This is about the futility of breaking up Facebook.
Thesis: Applying classic antitrust theory is fighting the last war. This war is really different.
1/8
Thesis: Applying classic antitrust theory is fighting the last war. This war is really different.
1/8
Whether the most urgent Facebook problem is its destabilizing role in politics
theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/…,
or it is Facebook’s violations of privacy
medium.com/@profcarroll/a…,
replacing one Facebook by N mini-Facebooks with the same business model might even make things worse.
2/8
theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/…,
or it is Facebook’s violations of privacy
medium.com/@profcarroll/a…,
replacing one Facebook by N mini-Facebooks with the same business model might even make things worse.
2/8
Me: The theory says that breaking up a monopolist will introduce price competition. But the customer thinks the product is free.
X: The customer is paying a price and must be educated.
Me: You propose to introduce a dependency on general education into law enforcement?
3/8
X: The customer is paying a price and must be educated.
Me: You propose to introduce a dependency on general education into law enforcement?
3/8
Facebook and Twitter are high-gain, long-reach influencers. It MIGHT be that if left alone in a benign environment they would reach an acceptable equilibrium. BUT:
>>In the presence of AMBIENT CRIMINALITY you will not get equilibrium but an arms race.<<
4/8
>>In the presence of AMBIENT CRIMINALITY you will not get equilibrium but an arms race.<<
4/8
Even with the most sophisticated AI heroics it will still look like whack-a-mole:
nytimes.com/2019/05/17/tec…
I don’t think antitrust theory recognizes such network-effect-driven runaway behavior. That’s why this war is different. We need a new model.
5/8
nytimes.com/2019/05/17/tec…
I don’t think antitrust theory recognizes such network-effect-driven runaway behavior. That’s why this war is different. We need a new model.
5/8
An example. This is a “pumped dynamical system”. (“Pumped” in the laser sense of continuous injection of energy from the outside, in this case ambient criminality.) This model is emerging as one way of explaining systems in which order emerges from chaos.
6/8
6/8
The work of Jeremy England
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_En…
is suggestive. Using computer simulation his research is showing how a chemical soup continually supplied with external energy can self-organize into interesting structures and behaviors.
7/8
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_En…
is suggestive. Using computer simulation his research is showing how a chemical soup continually supplied with external energy can self-organize into interesting structures and behaviors.
7/8
We need to understand the network-effect-enabled arms-race dynamic before we can suggest how to moderate it.
Without this understanding we’re just playing whack-a-mole.
8/8
Without this understanding we’re just playing whack-a-mole.
8/8
Many of these ideas are from these two books
melconway.com/talks/2019_con…
combined with a little intuition for pumped dynamical systems.
melconway.com/talks/2019_con…
combined with a little intuition for pumped dynamical systems.
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