Searching for the Town Square in a Virtual World
For many years now, I’ve been seeing discussions and statements made online that certain platforms serve as the ‘internet’s town square’. This town square analogy has typically been associated with Twitter, or what we now know as X. With Musk’s acquisition of X, we’ve seen ambitions to further “transform the global town square”.
Around a year ago, I initially conducted a little thought experiment. When I explore and navigate around issues in the digital world, I tend to ask myself the question: what does it look like? More often than not, there are plenty of real-world examples that can be used to draw parallels to issues that arise in the virtual world. Why? Because the real world is already a very complex space. The ‘internet’ is just an added layer on top that mirrors real-world issues with a slight twist. Same, same, but different.
Town Square of the Internet
According to Wikipedia, a town square is “an open public space used for various activities.” A town can be defined as a place where people live and work. As our existence increasingly becomes digitised, a lot of this ‘living and working’ happens on the ‘internet’.
But there’s the Internet, which is a worldwide system of computer networks versus the ‘internet’ according to your average Joe. It’s crucial for us to acknowledge this difference in understanding. However, regardless of how you define the ‘internet’, if the ‘internet’ was a town; its square would be the ‘open public space’ you used for ‘various activities’.
For many of us, ideally, the ‘internet’ is a town where you can build virtual ‘homes’ for your virtual ‘persona’ and interact with other virtual ‘personas’ both privately and professionally at the town square.
There has been extensive debate on whether social media platforms, like Twitter constitutes ‘public space’, or more specifically the ‘public sphere’. The notion of ‘public sphere’ is broadly defined as a realm of social life in which public opinion could be formed. However, when privately-owned companies enable and facilitate the existence of a virtual ‘public sphere’, that’s when the water gets a bit muddier.
Privately-owned public spaces don’t only exist in cyberspace. Plenty of cities around the world have privately owned public spaces. London is a great example of a city with several ‘pseudo-public spaces’. In such spaces, although the space seems public; access to this at the discretion of landowners.
The problems that have arisen in London in relation to these pseudo-public spaces eerily reflect the problems of online platforms. They’re owned by private entities. There’s a “democratic deficit” in the governance of these spaces. There’s a lack of transparency in how the rules are enforced.
Twitter has been trying to declare itself a pseudo-public space before Musk took the reins. Although Twitter was the only online platform to use the town square analogy. In this attention economy, other platforms are also constantly competing to be the ‘global town square’. Meta, for example, introduced Threads in attempts to dominate the ‘town square’.
Town Square of the World
Conceptually, the internet has no borders. However, in reality, internet connectivity does not always entail unlimited and unregulated access to information or services. Governments around the world have exercised their power to censor access to information or restrict access to services. What’s even more concerning is that social media algorithms, like the ones used by Facebook, have been responsible for intensifying violence in places like Myanmar and Ethiopia.
Although Threads launched in July 2023, Meta delayed its release in Europe, due to their concerns over “upcoming regulatory uncertainty”, namely to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). But, what’s so uncertain about the DMA?
The DMA defines when a large online platform qualifies as a ‘gatekeeper’. These are digital platforms that provide an important gateway between business users and consumers.
Under the DMA, gatekeepers (like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter) will keep all opportunities to innovate and offer new services. They’re just not allowed to use unfair practices towards users that depend on them to gain an undue advantage. However, strategically Meta’s focus has never been on Europe. Their strategy in the past decade has been focused on more densely populated regions with lower barriers to entry.
In many places in the world, “the Internet [does] not exist; only Facebook (Meta).” Since around 2013, Meta, has been on “a mission to connect the world” to the internet. Meta, under Mark Zuckerberg, has proposed rough plans for making connectivity a human right.
Zuckerberg argues that by bringing everyone online, billions of lives would be improved; but we would also improve as we benefit from the ideas and productivity they contribute to the world. Sounds promising but it only paints a small portion of what connectivity would really entail.
Smaller World, Bigger Towns
Enabling connectivity for more people will make the world a lot smaller. It can provide for better employment opportunities and increase an individual’s access to information. Unfortunately, internet connectivity according to Zuckerberg means connectivity to Meta’s products and services.
So, with that in mind, let’s revisit the town square analogy. If the internet is a town and the town square is a public space where internet users can go and partake in various activities; where do online platforms fall under this analogy?
I believe that online platforms are vendors at the town square. Unfortunately, these vendors have transformed their stands into massive 24/7 casinos with no windows, unlimited drinks, and endless amount of credit to spend. What ends up happening is we forget there’s even a way out. We forget that there’s a town square because everyone’s at the casino and we don’t want to miss out.
We’ve been locked in the casino for so long, we’re scared to leave. Once we muster up the courage to finally do so, it turns out the drinks were not free, and you were too drunk to read the changes in the terms and conditions. So, to repay your debt, the casino commodifies your experiences, strips you naked and auctions everything off to the highest bidder.
Enabling connectivity as proposed by Zuckerberg would make the world much smaller, but the vendor’s stands at the global town square way bigger. So big, you forget there was even a town in the first place. Unfortunately for us, he’s not the only one.
Yes, most of us find some form of entertainment from tech billionaires doing tech billionaire things. Like Zuckerberg on a $10,000 hydrofoil slathered in zinc. Bezos carving his fiancé on his $500 million yacht. Or, Elon Musk just being Elon Musk.
However, let’s not disregard the fact that the top three companies dominating the global digital advertising space are Alphabet Inc. (Google), Meta, and Amazon; these three companies together account for 70% of digital advertising revenue of global public companies.
What all these online platforms have in common is that they’re trying to declare themselves the town. What’s even worse is we’ve kind of just let them. We’ve let them into our homes, we’ve even let them into our governments. What they’ve essentially done is commodified our existence in abstraction. They’ve made it virtually impossible for us to ‘live and work’ on the internet without relying on their infrastructure. Be it through Meta’s products, Amazon Web Services, or Google Workspace.
As the lines between the physical world and cyberspace blurs, its vital that we talk about what that means for us.
Autonomy and Free Will
A few days ago, I watched a talk with Jack Dorsey, former co-founder and CEO of Twitter, discuss how he believes that the free speech debate on social media platforms is a complete distraction and that the real debate should be about free will. The talk gives of insight as to the issues he faced while heading Twitter, specifically in relation to content moderation and restrictions on speech imposed by governmental bodies.
While I agree with a lot of the things he says, namely, about open-source technologies, how centralization opens up the possibility of a single point of failure, his perspective on data portability, interoperability and ownership, the fact that we are being programmed by algorithms based and that closing a technology forces dependency and our dependency on algorithms is impacting the agency we have. More importantly, I agree that the public square is by default the Internet and cannot and should not be owned by one company. The issue with the public square is it’s difficult to find the things that you are interested in, Big Tech’s solutions to the discovery problem have enabled them to dominate the digital ecosystem and virtually every aspect of our virtual lives. However, if we are able to solve the discovery problem in an open source or ‘free agency way’, it would be precisely what we need.
Dorsey believes the only answer is not by working harder at open source or making them explainable, but to give people choices on what algorithm they want to use from parties they trust or choice to build their own algorithms. Essentially, the creation of a marketplace around algorithms that you can choose. We all can benefit from the use of discovery mechanisms to help sift through the Internet, but in order to be able to trust the help we need some agency over it.
Dorsey also highlights the shortcomings of open-source algorithms. Open-source algorithms are effectively still black boxes, and you cannot predict how it will work and what it will show you. But he believes it’s more dangerous to continue to rely on algorithms without choice.
There’s a lot to unpack in Dorsey’s talk. But what initially drew my attention was the notion of choice and the exercise thereof. Although I’m a major advocate for free will as a concept; the issue with free will it requires some willingness. Willingness on the consumer side to want to be informed about what’s available and what’s out there. Unfortunately, a lot of us have really gotten cozy in the casino and we can’t seem to escape. We’ve turned a blind eye to the exploitative practices. But there’s another camp of consumers, those that are simply uninformed and therefore unable to engage in the exercise of free will.
While we cannot force people to care, as force alone negates the notion of free will. There’s still a lot that can be done to remedy the lack of education and information aspect. Digital literacy remains an issue in both the global north and south, with lower rates among elderly individuals. So, how do we ensure that open-source doesn’t end up closing the door for individuals willing but unable to exercise free will? How do we equip individuals to be able to pick their algorithm of choice, if we are able to make that choice?
I think the approach is two-fold. In line with what Dorsey stated, a slow and deliberate approach is the way to go. Given how much harm the ‘move fast, break things approach’ has done to society, I think it’s crucial to take the time to see what’s truly important and push it in the right direction instead of solely seeking profit. The current oligarchy that is Big Tech needs to be broken up and we should gradually move towards a more decentralised ‘town square’. Moreover, I believe that more resources need to be allocated to ensuring that individuals, regardless of their geography, have access to information regarding their digital existence that is easy to understand to facilitate the exercise of free will. And, finally, in an ideal world, we all collectively start caring about our autonomy a bit more.
If you’re interested in learning more, here are some useful resources:
The rise of the quasi-public space and its consequences for cities and culture (2017) by Andy Pratt
Report on Myanmar: Facebook’s systems promoted violence against Rohingya; Meta owes reparations (2022) by Amnesty International
Commentary on What Facebook Does (and Doesn’t) Have to Do with Ethiopia’s Ethnic Violence (2023) by International Crisis Group
Digital Literacy and the “Digital Society” (2008) by Allan Martin
NOSTR, a decentralised social network
