5 ms·

Wait a second. Mark did not steal his money. It is his money. Hence, he does what he likes with it. If you believe the estate tax department should have his mon

by gizi 11y ago

Wait a second. Mark did not steal his money. It is his money. Hence, he does what he likes with it. If you believe the estate tax department should have his money, let them set up a Facebook project. What is stopping them from creating similar value? Are they really waiting until someone else does it, to leech from him?

zgohr 11y ago
You believe the government had no hand in the success Facebook has had?
- gizi 11y ago
  Causality is something that you prove in repeatable experiments. Where are the repeatable experiments backing your claim?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
quadrangle 11y ago
> Mark did not steal his money If theft is defined solely by law, then you are correct. > creating similar value Facebook does not create value, it merely captures it. I suspect you subscribe to a simplistic economic ideology that does not even recognize the existence of a create vs capture distinction.
- gizi 11y ago
  > Facebook does not create value, it merely captures it. That is not up to any of us to decide. In the meanwhile, the world population has voted with its feet on exactly that subject. Technology is a meritocracy. Seriously, nobody cares about the ideological manifest of the one or the other communist party. It is technology that runs the world and not any unproductive, imbecile political opinion. Furthermore, technology overrules politics. Time after time, with new technology we bring the political idiots to their knees, and we shall keep doing so.
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    > Technology is a meritocracy. You can keep telling yourself that, or you can drop your naive ideology and look at how the world actually works.
- davnicwil 11y ago
  > Facebook does not create value, it merely captures it Do you really mean that literally? It is a service which some (not all) people do enjoy using, and which connects people in ways they weren't previously connected allowing for new opportunities, and therefore represents value to those people which did not exist before they had access to the service. It has therefore created value for humans in the aggregate, that is an undeniable and objective fact. One person or another's individual opinion of its value in their lives, or the value it ought to have or not have in others' lives, in no way changes this fact. I don't know what exactly what you mean by the create/capture distinction, and I'd be really interested to hear you elaborate on this point and define those terms. But at least according to my somewhat-plain-English interpretation of those words, Facebook pretty demonstrably does both. It creates value by providing a service, and captures value (a great deal more, probably, monetarily, if that's even measurable) from the information generated by people (always voluntarily, because they want to: the key fact to keep in mind) using that service. No?
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    "create value" has to be weighed against the alternative if it weren't there. Very little of value that Facebook does would be missing from the world if Facebook didn't exist. Alternative ways of networking and sharing information would and do exist and Facebook's version isn't adding real value. 99% of the valuable things about Facebook are the user-generated content, not Facebook itself. Facebook's work is primarily curation via how they run their feed algorithm, and they do a generally shitty job at that in terms of value to the users.
  - gizi 11y ago
    Ok. Why are political opinions useless and immaterial? One, because technology always overrules them. What are you going to do against executable technology? Some more political verbiage? Two, because almost nobody is willing to risk their lives and die for that kind of opinions. Ultimately, it will always be the few who do, who will end up running the show. Voting does not count, simply because voting is not valid proof-of-work.
exit 11y ago
your argument is seriously that state revenue services should stop collecting taxes and do a startup instead..?
objclxt 11y ago
That is one truly crazy argument. You seem to be suggesting there should be no taxes. After all, "it's your money" Quite how government then functions is beyond me, but I'm sure there's some libertarian argument I'm missing here. I am sure you will disagree though, seeing as you think taxes are "leeching" people's money. I suppose on ethical grounds you don't take advantage of any government services of any kind.
- gizi 11y ago
  Political verbiage is no match to executable technology. If you don't like something, write source code that will make a difference, and if you can't, you lose. That is why the libertarian argument will always win.
  - fucking_tragedy 11y ago
    Poe's law at work.
- jMyles 11y ago
  > That is one truly crazy argument. > You seem to be suggesting there should be no taxes. I can't stand that our culture is so quick to pin anarchic notions to mental illness. It's not 'crazy,' it's a totally legitimate worldview, backed by some awesome and smart people throughout history.
angersock 11y ago
He's created one of the largest and most pervasive surveillance systems on Earth--this is where the fortune comes from.
- logicallee 11y ago
  the reason you have no right to say this is that most FB communication and interaction simply wouldn't have happened off of facebook. That's how great it is. People keep in touch with friends, acquaintances turn into friends, who never would have. So I have very little sympathy for your point of view, since the benefits outweigh the fact that all this is (probably) surveilled. It's not overt either. FB doesn't butt into your social life, you can say whatever you want to each other. you don't have to feel like someone is watching. Do you feel like you're in NK when you're on FB? I sure don't.
  - angersock 11y ago
    Do you feel like you're in NK when you're on FB? I sure don't. That's kinda the key to effective surveillance: if the target doesn't feel the need to change their behavior, the data collected will be much more useful. Have you ever seen the sort of targeted advertising dashboards FB has?
    - logicallee 11y ago
      Oh man, am I pissed when FB learns something from my current Googling subjects and advertises me this creepily specific stuff. I always report it and ask to hide it, it's super offensive that it would do that. I try to keep FB use restricted to an incognito window for this reason and this doesn't often happen. But this wasn't what we were talking about, I thought surveillance meant that the conversations you have on FB might be less anonymous than having them in real life - that's what it means to me. Except that the consquences are the same: none. la-de-da. to turn it right around: "If the target doesn't feel the need to change their behavior, are you really restricting his/her freedom in any way?" Plus, it's not "need to change their behavior". Participating on FB is new behavior. it's like having a chatty new friend, but who is gossipy. You know what you're getting into when you're talking with them, could still be worth it, and for billions of people including me, it is. I'm much more concerned with what FB shows my friends (i.e. my privacy settings) than some nebulous phantom objection to the fact that it's not all encrypted in a way that is end-to-end between clients, hiding the traffic even from facebook, generating dummy traffic with friends you're not actually talking to etc. That would be the actual answer to the "surveillance" objection, and I guarantee you that even on this technical forum, the previous paragraph is the first time you even heard of this off-the-wall idea that nobody is suggesting. Stopping FB surveillance is just a non-issue.
bcg1 11y ago
https://www.iqt.org/ https://www.iqt.org/ The rabbit hole goes a long way down from there. And to answer your question... yes, the government just sits around waiting to leech off of people. Its what they do. Otherwise it would be called a business, not a government.

by gizi 11y ago

zgohr 11y ago

You believe the government had no hand in the success Facebook has had?

gizi 11y ago
Causality is something that you prove in repeatable experiments. Where are the repeatable experiments backing your claim?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

quadrangle 11y ago

> Mark did not steal his money If theft is defined solely by law, then you are correct. > creating similar value Facebook does not create value, it merely captures it. I suspect you subscribe to a simplistic economic ideology that does not even recognize the existence of a create vs capture distinction.

gizi 11y ago
> Facebook does not create value, it merely captures it. That is not up to any of us to decide. In the meanwhile, the world population has voted with its feet on exactly that subject. Technology is a meritocracy. Seriously, nobody cares about the ideological manifest of the one or the other communist party. It is technology that runs the world and not any unproductive, imbecile political opinion. Furthermore, technology overrules politics. Time after time, with new technology we bring the political idiots to their knees, and we shall keep doing so.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  > Technology is a meritocracy. You can keep telling yourself that, or you can drop your naive ideology and look at how the world actually works.
davnicwil 11y ago
> Facebook does not create value, it merely captures it Do you really mean that literally? It is a service which some (not all) people do enjoy using, and which connects people in ways they weren't previously connected allowing for new opportunities, and therefore represents value to those people which did not exist before they had access to the service. It has therefore created value for humans in the aggregate, that is an undeniable and objective fact. One person or another's individual opinion of its value in their lives, or the value it ought to have or not have in others' lives, in no way changes this fact. I don't know what exactly what you mean by the create/capture distinction, and I'd be really interested to hear you elaborate on this point and define those terms. But at least according to my somewhat-plain-English interpretation of those words, Facebook pretty demonstrably does both. It creates value by providing a service, and captures value (a great deal more, probably, monetarily, if that's even measurable) from the information generated by people (always voluntarily, because they want to: the key fact to keep in mind) using that service. No?
- quadrangle 11y ago
  "create value" has to be weighed against the alternative if it weren't there. Very little of value that Facebook does would be missing from the world if Facebook didn't exist. Alternative ways of networking and sharing information would and do exist and Facebook's version isn't adding real value. 99% of the valuable things about Facebook are the user-generated content, not Facebook itself. Facebook's work is primarily curation via how they run their feed algorithm, and they do a generally shitty job at that in terms of value to the users.
- gizi 11y ago
  Ok. Why are political opinions useless and immaterial? One, because technology always overrules them. What are you going to do against executable technology? Some more political verbiage? Two, because almost nobody is willing to risk their lives and die for that kind of opinions. Ultimately, it will always be the few who do, who will end up running the show. Voting does not count, simply because voting is not valid proof-of-work.

exit 11y ago

your argument is seriously that state revenue services should stop collecting taxes and do a startup instead..?

objclxt 11y ago

That is one truly crazy argument. You seem to be suggesting there should be no taxes. After all, "it's your money" Quite how government then functions is beyond me, but I'm sure there's some libertarian argument I'm missing here. I am sure you will disagree though, seeing as you think taxes are "leeching" people's money. I suppose on ethical grounds you don't take advantage of any government services of any kind.

gizi 11y ago
Political verbiage is no match to executable technology. If you don't like something, write source code that will make a difference, and if you can't, you lose. That is why the libertarian argument will always win.
- fucking_tragedy 11y ago
  Poe's law at work.
jMyles 11y ago
> That is one truly crazy argument. > You seem to be suggesting there should be no taxes. I can't stand that our culture is so quick to pin anarchic notions to mental illness. It's not 'crazy,' it's a totally legitimate worldview, backed by some awesome and smart people throughout history.

angersock 11y ago

He's created one of the largest and most pervasive surveillance systems on Earth--this is where the fortune comes from.

logicallee 11y ago
the reason you have no right to say this is that most FB communication and interaction simply wouldn't have happened off of facebook. That's how great it is. People keep in touch with friends, acquaintances turn into friends, who never would have. So I have very little sympathy for your point of view, since the benefits outweigh the fact that all this is (probably) surveilled. It's not overt either. FB doesn't butt into your social life, you can say whatever you want to each other. you don't have to feel like someone is watching. Do you feel like you're in NK when you're on FB? I sure don't.
- angersock 11y ago
  Do you feel like you're in NK when you're on FB? I sure don't. That's kinda the key to effective surveillance: if the target doesn't feel the need to change their behavior, the data collected will be much more useful. Have you ever seen the sort of targeted advertising dashboards FB has?
  - logicallee 11y ago
    Oh man, am I pissed when FB learns something from my current Googling subjects and advertises me this creepily specific stuff. I always report it and ask to hide it, it's super offensive that it would do that. I try to keep FB use restricted to an incognito window for this reason and this doesn't often happen. But this wasn't what we were talking about, I thought surveillance meant that the conversations you have on FB might be less anonymous than having them in real life - that's what it means to me. Except that the consquences are the same: none. la-de-da. to turn it right around: "If the target doesn't feel the need to change their behavior, are you really restricting his/her freedom in any way?" Plus, it's not "need to change their behavior". Participating on FB is new behavior. it's like having a chatty new friend, but who is gossipy. You know what you're getting into when you're talking with them, could still be worth it, and for billions of people including me, it is. I'm much more concerned with what FB shows my friends (i.e. my privacy settings) than some nebulous phantom objection to the fact that it's not all encrypted in a way that is end-to-end between clients, hiding the traffic even from facebook, generating dummy traffic with friends you're not actually talking to etc. That would be the actual answer to the "surveillance" objection, and I guarantee you that even on this technical forum, the previous paragraph is the first time you even heard of this off-the-wall idea that nobody is suggesting. Stopping FB surveillance is just a non-issue.

bcg1 11y ago

https://www.iqt.org/ https://www.iqt.org/ The rabbit hole goes a long way down from there. And to answer your question... yes, the government just sits around waiting to leech off of people. Its what they do. Otherwise it would be called a business, not a government.