(Continuation of my previous comment…)

… Facebook is empirically good enough or else we would use something else.

I have heard this sort of thing many times, about a number of things (Facebook is certainly one of the usual suspects, though far from the only one). It’s worth examining this view closely.

Let me say, first, that quanticle’s point about Facebook potentially being an inadequate equilibrium is certainly a good one. But I want to take a somewhat different approach.

What do we mean when we say that Facebook is “good enough”?

Well, perhaps what we mean is: Facebook is good enough for us to continue using it—or, equivalently (?), not bad enough for us to stop using it. What we’re saying, then, is: if Facebook were bad enough for us to stop using it, then we would stop using it. Since we’re still using it, it must be good enough for us to keep using it.

This is clearly tautological. Under this interpretation, “Facebook is empirically good enough or else we would use something else” simply reduces to the observation that we are, in fact, still using Facebook. Which we already knew. So we’ve concluded a grand total of nothing.

The assumptions behind this perspective seem to be as follows. There is some dimension of “goodness”, along which a product or service may be “good” or “bad” (rather, of course, we should say “better” or “worse”). There is some point along this dimension such that at or below that point, the product/service is so bad that its users abandon it. If it is less bad than that, then its users continue using it.

Well, fair enough. We might quibble that there is more than one dimension of “goodness” (that “goodness” is multidimensional); we might quibble that “goodness” for one sort of person is not the same as “goodness” for another sort of person; etc. But let us take as an axiom, for now, that there is something sufficiently close to a single dimension of goodness (perhaps a vector through multidimensional goodness-space; perhaps the average of different people’s such vectors… or something; the details needn’t matter). Let us assume that we can, roughly, identify and agree upon this dimension.

And yet, having taken this axiom, we are actually still adrift, as far as having any kind of satisfying account of “goodness” or “good enough”, because we face two key questions:

What is the nature of this “goodness” dimension? Just what exactly makes a product or service in this category “good” or “bad”, “better” or “worse”? How, exactly—other than “do its users abandon it”—do “good” members of this category differ from “bad” ones?
Do we care about any other points or ranges along this dimension other than the “tipping point” of “bad enough to be abandoned by its users”? Is “is this product/service literally too terrible to keep using, yes/no?” the only question (as pertains to “position along the ‘goodness’ dimension”) that we have reason to ask of a product/service? Supposing we ascertain for ourselves that a product/service is just good enough for us to use—have we now no further reason at all to concern ourselves with its “goodness”?

The answer to both questions is actually the same—call it question A:

Question A: “Is this product or service accomplishing my goals / satisfying my needs / etc.?”

Now, might you argue that, actually, this is just the same thing as “is this good enough to not stop using it”?

You can argue that. But that argument would be absurd.

For one thing, you would have to argue that the answer to question A is binary: yes, this product or service is accomplishing my goals; or, no, this product or service is not accomplishing my goals. But of course it’s not binary; your goals might be accomplished only partly, or not as well, or only some of your goals might be accomplished, etc.

For another, you would have to argue that, empirically, if a product or service fails to accomplish a person’s goals, or fails to satisfy their needs, or fails to do these things well, then that person stops using said product or service. Of course no such thing is even remotely true.

So when you say “we are still using Facebook, therefore Facebook is good enough”—meaning, of course, nothing more than “Facebook is not quite so bad as to be too terrible to keep using”—then my question to you is this:

So what?

Who cares? Why should that be significant? OK, so Facebook is just “good enough” that we’re not motivated to abandon it—fine; we knew this already (it follows, tautologically, from us not, in fact, having abandoned it). So what? Does it accomplish our goals? Does it satisfy our needs? How well does it do these things? Is it good enough to make continuing to use it be the optimal strategy? By using it, do we win? Might we win more if we abandoned it, and switched to something else? These are the questions that matter!

P.S.: When I see people arguing against attempts to motivate abandonment of Facebook (or similar attempts to improve other inadequate equilibria like this) on the basis of “it’s good enough, or else we wouldn’t be using it”, I cannot help but think of this recent post.