In her post, Marion pointed directly to online communities that have discussion boards which exhibit all three forms of exclusion that Prof. Strahilevitz outlines in his book. Others have also commented on the application of Prof. Strahilevitz’s work to online communities. I’d like to take one step back; instead of focusing on the community members’ interests in excluding others, I would like to think more about what the site owner’s incentives are to exclude in different ways.
A great example because of its ubiquity — and also, perhaps, an obnoxious one for the same reason — is Facebook. When it began, the site offered college students a chance to network with other students at their same school. At that time, the site wanted to exclude non-students. They had at their disposal an easy filtering mechanism — .edu e-mail extensions. So Facebook, as owner of the “property,” exercised its bouncer’s right by disallowing any potential members without .edu extensions.
However, the site could have — and may have — used exclusionary vibes by holding itself out as a site for and by college students. Certainly, any members who invested in the idea that it was good to exclude non-students would amplify the vibes in their interactions with non-students on the network. Another option — and again, one that Facebook may have used; I know little about its origins — would have been to provide exclusionary amenities like forums for members to discuss certain classes or campus traditions. If the principal benefits of an online network involve discussion of an experience with which I am unfamiliar, I will have little incentive to seek entrance — so I will self-select out, and the exclusionary amenity does its job.
But as we have seen with Facebook, owners of social networks don’t necessarily have strong incentives to maintain exclusivity. As Facebook has expanded its scope beyond college campuses, the benefits that it provides members have changed. They may have passed through a similar situation to that of Gap, which tried to be the clothing store for everyone. As Facebook becomes the social network for everyone, is it the social network of choice for anyone? Specialized social networks like LinkedIn and Goodreads go for a specific membership. But Facebook has thus far succeeded by shedding all forms of exclusive behavior — aside from monitoring for fraudulent or offensive membership.
It seems to me that there is a line that owners of social networks have to draw between exclusivity and inclusion — a determination the network owner makes superior to any exclusivity actions by the network’s members. As a network shifts that line, its nature changes, and members get a different set of benefits. Someone who joins an exclusive online network and invests time and resources into his occupation of that network might be doing so with the expectation that the network will maintain a mostly consistent exclusivity. However, if the network shifts over time, he may lose much of the value of his investment. So if I invite people to populate a social network I own, do I owe them any duty to maintain exclusivity? Should some form of governance arise to ensure that a network’s growing financial interest in inclusion does not snuff out the equity that the network’s longtime members might have in the network?
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