Online Self-Investment Paradox and Facebook

Recently, my mind's attention got caught by this  Facebook transparency rant by Danah Boyd, another call to action in the electrified atmosphere of weighing in on shrinking of online privacy that is becoming an active ingredient of our internet zeitgeist.

Her politically biased discourse aside, the author does make valid and unsparingly honest remarks about the state of privacy on the web at large and the motives of various players trying to influence it.

From my perspective, its main contribution to the current Facebook privacy debate is that it makes a case for all those who (would) disagree with the site yet remain on it, it softens and bends the consumer response logic of voice/exit upon disapproving of Facebook's actions to a point at which those users are portrayed as victims who are not in a position to either leave or complain: the social contract with Facebook that was established when signing up has been gradually broken in such a way that prevents them from either exiting the service or voicing their dissatisfaction with the situation that they are not even fully aware of (again in part due to its gradual morphing).

In my opinion, this forthright attitude needs to be taken a step further. What needs to be exposed is the real underlying cause for the existence of the situation. Why do users online neither exit nor voice their complaints? The voluntary limbo they are in doesn't exist because of their own unsuspecting cluelessness, it's not because of Facebook's foul plan for gradual world domination. The attitude of most users doesn't change even when the full information picture lays bare in front of them.

The real answer lies in countless hours invested in profile building, networking, promoting the website to their social circle, the effort it took them to start trusting it and in the end the lack of alternatives that would outweigh (or have the potential to outweigh) the investment. Lack of alternatives is a major reason that has kept monopolistic services like Facebook above the water.

This real issue stems from what I call online self-investment. It is the prime issue of our internet era and at the same time an online incarnation of a dilemma as old as humanity itself, albeit with a twist.

Online self-investment simply means investing yourself in an online activity. It is a recurring theme in the life cycle of any online service or product. It shows consumer-service interaction and pitfalls thereof from the perspective of the user. It offers an insight into user behavior beyond the classic assumptions of frustration and passive attitude, adding another dimension to it.

Even though investing yourself, your time, money and your cognitive processes into something, that in itself won't prevent you from leaving or attempting to change it, though it will influence your calculation of what to do. In real life, such decisions bear real consequences that for the most part cannot be rolled back.

However, when it comes to the same situation online, the rules change. Unlike in real life, people don't have anything tangible to lose, and it could very likely be rolled back without consequences. But they can, as research shows, perceive virtual life as reality. This enables them to invest themselves into their activity in the same way as in real life.

Online self-investment that I've just described functions in the same way as one would expect from a real life self-investment but leads to a radically different result: O.S.I. therefore inevitably leads to online self-investment paradox.

Instead of deciding between voice and exit, online users keep investing themselves into an activity that they would try to change - or not continue at all - in real life. And they are doing that not despite but because of the fact that their virtual activity and its consequences are perceived as intangible, even if the service itself is costing them real money. In this sense, users still view virtual life as removed from reality.

To rephrase, users online are resuming their activity because they are self-invested in it in a very real way and at the same time still treat it as removed from reality. They are experiencing it as reality but not treating it the same way. This is what I call O.S.I. paradox, the online self-investment paradox.

I have stumbled upon this pattern throughout the internet, again and again. World of Warcraft, a paid MMO service, was a classic example of such dissonance. Millions of players who are investing time and money into an online computer game on a daily bass, a good portion of them privately disgruntled with the publisher's (Blizzard) attitude yet very few quit or raised their voice because of it, they rather kept investing their time in the game.

The lesson for anyone providing a service in this case is that in order to keep the users pacified, it has to ensure the following:

1. provide them with means for perpetual online self investment

2. make sure that you have as little competition as possible (appearing more appealing than the competition is what breaks many more services than it makes)

3. keep realities separate, do not allow for overlapping of the issues with reality: as soon as the online self-investment overlaps with reality, the individual's exit/voice decision reappears.

But what is there to do for users who actually want change? What stance do we assume, that of people as sheep needing to be lead by those who know what is right for them? Is the approach taking the fight (in the case of privacy) to every particular application/website or would time be better spent lobbying for a general regulation?

We hear criticism of Digg that it is caving in to users too much on one side and praise of companies like Facebook and Apple who follow through with their plans regardless of users' opinions. The approach works for Apple but in case of Facebook the situation is different. It is not engineers who bring services to life, it's people who do it, the engineers only serve as administration of the skeleton, the frame that helps you invest yourself in the service.

Taking that into account, Facebook should take the same path Digg did. And this is just the first of many reasons for it.

And since voicing your opinion is to no avail, exiting remains a viable alternative.

Sidenote: Little known fact: Facepook as a Facebook clone actually exists. Since it smells phishy, caution while there is advised.