illegal material or contraband. Nor do we throw the bank branch manager in jail because the money in their bank was used for criminal purposes (although they sometimes know – and in that case we do and should).

We act like we can’t possibly learn from the past with a new situation in the present. That we just have to repeat the same problems, over and over again, every time there’s a new change. This is a kind of powerlessness brought on by ignorance. It’s on a computer and it’s done by young, clever people who use words most people don’t understand. And it’s kind of magical, if the typewriter is the last writing instrument whose innards you still understood. Because it’s magic, and the magicians who benefit from it say it has to be this way, then it just has to be this way. Francis Fukuyama may be a genius in his area of expertise, but he bows to technology much the same way your grandma does.

There are other arguments, such as we wouldn’t have such a broad dissemination of information about the sciences, or social, or political events. But we do And with organizations that are subject to standard laws and norms for publishers. The internet drives down the cost of publishing and so opens the ability for smaller publishers to come forward. But they are still publishers. If Scientific American online publishes an article on their site threatening the city manager of Watkins, Illinois, they can be sued. It doesn’t matter if they paid for the article, or it was written by their staff, or it was freely handed to them. They are a publisher and chose to publish it. The same threat on X might go unnoticed as it may not even be in the top 10% of threats against people that day, promoted by the algorithm on X. If I set up a news outlet on the internet, and “publish,” I will be sued for the butt-baby thing. But if I’m “just a platform,” taking submissions from users, then I’m actively shielded. Even if it’s the same butt-babies, poorly veiled death threats, anti-vaccine fabrications and all else.

This collective delusion can’t continue in the context of a vibrant democracy. The more we delude ourselves into believing we are incapable of correcting our own creation, that the things the mind of man hath wrought are as unshakable as the strong nuclear force, and that it is as inevitable as the sun rising, the more we will seem like complete morons to future generations.

I often feel like the one guy point at the naked emperor, parading down the street, and wondering why no one else sees this for what it is. I think other people do. I think they’re afraid that if they do anything about the current situation, then their side gets hurt more. If we take away section 230’s protections, it will be the other side that runs amok. Or it will just be big publishers that squeeze out the little publishers. (As if we don’t already have a handful of social and traditional media companies, all owned by politically minded billionaires). But what if there’s a problem and we need to get our base out to protests? What if the other side comes to rule the information landscape?

So that’s where we are. Ignorance about the thing we created and fear its absence will leave our side worse off. And we have many, many instances in our history where fear and ignorance have ruled us, and maybe that’s the example from which we fail to learn.

Why Everything Feels Broken

Once upon a time, if you wanted to watch television (a football game, a show, or whatever) you pushed a button and twisted a nob. That was the entirety of the user interface. The channels were clearly marked and number 2 through 13 and ‘U’. If you twisted the top knob to ‘U’, you had the choice of a whole slew of channels on a lower knob, marked UHF. These tended to be local, low-budget, smaller stations and public broadcasters. They were the kind of station that had a ‘Creature Feature’ movie night where the station owner’s nephew pretended to be Dracula. The whole interface was an on-off button, and a pair of knobs (or a keypad on a remote to select 00-99). When our family went to cable in the 1990s, it was at most 3 buttons pushes to select a channel. (And if you hit ‘4’ and just waited instead of typing in ‘004’ – chances are it would turn on channel ‘4’).

At my parents’ house, they now turn on the TV and are presented with the Roku welcome screen. Then they need to select their TV provider, Hulu, by navigating to that icon and selecting it. They are then taken to a list of users, for ‘personalized’ content. The just have the one. Then they need to hit the left arrow to switch to the left side of the navigation and the down arrow to select ‘live’. From there they can use the right arrow to make the current screen the focus. Using the ‘down’ array (for some reason) allows them to select a channel. But it doesn’t show them all the channels. Just the channels they traversed recently (although I think Hulu’s logic on ‘recent’ is a little screwy). For all the channels, they need to return to the left side navigation again, select what subset of channels they might want, and then scroll around until they find that channel.

Dozens of button clicks, four or five menus (depending on what you count), and having to navigate from Roku to Hulu, all to do something that once required nothing more than twisting a knob. And that’s if you do everything correctly.

For elderly people like my parents, this is a nightmare. For them the TV is clearly broken. They sometimes hit the wrong key. They sometimes get confused as to why they are prompted for new information. They forget if their show is on Hulu or Netflix. Depending on when you bought the Roku, the four buttons to take you directly to a service may or may not include any of the services you use. The interface is intentionally confusing to guide you to Roku’s or Hulu’s content or sponsored content or partners. And god forbid they have to log in to Hulu again for some reason, or there’s a new privacy policy to agree to, or there’s some promotional message. I’m often around as I help take care of them, so they hand me the remote in frustration and I put on the local news. But that’s old people, right? They don’t really count. (Have I got some news about what the future has in store for you, as well…)

Why does a lack of well designed products for the end user indicate a systemic problem in our society? From our perspective these things are broken. Products are now designed for the benefit of the provider and the third parties harvesting data. From their perspective, this is great. We have scroll through content we don’t want to watch or have to dig twice as hard to find something we need. We might get tricked and watch their ads. This is a feature for them. The TV manufacturer, Roku, and Hulu have no incentive to take my parents directly to a local channel to watch news at 6 pm. They have every incentive to drag them through all sorts of other content because it makes a little more money.

At no point, during my childhood and early adult-hood, did I have to agree to a EULA or privacy policy to watch television. Not because the executives at the TV manufacturer were better human beings, but because they had no way of collecting that data. But if they had a means of collecting that data, people would have blown a gasket. Keeping track of the books I read, the shows I watched, or where I went, was dystopian and Orwellian. Something we try no to think about, as the services and products we use capture that information and much more. And it’s easy to forget about the data market-places were this data can be aggregated from multiple sources and sold (without warrant) to the government. After a couple of decades of technological progress and slow incursions on our privacy, we are now the frogs looking at the boiling water and wondering ‘how did this happen?’

When you buy a smart TV, the makers argue sponsored content and information harvesting deals lower the cost to the consumer. You are told it’s good for you. Why would someone help subsidize your TV for some data and to push their content? So you buy things you don’t need. Can’t afford it? No problem – do it in four easy payments. (Including groceries – ugh!) The advertisers and content pushers want you to think you’re smarter than they are and somehow immune to their efforts. (Which is obviously true because you drink the beer of smart people everywhere, right?) How much does your data and attention ‘lower the price’ of the television? We have no idea. It could be $5 or it could be half the cost. But if it is half the cost, think how much the advertisers are getting out of that deal!

Data predation is coupled with a lack of options. It’s good for the consumer to have one search engine. It’s good for the consumer to have one operating system. It’s good for the consumer to have one choice, right? If it lowers prices, it’s got to be good for the consumer, right? That is the monopolist’s new trick. Just (promise to) keep the sticker price down. Unfortunately we can’t run the world with two different set of policies. When an anti-trust case is litigated, we can’t both break the monopolist and not break the monopolist to see which option results in a better world, ten years hence. We just have a mob of economists come through with their “objective” estimates of how much prices will go up or down. I can assure you that every monopolist has convincingly argued the world is a better place if they are allowed to integrate and lower costs to consumers.

But price isn’t the only lever a monopolist has. For example, they can be paid to push content you don’t want. Are you a business using Windows 11 Enterprise Edition? Why are some games pre-installed on your enterprise desktops and laptops? Would you be surprised to know that’s sponsored content? Look at the clickbait feed when you open Microsoft Edge or the start menu. Should that be on a work computer? What about a laptop you buy at the store, only to find you can’t uninstall some of the software? You could buy a premium product, like an Apple Mac. Or maybe you can’t buy a Mac, because your kid’s school, your work, or maybe just games you like are only on Windows. Microsoft can do this because they know you don’t have a choice. As a business you have few options, none of them exceptionally palatable.

Leena Khan tried to do something about it. She was hated by both the right and left (well, the donor part of the right and left). Ms. Khan always seemed in danger of being asked to step down. She was probably not the world’s greatest manager. She was willing to go after big tech, the woke companies the Republicans wanted to hurt, so even JD Vance once sang her praises. Flawed, and sometimes awkward, she did push back.

This is part of the fall. You are hung on a hook like a fattened pig and butchered to become a vendible commodity. Even if you don’t have an intellectual grasp of your exploitation, you feel it. It’s not that people in power have no incentive to fix it. They have the exact opposite incentive. The wealthy profit from this machine. And neither side is immune. You might find more sympathy among Democrats – but not necessarily more effort. Even if I sometimes thought her choices were peculiar, Ms. Khan was a rare moment when something was actually tried. So was the CFPB, which I’ll link through Wikipedia because I don’t know how much longer they will be around. The interests are aligned toward further extraction of your value, further monetization of your attention, and further driving you into debt.

Where is it taking us? At some point the exploitation is not compatible with a good life. One of two things can happen. We could have a genuine rebellion. We rise up and smash the machine. This sounds romantic, but as someone who has read a little history, I can tell you that revolutions can go very bad. The ballot box is less bloody and more predictable than the barricades. Whether it’s the terror following the French revolution, the rise of the authoritarian bolsheviks after the Russian revolution, or countless smaller coups and insurrections that lead to psychotically brutal regimes, a revolution can quickly turn autocratic. Some of which might be playing out in the current administration.

The second option is to meander forward. The temperature is managed well enough so the frog never knows it’s being boiled. Each year life gets shorter and more miserable. In this period, everyone is out for themselves. Everyone is cynical. The country descends into kleptocracy. We’ve already seen many of our leaders go from modest means to fantastic wealth on their government salaries. If you have sufficiently low morals and good connections, you live well during this future. Otherwise the good things slowly become memories. Remember when you just went to a doctor because your job provided health insurance? Or you could afford to buy a house? Or children weren’t a luxury good? Or teeth weren’t just rich people bones? Or you could just pay for a Big Mac meal once and not in four easy installments?

I would argue we are taking the second option. And that’s why it all feels broken. Because it is breaking, from our perspective. But it’s not a sudden, catastrophic event. It is getting slowly worse as we are mined for attention and data so we can be sold increasingly needless and expensive products. Our leaders are wielding power for the benefit of the wealthy, and the wealthy are rebuilding the world in their favor. The few protections our leaders once put in place to foster competition or prevent companies from predatory practices are being lifted, as the wealthy rewrite the rules. To do that they must break our world. We continue to elect leaders that are there because of the generous support of the monied interests that want to exploit us, rather than rejecting those leaders outright. At some point we should be asking why the predators at the door are so eager for us to support their candidates.

And that local UHF TV station? That’s been consolidated in the The Sinclair Group. The station owner’s nephew doesn’t do ‘Creature Feature’ any more. He peddles right wing talking points.