Privacy and publicity

Three things interest me about the John Snow debacle (if you haven't followed the saga of a Soho pub kicking out two gay drinkers for kissing, summary here), two of them mainly about Facebook.

First, the incident itself seems to indicate that the internet has made the maintenance of private little fiefdoms of bigotry harder than ever. Run a covertly homophobic, racist or otherwise unsavory pub even ten years ago and it was non-trivial for anyone to do much about it. Now that a protest as peacefully whimsical as a kiss-in can be knocked together on Facebook, not once but as often as the pub tries to lock the protestors out, it's much harder. I'm as much a fan of cultural diversity and people being allowed to do what they like as the next virtual federalist, but one of the consequences of freedom, even the freedom to be a bigot, is bearing its consequences - including nationwide calumny and what looks increasingly for the John Snow's current management like financial disaster.

Second, yesterday Facebook pulled a photo of two guys kissing from the the kiss-in protest page, in what was later admitted by Facebook to be an error but initially explained in an email as being because the photo violated Facebook's ban on “nudity, or any kind of graphic, sexually suggestive content". Facebook here finds itself in a position of bizarre hypocrisy. The company that doesn't believe in privacy and has clocked up a valuation of $65 billion by convincing us to share everything apparently wishes to set limits on what is public or shareable based on extremely limiting and conservative moral judgements.

And there, of course, is the third thing and the crux of what Facebook really believes is public and shareable - noise about growing imaginary vegetables and, if we cast our minds back to the Beacon debacle, other commercial transactions. Which means, if it is to attract businesses, lowest common denominator "family values" such as the censorship of perfectly innocent photographs. (Compare Facebook's superficially wholesome reputation to the consistently commercially valueless Livejournal, pariah of advertisers for its reputation as the home of marginally legal slashfic.) Facebook is a great place to hold superficial conversations, promote relationships that can be defined by pre-selected tickboxes and organise bland events. It is a poor place for protest, for saying anything that clashes with the needs of advertisers or for sharing anything that would look out of place on Disney's Main Street USA (like, it initially seemed to the moderators, two guys kissing). I don't really use Facebook any more - I don't trust it or its commercial agenda. And we've seen recently how much easier than we might have thought it is for everyone to leave a once-dominant social network.