Astroworld is Facebook

In the midst of a heated debate about Facebook, it occurred to me, and I haven't fleshed-out the whole concept yet, that basically the Astroworld tragedy is a microcosm of the Facebook tragedy.

I joke that because I'm a Mark I can see where Zuckerberg was going with this. I mean, from an engineering standpoint it's pretty cool, however from the movie "The Social Network" it appears that Facebook was dreamt-up by a couple other guys who hired Zuckerberg to build it for them and he stole it. Maybe that's where all this started. Maybe if a thief didn't bring this machine to the table we (Facebook users - the world) might be faring better.

Whatever the reason, there is vein of resentment for Zuckerberg and it's coming from Facebook users. Having worked at a broadcast television station, where we serviced anyone with an antennae, I received a lot of unhappy calls from viewers whenever our signal went out. They complained of missing Jeopardy, which I always considered off-base since they get it for free. The station bears the cost (and also makes the profit) yet folks still get upset. Same thing with Facebook to an extent. People use it for free and complain when it doesn't work right. 

The difference between Facebook and broadcast tv, which is policed by the FCC, is that Facebook users can use the platform to harm other users - it's a riskier product. Maybe we think of Travis Scott as a riskier product. Or maybe Travis Scott is the common user, whose use might hurt other users.

With such risk and such deadly outcomes, these products, Facebook and Astroworld, need policing. The question is who gets policed. Prevailing sentiment, I think, says Facebook needs to be policed and not, so much, do the policing.

So what am I trying to say? 

Facebook and Astroworld cannot deny responsibility for the deaths of its users, because they know their product is risky. Maybe even more risky than they let on.