Why Its Plan to Invigorate Groups Won't Help Facebook Build Communities

Zuck is apparently bothered that Facebook has become a means of dividing rather than uniting humanity so he wants to build communities.

But Facebook being Facebook, there are suspicions that further enabling groups is just another way of providing advertisers with better data for which the company can charge more. And offering subscriptions, sponsorships and tickets underscores the difference between a group and a community. JL

Davey Alba reports in Wired:

Zuckerberg claims there are 100 million people in "meaningful" groups they consider vital to their daily lives. He wants to see that number hit 1 billion within five years. To get there, Facebook plans to deploy artificial intelligence. The company added tools to schedule posts, screen and block members, and link groups. (It) wants member subscriptions, sponsorships and tickets that could generate revenue to strengthen and expand their communities.

Facebook has a new mission. Rather than "make the world more open and connected," CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together." Grandiose marketing slogans and vague promises aside, what this means for you is a renewed focus on Facebook Groups.

Yes, Facebook Groups, the sleeper hit the company unveiled in 2010 and hasn't done much with since. Groups started as a way of sharing things with smaller circles of people in your life—your family, your book club, your kickball team—without cluttering your profile. Nowadays, though, you can find a group for almost anything. Zuckerberg claims there are 100 million people in "meaningful" groups that they consider vital to their daily lives. He wants to see that number hit 1 billion within five years.

To get there, Facebook plans to deploy—what else?—artificial intelligence to recommend groups you may find "meaningful." More importantly, the company added tools to schedule posts, screen and block members, and link groups. Together, these additions will help you find groups you might want to join, and to give the people leading those Groups greater control over their content and membership.

Zuckerberg hopes this proves his commitment to fostering vibrant, sustainable communities. Although Zuck's promise to bring the world closer together drew accolades from the adoring crowd at the recent Facebook Communities Summit in Chicago, there's reason to be skeptical. Groups, as it stands now, cannot build the communities Zuckerberg wants it to.

A Lack of Functionality

The renewed commitment to Groups comes as Facebook examines its role in society. Zuckerberg dreams of connecting the world, but in many ways his company has done the opposite by creating a network of bubbles and echo chambers populated by like-minded people. This troubles Zuckerberg, who outlined his vision for improving Facebook in February with his 5,726-word manifesto, Building Global Community. It argues that bringing people together online as well as offline strengthens physical communities.

To make that happen, though, Facebook Groups must change. At the least, group leaders need the ability to reach members without going through Facebook, because this is essential to forging meaningful relationships, says Gina Bianchini, the founder of Mighty Networks, a software company for creating niche social networks. Even with the update, getting basic info like members' email addresses or location requires contacting everyone in the group individually.

Even seemingly simple things are a hassle. "The frustrating part about Facebook is the inability to search through prior conversations—the search function never works—or download all posts, comments, and replies," says Wendy Kramer, an admin for Donor Sibling Registry, a community of families with children from sperm and egg donors. The organization's website boasts some 54,000 members and its Facebook Group provides a forum for news, conversations, and guidance to a few thousand people. "There is no way then to keep these historical and important conversations," she says.

The user interface presents another hurdle. “It's fine for broadcast content, like an activist group announcing upcoming actions or a restaurant posting pictures,” says James Grimmelmann, a law

professor who studies social networks at Cornell University. “And it's fine for small tight-knit groups where people know each other and have low-intensity topical discussions now and then. It’s not built to handle anything in between.”

What makes this so frustrating is the fact community-fostering platforms like Reddit and Slack seem to have figured it out. They feature robust search tools, vast archives, browsable files, and the ability to go more than two layers deep in a comments thread.

All of which is to say, Groups still works much like it did when Facebook introduced it a decade ago—and without significant improvements, the company doesn't give people much incentive to use it as Zuckerberg envisions. He's done nothing to makethe

tool do anything more than a way of bringing families, book clubs, and kickball teams together.

Show Me the Money

Yes, Facebook added high-level analytics and real-time metrics like post counts and times of day when members are most engaged. Admins can now accept or reject membership requests in batches, banish bad actors, schedule posts, and link to like-minded groups. But Bianchini wants more meaningful functions, such as member subscriptions and native sponsorships and tickets—features that could generate revenue that group admins could use to strengthen and expand their communities.

“What I believe, after doing this for 10 years, is the way to create immersive, beautiful, meaningful groups is to empower a group leader with full access to data and the business model,” Bianchini says.

Granted, not everyone will want this. Reddit, for example, consciously decided against monetizing groups. “Participants on Reddit are very concerned about what they call corruption—that a moderator might promote ideas or content unfairly if they were allowed to make money,” says Nathan Matias, an MIT Media Lab researcher who specializes in online

communities.

Facebook will have to confront this if it's serious about fostering community. It offers its advertisers powerful tools and a wealth of data in a bid to maximize revenue. Offering those things to Group admins would help Zuckerberg fulfill his goal. “If you’re an advertiser on Facebook, you have an incredible range of data and abilities to understand how your advertising is going, and to adjust what you’re doing for maximum ad revenue,” Matias says. “If you’re moderating a group on Facebook, you have a few insights, but nothing of the flexibility towards the goal of building community.”

Facebook Groups: A Track Record

Providing truly flexible tools and useful data would prove Facebook’s commitment to Zuck's mission. But it won't necessary bring the world together in the way he envisions. You can't build a community without people willing to build it.

Facebook has seen some success here. The 2017 Women's March drew as many as 5 million people to marches worldwide, and you could argue it all started with a Group. Still, Facebook only disseminated information. The people acted on it. Without them, that Facebook page would have been just another Facebook page lamenting President Trump's election.

“One way to see it is Facebook making these changes, and Facebook delivering these societal outcomes,” Matias says. “But another way to see is people around the world are investing their energy, creativity, and spare time to look through terrible comments, and they happen to be using Facebook’s platform to deliver these societal outcomes.”

All of which is to say, improving Groups is an admirable goal, one Facebook ought to pursue vigorously. But Facebook can merely tweak its tools. It's up to people to build the meaningful communities Zuckerberg hopes to see on Facebook.