Facebook, A Democratizing Influence?

In “spirit of the web”, Rowland considers the phone as a powerful democratizing influence and I think that this idea can also be related to Facebook. With a social networking site such as Facebook, we see a system that is extremely accessible. Such a system becomes an equalizing force in society simply because there is no way to adapt the system to make it more advantageous to those with money. Just as it is considered by Rowland that there is no way to make a telephone work differently for the rich, for example it can’t ring louder for some people then for others, there is also no way for a social networking site to discriminate by class. A site such as Facebook is not only unable to discriminate by class, but it also has no way of controlling the age of it’s users. However what is interesting to consider is that Facebook started out as a networking site for Ivy League university students. So if we buy into the stereotypes of “privileged” Ivy League students, it can be considered that, at first, this specific social networking site did discriminate by class, or at least by education and furthermore, at the time, by age. However, this was quick to change and as Facebook has filtered down to become available to college students, high school students and even residents of cities that are not partaking in education, we definitely see a system that groups people together, people who often come from extremely different walks of life, but who all have the similarity of either having friends in common or a network in common. Furthermore, relating back to the idea that the system in itself works in the exact same way for everyone, which we see through equal accessibility to privacy settings or different applications, it can be considered that the only thing that could change the way in which somebody uses this site is the access that they personally may or may not have to a camera, which clearly requires money. The other two technologies that are needed to access this site would be firstly, a computer and secondly, the internet. However, with easy access to computers and internet in schools, cafes and public libraries I am certain that, at least in the developed world, Facebook is, in fact, an easily accessible, non discriminating website and a definite democratizing influence.