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Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web
- IBM 9y ago>At a White House dinner in 2015, Mr. Zuckerberg had even asked the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, whether Mr. Xi might offer a Chinese name for his soon-to-be-born first child — usually a privilege reserved for older relatives, or sometimes a fortune teller. Mr. Xi declined, according to a person briefed on the matter. Laughed out loud at this. I can understand wanting access to the market but this is just embarrassingly desperate.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mtgx 9y agoIt shows what kind of person Zuckerberg is. "Please sir, let Facebook enter China. Here, I'll even offer you my first born!" If he's willing to do this with his kid, what is he willing to do with our data? Sorry, I meant Facebook's data, according to their ToS.
- TAForObvReasons 9y agoZuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks. http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
- unclebucknasty 9y agoThe thing about that is that people, including Zuckerberg, will say "hey he was just a kid when he wrote that". But, he was old enough to know better, and it's a real tell on his character. A lot of who you are, including your moral foundation, is well formed by that age. And, if anything, his actions since have only underscored that fact.
- jxramos 9y agoInteresting to point out the age of reason culpability here.
- aarpmcgee 9y agoWow. That is gross.
- beepboopbeep 9y agoYa. Zuck is not a good person.
- dang 9y agoPersonal attacks (which this is) are not allowed here, regardless of who the person is or how unlikeable you find them. Please stick to substance and comment civilly or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Steko 9y agoThe secret to a good kowtow is a very slight audible confirmation that your head has touched the floor. The person performing the kowtow needs to adjust the force they use depending on both the flooring material and the hearing ability of the audience (who are often elderly).
- jacquesm 9y agoBy that reckoning there should be a good sized dent in Zuckerberg's forehead (and the floor).
- jonny_eh 9y agoI dunno, I would think it's an honour to have the president of China give your child a Chinese name. But I'm not Chinese, and neither is Zuckerberg.
- rvense 9y agoI think his wife is, though. Which makes it slightly less odd to give the child a Chinese name, but really not less so to ask a total stranger to decide it.
- rexpop 9y agoThis comes off to me as an insult directed at the Chinese president.
- odiroot 9y agoThis story somehow makes me really warm in my stomach. Zuckerberg facing a more experienced player.
- jquery 9y agoZuck: People just submitted it. I don't know why. They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks
- sctb 9y agoPlease don't take us on generic tangents. You can tell if it's generic if you'd post it on any thread with a certain word in the headline, like "Facebook". https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jquery 9y agoFair enough but it seems particularly applicable here where trusting FB's "what's on your mind box" = jail time.
- amrrs 9y ago>The diplomatic game that unfolded in Vietnam has become increasingly common for Facebook. Yes, At least this should ring a bell to all those who still think they can write anything on FB about a Government and get away with it. Facebook while being pushed and portrayed as your personal diary is actually your digital repository only accessible for the most elite like Government. While an average FB user can easily shame anyone around him (like how frustrated boy friends shame their ex girl friends), fellow average FBians can't do much. This reiterates the capitalist world that we live in where Democracy is just a myth.
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- Gaelan 9y agoFacebook, for better or worse, seems to adapt to local laws. I haven’t heard anything about FB removing anti-government posts in countries that have strong speech protections for non-internet speech.
- driverdan 9y ago> At least this should ring a bell to all those who still think they can write anything on FB about a Government and get away with it. They should be able to. Free speech is a human right. FB should not be helping governments violate human rights. > This reiterates the capitalist world that we live in where Democracy is just a myth. Those are two different things.
- rdtsc 9y ago> Free speech is a human right. FB should not be helping governments violate human rights. I think it is usually framed in as a human right against government intervention. That is the government can't shut you up if you want to criticize it. However FB is not the government. FB can stop and censor people because it is a private entity. Nobody has a right to use FB's resources (server time, bandwidth) for free to say whatever they want. They can be kicked out without any legal repercussion. Now wonder what happens if the government gives incentives FB to act on its behalf. Maybe a carrot and stick approach, it can tax it higher, raid its offices or pay it off with contracts in response to FB silencing or blocking certain users. This is where it gets interesting. What about if a 3rd party wants to silence some opinions and it has nothing to do with the government. Does free speech still apply. Let's say multi-billionaire wants to shape public opinion so it pays billions of dollars to FB or Google to silence and suppress competing opinions. No government in sight here. But it does feel like free speech is being violated. Or is it? Kinda interesting to think about. And this is not just hypothetical after the election Facebook, Google and Twitter all jumped on the "we will work hard to fight Fake News" bandwagon. It was a nice impulse on the surface, but I think what they really meant was that they are offering those who have money to spend the ability to manipulate and control opinions and discussions since they are essentially monopolies of online social interaction and news dissemination.
- AlexandrB 9y agoI find that the headline and the article mischaracterizes what is happening. The "Wild Web" was reigned in long ago by commercial interests. A distributed web with many small nodes would still be hard to control and police effectively. However as much the web has been centralized by the likes of Google, Facebook, and large media conglomerates effective government censorship is once again possible. This is like a wild meadow turning to a manicured lawn. The near-monoculture of the web will have a much harder time withstanding legal assault by state actors than a distributed web would have.
- scrumper 9y agoAnd, to complete the thought, the behavior of those corporate centralizers has rendered it politically acceptable for the government to do so.
- vkou 9y agoCensoring speech has been politically acceptable for every single Western government, besides the US^, since at least WWII. It has not yet brought about the collapse of civilization, or a descent into despotism. ^ It has also taken place in the US, but to a different extent.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hnaccy 9y ago>It has not yet brought about the collapse of civilization, or a descent into despotism. That's quite a short time scale.
- outoftacos 9y agoThis is par for the course for the NYT, the noble corporations are painted as heroes keeping us safe from the dirty wildlings who are about to topple the wall any day now. They do the same thing with many (large) companies, the State Department, all military/intelligence branches, etc. It's how you get access, and they seem more willing to play ball and churn out these puff pieces over doing real journalism than anyone. The Times is the most prominent example of this pattern, but it's becoming more and pervasive.
- ameister14 9y agoIf we're going with the wild-west analogy, what's happening now is the transition from a Territory to a State. It was wild and ungoverned, then corporations moved in and created some order, and now governments see order and are moving in to take over management.
- __jal 9y agoIt is a terrible analogy all around. What is happening is that Facebook is shifting from being AOL 2.0 to being a government contractor. They'll eventually be more entrenched and integrated (in the US) with the IRS, police, intelligence, etc. The first step is to get them over a barrel, with public opinion against them. The rest is easy, and FB will embrace it.
- Top19 9y agolol the AOL 2.0 analogy. I will never forgive my parents for signing us up for AOL Broadband. What is AOL Broadband you wonder? Well you sign in to AOL just like you did with dial-up, the experience is almost the same so old people didn’t freak out, and then it drops you into AOL’s shitty shitty browser. Oh and it even blocked our other browser from ever working due to how the tunnels were configured (Internet Explorer), and you couldn’t use a wireless router with AOL Broadband in Texas until 2006 (ruining Xbox Live which was on the 2nd floor).
- beepboopbeep 9y agoI think its perfectly fair to scrutinize and regulate a company that has such an immensely pervasive presence in the every day life of so many citizens. Yes, that applies to google to. Why should I trust them to be responsible?
- Havoc 9y agoSeems more like FB is reeling in official policy but ok...
- danielrhodes 9y agoThere is now a history of American tech companies operating in China. The lesson is pretty clear: play politics if you want, but know that if you do (i.e. Google), you are going to lose access to the market. Thus, it comes down to a business decision and it becomes increasingly hard to argue on principles if things look so binary.
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- bukgoogle 9y agoFacebook and "new world" just sounds scary. I really do not want facebook's new world.
- faceboksukha 9y agoPlease people, try to avoid facebook and they agenda much as possible.
- doktrin 9y agoFacebook is most likely a net negative in this world. I don't know if it's always been true, but I think it is now. I personally didn't realize how strong my feelings were until one of their recruiters contacted me. I'm far from a 'values' driven employee, but this was by far the easiest refusal of my career.
- robbrown451 9y agoI agree it is a net negative, but it kind of needs to be clarified because if Facebook didn't exist, it would be someone else. Maybe MySpace would have evolved to fill the niche, or maybe another company, or maybe even an open solution. I tend to think that it would be quite possible for a company to fill the Facebook niche in a much more positive way, while still making a profit. But they certainly won't be able to do it as long as Facebook is there.
- ben_jones 9y agoWas there really such a NEED for fb to exist that it was inevitable?!
- danjoc 9y agoWhat a difference 20 years makes... https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
- l5870uoo9y 9y agoIt is with the greatest obviousness that strategic important sectors — such as defence — can't trade with foreign countries without specific permission from the government. The tech sector is an sector of strategic importance and it can't both serve the Chinese communist party and the US democracy. The Chinese understands this.
- TCM 9y agoI think its more of the opposite. Technology creates spheres of influence in the countries that they operate. Traditional governments attempt to reign it in (this is usually effective if they are a company with ad revenue or they want to follow local laws. But when you cut down one sphere another grows to replace it.
- Top19 9y ago> Facebook is racing to gain the advantage in Africa over rivals like Google and Chinese players including Tencent, in a 21st century version of the “Scramble for Africa.” That is a really scary thing to have read. Perhaps the New York Times is out of line in using it, but if that metaphor is even 10% accurate that would be very bad. To give some background, the “Scramble for Africa” is the only time I’ve ever read the words, where the writer had a serious argument, “was worse than the holocaust”. This was in reference to the mass deaths in the Congo under King Leopold of Belgium, as documented in the book “King Leopold’s Ghost”. I know a ton of people have died in history and there have been so many wars, but the Scramble for Africa was really really really bad. Yeah so I guess in conclusion, NY Times shouldn’t have used that phrase, Facebook sucks, and if they (Facebook) mess up almost everywhere please please just not let them mess up the African continent.
- pnathan 9y agoThe Great Myth of cyberspace was that individuals in it or the servers that ran the software were not subject to the laws of the nations they existed within. The cold reality is that this is not true. And, thus, in time, to exist within a repressive regime requires importing the repression within the software. This is the bargain Facebook wants to make.
- divbit 9y agoI actually don't mind a little censorship of illegal-ish stuff (or at least warning, that hey, this person is trying to metaphorically sell you something illegal !), but what really bugs me is the subtle (and not so subtle), targeted manipulation I sometimes feel I experience, where there might be like many different usernames all targeting you but somehow all controlled by the same person / interest, and you just think it's normal conversation... (Apparently Reddit is mostly bots?) I think we saw some (heck, a lot of this) in the 2016 election, and personally I try to keep myself to a human-usable number of usernames (I think I have like 5 to hackernews as I forget passwords, but tend to use at most one, or two obviously linked ones for an extended period of time, and then switch if I say something too stupid and want to get a clean start) I don't think something like necessitating a real id is a good idea, since then everything you say is tied to you forever (hail satan), but I'm sure some kind of manipulation detection would be possible... would be an interesting project to work on actually.
- chasd00 9y agothe web is still as wild as you want, if you hate facebook then write a better facebook. That use to be how it worked, not sure what changed. Maybe people just aren't as creative as they use to be. When i was single and had free time public IPs were golden because then you could run a webserver and DNS and once you've registered a domain name you could get whatever you wanted out on the web. I can get a public IP, server, and DNS for basically free now with a few clicks. If something sucks and you think it could be better than go do it and let the world be the judge. The web is more accesible now than ever.