This past week, Facebook engaged in a justification campaign. At the same time, we heard of its intention to further blend Instagram and Whatsapp into the mother ship. The company also announced the creation of a new petition service that could be hijacked by special interest groups.

It was a intense communication week for Facebook. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, the company chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg stated the 87th iteration of the company’s “we are sorry” tune by admitting: “We did not anticipate all of the risks from connecting so many people. We need to earn back trust.” Well, we’re waiting.

At the same time, Facebook’s PR apparatus managed to have an op-ed published in several newspapers across the United States and Europe. The piece is signed by Mark Zuckerberg but has the feigned, artificial tone of a piece thoroughly edited by a cohort of lawyers and flacks. The exposé is mostly a defense of the company’s business models and a commitment to — no joke here– protect our data. Sounds like a cannibal suggesting, “let’s share a meal.”

Publishing such a hodgepodge of factual distortions without any counterpoint is concerning. To a large extent, the principle lies at the polar opposite of basic journalism: the company comes up with a publish-it-or-leave-it text and picks its publication. Facebook likely chose The Wall Street Journal over The New York Times because the NYTimes’ increasingly unfavorable, albeit excellent, coverage of Facebook. NYT’s contributor Kara Swisher reacted to Zuck’s Op-ed with an acerbic commented version titled Mark Zuckerberg, Let Me Fix That Op-Ed You Wrote. In France, Le Monde, which, despite its claim will never be the French NYTimes, took an opposite stance: not only did the newspaper published the column without any perspective but it publicized the piece gratuitously. It was featured as an exclusive on Le Monde’s front page and the front page business section.

Now let’s turn to Facebook’s business model and their strategy for securing the future of the company.

Last week, The New York Times revealed the upcoming integration of the infrastructure between Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram. While each of the application will remain, for now, independent, the upcoming integration has one major goal: to make the breakup of the social behemoth impossible. In recent years, Facebook Inc. has already managed to discreetly integrate its advertising machine. An integration of all these infrastructures is likely an attempt by Facebook to outmaneuver American and European regulators.

This consolidation tactic is well-known among tech giants. A couple of weeks ago, Richard Kramer, Founder of Arete Research, was interviewed by NYU’s marketing professor and pundit Scott Galloway. The interview was broadcasted on YouTube before anyone knew about Facebook’s intention. The Kramer’s depiction was prescient:

“Google unified quite a bit of their business. For advertisers, you can buy YouTube, Search, Maps in a unified way. Their business is opaque by design. It is very difficult to find one area of insertion in which you would say ‘this area has to be separated from the rest.’

Kramer added a compelling analogy of Google’s business:

“Imagine if JPMorgan owned the New York Stock Exchange, was the sole market-maker on its own equity, the exclusive broker for every other equity in the market, ran the entire settlement and clearing system in the market, and basically wouldn’t let anyone see who had bought shares and which share or certificate or number they bought… That is Google’s business model.”

When Galloway asked Kramer about Facebook, the analyst responded:

“Again, we see happening right now Facebook bringing the components of the platform closer together. Facebook is transitioning from a product company to a platform company that will be hard to disaggregate.”

Now let’s switch to what I would refer as the provocation of the week: the announcement of a new product by Facebook called Community Actions.

The idea of the product is to provide a tool for anyone willing to advocate a change in their community. In the crosshairs is Change.org and its 200 million users that Facebook wants to capture. The situation is similar to what Snap Inc. experienced a few years back when the company was unwilling to sell to Facebook. The result of their refusal was that Zuckerberg is choking the company to death. Look at this comparison of the stock performance of the two companies since March 2017 (despite FB’s recent drop):

The same pattern will likely occur in the battle between Community Actions and Change.org, but with slightly different mechanisms. Due to a certain opposition of regulators (US and EU), Facebook has no chance to acquire Change.org. However, for Facebook, organizing petitions seem to be a natural, extra feature that it would like to make available to its 2.6 billion users (the service will be initially deployed in the United States).

Facebook showcases this new feature as a tool for positive (what else?) actions for communities. Hence this Alice-in-Wonderland narrative:

As a European, allow me to offer a different perspective.

Right now, in every country coping with the new wave of populism, the biggest concern is the defense of representative democracy against the concept of popular referendums in which any group of citizens could throw whatever comes to mind to a public vote. The most dreadful consequence would be to see fundamental laws that had resisted political swings be put on the ballot in a rigged way.

Viewed from Facebook headquarters, Community Actions will be used to push for a park bench or a new garbage collection system. There will be lawyers who concoct precise and global guidelines to prevent any abuse.

I will not insult the intelligence of people working at Facebook by suggesting they could be so naïve. Here is what will likely happen instead:

The most extreme/organized interest groups will seize the platform with relatively mundane proposals that, in fact, carry a hidden agenda. For example, you will see in South Dakota questions like: “Do you support the construction of a Women’s Clinic in [city of x]?” (The facility, by the way, performs abortions.) The reply will be an almost unanimous no. Actually, the petition won’t happen in a place like South Dakota-, where women already need to drive 330 miles on average to get an abortion vs. 11 miles in the rest of the country. But you get my point: we will see a considerable amount of legislation that has been taken for granted thanks to decades of democratic process being reconsidered by groups taking advantage of popular trends or emotions. Everyone can see the dark, twisted road ahead.

Except, apparently, Facebook.

While everyone is worried about the idea of people-initiated votation gaining traction in Europe and elsewhere, despite its poor record in the matter, the sole response of Facebook is to become the vector of the “direct democracy” movement.

Facebook’s recent actions are a perfect example of either sheer cynicism or a disconnection of Facebook’s management to the reality of the world. You pick.

frederic.filloux@mondaynote.com