7 - The Obfuscation of Spatial Constraints on Facebook

Summary

Chapter 7 unpacks the conditions of place on Facebook. It highlights contingencies in convening in Facebook-mediated spaces tied to physical infrastructure, group administration, algorithmic and corporate controls, and state oversight. This chapter makes the case that on Facebook, experiences have not matched the actual – and potential – conditions of ownership over digital infrastructure and space. Public discussion on social media obscured, rather than removed, unequal ownership structures and physical dependencies. Participants experienced discussion on Facebook as open and unpredictable, but this was premised upon a limited view of underlying structures and controls. This raises a critical question about the nature of publics online: if spatial configurations of publics mask their constraints, resulting in experiences that seem unpredictable but are not necessarily so, what does this mean for the actual scope of unpredictability of the interactions?