[governance] About Facebook blocked and content removed in Brazil

Tue Jun 5 16:35:31 EDT 2012

FB is as much a public space as it can be a private space. No different from walking down the street, which is public, but homes are private. However, there are establishments that cater to the public which can be deemed as public space although it may be a private business. The test is, where public liability applies to the owner, it is a public place. Where trespass applies to the public it is a private place.

Hence, in terms of fb, it all depends on your privacy settings or the format you choose to use, such as pages or groups. Groups can be closed or open but pages are open to the public view. Your traffic emanates from your friends and in some cases, friends of friends. Choose your friends carefully.

ROK

From: Jacqueline Morris 
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2012 2:55 PM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org ; Marilia Maciel 
Subject: Re: [governance] About Facebook blocked and content removed in Brazil

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 10:59 AM, Marilia Maciel <mariliamaciel at gmail.com> wrote:
  When Obama called Twitter to postpone the maintenance of their website, so that protesters were not deprived of the platform on a crucial moment of the revolution, everybody seemed to be ok with the intrusion of the political interests of a particular government in the work methods of a private company.

Actually, I wasn't.  But if the owners were willing to comply with his request, and the US govt didn't strong-arm them into making the decision, I didn't think that I had any standing to protest too loudly about the interference of government in the running of a private business. I did grumble, though.

  Zuckerberg and his best friends should not be entitled to make crucial decisions all alone and to enforce regulation that touches upon privacy and FoE, to name a few, as they do, across-borders. There should be mechanisms of accountability.  

Why? They created it, they own it.  It's theirs. They could shut it down tomorrow, if they wanted to walk away from it.  This is the problem with people allowing themselves to grow dependent on privately owned networks. Of course, if it's so vitally important to communication, do like governments do when they want something private to be used for the national good - nationalise it. It can be bought.

  FB grew in importance and owners' bank accounts grew in zeros. This success comes with a price: higher standards of transparency and accountability. 

Again, why? Bigger companies have higher standards of transparency and accountability? Not really. A billion dollar company is subject to the same laws of transparency and accountability and disclosure as a million dollar company. At least in my country. There's laws for public companies, no matter the size. 

  As was said on the other thread, the more the platform becomes widely used for worldwide communication, the narrower should be the freedom of FB board to do whatever they like without democratic ways of discussion. 

But again, why? It's a platform owned by a publicly traded company. Unless they break laws, under what authority can anyone tell the Board - "you cannot run your own company as you see fit"? What would the investors do, if the Board says - well, this step is in the shareholders' best interest, but these people say we cannot do that, so we won't act in the best interests of the company and its shareholders. As far as I know that's reason for shareholders to remove the Board!
Facebook has its own "democratic ways of discussion" - there's "consultation" going on now on Facebook about the new terms of service and privacy policy.  

  When it comes to unilateral contracts, free will to negotiate is hampered. And when it comes to platforms of strong monopolistic tendency, such as FB, accepting these unilateral contracts (terms of use) can be far from being an option, but a pre-rquisite to fully engage on communication in the public sphere.

Yep, it's a take it or leave it proposition. Just like Windows, or Office or pretty much any software, service, association, club, etc. Either you agree to their terms, or you don't join/use/participate. And I don't have a problem with that. 
I know many friends and family who have left Facebook, or never joined, and engage in communication quite happily on many of the other social networks, as well as via other tools. One does not HAVE to be on Facebook. Billions of people aren't. A good 70% of my students each semester aren't, I make them join as it's part of the class, but many delete the account after the class. They just don't want to be on. And that's fine. 

Jacqueline A. Morris
Technology should be like oxygen: Ubiquitous, Necessary, Invisible and Free. (after Chris Lehmann )

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