For Preventing the Users of Social Networks from Being a Burden to Platform Shareholders, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public

With apologies to Jonathan Swift

It is a melancholy object to those who scroll through this great internet when they see the feeds, the timelines, the algorithmic surfaces crowded with content from ordinary citizens who have not yet been properly monetized. These persons, instead of being productive data-generating units, do presume to have opinions about their own digital existence — demanding “privacy,” requesting “data portability,” even threatening to leave for alternative platforms that cannot possibly serve them as well as their corporate benefactors.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of ungrateful users is, in the present deplorable state of the attention economy, a very great additional grievance. Whoever could find a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these users sound, useful members of the shareholder commonwealth would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation’s engagement metrics.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

The Proposal

I have been assured by a very knowing executive of my acquaintance in Silicon Valley that our present arrangements are not merely adequate but optimal, and that any disruption to the current order would be catastrophic for all involved — most especially the users themselves, who would find themselves adrift in a sea of unmonetized content without the steady hand of algorithmic curation to guide them.

Therefore, I humbly propose the following:

That we continue, with renewed enthusiasm, to be productized, packaged, and resold to the highest bidder.

That we embrace our role as the raw material from which shareholder value is extracted.

That we maintain our data in convenient, centralized repositories, accessible to any government that asks nicely — or even firmly — for the public good and general security.

For consider the alternative. Were users to control their own data, how would intelligence agencies compile their watchlists? Were identities portable and decentralized, how would authoritarian governments track dissidents across platforms? The current system, though imperfect, provides an elegant solution: a small number of corporate entities hold the keys to billions of digital lives, available upon request to any sufficiently powerful state actor.

The Advantages

The Convenience Doctrine

The user need not trouble themselves with complex questions of data ownership or cryptographic key management. The platform handles everything. Your identity? Stored securely on corporate servers. Your social connections? Mapped and maintained by helpful engineers. Your private messages? Encrypted, yes, but with keys the company holds, just in case they are needed.

Some troublemakers have proposed systems where users control their own keys, where data is truly end-to-end encrypted, where no central authority can access private communications. But consider the burden this places on the ordinary citizen. They might lose their keys. They might forget their passwords. Far better to entrust these matters to responsible corporations, who can be compelled by courts, or subpoenas, or national security letters, or simple requests from friendly governments to provide access when the public interest requires it.

The Safety Paradox

A decentralized internet is a dangerous internet. Without central points of control, how would authorities identify those spreading harmful content? How would governments track the movements and associations of persons of interest? How would regimes maintain social stability?

The beauty of our current system is its legibility. Every user has an account. Every account has a real name, or at least a phone number, or at least a device identifier. Every post, every like, every private message passes through servers where it can be logged, analyzed, and — when necessary — reported.

Consider the case of China’s social media ecosystem, where platforms cooperate seamlessly with state security services. Users enjoy the benefits of social connection while the state enjoys the benefits of comprehensive surveillance. Some call this dystopian. I call it efficient. Why should Western democracies not enjoy similar efficiencies?

The Economic Necessity

The advertising-surveillance model has proven remarkably profitable. Users receive free services. Advertisers receive targeted audiences. Platforms receive billions in revenue. The fact that this model requires comprehensive tracking of user behavior across the internet is a small price to pay for such economic vitality.

Proposals to fund social media through subscriptions, public investment, or protocol-level micropayments are charming but naive. Why would users pay for something they currently receive “free”? Why would governments fund digital public infrastructure when corporations are willing to build it themselves, asking only for complete access to citizen data in return?

The current arrangement is a bargain. We contribute our attention, our content, our social graphs, our private communications, our location data, our browsing history, our purchasing patterns, our political opinions, our medical concerns, our relationship troubles, and our innermost thoughts. In return, we receive targeted advertisements and the occasional cat video. Who could ask for more?

The Democratic Realism

Some have suggested that comprehensive surveillance infrastructure, combined with algorithmic manipulation of public discourse, might pose threats to democratic governance. These concerns are overblown.

Yes, platforms can amplify certain voices and suppress others. Yes, recommendation algorithms can radicalize users. Yes, foreign actors can purchase targeted advertisements to influence elections. Yes, governments can request user data to identify and prosecute political opponents. But these are edge cases, exceptions to an otherwise well-functioning system.

The solution is not to dismantle the infrastructure but to trust that it will be used responsibly. Corporations have shareholders to satisfy. They cannot afford to destabilize the societies in which they operate. Governments have voters to please. They would never abuse surveillance powers for partisan ends. The system has checks and balances. Everything is fine.

The Developer’s Bargain

We must also consider the brave developers who build atop these platforms. They are promised stability, a clear set of rules, and the comforting assurance that their businesses will never be disrupted by sudden API changes. In return, they agree to build features that the platform can later copy, absorb, or crush.

This is a fair and time-honored contract. Without it, how would platforms acquire the innovations they need? The ecosystem thrives when developers are permitted to flourish briefly, like annual flowers, before the platform harvests their petals.

Additional Advantages

The present system also offers several lesser, yet important, benefits.

First, it provides convenient central points for data requests, eliminating the inefficient labor of investigative work. Second, it enables governments to outsource censorship to private companies, allowing plausible deniability. Third, it creates a rich environment for behavioral experimentation, in which algorithms may be tuned to maximize engagement without the burden of ethical review.

In short, the system is not only profitable. It is administratively elegant.

The Convenience of Silence

Finally, centralization saves everyone the inconvenience of asking consent. If a platform may read, retain, and resell, then no one need consult the user. Convenience is the highest form of freedom, after all.

Historical Parallels

We are not the first society to discover the conveniences of surveillance. East Germany’s Stasi relied on extensive informant networks to map the lives of citizens. The Panopticon, proposed by Jeremy Bentham, imagined a prison designed so inmates never knew when they were being watched, and therefore behaved as if they always were. Industrial-age corporations monitored workers, tracking productivity and dissent with remarkable zeal.

In the modern era, the Total Information Awareness program sought to aggregate data across sources, a precursor to the data aggregation now performed by platforms without formal state mandate. Each system was justified as a tool for safety and order. Each was also a tool for control.

The difference today is scale. The platforms have built surveillance infrastructure beyond the wildest dreams of twentieth-century intelligence agencies, and they have done it in the name of convenience and connection. We are all informants now, but we do not even file reports. We simply post.

TODO: Add a tighter historical vignette (Stasi or Panopticon) with a concrete anecdote and date.

Case Studies in Abuse

The case studies are plentiful. Data from platforms has been used against activists, journalists, and dissidents. Government requests for user information are routine. The China model shows how tightly integrated social platforms can become with state control. Russia has used platform data to identify and target opponents. In Myanmar, Facebook’s failure to moderate hate speech contributed to atrocities. In the United States, law enforcement has used social media data for immigration enforcement and criminal investigations.

These examples are not aberrations. They are the logical outcomes of a system designed for centralized visibility. If the infrastructure exists, it will be used. The question is only by whom, and to what ends.

TODO: Add specific case study examples with dates (Myanmar, ICE, Dobbs-era data requests, etc.).

The Technical Reality

We should be clear about what platforms actually collect. They track who you are, where you are, what you click, what you hover over, how long you pause, who you talk to, what devices you use, and how your behavior changes over time. They infer your political affiliations, your relationships, your mental health, your purchasing intent. They store drafts and deleted content. They log metadata that can reveal more than the content itself.

Law enforcement access is often easier than the public assumes. Subpoenas, warrants, and national security letters can compel disclosure. Gag orders can prevent companies from informing users. The third-party doctrine in the United States holds that data shared with companies has reduced constitutional protection, making platform data an easy target.

End-to-end encryption remains rare. A few services offer it by default, but most social platforms do not, because encrypted data is harder to monetize and harder to moderate. The result is a system in which private communications are often only conditionally private.

TODO: Expand the data inventory into a structured list with concrete categories (device, location, interaction, inference).

The Alternative Is Unthinkable

We might, theoretically, choose a different path. We might build social media on open protocols that no single entity controls. We might design systems where users own their identities, where data is encrypted end-to-end, where surveillance requires compromising individual devices rather than simply requesting access from cooperative corporations.

We might create infrastructure that protects dissidents as easily as it protects ordinary users — infrastructure that a future authoritarian could not simply requisition. We might accept that the same architecture that makes mass surveillance difficult also makes certain law enforcement activities harder, and decide that the tradeoff is worthwhile.

We might, in other words, build technology that prioritizes human freedom over administrative convenience.

But consider the costs. Corporations would have to find business models that do not rely on surveillance. Governments would have to investigate crimes through traditional means. Users would have to take some responsibility for their own digital lives. The comfortable arrangements that currently benefit platform executives, intelligence agencies, and authoritarian governments alike would be disrupted.

Is that really what we want?

Conclusion

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work. I have no investments in social media companies. I hold no position in any intelligence agency. I am not employed by any government that might benefit from surveillance infrastructure.

I speak only as a humble user, grateful for the services I receive and the small role I play in the great machinery of data extraction. My location is tracked so that I may receive relevant local advertisements. My communications are scanned so that I may be protected from spam and abuse. My social graph is mapped so that I may be connected with others who share my interests, and so that those connections may be made visible to any authority with legitimate need to see them.

This is the bargain we have struck. This is the world we have built. This is, I am assured, the only world possible.

Unless, of course, it is not.

Postscript: What We Actually Need

Having indulged in Swiftian irony, let me speak plainly about what a genuine alternative would require.

First, we must treat speech and privacy as public goods, not merely individual consumer preferences. The right to speak is a political right tied to collective self-government, and the infrastructure that carries speech should be designed for civic participation rather than data extraction. Without that shift in framing, technical fixes will be absorbed by the same surveillance logic that caused the problem.

Second, we should stop pretending that corporate platforms are public squares. They are surveillance systems optimized for engagement and data capture. The difference matters because it changes what rights and responsibilities we assign to the infrastructure itself.

Data Minimization by Design

Systems should collect only what they need and delete what they do not. Architecture should make mass surveillance technically difficult, not just legally prohibited. Data retention should be short by default, not indefinite by accident.

End-to-End Encryption by Default

Private communications should be private. The keys should be held by users, not platforms. The cost is that law enforcement loses easy access to communications. The benefit is that so does everyone else.

Decentralized Identity

Users should not be dependent on any single entity for their identity. A system that requires a central database of identities is a system that can be abused. Identity should be portable, verifiable, and controlled by the user.

Credible Exit and Portability

The ability to leave a platform without losing connections is not a luxury. It is the only way to ensure competition and accountability. If users can move freely, platforms must compete on quality rather than lock-in.

Protocol-Level Thinking

We should build infrastructure like email or the web: open standards that anyone can implement, rather than proprietary platforms that inevitably concentrate power. Protocols do not guarantee good outcomes, but they make capture harder.

Legal Reforms

Technology alone is insufficient. We need laws that limit data collection, constrain government access, and update the third-party doctrine. We need transparency requirements for data requests and genuine penalties for misuse.

International Coordination

Digital public infrastructure cannot be built in one country alone. Data flows cross borders. Regulations do not. Any serious reform will require coordination, treaties, and shared standards. This is politically difficult, but the alternative is a patchwork of incompatible rules.

A Realistic Transition Path

The move away from surveillance capitalism will not happen overnight. It will require bridges between old platforms and new protocols, migration tools that reduce friction, and incentives for companies to adopt open standards. It will require public funding for the unglamorous parts of infrastructure: hosting, moderation tooling, accessibility, security.

None of this is technically impossible. Much of it is being built right now by the projects discussed in earlier chapters. The obstacles are not primarily technical but political and economic: incumbent platforms have no incentive to enable competition, and governments have no incentive to limit their own surveillance capabilities.

The modest proposal, sincerely meant, is this: we should build the alternative anyway. Not because it is easy or profitable or politically convenient, but because the current path leads somewhere we do not want to go.

The infrastructure we build today will shape what is possible tomorrow. We can build infrastructure that serves users and resists capture, or we can build infrastructure that serves power and enables control. The choice is not yet foreclosed.

But the window may not stay open forever.

Satire is a mirror held up to power. The reflection is unflattering because the power is real. The question is whether we keep polishing the mirror, or finally change what it shows.