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Friday, September 4, 2020

Facebook or freedom, Part 1: Who gave you permission to mess with my mind?

No, I’m not talking about the issues Facebook is having with hate speech and political posts, though those issues are certainly deep and important ones. I’m talking about something that may seem relatively minor, their ability to change the user interface any time any way. After all, it’s their software and their platform/site, no? Yes, but it’s my mind, and yours, that they’re messing with when they make such changes. THAT’s why, over the long term, this may become an important issue.

In this first post I discuss Facebook’s upcoming change in its user interface. To the extent that computer media are extensions of the user’s mind, when Facebook changes its interface, it is interfering with its users use of their own minds. It is alienating them – a Marxist concept – from their minds. In a later post I’ll discuss the possibilities of giving users greater control over the interface.

When the black curtain came down

On Tuesday, August 25, I was using Facebook, as I do every day, and I changed from one page to another. All of a sudden, WHAM! the interface changed and went mostly black. Facebook informed me that they would be changing the interface permanently on September 1, but I could get the new interface now. But, if I wanted, I could, at least temporarily, switch back to the old interface.

I promptly did so. Well, not so promptly because I first had to figure out how to do that. Somewhere in there I also had the opportunity give them feedback. I told them, without giving it a second thought, without trying out the new interface, that I didn’t like the new interface. Not one bit.

Why did I do that without even giving it a chance? General principle, general principle, which I’ll get to shortly.

Once I had the familiar interface back I went searching the web to find out about this change; I probably searched on something like, “Facebook interface change”. I discovered that this had been in the works for some time, that it was more or less well known, and was being done for good and sufficient reasons.

So why didn’t I learn about it until they sprung in on me, WHAM! without warning? I don’t live out on the Siberian tundra or the Australian out-back. I live in upstate New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan. And I’m on Facebook every day. Why no warning? Would it have been so difficult?

Anyhow, September first rolls around and I expect Facebook to be sporting its new and improved black look when I sign on. But, no, same old Facebook. They pulled the switch on me on the second, but let me go back, which I did. Still, I assume that one of these days I’ll be stuck with the new interface. And who knows, maybe I’ll even like it.

But why should I HAVE to like it?

It’s MY mind you’re messing with

It’s a cliché that media of all kinds are extensions of our minds. Let’s take that cliché seriously. My computer IS an extension of my mind.

That’s particularly true for me as I am an intellectual and writer, musician, and artist. I have owned and used a personal computer since 1981, when I purchased a North Star Horizon. In 1984 I got a classic 128K Macintosh and have been on some Macintosh ever since. I went online in the 1990s, first email, but then the web starting in 1994. Yes, my mind is in my head, but how I use it is deeply enmeshed with computers, a story I tell in this working paper fro 2015, Personal Observations on Entering an Age of Computing Machines, https://www.academia.edu/18791499/Personal_Observations_on_Entering_an_Age_of_Computing_Machines.

So, when Facebook, unilaterally changed the interface on me, it was messing with my mind. And that’s why I said “NO” immediately and unequivocally. I did not give them permission to mess with my mind.

Do I think the current Facebook interface is wonderful? No. Do I think it is awful? No. The truth is, I don’t think much about it at all. I just use it to go about my life.

For two-thirds or more each year I write two or more blog posts a day; I post each one of them on my Facebook page. The rest of the year, during my dormant melancholy phase, I do blog posts less frequently, sometimes as few as one or two a week. I also link bits of this and that, including my photographs, to my FB page and make comments of various kinds. And I read up on friends and acquaintances. Often enough I get ideas useful for my intellectual work. And I do other things on FB as well, but the details don’t matter. The point should be clear: I make extensive use of FB.

So I think of the FB interface as a part of my mind. No, not “think of”, but rather “use”, I use it as part of my mind. I know where things are and how to get things done. I don’t have to think about any of that, I just do it.

A change to the interface, even an ‘improvement’ to it, thus interferes with my mind, my work, my play. It’s like you have your office all set up so you can use it. It may not look neat and orderly to an observer, but you know where everything is and are comfortable with it. Then a cleaning service comes in, empties the waste basket, sweeps the floor, rearranges your desk top, tidies up you shelves, and takes the scattered books and papers and arranges them neatly here or there. Now your office looks neat and orderly. But it’s useless to you because you can’t find anything in all that neatness. The neat new order is not the order you’re used to. As far as you’re concerned, the new order is a mess.

Now, back on August 25th when FB sprung this on me I figured that maybe I should just up and leave FB. I even said as much publically, on both Facebook and Twitter. And, if I saw a way to bring a couple of million FB users with me, that’s probably what I’d do. Given that FB has well over two-billion monthly users, the loss of a million or two wouldn’t make much difference to them. But if they all left at the same time, and for the same reason, they might pause and think. But that’s not going to happen. I’m not going to bring a bunch of users with me when I leave.

So, I’ll stick around and no doubt I’ll get used to the new interface. After all, I have no choice, no I, not if I want to continue using FB. Will I like it better? I can’t tell, but, really, that’s irrelevant. For better or worse, I’ll adapt.

What about ten or twenty years from now?

But is this a viable long-term strategy, both for Facebook, and for users? If, over the long term, our work and play become ever more deeply enmeshed in computational facilities of all kinds, unilateral vendor-side changes in the interface will become more burdensome for users? Is there a way to give users more control over the interface?

The fact is, no matter what FB says, no matter how hard they claim that they’re doing this to enhance my experience, I also believe that they’re doing this to assert their power over me. That, I suspect, is why they sprung the change on me, and who knows how many other users, without any warning. They did it because they can.

Do I know this? No, I don’t. I’m certainly not privy to FB’s internal deliberations on user relations. It’s quite possible that no one inside FB ever said anything about asserting power over users by making unilateral changes in the interface. That’s not how these things work. Individuals in organizations don’t have to say these things in order for organizations to act as though they’re true.

And the more FB acts that way, the more user’s are going to come to think and believe that that is what FB is doing. How many FB users believe right now that FB is manipulating them against their own interests and in favor of FB’s? Unilateral changes in interface design will inevitably increase that number. That cannot be good for Facebook. But I haven’t the foggiest idea how that level of user dissatisfaction will play out in the marketplace.

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