Regimes of Sharing

This paper explores the values, characteristics, and conditions of interoperability provided by Open Application Programming Interfaces (Open APIs) used by Facebook to identify underlying tensions that may challenge the sustainability of the Web as an open, secure, and liberating communication space. Interoperability between major online social network services holds great potential for linking a broad range of platforms, spaces, and people together in exciting new ways. Open APIs support interoperability by providing the tools to share data used to develop popular and useful Web applications, achieve seamless integration of social media services, and give rise to mutually beneficial third-party developer ecosystems that build on top of social media platforms. Yet, while Open APIs provide new ways of sharing and participating, they also provide a means for companies like Facebook to achieve market dominance, as well as undermine privacy, data security, contextual integrity, user autonomy and freedom. This paper examines interoperability enabled by Open APIs among competing online services (Facebook, Google, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter) to identify the tenuous push and pull of competition and cooperation. The author provides a summary and analysis of Facebook's Open API releases over the last five years, to determine the underlying conditions for sharing and identify the social implications of their technical features. This paper concludes by suggesting ways that users can make more informed decisions about their sharing and perhaps change the underlying conditions of interoperability all together by developing more secure and user controllable social networks, Open APIs, and online applications.