kidmercury

Well folks, I have some good news: the beatdown the blogosphere has been dropping on the venture capital community, which we've been providing breaking coverage of here on KidMercuryBlog.com, has subsided. Looks like VC's will finally have a chance to lick their wounds and recoup.

But that doesn't mean the blogosphere hasn't found a new victim.

That's right folks, while the 'sphere has moved on from opening an can of whup ass on VC's, they've simply set their eyes on a new target: Facebook.

Yesterday we talked about how Valleywag hated on Facebook. And hot on the heels of that story comes Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb going apeshit on Facebook. See for yourself.

Why did Kirkpatrick decide to do to Facebook what Umair Haque has done to VCs? Well, the answer is that Facebook has been trying to find a way to reassure its users that they remain in control of their data on Facebook. To this end, Facebook has invited its user base to participate in creating "the Facebook Constitution" -- essentially the terms of service by which how Facebook will operate. Kirkpatrick is calling Facebook's bluff, saying that it won't do anything.

I agree with Kirkpatrick. As others have noted, the key issue is data portability; until Facebook users can easily get their data out of Facebook, all their talk is just that: talk. Empty rhetoric.

Ultimately, this issue with Facebook can be summed up with one word: governance. Facebook needs a governance system to manage its community. It's that simple.

Simple, yes. Psychologically easy? LOL. Not quite. Ultimately it will boil down to one issue:

Facebook needs to be willing to challenge governments of the world.

As we have discussed many times over the past few years (here and here), it is my contention that social networks are here to take us beyond the nation-state. Part of this process means that Facebook must respect its users more so than the governments of the world. Also an implicit part of this discussion is that in order for Facebook to come up with a terms of service that satisfies its constituents, it must be able to satisfy users of Facebook around the world. As such, its terms of service must be willing to openly deal with this. If Facebook is simply going to be subject to the laws of where the user resides, there is not much of a point at all in creating a democratically established terms of service; after all, at the end of the day, it is whatever jurisdiction they are under that will truly govern things, and things like privacy and data portability will be meaningless, as most Americans are subject to the Patriot Act, as well as any other legislation that may come in the future that may contradict the democratically established terms of service created by Facebook and its constituents. (Not to mention that even the "local government rules" concept still leaves much room for interpretation; for instance, many counties in the US have declared themselves independent of the Patriot Act. So if the US federal government comes asking for data of a user under the Patriot Act, but if this user lives in a county where the Patriot Act is not enforced, who wins?)

Journalists, Don't Forget to Look in the Mirror....

Journalists -- or should I say, "journalists" -- may wish to look in the mirror before acting all tough and hatin' on Facebook. To illustrate my point, check this search result from the real journalists over at PrisonPlanet.com:

google censorship siterisonplanet.com - Yahoo! Search Results

Now compare that with the same query on ReadWriteWeb:

google censorship site:readwriteweb.com - Yahoo! Search Results

Get the picture?

Man, Kid Mercury, You Just Never Learn, Do You....

Yes, I know. "Kid Mercury, we choose to live in fear of our government masters, we will always bet on Lies and never on the Truth, you are stupid for trying to persuade us otherwise.....we hate you....."

Yes, of course, such arguments are hardly new. Of course, neither is the futility of those arguments. As is the case with venture capitalists, social networking and the web in general is going to run into serious limitations -- limitations we are already seeing, as evidenced by the turmoil resulting from our government-created monetary crisis -- until the government issue is addressed. The governments of the world are increasingly broken. They have destroyed capitalism and will continue to make innovation and entrepreneurial planning difficult in a variety of ways; not only through inflation/deflation/business cycle crises, but also through legislative crises that prevent Facebook from developing a meaningful terms of service.

I will conclude with a link to my song, "Proud to be a Conspiracy Theorist," which I have dedicated to the venture capital community. I hope the venture capitalists behind Facebook will hear the epic ballad I have created for them and will be inspired to serve the Truth -- for the Truth is our best weapon in reforming government, which in turn is necessary for maximizing the potential of Facebook and ensuring it can create the best governance system for its users. In light of the urgency of this matter, I will also be writing a song specifically for Facebook, to help them through these troubled times (working on a jam hatin' on Obama now, but the Facebook jam will be after that).