If left to themselves, as they are today with the working class prostrate, the bourgeoisie are not only exhausted by internal conflicts, but, more often than not, founder in oppositions incapacitating their ability to govern politically. “hello literally everyone,” the official account of Twitter tweeted yesterday afternoon, after Facebook and its affiliated platforms Instagram and WhatsApp went dark at about 11:40 that morning. The Facebook outage lasted for more than six hours and appears to have been caused by an internal error. But the void caused by the absence of the internet giant brought to a head one of these internal conflicts of the bourgeoisie—legacy media versus new media.
The latest iteration of this conflict began in mid-September, when the legacy Wall Street Journal (owned by Rupert Murdoch) began to publish a series of investigative stories based on documents provided by a whistle-blower.
The “Facebook Files” explore how the company has “whitelisted” high-profile users, exempting them from the rules that put limits on “ordinary” users. Another article reveals that researchers showed Facebook executives evidence that Instagram allegedly damages teenage girls by pushing an ideal body image and that they flagged the increasing use of the site by drug smugglers, human traffickers, and other criminals; their discoveries went unaddressed.
Facebook is new media controlled by Mark Zuckerberg, of course, and his preferences. Concerned about declining engagement with their material, hence profits, Facebook allegedly privileged polarizing material that engaged people by preying on their emotions. It is alleged to have encouraged the extremism that led to the January 6 protests, lowering restrictions against “disinformation” (information disfavored by the ruling class) quickly after the 2020 election. Of course, it also banned President Trump on January 7 as a bow to then-predominant bourgeois opinion.
Sunday night, on CBS’s 60 Minutes, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen revealed herself to be the source of the documents. She is concerned, she says, that Facebook consistently looks to maximize profits even if it means ignoring “disinformation,” which is the prevailing attitude of the bourgeoisie at any given moment; “good” information is that which favors bourgeois ideological inculcation, i.e. the captured class of acamedia which can properly disseminate information and explain the world to you. Her lawyers have filed at least eight complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees companies and financial markets—ensures the bourgeoisie don’t take excessive advantage of each other. Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said it was “ludicrous” to blame Facebook for the events of January 6. Chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg have not commented.
Lawmaker lapdogs of the bourgeoisie—prompted by legacy contributer/controllers— have repeatedly asked Facebook to produce documents for their scrutiny and to testify about the social media platform’s public safeguards. Today, Haugen will testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security about the effects of social media on teenagers. Her lawyer, Andrew Bakaj, told Cat Zakrzewski and Cristiano Lima of the rival Bezos non-disinformational (tongue firmly in cheek) source Washington Post that Haugen’s information is important because “Big Tech is at an inflection point…. It touches every aspect of our lives—whether it’s individuals personally or democratic institutions globally. With such far-reaching consequences, transparency is critical to oversight, and lawful whistleblowing is a critical component of oversight and holding companies accountable.”
Amidst the outrage over the Facebook revelations, technology reporter Kevin Roose at the legacy rival New York Times suggested that the company’s aggressive attempts to court engagement reveal weakness, rather than strength, as younger users have fled to TikTok and other sites and Facebook has become the domain of older Americans. He notes that Facebook’s researchers foresee a drop of 45% in daily use in the next two years, suggesting that the company is desperate either to retain users or to create new ones. (TikTok routinely comes under its own ‘scrutiny’ for other reasons, as a foreign ‘threat.’)
While the technology Facebook represents is new, the concerns it raises echo public discussion of late nineteenth century industrialization, which was also the product of new technologies, like the allegedly corrupting influence of the telephone or phonograph. At stake then was which few hands would enjoy the concentration of economic power—the contest of bourgeois rivals. How could the nation both preserve the right of some bourgeoisie to build industries and not completely wipe out rivals in the face of technology that permitted unprecedented accumulations of wealth?
While money is certainly at stake in the issue of Facebook’s power today, the more pressing issue for the bourgeoisie is who will control the information flow and the commanding heights of mindshare—legacy outlets owned by billionaires like Bezos, or new information outlets owned by billionaires like Zuckerberg.
When we began to grapple with the excesses of industrialism, communists thought the whole system needed to be taken apart—by violence if necessary—while the bourgeoisie sought save the benefits the technology brought without letting it destroy their privileged position. The bourgeoisie eventually solved the problems that industrialization raised for the society by reining in the Wild West mentality of the early industrialists and sharing to some degree, providing some carrots as well as sticks for workers, and reaching a truce among themselves through regulation of business practices.
“I don’t hate Facebook,” Haugen wrote in a final message to her colleagues at the company. “I love Facebook. I want to save it.” Meanwhile, Americans were busy watching Facebook crash and the falling stock took between $5 billion and $7 billion of Zuckerberg’s net worth. The message should be coming in loud and clear—Zuckerberg needs to accommodate his rivals better.
Notes
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-set-to-appear-before-senate-panel-11633426201?mod=djemMoneyBeat_us
https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2020/06/28/tiktok-beneath-its-fun-exterior-lies-a-sinisterpurpose/?sh=3dddca773b79