A COUPLE of months or so after becoming Britain's prime minister,
David Cameron wanted a few tips from somebody who could tell him how it
felt to be responsible for, and accountable to, many millions of
people: people who expected things from him, even though in most cases
he would never shake their hands.
He turned not to a fellow head of government but to...Mark
Zuckerberg, the founder and boss of Facebook, the phenomenally
successful social network. (It announced on July 21st that it had 500m
users, up from 150m at the start of 2009.) In a well-publicised online
video chat this month, the two men swapped ideas about ways for
networks to help governments. Was this just a political leader seeking
a spot of help from the private sector--or was it more like diplomacy, a
comparison of notes between the masters of two great nations?
In some ways, it might seem absurd to call Facebook a state and Mr
Zuckerberg its governor. It has no land to defend; no police to enforce
law and order; it does not have subjects, bound by a clear cluster of
rights, obligations and cultural signals. Compared with citizenship of
a country, membership is easy to acquire and renounce. Nor do
Facebook's boss and his executives depend directly on the assent of an
"electorate" that can unseat them. Technically, the only people they
report to are the shareholders.
But many web-watchers do
detect country-like features in Facebook. "[It] is a device that allows
people to get together and control their own destiny, much like a
nation-state," says David Post, a law professor at Temple University.
If that sounds like a flattering description of Facebook's "groups"
(often rallying people with whimsical fads and aversions), then it is
worth recalling a classic definition of the modern nation-state. As
Benedict Anderson, a political scientist, put it, such polities are
"imagined communities" in which each person feels a bond with millions
of anonymous fellow-citizens. In centuries past, people looked up to
kings or bishops; but in an age of mass literacy and printing in
vernacular languages, so Mr Anderson argued, horizontal ties matter
more.
So if newspapers and tatty paperbacks can create new social and
political units, for which people toil and die, perhaps the latest
forms of communication can do likewise. In his 2006 book "Code: Version
2.0", a legal scholar, Lawrence Lessig noted that online communities
were transcending the limits of conventional states--and predicted that
members of these communities would find it "difficult to stand neutral
in this international space".
To many, that forecast still smacks of cyber-fantasy. But the rise
of Facebook at least gives pause for thought. If it were a physical
nation, it would now be the third most populous on earth. Mr Zuckerberg
is confident there will be a billion users in a few years. Facebook is
unprecedented not only in its scale but also in its ability to blur
boundaries between the real and virtual worlds. A few years ago, online
communities evoked fantasy games played by small, geeky groups. But as
technology made possible large virtual arenas like Second Life or World
of Warcraft, an online game with millions of players, so the overlap
between cyberspace and real human existence began to grow.
From the users' viewpoint, Facebook can feel a bit like a liberal
polity: a space in which people air opinions, rally support and right
wrongs. What about the view from the top? Is Facebook a place that
needs governing, just as a country does? Brad Burnham of Union Square
Ventures, a venture-capital firm, has argued that the answer is yes. In
the spirit of liberal politics, he thinks the job of Facebook's
managers is to create a space in which citizens and firms feel
comfortable investing their time and money to create things.
Facebook has certainly tried to guide the development of its online
economy, almost in the way that governments seek to influence economic
activity in the real world, through fiscal and monetary policy. Earlier
this year the firm said it wanted applications running on its platform
to accept its virtual currency, known as Facebook Credits. It argued
that this was in the interests of Facebook users, who would no longer
have to use different online currencies for different applications. But
this infuriated some developers, who resent the fact that Facebook
takes a 30% cut on every transaction involving credits.
Like any ruling elite that knows it relies on the consent from the
ruled, Facebook seeks advice from its members on questions of
governance. It allows users to vote on proposed changes to its terms of
service, and it holds online forums to solicit views on future
policies. And like any well-intentioned politico, Facebook makes
blunders: its members were infuriated earlier this year by changes to
its policy that made public some previously private information. If Mr
Zuckerberg achieves his goal of creating the world's favourite "social
utility", he may need to give users a more formal say--a bit like a
constitution.
Experience shows that networks which neglect governance pay a
price. Take MySpace, which was once much bigger than Facebook: its
growth stalled a couple of years ago when its managers let the site
become too disorderly. There is a thin line, it seems, between the
freedom that spurs creativity and a free-for-all.
For now at least, real governments still have some aces; they can
simply pull the plug on the service. Facebook is blocked in China, and
in May it was temporarily cut off in Pakistan, under a court ruling
about a page that advertised a contest to draw the Prophet Muhammad.
Perhaps Facebook is less a nation than a giant transnational
movement--comparable to the Red Cross or the Catholic church--which has
an overarching aim and can speak to governments on something like equal
terms.
As Facebook's masters present it, their mission is just to make the
world more open and connected--and bring closer the "global village"
predicted in the 1960s by Marshall McLuhan, a futurologist they love.
Their claim to be accelerators has some force. Facebook's success
"raises a lot of issues that we thought were a generation away," says
Edward Castronova, a professor at Indiana University. One of them is
how much impact virtual economies and currencies will have on real
world ones. The Chinese government has repeatedly curbed virtual
currencies. Last year it banned their use to buy real-world goods and
services, in part because of concerns about the impact on the yuan.
Facebook may also influence how governments supply services, and
compete to provide them. For instance, the firm allows members to use
their Facebook profiles to log into other sites around the web,
creating a sort of passport. A similar facility could help people on
the move retain access to government services. And then there is the
question of how social networks will change politics. Clearly, they
help to stimulate discussion and marshal action, and they let
governments trawl for and test proposals. When Messrs Cameron and
Zuckerberg conferred, the main topic was how to get new ideas for
cutting public spending.
Like many diplomatic relationships, theirs was fickle. Days after
the chat, Facebook was rebuked by the British government for allowing
tributes to a murderer to be posted. The firm refused to remove the
offending page, which was later taken down by its creator. "Facebook is
a place where people can express their views and discuss things in an
open way, as they can and do in many other places," it said. Mr
Zuckerberg may not have any territory, but he was determined to stand
his ground.
