Lifeboats Away

The impending shutdown of Google+ is proving to be interesting. There has been a lot of trying out new social media sites and reporting back on the pros and cons of each. The founder of one popular alternative, MeWe, has shown up on Google+ "in person," as it were, to make a pitch for his service. To the best of my knowledge, he's the only direct representative of a company to actively recruit new users.

While Google+ going away may seem that it would be a boon to Facebook, it wouldn't be a direct one. People who came to Google+ and stayed throughout the place being called a "ghost town" over and over again (mainly, I suspect, due to a lack of a major presence of popular businesses on the site) are unlikely to want to migrate to Facebook. So it's likely not worth Facebook's time to even detail an intern to look into enticing people to the Zuck side.

But there is a fairly simple way that Facebook can benefit from this event. If:

• The migration becomes fairly chaotic,
• Former Google + user groups to fragment and disintegrate and/or
• Rumors of colonization by spammers and political extremists gain traction,

This will benefit Facebook. Mainly, I suspect, because the "Google failure beat" of the technology media will be watching. The more painful the transition away from Google+ is, the more it buttresses the idea that moving away from Facebook, while maintaining the digital life one spent so much time and energy building, will be difficult and risky. It's Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt that Facebook doesn't have to have their fingerprints on.

If Facebook is the Major Leagues, Google+ was largely considered an abject failure because it was never able to rise above farm-club or college team status. But even if you consider that generous, and would compare Google+ to a high-school team, other social media platforms have avoided the stigma of failure, because even though they're only Little League (or even T-ball), no one expects them to be any better. It's believed that they're always going to be marginal players. I'd never even heard of MeWe prior to the announcement that Google+ would be shuttered - it doesn't even show up in Wikipedia.

Which raises a question of its own. Facebook is not in the social media business. It's in the information business. While it's commonly said that Facebook users are the company's product, it's likely more accurate to say that they're suppliers, wholesalers if you prefer; the information and attention they bring is being sold to other business customers as Facebook's product. This, it seems to me, is part of why Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had so much difficulty answering Senator Lindsey Graham when asked: "Is there an alternative to Facebook in the private sector?" A straight and honest answer would have required admitting to the true customer base. (Of course, another reason could easily be that Mr. Zuckerberg understood that if he claimed another company could actually compete with them, that upset users might immediately switch to the other service.) Alphabet could afford to be in the social media business, they have a ton of money; they didn't need Google+ to be a profit center. In the end, this didn't stop them from under-resourcing Google+, and rather than remedy that, they decided to simply nix the whole enterprise.

Although that leaves aside the question of whether Google+ was genuinely in the social media business, it does raise an important question: Can anyone actually survive with "social media" as their product, rather than as payment for something more valuable? On the face if it, that answer appears to be "no." Social media users expect to be able to access a service without needing to pay money. And if all they're going to bring to the table is attention and information, then social media providers will have to find a way to parley that into a means of keeping the lights on and the servers running.


The lack of a single clear alternative to Facebook (or, perhaps, Google+ being that alternative) already works in Facebook's favor. It might not be a literal monopoly, but it's close enough. The five-year head start that Facebook had over Google turned out, in the end, to be completely insurmountable, even with Facebook making one misstep after another. But I suspect that people will be watching, to see how easy it is for the orphaned Google+ user base to build new digital homes for themselves. If it goes off without a hitch, others could be enticed to make the leap. But if it goes badly, Facebook's boosters will be waiting.

Bait and Switch

So a bar in Seattle kicked out a group of Republicans (who may or may not have been provocateurs), and this started a debate on the merits of ideologically-based discrimination, as opposed to other sorts.

When defenders of the "Free Market" spoke up, the following was offered: "Every time the 'free market' approach is argued I have to point out that we have existing proofs in this country within the last century that it does not work." This triggered two sequential responses, one from a self-described Libertarian and one from a self-described Anarchist.

The Libertarian offered that, essentially, that discrimination against Black Americans was not a side-effect of the functioning of the free market, but of its subversion. He said of the Jim Crow South: "The businesses were told by the government that they not only could oppress, but should oppress, [Black Americans]."

The Anarchist, on the other hand, basically said that remedy of government intervention is worse than the disease: "It may 'work,' sort of, while you're able to lock up your opponents fast enough, but (a) that is the wrong thing to do, it just is, and (b) violence, including politically motivated violence, destabilizes society pretty rapidly […]"

This is what I mean when I use the term "Institutional 'hypocrisy'," and it illustrates one of the main problems with many political arguments; namely, that people can support the same policy for completely different reasons. And those differing reasons give the uninitiated pause.

To the degree that people don't (can't or won't is tangential) understand the differing points of view that support the free market, the differing arguments of the Libertarian and the Anarchist seem like a bait-and-switch: The Free Market is touted as a solution to systemic discrimination, but its supporters know that it actually offers no remedies, and in fact, proscribes them in the name of "freedom."

Libertarian: Government intervention caused discrimination, so non-intervention will give non-discrimination. (The {perceived} bait.)
Anarchist: Government intervention itself is evil, so we shouldn't be doing it regardless, even if non-intervention would directly bring about discrimination. (The {perceived} switch.)

The difference between the Libertarian and the Anarchist, being invisible or unknown to a supporter of government regulation and/or intervention, feels like two people working in concert to deceive or have it both ways, since they understand (incorrectly) that Conservatives hold to a single monolithic belief set. In a culture in which the presumption of good intent is considered to be foolish, the assumption often is that the Anarchist's belief that government intervention is the wrong thing to do is motivated by the knowledge that it would prevent discrimination.

This is not meant to be a knock on their separate arguments, but rather an illustration of how political discourse is complicated when you have multiple people arguing for the same things. Since people can support policies for their own reasons, the differences between those reasons often strikes people as intentionally disingenuous, rather than simply uncoordinated.

Going Courting

One of the things that the fight over confirming Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States had brought home for me is that for many people, the job of the Court is not to determine what the Constitution allows or does not allow. Instead, the job of a Court Justice is to ensure that the determinations reached by the political party that put them there are affirmed. And an ideological majority results in the Court having that same job.

And in this sense, the Supreme Court is a political body. Which is what one would expect of it. There is nothing about being a judge that renders one above the ideological divide that the rest of the nation endures. The public views their interests through their ideology, and votes for legislators and executives that will advance those interests. The President seeks to appoint justices that their voters approve of, and legislators vet them for adherence to ideological orthodoxy.

This strikes me as perhaps unfortunate, but not unexpected. And it not a failure of Democracy, as mediating enduring ideological disputes is not the purpose of Democratic governance.

Reflections

A picture I took about 13 years ago, that I never did anything with. I've decided that it should live here for a while.

Attention

So the test of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System took place late this morning, and, as you likely know if you're reading this in the United States, it was titled "Presidential Alert."

Which seems to be an odd name for something that has nothing to do, really, with the President. The NWEAS isn't intended to be a bullhorn, or a bully pulpit for the current inhabitant of the Oval Office. According to FEMA: "You would not have a situation where the president would just wake up one morning, and attempt to send a personal message." But it seems that referring to the message as a "Presidential Alert" gave a lot of people the idea that this is just what could happen. And it's not like a term such as "National Alert" is trademarked or anything.

So... why do it?

I don't know. And frankly, I don't feel that I could speculate with anything approaching any accuracy, so I won't. But it does seem like an odd choice, given how polarizing a figure the President is.