Some things to think about before we hit Facebook with a ‘bot tax’

So Sen. Amy Klobuchar was on Meet the Press yesterday expressing her concern about automated “bot” accounts and pushing social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to do more to purge them from their sites. (And of course all of these concerns are happening within the context of Russian interference with the 2016 US election.) Klobuchar:

These are the most sophisticated companies in America. They have brilliant people working there. I believe that they’ve got to put more resources — maybe it means they make less profits off of ads and other things — but they’ve got to put the resources into Facebook and Twitter to stop these bots from dominating the accounts.

It was at this point that MTP host Chuck Todd jumped and asked whether these companies should be fined, comparing them to polluters. To which Klobuchar responded, “I think that would be a great idea.”

Upon hearing this, I was almost immediately reminded of the much-quoted bit of politician’s logic from the 1980s BBC television political sitcom “Yes, Prime Minister”: “We must do something; This is something; Therefore, we must do this.” Less well known, I think, is the response to that syllogism: “But doing the wrong thing is worse than nothing.”

I mean, I get it. Politicians think they need to do something, even if it isn’t particularly well thought out. But at least in the case of Facebook, the company is doing something in response to criticisms about how people use and interact with its product. First, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would alter its News Feed content to “encourage meaningful social interactions with family and friends over passive consumption.” So more emphasis on what family and friends share vs. “brands.” Second, Facebook is trying to “prioritize news that is trustworthy, informative, and local” through surveys of its online community, which may help if properly done. But the company also has to effectively communicate what it is doing, and Klobuchar’s comment may suggest more work needs to be done there. (That, especially given the relatively low trust levels toward Facebook.)

Moreover, politicians should also acknowledge, in the case of Russia, how sophisticated the misuse of social networks can be, including using identity theft to buy ads. As tech industry watcher Ben Thompson noted after reading US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s recent indictment of various Russians and Russian entities: “Presuming the indictment is accurate — and given the fact that Mueller and team were transcribing private messages and internal group emails, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be — the biggest revelation from this indictment was just how sophisticated the Internet Research Agency was. And, to that end, while I was already inclined to give Facebook the benefit of the doubt because of its sheer scale, to my mind Mueller just exonerated the company completely: it is beyond unreasonable to expect Facebook to have, absent outside prompting that something was afoot, organically discovered and stopped the Internet Research Agency’s activities.” Also, he adds, politicians should think hard about how any regulations would potential inhibit challenges to megaplatform incumbents from future corporate competitors.