It may not be clear yet on what terms, or by what department, or as what kind of entity; but a definite sense transpired that Facebook and other companies like it (if indeed there are any other companies like it) cannot be trusted to manage its own responsibilities to us, its users.
What kind of regulations does Facebook need?
Yes, we can subject the company to external audits of its management of personal information. We can apply the regulations already in place for media companies and financial institutions and any of the many other pies Facebook has its fingers in. We can impose Zeynep Tufekci's proposed restrictions on data harvesting.
Probably we should do all those things.
But the real root of the issue, the reason why Facebook's business model is a national concern, is power.
Imagine that half the customers of an international enterprise think it's incompetent at the primary thing that company does to make money. It sounds ridiculous. Surely those customers would go find someone else to work with.
What could possibly keep them from doing that?
Why is it that literally half the people who use social media websites don't trust them to protect their data? How can that be? Why don't they "vote with their feet" and delete their accounts?
We know the answer. Ask any two Facebook users why they are on the platform, and one of them will tell you that it is only because it's "the only way they can keep in touch" with others on the platform.
And that's the power Facebook has over you. That's how they can keep you logging in even though you know damn well how reckless and manipulative (dare I say evil) they are.
They've got the family announcements, the party invitations, the baby photos, and the critical health updates on your sick grandmother, and they're not going to show you any of those unless you log in.
The whole issue of how to regulate Facebook would become much simpler if the half of Facebook's users who hate it could leave without losing access to to those updates.
And there's a fairly straightforward way to do that: require Facebook (and other social media services) to support remote following.
Which is what exactly?
What the hell is remote following, you ask? (Assuming it's not Facebook's new drone surveillance program.)
As countless explainers of decentralized social media have done before me, I will describe remote following in terms of an analogy to email.
What do you use for email? Yahoo? Gmail? Your own server?
Do you find it surprising that you can send emails to other people who use email, even though they're on different email platforms? Of course not. An email platform that didn't allow you to reach anyone with an email address on any other platform would be completely unacceptable.
There's no technological reason that social media services can't operate in exactly the same way. When you post on Facebook for all your followers to see, there's no reason why people whom you have allowed to follow you from other platforms shouldn't be able to see it too, whether they're on Twitter or The Wandering Shop or Kitty.Town.
If Facebook supported remote following, then a user on Friendica would be able to send you a follow request at say @earthling@facebook.com.
Or if Twitter supported it, you as a Facebook user could request to follow @notanalien@twitter.com.
Or as an octodon.social user, I could connect with your Google+ profile that you forgot you had by following @seriouslynotanalien@plus.google.com.
I Am Not Making This Up
This may all sound completely fanciful, but as a matter of fact, all of the social media sites linked above already do it! Users on any of these sites (as well as hundreds of others) can follow and share with users on the others (or opt not to share with those users).
That's remote following, and it's the only thing I want from Facebook.
Of course they'll never do that voluntarily. They profit immensely from the fact that people who don't in the least bit want to use Facebook nevertheless have to use it.
The only thing that makes Facebook special is that everyone you care about is on it. If you didn't have to be on Zuckerface to see updates from your friends and family, their iron grip on our online social infrastructure would break.
Suddenly the platform would become a commodity instead of a closed and centralized network. Suddenly we would no longer have to choose between protecting our privacy and interacting online with people we care about. Suddenly we would all be free from Facebook.
