The problem with Facebook and Apple, as explained by Batman and the Joker

Facebook and Apple are both under the microscope this week because of the power they have over those who build their businesses on their platforms.

For Facebook, the issue is a change to its News Feed algorithm that will privilege posts from friends over posts from news publishers. For Apple, it's a public battle with Spotify over the 30 per cent fee that it collects from subscriptions sold through apps in the App Store. 

In both cases, the question is the same: How much responsibility do these tech companies have when the needs of their own business conflict with the needs of the companies that rely on them for distribution and revenue?

Thinking about that question, I'm reminded of a page from "Batman: The Killing Joke," a classic comic first published in 1988 and soon to be adapted into an R-rated animated movie starring Mark Hamill. 

At the end of that story, Batman has captured the Joker after a caper that's actually super weird and icky and that involves gratuitous violence towards women. Before Batman turns him in, the Joker tells one last joke:

Two inmates are trying to escape a lunatic asylum and get up to the roof. There's a narrow gap to the next rooftop, and beyond it, freedom. The first inmate jumps across without a problem, but the second one is afraid of falling. So the first inmate offers to shine his flashlight across the gap, so the second one can walk across and join him.

The punchline: