![[technology-1283624_1920-computer-code.jpeg]] Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/pexels-2286921/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=1283624">Pexels</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=1283624">Pixabay</a> The phrase "code is law" means different things to different people, but at it's core, it captures the idea that, in an online, networked world, computer code regulates our conduct in ways that are equivalent (or, if not equivalent, at least analogous to) the way traditional laws and regulations regulate society. The author most closely associated with the phrase "code is law" is law professor [[Larry Lessig]] -- although if you want to get all "well ackchyually" about it, the first person to use the term was probably MIT professor William Mitchell who wrote "out there on the electronic frontier, code is the law." In any case, Lessig developed and popularized the idea, first in 1999, with his book [Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_and_Other_Laws_of_Cyberspace) and then when he updated and revisited the argument in 2006 with his book [Code: Version 2.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:_Version_2.0) As Lessig puts it, the "code" of cyberspace was not neutral, but instead would govern the values of cyberspace: >the argument I was making was that actually, the values could be radically different depending on how the technology developed: instead of the technology supporting free speech it could suppress free speech. Instead of a technology for privacy, it could be a technology destroying privacy, and we needed to focus and understand code if we were going to understand how to build the environment we wanted. [[Lessig 2022-04-07]] ## Expanding from "Code is Law" to "Business Models Eat Law" On April 7, 2022, Lessig spoke at a panel discussion at the [[Stanford Codex Future Law 2022]] conference, where he argued that we should shift our focus from the "code" that runs our platforms to the "business model" of the companies that build that code: > Now 20 years later, it seems like deja vu all over again. But now I don't want to emphasize code as the thing you need to obsess about. Now I'm going to emphasize __**business model**__ as the thing we need to emphasize. > > And if the first slogan was "code is law", ***I think we need to see that "business models eat law."*** Business models eat law, and that's because we've seen how business models of digital technology companies have extraordinary externalities for our society. ## The Business Model of "Engagement" is Destroying Society Lessig argues that our ability even to govern ourselves is in grave danger from a business model based on engagement at all costs: > Our capacity even to govern ourselves is destroyed by a business model, whose core metric or core dynamic is engagement through the extraction of information about individuals. > > We've got to obsess about the business model. So when you ask what is that, how do we think about how to build a business model? ## The Case of (and against) Facebook Exhibit One in Lessig's case against the current, powerful platforms is the changes wrought at Facebook, as it focused on engagement (i.e. clicks) at the expense of all other considerations: >this place that used to be called Facebook, [now called "Meta"] you gotta remember that company. It had all of the good things that [Meta] describes Meta will have. > >It had a privacy concern. It had a safety concern. It had a diversity concern, and a lot of great people working in those areas. Really, really great people. I mean, that. Genuine people who really wanted to make that platform beautiful in all of those respects. ***And they were crushed***, all of them by a business model that had a different objective. > >And the Facebook files revealed again and again, how genuine honest engineers inside of that company were saying you need to do this and you need that to protect safety or privacy. and it was like, "thank you very much. No we're gonna do this, because it maximizes engagement" despite the effect on teen girls or despite the effect on democracy. ## "Watch the Code" is Now "Follow the Money" How can we try to ensure that the platforms we use protects and encourages values that we want to celebrate? Lessig encourages us to put that question front and center: >So the question we need to put at the center is what we're talking about building what will certainly be our future. . . The real choice we can make is whether it will be something like that driven by the business model of today, or something that's driven by very different business models, that don't destroy the capacity of us to act as people together in running a society or running a democracy. Lessig argues that the European model is superior to the (more or less) hands off attitude of US regulators: >There are ways to think about the interaction between code and law that produces an environment that we would celebrate. And the failure to think about that has resulted in code evolving to produce dystopian reality. Facebook news is an example. So here the point is to think about how code era law interacts with code and also interacts with business models. > >So you see in Europe, the law much more aggressively trying to tailor/channel business models related to advertising and you know, the newsfeed type because they begin to recognize it's a bad thing to allow that business model to live in a public discourse space without bashing and saying we should stop advertising. ## Our Take: Lessig's Diagnosis is Correct But His Remedy Is Wrong We defer to no one in our admiration for Larry Lessig, and applaud him for his pioneering work in thinking through how the law must and should adapt to a networked world. And we share his concerns for the destructive power of monopoly platforms focused on "engagement at all costs" coupled with "surveilance capitalism" aka "if you are not paying for the product you are the product" Having said that we are less optimistic than he is about the ability of governments to find the right balance between limiting the harm from "enagement optimization" while protecting unpopular opinions and free speech. We are optimistic, in a way that Professor Lessig probably is not, about the possibility of smart contracts and cryptocurrencies to open up new, decentralized business models that encourage better conversations. More to come.