Good Facebook, Bad Facebook

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook, as many people do. On one hand it allows me to connect with people from my past and present around the country and the world. It connects me to social causes that I care deeply about. But, of course, it is still a company and it may do bad things too.

Good
Have you heard that Facebook will power its Altoona, Iowa data center entirely by wind power starting in 2015? This makes me feel a bit better about posting my content both for Mama of Ma'at and my personal account on the site. A company as rich as Facebook should be obligated to reduce its carbon footprint. In fact, Facebook's goal is to use 25% renewable energy by 2015, after which it will set another benchmark.

The under-construction site of Facebook’s new data center, to open in 2015. Photo credit: Facebook

Bad
Did you also hear that Facebook joined the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)? ALEC is a "D.C.-based consulting, lobbying group known and loathed for drafting conservative template legislation on behalf of big industry and pushing in around State Houses," (source). Facebook, Yelp, Google and Microsoft have all joined ALEC. Why might this be? Well, according to Forbes, it's because government controls business so much that companies have to join lobby groups on all sides otherwise government will change laws to screw those businesses over. The only real solution, according to Forbes, is to get government out of business.

Ha. I have to laugh at that one a little. Maybe it's a chicken and an egg problem. Who corrupted who? Did government corrupt business or did business corrupt government?

According to Salon.com, tech giants like Facebook joined ALEC to draw up model anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) legislation.Who knows if this is true, but does it then mean ALEC is trying to help get more public participation? That seems very uncharacteristic of ALEC, but Salon.com does point out that "although rare, this is not the first instance of ALEC working with traditionally liberal organizations — especially on issues like privacy which span the liberal/conservative libertarian divide."

When asked directly, Facebook (and Google) representatives did not know why their own companies joined ALEC. If you don't know why you're doing something gentlemen, don't do it.