Facebook's history of comparing itself to older, widely accepted tools like chairs and cars shows how its leaders deploy analogies to downplay criticism
The social media giant keeps comparing itself to other, less controversial technologies. Historians aren't buying it. Tweets: @karaswisher , @epro , @brad262run , @sts_news , @tiffanycli , and @willoremus Tweets: Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : Still they persist even though there is no comparable: Facebook is like chairs. No, telephones. No, cars. No ... https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Emil Protalinski / @epro : Facebook is replaceable; the internet is not. Except in countries where Facebook is the internet. This tactic is deliberate and intentional. https://twitter.com/... Brad Mumbrue / @brad262run : “It's a tactic that reveals how Facebook's leaders rationalize the social network's problems ... But historians of technology say that these sorts of comparisons can also be revealing in ways that the people drawing them don't necessarily intend” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Lee Vinsel / @sts_news : New WaPo piece by @WillOremus on how Facebook/Instagrams execs keep comparing their platforms to chairs, telephones, cars, and other old technologies. Contains quotes from @libshipwreck and me. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Tiffany C. Li / @tiffanycli : There's also a fun history of lawyers and judges wrestling with often inaccurate metaphors and analogies to try to figure out new tech. See, e.g., @rcalo “Robots as Legal Metaphors” https://papers.ssrn.com/... @RebeccaCrootof @bj_ard “Structuring Techlaw” https://papers.ssrn.com/... https://twitter.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : I wrote about Facebook's weirdly extensive history of comparing itself to things that are very much not Facebook — and what its executives are really saying when they say Facebook is like chairs, or telephones, or churches, or the printing press, or cars. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...