Facebook comments are community
I comment on Facebook, a lot. I pay attention to and click on a fair number of local news reports, and visit the comments often.
One local outlet just shared an article about inflation, and I see a frequent commenter. We'll call him Ted.
We often comment on each other's comments. I think he has terrible views and is badly informed. He probably thinks the same of me.
There are several other frequent commenters that I see under my local outlets. Some people whom I've thought liberal have turned out to be more complicated. Some conservatives have too.
These local news comment sections are a small community I'm a part of, and I just realized that before starting this blog post.
I didn't mean to join this community. But I wanted to comment about my community. I wanted to argue about queer rights. I wanted to learn other people's perspectives. And so many other things.
Through this, I've gotten to know a few people, even if superficially, and we're all there because we care about the world and want it to go in a "good" direction.
Many of us have different ideas of what is "good", and even greater differences about what paths we should take to get there.
Ramblings of mad nb
Facebook is a platform that allows communities to form. Facebook does not make any communities. News stations and city governments and businesses and freelancers and nonprofits and others make Facebook Pages where they create content for the internet, not for their existing community.
Facebook used to be geared more toward connecting your own community, the one you already have in real life. Now it's about making new communities that are entirely online. (It does the IRL stuff too, I suppose)
But Facebook doesn't build the communities. News stations do when they post a news story about my city. My city government does when they ask for feedback on an upcoming road project. People do when they create a 'Group' on Facebook.
We participate in these communities by commenting. We are possibly part of these communities by reading the articles, by reading comments, by reacting to posts.
Facebook is a tool. It provides infrastructure. It provides a system.
This system encourages certain kinds of communities to form. (probably? Maybe it's just my personal experience. I'm quite sure the platform design influences this though. A platform with no commenting or with irl verification required to comment would surely influence different kinds of communities)
It's not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing. but it is worth asking: Does it encourage some kinds of communities over others? Does it discourage other kinds of communities? If yes, which ones, and why?
Is it unintentional, or is it part of any agenda? Is it just to increase engagement and advertising consumption, and ultimately profits? Was this concept (encouraging certain kinds of communities via the software design) even considered?
Anyway, more importantly, what kind of communities do we want to encourage? We being me. But also we as communities, as people who share this world together.
It would be nice to remove the question all together and not do any form of ... social manufacturing. But that's just not possible.
Having a public park will encourage people to be outside. If the park is far away, this might encourage people to play in their back yard or be inside.
So ideally, it comes down to a process of consent. These decisions (where to build a park, whether or not to build a park) DO affect communities, and it affects the day-to-day decisions people make.
So having a process of consent for what influences will be built into it is probably desirable.
If I want to be encouraged to be outside, I will be in support of public parks. If I want to be encouraged to be inside, I will oppose public parks.
But not everybody will want the same thing. And not everybody will want their tax dollars going to it.
As it is right now, we have a majority-based representative democracy. If 51% of voters win a candidate that's gonna build a park, we get a park. If 51% win a candidate who's going to sell to business developers, we get businesses.
So in theory, the kind of society we live in just depends on what the 51% say.
That's fucked up.
Because what about the other 49%? They're very significant. Even if it was 1%... That's still 1% of people who now are forced to live with and be influenced by systems they said no to.
That's a tragedy. If 65% support recreational cannabis & 35% don't ... 35% lose, but they still have to smell pot smoke, live in communities with higher pot use, be influenced by cannabis businesses advertising product, and possibly other negative (at least in their view) side effects.
And I think that sucks for the 35%. I'd rather have recreational cannabis than not. But it sucks that people who opposed it have to live with it.
It sucks that I am opposed to surveillance cameras, but I have to live in a community that has them. They may influence my behavior, and I don't want that influence.
One may argue that it doesn't matter if you're behaving, but that doesn't change the fact that I don't consent. I don't want it. But I don't have a choice, because the majority politic approved it and funded it.
Such is society, I suppose. I wonder if there are solutions to make this consent problem more consensual.
I forgot
I'm wondering about this community aspect on the web at large. The indie web or whatever. And I'm wondering if the community-building aspect of Facebook can be translated to the broader web, outside of a central platform. And I'm wondering if that's desirable.