prior probability

I just discovered that my micro-paper “Betting on Conspiracies?” was published in the Journal of Brief Ideas (JOBI) on September 12, 2021. (I had submitted my brief idea back in mid-July, but a notification email from JOBI got caught in my spam filter.) Here is a link; below, a screenshot:

This is post #9 of a multi-part series.

The penultimate part of Professor Jack Balkin’s paper “How to regulate … social media” contains my favorite quote about Facebook (Part 8, pp. 88-89, footnote omitted): “Facebook’s history as a company has been a cycle of engaging in bad behavior, getting caught, apologizing profusely and promising to mend its ways, followed by the company engaging in slightly different bad behavior, offering new apologies and promises of reform and so on.” (For further evidence of this apology cycle, check out this chronological compilation of Mark Zuckerberg’s insincere apologies over the years. This comprehensive compilation by Gregory Fowler and Chiqui Esteban, which is titled “14 years of Mark Zuckerberg saying sorry, not sorry,” traces this apology cycle as far back to Zuckerberg’s creation of an illegal website called Face Mash back in the fall of 2003 — a website that was memorably depicted in the 2010 movie “The Social Network.”)

After citing the work of Shoshana Zuboff, Professor Balkin then goes on to make the following remarkable claim (p. 89): “Facebook will keep misbehaving and it will keep apologizing, not because it is incompetent or clumsy, but because of the fundamental misalignment between its goals and the public’s needs, and because it has an inherent conflict of interest with its end users and … with democracy itself.” Really? Just because you say something doesn’t make it true. To the point, what is the evidence that Facebook has an “inherent conflict of interest” with “democracy”. What does that even mean? Maybe Facebook is just incompetent or clumsy.

For my part, I suspect that the true purpose of Prof Balkin’s hyperbolic rhetoric is to justify his call for regulation of social media. Indeed, Balkin will make three specific regulatory proposals in the last part of his paper, Part 9, which I will review in the next day or two …

I just realized that I have not blogged about “Hispanic Heritage Month” in the eight years that I have been curating my “prior probability” blog. To help remedy this omission, I thought I would begin by sharing the poster art pictured below from the National Park Service (NPS). FYI: More details are available here, via the NPS.gov website.

This is post #8 of a multi-part series.

In Part 7 of his paper “How to regulate (and not regulate) social media“, Professor Jack Balkin considers two alternatives to direct social media regulation: (1) the creation of a state-owned social media platform, and (2) turning social media and search engines into public utilities, like water and power companies. To his credit, Prof Balkin quickly rejects these two alternatives.

In brief, the main problem with a state-owned social media platform is that, unlike private companies like Facebook and Twitter, state actors must provide a hearing before taking any adverse action against a user, a requirement that would make content moderation costly and time-consuming. Worse yet, a state-run platform would not be able to censor hate speech, since courts have ruled that hate speech is protected speech under the First Amendment.

What about the public utility model? According to Balkin (p. 87), if social media platforms and search engines were converted into public utilities, they “would give up advertising altogether and simply provide access and content moderation services in return for a fixed monthly subscription fee.” The problem with this solution, however, is that Balkin fears that this option might have the effect of reducing the overall number of social media platforms, depending on the price elasticity of the subscription fee. Today, I can use any number of social media services for free, but if I had to pay to use a social media platform, I might cut down on my use of social media. (But would that be such a bad thing?)

For my part, I am more open to the public utility model because, in reality, social media is not “free”. In exchange for the right to post pictures and connect with “friends” on any given social media platform, the user is granting the owner of the platform the right to use the data generated by his use of the platform. Personally, I would rather pay a subscription fee and keep the rights to my data. Also, the subscription fee could be a modest one, perhaps as little $1/month, considering the large number of users many social media companies have.

Note: I will review the last two parts of Balkin’s paper (Parts 8 to 9) in my next post.

On Friday (9/10), on the heels of our disgraceful surrender in Kabul, President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to declassify documents related to the FBI’s investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Here is the first 9/11 document to be declassified. Alas, the document is still heavily redacted (what information is our government still hiding from us?), but it confirms that two of the 9/11 terrorists received material support from an unidentified official attached to the Saudi Consulate located in Los Angeles, Calif. (my hometown!). Was this Saudi official a rogue agent, or was he acting under orders of the Saudi Government? Either way, it looks like George W. Bush, a war criminal who should be hanged, ordered the invasion and military occupation of the wrong country.

Note: I will resume my review of Jack Balkin’s “How to regulate (and not regulate) social media” paper in the next day or two.

More details here, via rasmusab. Hat tip: @pickover.

This is post #7 of a multi-part series.

Thus far, I have carefully reviewed the first four parts, plus the intro, of Professor Balkin’s new paper “How to … regulate social media”. That portion of the paper is mere throat-clearing, so to speak, providing the context for Balkin’s overall pro-regulation argument. In Parts 5 and 6 of his paper, however, Balkin finally gets around to explaining in earnest why social media must be regulated.

To appreciate Balkin’s contribution, let me engage in some background throat-clearing myself. To the point, whenever someone calls for government regulation — whether it be regulation of social media or regulation of hair dressers — one should always ask two questions: (1) What is the problem that the call for regulation is designed to solve? And (2) will the proposed regulation solve the problem, or will it make it worse? (Shout out to my intellectual hero, Ronald Coase.)

With this background in mind, let’s now turn to Parts 5 and 6 of Balkin’s paper. According to Balkin (pp. 81-82), the problem with social media today — i.e. the problem that he wants to fix via regulation — is the overproduction of propaganda and conspiracy theories and the underproduction of “knowledge” — another term, by the way, that Balkin does not bother to define. Additionally, Parts 5 and 6 explain why social media over-produces so much, for lack of a better word, “intellectual garbage” (e.g. propaganda, fake news, and conspiracy theories) and under-produces informed opinions or true “knowledge”. According to Balkin (p. 82), the reason for this sad state of affairs is that social media firms are “profit-making technology companies” that are “solely market-driven.”

Is Balkin serious? Is that the best he can muster?

Let me not waste any more of our time. In brief, there are three fundamental flaws with Balkin’s pro-regulation argument. One is empirical: he provides no evidence whatsoever that conspiracy theories, fake news, etc. are being over-produced or are crowding out “knowledge”. For my part, I do not dispute that conspiracy theories and fake news do, in fact, spread on social media, but my reply to Balkin and his elitist ilk is that the optimal level of such garbage is not zero.

Another problem is that Balkin has his pro-regulation blinders on again. What do I mean by this? I mean that Professor Balkin fails to realize that all media companies — from ABC News and CNN to The New York Times and the Washington Post — are all profit-making companies that are ultimately market-driven. (I already made this critique in a previous post, which is titled “Professor, they run ads,” with the “they” referring to all media companies, not just social media ones.)

But the biggest problem with Balkin’s argument — and the biggest blind spot in his overall liberal law professor world view — is his distorted picture of the market incentives of social media companies. For Balkin, the reason why conspiracy theories and fake news and other forms of intellectual garbage spread on the Internet is because social media platforms need to cater to the tastes, however low-brow or deranged, of all its users, and furthermore, the reason why social media companies cater to these tastes is because these firms are “solely market-driven”.

Alas, Balkin is wrong. Market incentives are features, not bugs. Social media companies have many incentives to clean up their acts and curb the spread of misleading or even dangerous information, and that is why social media firms spend so much time and effort on their content moderation policies, even in the absence of the heavy hand of government regulation. These companies might not always get it right. (Often, it is conservative voices that are censored.) But my larger point here is that social media companies don’t need the government telling them what to do.

Having made this stinging critique of Balkin’s pro-regulation argument, I now want give Professor Balkin his due. Although Balkin’s pro-regulating stance is for the most part misguided for the reasons I have provided above, in Parts 5 and 6 of his paper Balkin also highlights two legitimate concerns about social media — concerns that might justify some form of public regulation.

One legitimate concern is the private cost of content moderation, or as Balkin himself puts it (p. 83), “Quick, accurate, at-scale content moderation is hard to achieve.” The other potential concern is what Balkin refers to as “the dangers of surveillance capitalism” (p. 84). In exchange for “free” access to Instagram and Gmail, for example, Facebook and Google are able to collect and aggregate enormous amounts of end user data and then use that data not only to sell ads, but also to “nudge” their users in potentially ominous directions.

Like I said, these are legitimate concerns, and Balkin is right to bring them up. The main difference between Balkin and me, however, is that I tend to have more faith in markets than in governments when it comes to finding solutions. Edward Snowden taught us that lesson years ago …

Note: I will review the last third of Balkin’s nine-part paper (i.e., Parts 7 to 9) next week, starting on Tuesday.

This is post #6 of a multi-part series.

Although Part 4 of Professor Balkin’s paper on “How to regulate … social media” is the shortest part of his paper (with the exception of the opening and concluding sections), it is emblematic of the larger problem with Balkin’s pro-regulation argument. Recall from my previous post the four key ingredients that, according to Balkin, a healthy public square must have. (These four criteria are set forth in Part 3 of Balkin’s paper.) Part 4 adds a fifth criterion to the list — a criterion specific to the digital sphere. To the point, Balkin argues (correctly, I might add) that a healthy digital public square requires a wide variety of social media platforms, or in Balkin’s own words (p. 80), “To achieve a healthy and vibrant public sphere, we also need many different kinds of social media with many different affordances, and many different ways for individuals to participate and make culture.”

I agree 100% with Balkin about the benefits of diversity in the social media market, so what is the problem? Let’s put aside the irony that this is more or less the situation we have now. Today, we have many different types of social media platforms — from Twitter to TikTok and everything in between — each with their own set of community standards and values. The deeper problem with Balkin’s overall stance in favor of social media regulation is that it has an enormous blind spot — a blind spot so big that it will bring down his entire pro-regulation argument like a house of cards.

In brief, Balkin is so single-mindedly committed to social media regulation that he completely misses the following glaring contradiction that would result from any regulatory regime: the fact that regulation will most likely destroy the existing diversity of social media models that Balkin (and I) so much desire by imposing a uniform set of legal requirements on social media firms. Worse yet, Balkin also fails to recognize the very real possibility that regulation might impose onerous compliance costs on social media firms, making it even more difficult for new firms to enter the social media market!

To be fair, Balkin will mention the problem of compliance costs in passing toward the end of his paper (on p. 90), but mark my words: later on, when we reach the last part of the paper (Part 9 on pp. 89-96), the part that contains Balkin’s proposed models for regulation, we will see why all of Balkin’s specific proposals will most likely make matters worse by destroying the existing diversity of social media models.

Note: I will review Parts 5 and 6 of Balkin’s paper in my next 9/11 post.