Is Facebook Too-Big-To-Fail?

The Fake News Issue Demands We Ask That Question

Facebook allows fake news to spread on its platform. Potentially it influenced the U.S. election’s outcome in doing so. That raises questions: What role does Facebook play in the news ecosystem? Is it systemically relevant? Too-big-to-fail even? An analytical look at the network’s influence on users, media and the public sphere.

I think some part of the fake news debate surrounding Facebook is overblown. Insofar I stick to my earlier remark that claims like Facebook made Trump are certainly exaggerated and, worse, try to find an easy scapegoat instead of tackling the real issues.

That said, I kept following the reporting on the issue and changed my initial position. While I still think it’s dangerous to blame a single actor (Facebook) for the outcome of this complex election, by now I admit it might have had a larger influence on it than I initially acknowledged.

Apparently fake news, at least the popular bits, were heavily skewed towards Pro-Trump/Anti-Clinton pieces. In the three months leading to the election it outperformed posts by serious media in terms of engagement on Facebook. A particularly nice take by Max Read is his framing that Facebook has turned into an instrument that allowed DDoS attacks on civil society by being the grounds on which right-wing propagandists and Macedonian scammers likewise flooded the public sphere with junk news.

While I still think the questions I posed here ought to be answered before agreeing on a final verdict, Rick Webb’s argument that even small percentages matter is pretty plausible to me (and his piece well worth a read!).

But I don’t want to write about the percentages to which Facebook assisted in Trump’s election. Because regardless of the answer, the overall development’s direction is worrisome enough. The influence Facebook has as the intermediary between people and the media is huge without a doubt. Take the relatively recent fake news issue and add to it the broader — but long-term probably more important — filter bubble issue (nicely summarized by Tobias Rose-Stockwell), and what we get is a mixture with very frightening potential. Brian Phillips, in his brilliant essay, is on point:

The sensational headline that’s been thrown at Facebook’s misinformation problem asks whether fake news cost Hillary Clinton the presidency. But you don’t have to believe Facebook got Trump elected to be a little chilled by its current estrangement from fact. One of the conditions of democratic resistance is having an accurate picture of what to resist. Confusion is an authoritarian tool; life under a strongman means not simply being lied to but being beset by contradiction and uncertainty until the line between truth and falsehood blurs and a kind of exhaustion settles over questions of fact. Politically speaking, precision is freedom. … Authoritarianism wants to convince its supporters that nothing is true, that the whole machinery of truth is an intolerable imposition on their psyches, and thus that they might as well give free rein to their fantasies.

Now, I wouldn’t accuse Facebook of being authoritarian (given their willful inaction). To borrow the words of James Allworth and Ben Thompson, we just witnessed sins of omission rather than commission. But at scale the effect of either is just as disastrous.

Which leads me to the questions I’ve been grappling with the last few days: Is Facebook too-big-to-fail? And if so, which reasonable ways forward exist?

I don’t intend to give a conclusive answer. Rather, I want to present the key facts on which a discussion can unfold and share some thoughts on the second question.

But first, let’s make sure we are on the same page terminology-wise. Too-big-to-fail is a concept that rose to popularity during the ‘07/’08 financial crisis. Back then, some banks were basically broke but eventually bailed-out by governments because their bankruptcy would have endangered the entire global financial system. They were deemed ‘too-big-to-fail’. On a more abstract level, thus, the term refers to single entities within a system which play such an integral role in the system’s survival that their breakdown would likely cause the entire system to follow suit. The existence of such too-big-to-fail entities is the result of a poor risk distribution strategy.

So, with that in mind, let’s look at Facebook and the role it plays within the system of news, the public sphere and opinion forming.