Huh. Wow. I remember being at a presentation Chris gave in Dubuque Iowa of all places back in 2007 or 2008 as he explained how the Obama campaign was using Facebook. It was one of the first high profile campaigns to do so. I thought it was brilliant back then for a presidential candidate to utilize social media... What an amazing idea! But now I hate everything. (Was it always this bad and we just didn't see it before?)
Back in 2008, Facebook didn't have nearly the algorithmic curation it has now. For instance, you were much more likely to see posts from friends sharing content you disagreed with. Now, Facebook's algorithms have gotten so good at their primary business objective (increasing engagement with the platform) that you're guaranteed to see almost entirely content that you agree with.
If I share a picture of my kids, Facebook makes sure all of my relatives will see it. If I share a political post, it will only be seen by my friends that agree with me.
Ad targeting was also much less sophisticated back then (did Facebook even have ads yet at that point?).
Really? The only time I see differing political opinions from people I know is on Facebook, because it’s typically weak ties rather than close ties who sit on the other side of the aisle, and Facebook is the main way I keep up with weak ties.
> Was it always this bad and we just didn't see it before?
I definitely remember reading some pretty-accurate-in-hindsight scare pieces about Facebook's only way to monetize around the time they IPO'd.
That said, it's almost impossible to separate signal from noise with the earliest folks to cry wolf, and it doesn't help that some of them (looking at you, Peter Schiff) love to trot out their sky-was-falling predictions after the fact as proof of their clairvoyance.
While they all nailed it with Facebook, I don't remember a single piece about Google's similarities as they were rolling out Gmail/GChat/GDocs/GDrive for "free".
"This bad" is a value judgment, and so the answer to the question necessarily depends on what your values are compared with the values employed in using the technology.
This applies to broadcast media as much as it does to social media. TV and Radio can be used to educate, or for thought-provoking news & commentary, or high art, or for pandering entertainment, advertising, or even propaganda.
I think social media was in a different place 10 years ago, essentially in its inception and somewhat less directed but essentially driven by the values of its early adopters and best ostensibly vision of its creators and boosters. I also see the values Obama was campaigning with as better than a lot of the values behind some social media now, but that's my own value judgment.
And as other interests came to understand it as medium that could amplify their message, and came into understanding of specific dynamics, and social media as an enterprise has therefore become legible to and influenceable by business and political interests, it's definitely suffered.
The problem with any new media is that wealthy interests quickly figure out how to use it to achieve their ends by manipulating public opinion. Happened with radio. With TV. Now with social media. It's a problem.
Campaigns effectively have no choice but to try to use Facebook better than their rivals, so it's something to be celebrated in isolation from the problems of the underlying platform.
Facebook was still 4 years from IPOing in 2008, so it was definitely a different time. The vast capital Zuckerberg personally has at his disposal thanks to owning the majority of voting shares is unprecedented. Zuckerberg can have Facebook easily buy any up and coming social networks at prices the startups can't refuse (eg Instagram). This behavior is good for Zuckerberg, good for Facebook, good for venture capitalists, and even good for the securities markets at large. This behavior is not good for consumers or competition which is exactly the point of antitrust actions.
> Was it always this bad and we just didn't see it before?
After about two hours of using FB in 2007 I had this crazy feeling that someone having access to all those people's photos and activities won't necessary end well; left and never looked back.
> It was one of the first high profile campaigns to do so.
This isn't true. He might have claimed it I suppose, but that's not true.
To the extent they did anything unique on social media, it was in using their own social media network, MyBO (which was originally developed by Blue State Digital in partnership with the DNC, but the Obama campaign had their own version that Chris also played a role in tweaking for the campaign).
At the time of the 2004 election, Facebook was open to students at some US universities. So to the extent the Obama campaign used Facebook at all it was the first national campaign to do so.
Every major campaign was using Facebook in 2008. To give the Obama campaign credit for being the "first" when it was used THROUGHOUT that primary by both parties at the national level and also at the state/local level makes no sense.
That said, Facebook organizing in 2008 looked nothing like what it looks like today. It looked far more like what we were doing in the MySpace days as far as political organizing online (MySpace got about the same amount of traffic back then). I personally think their work with MyBO is more noteworthy and distinguished from what other campaigns were doing, even if it wasn't built by them.
everything is ripe for abuse, the problem is we don't have a regulatory framework or the tools to reign in the abuse on Facebook and other digital media.
The question you need to ask yourself is "what kind of society do I want to live in" then you can answer what you want to be possible and not.
