When #DeleteUber was a trending hashtag it was relatively easy for people to take action in those cities where Lyft, MyTaxi or some other service was available. Even if you didn’t delete the Uber app outright, you could move it a screen back or so and default to another provider. Such is the power of competition.
The brief #DeleteFacebook run was a different story. There is no obvious other place to go (and please don’t say WhatsApp, as that’s Facebook also). The network effect in social is much stronger than the liquidity effect in on demand transportation. So not only did #DeleteFacebook run out of steam quite quickly but it doesn’t appear to have impacted user numbers.
So what is to be done? For years now I have been writing and speaking about the “Right to be represented by a bot.” We as endusers need to be able to run software on our behalf that interacts with systems such as Facebook. More recently I have phrased this as “Any system with 1 million+ users should by law be required to issue users with personal API keys.”
Why does that make a difference? Because with an API key I can have an intermediary software layer that operates on my behalf. And that layer can connect me with friends and family that are split up across multiple social networks. This would allow for real competition to Facebook to arise. And once there is competition there is a strong check on behavior as a future #DeleteFacebook campaign would be far more impactful.
Facebook has just announced that it will allow more data to be exported and that it might even some day support exports that could easily be imported into another service. The European GDPR has a concept of data portability that goes in this direction. But it still falls far short from the two way read-write API access that we need. Interestingly there is banking regulation in the EU that makes this mandatory for bank accounts. So if we can get there for bank accounts why not for social systems and while we are at it for search also?
Now would seem to be the time for creative forward looking regulation of technology that once again shifts power back to the enduser.
