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"THERE IS NO OVERSIGHT!" Should there be? I'm not quite sure. I mean, personally I feel a lot safer managing my own data privacy with what I give these compa

"THERE IS NO OVERSIGHT!" Should there be? I'm not quite sure. I mean, personally I feel a lot safer managing my own data privacy with what I give these companies, rather than having a government do it for me. And I'm not exactly a libertarian, I just think it's rational that this should be decentralized, the risk of a company turning against "us" is a lot less than a government, given history. "I've switched away from Facebook, and now I've lost touch with a lot of friends. They are my friends, why can't I export them? Why can't I export the data that belongs to me, and use it in some open-source format that allows me to reap the benefits of all the work that I spent tracking them down inside of Facebook's private garden?" You can. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference All those "What does your friend list say about your love life?" type surveys use it. "As a society, we need to start addressing these things, or we are going to end up with Internet giants that we don't have the means to get rid of, and that aren't at risk of being out-competed." We've heard this a lot over the years, but I've really never seen a case of a company that can't be out-competed. Who is it up to to "get rid" of an organization? On what basis? People stop using their services, and they stop making money is generally how it works. Otherwise, Antitrust law is the main mechanism today, isn't that sufficient? People forget that Google didn't ask permission or get oversight or contact copyright holders when building a search engine. They hooked a couple servers on the web and started crawling it with their algorithm, and replaced other search engines pretty quickly because they had a better service. One could say that it's impossible to compete with Google, but I'm not so sure: Bing is doing fine (if small share), DuckDuckGo is growing, etc. Adding more oversight/regs to the Web just makes it harder to replace these companies. I'm sure plenty wanted to "get rid" of Microsoft in the 90s because of their attitude and growing monopoly, and certainly they were fettered by the U.S DOJ., but looking back, the calls to break them up were a bit silly. No one would have predicted Apple was going to become much, much bigger (some still can't believe it).

xg15 10y ago
I just think it's rational that this should be decentralized, the risk of a company turning against "us" is a lot less than a government, given history. Last time I checked, Google search had 98% market share in Germany, Android had 78% market share worldwide. I don't see how you can talk about decentralisation given dominance like that. Whether or not a de-facto monopoly is a bad thing can be argued, I guess. (I personally think it is) But if one is present, I don't see why handing the power to a government that is (in theory) regularly elected and bound to basic rules of conduct and transparency is worse than handing the same power to a private entity which is bound to nothing except the expectation to grow and benefit their share holders. You can. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference* https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference* Until facebook decides to shut down this api - which is at their sole discretion.
- DrNuke 10y ago
  Fundamentally we are being cornered, marked and forced to buy their shit whatever and whenever we need something. We can't do much as individuals but we can expect different syndicates wanting slices from the same pie: China and their soft power government, Russian gov trolls for destabilisation, etc. This makes me think the US governement is well aware and happy with this development, from their geopolitics perspective. It is not liberals vs socialists, it is my shit vs yours to feed 8 billion consumers.
  - parasubvert 10y ago
    I'm not sure what the alternative is, or what even the problem is? Buying/trading/gifting/sharing shit makes the world go 'round.
    - DrNuke 10y ago
      You would want to support your local communities / markets maybe, now risking to become invisible or outpowered? It is called biodiversity. Very sad and dangerous for evolution a fully Googled or a fully Amazoned or a whatever monopolised world. Also dangerous: fascism and communism are made of the same metal and come from monopoly of minds and costumes.
      - parasubvert 10y ago
        "You would want to support your local communities / markets maybe, now risking to become invisible or outpowered? " With Amazon, sure, there's a point, but that battle was lost 30 years ago with Wal-Mart when U.S. consumers decided they didn't give a shit about their local community, they wanted "low prices". Not everywhere, mind you. "Very sad and dangerous for evolution a fully Googled or a fully Amazoned or a whatever monopolised world." I'm not sure I agree. Where's the monopoly? High market share isn't the only criteria. It has to be a case where consumers have little to no choice, which is clearly not true today. Plenty of people avoid Google (I try as much as I can). Amazon also isn't the world's only retailer or cloud computing company by a long shot. These things might be true tomorrow, but future crime ala Minority Report isn't actually a thing. I'm also not sure it makes sense to give corporate welfare to losers that will waste the capital, when these companies are actually giving customers good service (hence their high market share) and being great at technology (the barrier to entry is about knowledge). Also, given the number of negative articles about Amazon by current and former employees lately, I wouldn't bet on their braintrust staying in one place. "Also dangerous: fascism and communism are made of the same metal and come from monopoly of minds and costumes." I think that equating global corporations with fascism and communism dilutes those terms too much. We are a global society of organizations, it is pluralistic, and it is relatively new. I'm not fond of unregulated global capitalism, but at the same time I think it's much riskier to be ham-handed with laws and regs because someone thinks they know better, unless there's a lot of peer-verified research on the issue.
bkjsbkjdnf 10y ago
> I mean, personally I feel a lot safer managing my own data privacy with what I give these companies, rather than having a government do it for me What a fallacious statement. How is government oversight of these companies going to prevent you from applying your own magical 'data privacy management' spells?
- parasubvert 10y ago
  "How is government oversight of these companies going to prevent you from applying your own magical 'data privacy management' spells?" That depends on what is being overseen by the government. I have no issue with EU-style or Canadian-style privacy regs for PII. I think that encourages local innovation by ensuring data can stay within a legal geographical territory. Where I take issue is "AI is scary, please stop these companies from doing things" and by implication thinking that a government (a) is an organization I trust more than the company with what should be done with my data (a massive leap), or (b) provides value by preventing/limiting that organization from offering a services I want based on AI because non-customers somehow think it's scary or might lead to some nebulous monopoly power. I'm not saying no government oversight is every warranted ever, I'm saying that there's a lot of fear-based desire in this thread for "government save us from Zuck!!" which isn't helpful when people don't even know what specific regulation they're looking for and what the systemic consequences of that would be.
  - bkjsbkjdnf 10y ago
    > That depends on what is being overseen by the government. You must have had something in mind when you generated that bit of fallacious rhetoric.
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    > Where I take issue is "AI is scary, please stop these companies from doing things" That's my issue with people like Elon Musk & Sam Altman starting OpenAI, where "Many of the employees and board members are motivated by concerns about existential risk from artificial general intelligence."[1] and also people like Stephen Hawking raising concern about AI of the "Skynet is coming, panic!" style, (he also warned not to respond to aliens a few days ago), it just seems like a lot of the rhetoric is about a state of AI we're most likely 500+ years away from, while it may actually slow down useful research that will lead us there faster... 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
Taek 10y ago
I don't think you need oversight if you have a fair playing field for competitors. If switching from Facebook to... that other social network (?.. that's exactly the problem) was as easy as switching which restaurant you eat at, I wouldn't be calling for regulation I would be content using the social network that I thought was good for me. But I can't, because nothing comes close to Facebook. I feel that if we had broken up Microsoft in the 90's, we'd be in a much better place today. We're still churning out professionals by the millions who are fully dependent on proprietary software to make a living, when nearly equivalent free alternatives do exist for many of them (Office, CAD, Adobe are the biggest). It makes me sad, and Microsoft had a huge hand in that.
gsmiro 10y ago
For an example of how oversight do nothing for the end user take a look at the Brazilian model of state regulation "agencies" and how they get influenced by the bigger companies.

xg15 10y ago

I just think it's rational that this should be decentralized, the risk of a company turning against "us" is a lot less than a government, given history. Last time I checked, Google search had 98% market share in Germany, Android had 78% market share worldwide. I don't see how you can talk about decentralisation given dominance like that. Whether or not a de-facto monopoly is a bad thing can be argued, I guess. (I personally think it is) But if one is present, I don't see why handing the power to a government that is (in theory) regularly elected and bound to basic rules of conduct and transparency is worse than handing the same power to a private entity which is bound to nothing except the expectation to grow and benefit their share holders. You can. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference* https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference* Until facebook decides to shut down this api - which is at their sole discretion.

DrNuke 10y ago
Fundamentally we are being cornered, marked and forced to buy their shit whatever and whenever we need something. We can't do much as individuals but we can expect different syndicates wanting slices from the same pie: China and their soft power government, Russian gov trolls for destabilisation, etc. This makes me think the US governement is well aware and happy with this development, from their geopolitics perspective. It is not liberals vs socialists, it is my shit vs yours to feed 8 billion consumers.
- parasubvert 10y ago
  I'm not sure what the alternative is, or what even the problem is? Buying/trading/gifting/sharing shit makes the world go 'round.
  - DrNuke 10y ago
    You would want to support your local communities / markets maybe, now risking to become invisible or outpowered? It is called biodiversity. Very sad and dangerous for evolution a fully Googled or a fully Amazoned or a whatever monopolised world. Also dangerous: fascism and communism are made of the same metal and come from monopoly of minds and costumes.
    - parasubvert 10y ago
      "You would want to support your local communities / markets maybe, now risking to become invisible or outpowered? " With Amazon, sure, there's a point, but that battle was lost 30 years ago with Wal-Mart when U.S. consumers decided they didn't give a shit about their local community, they wanted "low prices". Not everywhere, mind you. "Very sad and dangerous for evolution a fully Googled or a fully Amazoned or a whatever monopolised world." I'm not sure I agree. Where's the monopoly? High market share isn't the only criteria. It has to be a case where consumers have little to no choice, which is clearly not true today. Plenty of people avoid Google (I try as much as I can). Amazon also isn't the world's only retailer or cloud computing company by a long shot. These things might be true tomorrow, but future crime ala Minority Report isn't actually a thing. I'm also not sure it makes sense to give corporate welfare to losers that will waste the capital, when these companies are actually giving customers good service (hence their high market share) and being great at technology (the barrier to entry is about knowledge). Also, given the number of negative articles about Amazon by current and former employees lately, I wouldn't bet on their braintrust staying in one place. "Also dangerous: fascism and communism are made of the same metal and come from monopoly of minds and costumes." I think that equating global corporations with fascism and communism dilutes those terms too much. We are a global society of organizations, it is pluralistic, and it is relatively new. I'm not fond of unregulated global capitalism, but at the same time I think it's much riskier to be ham-handed with laws and regs because someone thinks they know better, unless there's a lot of peer-verified research on the issue.

bkjsbkjdnf 10y ago

> I mean, personally I feel a lot safer managing my own data privacy with what I give these companies, rather than having a government do it for me What a fallacious statement. How is government oversight of these companies going to prevent you from applying your own magical 'data privacy management' spells?

parasubvert 10y ago
"How is government oversight of these companies going to prevent you from applying your own magical 'data privacy management' spells?" That depends on what is being overseen by the government. I have no issue with EU-style or Canadian-style privacy regs for PII. I think that encourages local innovation by ensuring data can stay within a legal geographical territory. Where I take issue is "AI is scary, please stop these companies from doing things" and by implication thinking that a government (a) is an organization I trust more than the company with what should be done with my data (a massive leap), or (b) provides value by preventing/limiting that organization from offering a services I want based on AI because non-customers somehow think it's scary or might lead to some nebulous monopoly power. I'm not saying no government oversight is every warranted ever, I'm saying that there's a lot of fear-based desire in this thread for "government save us from Zuck!!" which isn't helpful when people don't even know what specific regulation they're looking for and what the systemic consequences of that would be.
- bkjsbkjdnf 10y ago
  > That depends on what is being overseen by the government. You must have had something in mind when you generated that bit of fallacious rhetoric.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  > Where I take issue is "AI is scary, please stop these companies from doing things" That's my issue with people like Elon Musk & Sam Altman starting OpenAI, where "Many of the employees and board members are motivated by concerns about existential risk from artificial general intelligence."[1] and also people like Stephen Hawking raising concern about AI of the "Skynet is coming, panic!" style, (he also warned not to respond to aliens a few days ago), it just seems like a lot of the rhetoric is about a state of AI we're most likely 500+ years away from, while it may actually slow down useful research that will lead us there faster... 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI

Taek 10y ago

I don't think you need oversight if you have a fair playing field for competitors. If switching from Facebook to... that other social network (?.. that's exactly the problem) was as easy as switching which restaurant you eat at, I wouldn't be calling for regulation I would be content using the social network that I thought was good for me. But I can't, because nothing comes close to Facebook. I feel that if we had broken up Microsoft in the 90's, we'd be in a much better place today. We're still churning out professionals by the millions who are fully dependent on proprietary software to make a living, when nearly equivalent free alternatives do exist for many of them (Office, CAD, Adobe are the biggest). It makes me sad, and Microsoft had a huge hand in that.

gsmiro 10y ago

For an example of how oversight do nothing for the end user take a look at the Brazilian model of state regulation "agencies" and how they get influenced by the bigger companies.