The Largest Autocracy on Earth

What Facebook possesses most of all, of course, is people—a gigantic population of individuals who choose to live under Zuckerberg’s rule. In his writings on nationalism, the political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson suggested that nations are defined not by their borders but by imagination. The nation is ultimately imaginary because its citizens “will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” Communities, therefore, are distinguished most of all “by the style in which they are imagined.”

Facebook’s defenders like to argue that it’s naive to suggest that Facebook’s power is harmful. Social networks are here, they insist, and they’re not going anywhere. Deal with it. They’re right that no one should wish to return to the information ecosystems of the 1980s, or 1940s, or 1880s. The democratization of publishing is miraculous; I still believe that the triple revolution of the internet, smartphones, and social media is a net good for society. But that’s true only if we insist on platforms that are in the public’s best interest. Facebook is not.

"The freedom to destroy yourself is one thing. The freedom to destroy democratic society is quite another."

Even Facebook loyalists concede that it’s a place for garbage, for hyperbole, for mendacity—but argue that people should be free to manage their intake of such toxins. “While Facebook may not be nicotine I think it is probably like sugar,” the longtime Facebook executive Andrew “Boz” Bosworth wrote in a 2019 memo. “Like all things it benefits from moderation … If I want to eat sugar and die an early death that is a valid position.”