Clash of the Three Types of "Free"

When the recent terrorist attack in Christchurch (New Zealand) was broadcast live on Facebook, many went ballistic at social media for having no filters/checks against such material. And many have been cursing Facebook and WhatsApp for circulating “fake news”. Few would deny that we have major problems on these fronts. That said, there is no clear solution either.

Let’s see why it is so hard to fix these things. As Ben Thompson writes, on the Internet, we are used to things being free. And there are three types of “free”:

““Free as in speech” means the freedom or right to do something

“Free as in beer” means that you get something for free without any additional responsibility

“Free as in puppy” means that you get something for free, but the longterm costs are substantial”

Many of us agree with the “Free as in speech” part to varying degrees. But what the world gets via social media is a combo of two free’s:

“Facebook and YouTube offer “free as in speech” in conjunction with “free as in beer”: content can be created and proliferated without any responsibility.”

See the problem? Social media doesn’t care about the “free as in puppy” aspect.

The naïve response is to demand that social media include the “free as in puppy” aspect. But think it through and you’ll see the problems with that:

1)      Do we really want social media companies to decide what speech should be curbed? Or should governments regulate such matters? Doesn’t this sound like a choice between two devils?

2)     Regardless of who decides, it would still be individual sites that would have to apply the rules. Can every website have the skills and ability to write the software for such rules? Across the varying rules of multiple countries? If not, and only large companies with developers (and lawyers) can even attempt to apply the rules of filtering content, are we just making Facebook and Google even more bigger than they are?

Then there’s the fact that most of the Web is ad driven:

“The incentives of an advertising business drive them to focus on engagement, i.e. giving users what they want, no matter how noxious.”

And no, there’s no hope on that front because consumers aren’t willing to pay, as Caleb S.Fuller’s paper points out:

“Significantly, 86% of respondents express no willingness to pay for additional privacy when interacting with Google. Among the remaining 14%, the average expressed willingness to pay is low.”

We need people to go beyond cursing WhatsApp and YouTube, to understand the complexities involved, and a willingness to see if the proposed cure is worse than the disease. One can only hope that we’ll get to some kind of solution one day…