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Who Will Rein in Facebook? Challengers Are Lining Up

185 points by eplanit 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
fny 9y ago
Note to those who don't/can't read the article: the title is slightly misleading. The author does not mean business challengers to Facebook but rather political challengers (i.e. legislators, regulators, activists.) Basically, the glory days of free-range hacking without government regulation appear limited, especially with the likes of Bruce Schneier[0], advocating for the same. Cherish these moments while they last.* If you want to help mitigate the governments reach and make sure policy is implemented wisely, support our lobbying power through the EFF (https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/) and FSF (https://www.fsf.org/ https://www.fsf.org/). Edit: Updated language above to make it more clear that I am not anti-regulation. [0]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/11/regulation_of_t.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/11/regulation_of... [*]: What I mean to say is that I can foresee a world where you are mandated by the government to perform certain services through specific providers. For example, the government could, in the interest of protecting user security, mandate that all apps must provide user registration and auth through a provider that has received XYZ certification (i.e. OAuth through Facebook, Google, Auth0)
- jimmies 9y ago
  I wish we had a sci-hub.cc for wsj, I think one would be useful. There are plenty of reasons a person would want access to those articles without wanting/having the means to pay. Personally, I don't care for wsj articles, but if they want to pull a clickbait title, I think it's fair for them to provide a read.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    http://archive.is/PRdIN http://archive.is/PRdIN
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > There are plenty of reasons a person would want access to those articles without wanting/having the means to pay There are plenty of reasons the Wall Street Journal does not want this, e.g. its paying journalists top dollar relative to industry. As a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, I'm quite fine with their paywall policies.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- shmerl 9y ago
  Well, they can regulate IOT "be secure", but I'm worried more they'll regulate it "we want to always have access" or "you can't use open source OS on it because it gives you control".
  - bsder 9y ago
    Define "be secure". I have a vested interest in IoT devices beings secure, and the idea of the US government defining "be secure" is laughable at best, terrifying at worst. You will pine for the bad, old days of "completely insecure" when you have a TSA-like entity defining your security.
    - astura 9y ago
      The NIST's Digital Identity Guidelines are very good. https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html
      - benchaney 9y ago
        Yes, but NIST recommendations are non binding. It is the ability to create legally binding standards that attracts rent seekers and prevents technical expertise from being the primary factor in decision making.
      - bsder 9y ago
        As far as they go, yes. But what about something like firmware updates? What should be the frequency of update? How long am I required to support a device? Which update networking modalities am I required to support? These aren't small decisions. They can make a product viable--or not. Having this in the hands of something with the proven competence of the TSA (har har) is far from desirable.
        CommentCard 9y ago
        You make a good point. We seem to be in the "Wild West" phase of device software, where the companies making the product have created guidelines based on competitive design, development and maintenance/update standards rather than standards created by regulatory bodies. On one hand this can be abused to create artificial end-of-life scenarios by some hardware companies, but allows for a wide variety of choice in the companies providing alternatives. It also provides the end-user with less restrictions. Caveat emptor. On the other hand, a regulatory agency could reign in companies trying to artificially shorten the lifespan of a piece of hardware, but at the same time make the standard of support a huge barrier to entry that restricts choice to only the largest companies. There might be less rampant IoT exploits, but there'd also likely be less personal freedom to do what you want on your devices. Given how other industries like telecom and cable have trended, we'll probably get the worst of both worlds. There'll be expensive regulations that serve as barriers to entry for smaller companies, but the regulations won't do much to restrict corporate malfeasance.
- chatmasta 9y ago
  Total FUD. Not sure what you mean by “free range hacking,” but surely it has little to do with the regulations targeting activities of multinational conglomerates (Facebook), or any possible regulations for selling devices. You’re free to do whatever you want on your own devices. I don’t see how reasonable regulation meant to prevent tragedy of the commons (the only real application of regulation) will infringe on your ability to continue “free range hacking.”
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Facebook is doing whatever it wants on its own devices (servers), that’s the whole problem. Regulation is likely to apply to anyone engaged in similar activities (providing interactive services over the internet) although we can certainly dream that it’ll come with a carve-out for small scale operators.
  - fny 9y ago
    To clarify, I have no issue with the government requiring companies to disclose who has paid for advertising, the issue that I have is that its becoming increasingly prudent and attractive the government to regulate how we compute and how we respect private data, and if our voices aren't part of that conversation, we're screwed. Also, I take it you've never worked in a heavily regulated industry. It blows. While regulation is a good thing (PHI protection), it definitely has a chilling effect on innovation, and at times results in ill-informed policy (security via obscurity; pointless protective measures from know-nothing management.)
    - confounded 9y ago
      Our voices should be part of the conversation. I completely understand the fear about government regulation with respect to how we compute. For example Section 1201 of the DMCA, the CFAA both scare me, as do periodical “nerd harder” debates about backdoored encryption. But what is it that you’d like to do with people’s private data that you’re worried will be prevented? There are loads of apps right now that exfiltrate your address book, for example, to gather what you know about private individuals, without their knowledge or consent, to be exploited in an unregulated marketplace of personal data. Is that good? Do you think he EFF think it is, or the FSF?
- wybiral 9y ago
  > Cherish these moments while they last, and if you want to help mitigate the governments reach, support our lobbying power through the EFF (https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/) and FSF (https://www.fsf.org/ https://www.fsf.org/). I want reasonable restrictions on the governments AND the businesses in this case... To protect my digital freedom. Regulation isn't always evil. But realistically, I think the consumers are the most at fault for many of the issues that have been coming up lately (apathy towards privacy, lack of skepticism towards social media bots and advertising, willingness to put all their eggs in one basket, etc). I'm just not sure how we should address those issues.
  - fny 9y ago
    > I want reasonable restrictions on the governments AND the businesses in this case... To protect my digital freedom. Regulation isn't always evil. I agree completely! I'm just saying we should support our lobbying power to make sure we have a voice when these decisions are made.
  - alfredallan 9y ago
    > "I'm just not sure how we should address those issues" Neither is anyone else imo but I do think a good starting point might be creating actual awareness about said issues. And I don't mean issuing out public memos - which, imo, has been the approach so far. It might be better to use standard commercial/marketing tactics toward a different goal, i.e raising awareness. Create fud about privacy. Sure, it'll involve a bit of ingenuity and disingenuousness but the awareness will get raised. Make up lifelike examples and have them worked into the stories in popular sitcoms/movies. No guarantees it'll work, but I do believe it'll work better than simple blogs and informational videos, which imo might be too dull and dry for the average user.
  - abandonliberty 9y ago
    >I think the consumers are the most at fault for many of the issues that have been coming up lately (apathy towards privacy, lack of skepticism towards social media bots and advertising, willingness to put all their eggs in one basket, etc). Blaming consumers is the least helpful way to think of this and is, intentionally or not, blatant intellectual dishonesty that saves people from a deeper examination or taking action. It's lazy, scapegoats the people, and helps ensure the situation persists. It's like blaming the American people for the Iraq war, p-hacking, or climate change denialism. Humans have a limited capacity for knowledge. The greater our expertise in one subject, the more other subjects we must sacrifice. Therefore we must rely on the expertise of others _most of the time_ making us very susceptible to influence. I am certain both you and I (or all) are equally guilty of ignorance and apathy of several other societal ills.
- amelius 9y ago
  > Basically, the glory days of free-range hacking without government regulation appear limited I think there is a difference between a small startup launching a new service, and a world-wide social telecommunications network with over 1B users.
- allengeorge 9y ago
  Equating Facebook with "free-range hacking" is laughable. That's exactly what companies like Facebook and Google want us to do.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  > but rather political challengers (i.e. legislators, regulators, activists.) Interesting, but that's exactly what I thought of when I read the title.
- tstactplsignore 9y ago
  Companies like Facebook and Apple are already killing what I'd call "free-range hacking" with the gadget-ification of computing- we don't need to speculate about hypothetical future government plans, it's here now, and it's privatized!
- ijafri 9y ago
  +1 for [0] as the first footnote
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- feelin_googley 9y ago
  Not to those who actually want to read the article: curl -o x.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20171029163834/https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/who-will-rein-in-facebook-challengers-are-lining-up-1509278405 # remove javascript sed -i '/<p>/,/<\/p>/!d' x.htm New address for article: file://x.htm
  - znite 9y ago
    Or just copy OP url & add to pocket/instapaper ;)
    - hollander 9y ago
      Pro tip! (Not even the web archive URL, but the original works!)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
veb 9y ago
For those who want to read the article, one way you can do it is by posting it into the Facebook search bar, and then clicking one of the results - this bypasses the paywall. Or by clicking here: https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fwho-will-rein-in-facebook-challengers-are-lining-up-1509278405 https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...
- chewbacha 9y ago
  Ironic facebook link ftw
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  http://archive.is/PRdIN http://archive.is/PRdIN
- wolco 9y ago
  The link worked but thought my mobile was a desktop and put a huge banner that is uncloseable.
- hetspookjee 9y ago
  Oh the irony
WillReplyfFood 9y ago
Facebook is humanitys ilusions of grandeur. Which makes it valuable for advertisers. All a competitor needs to do is to facilitate the grandeur to become real. "Johnny read about your dream to make a wooden lifesized viking-boat, that you share with 5 others in your area. Johnny is a skilled carpenter and willing to train you, if you show him how to paraglide. Post the common learning experience on Realbook, to show who you really are, who you want to be, what mistakes happend. Others who tryied to build wooden boats, got stuck in there projects here, here and here. Others that succeeded and could help you on as mentors." Of course, that would be a real positive thing for the users. Who in there right mind would do such a thing? Im pretty sure, SV is unable to do so, without trying to fire-sale humanity goodness flavoured waver cookies.
- LyndsySimon 9y ago
  Everyone wants to dream; few people want to put in the work necessary to make them reality.
  - WillReplyfFood 9y ago
    More would- if it was publicly visible how much effort they put behind there dreams..
tim333 9y ago
I'm not sure what the answer is but something should be done about Facebook's part in the problems in Myanmar. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/business/facebook-misinformation-abroad.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/business/facebook-misinfo...)
- amigoingtodie 9y ago
  Wow. That is horrendous.
  - tim333 9y ago
    I was thinking if near the like button they had a report hate speech / fake news button and just didn't show stories much that where that was clicked it would probably make a difference.
    - thefreeman 9y ago
      Unfortunately, like any kind of downvote system, it would get abused as an "i disagree" button instead.
      - tim333 9y ago
        I was thinking something that didn't notify any users that anyone had pushed it, just made the algorithm share it less and if a lot of people push it maybe submit it to the moderators.
    - NoGravitas 9y ago
      They have a reporting system. It doesn't work (and currently, they don't have any incentive to make it work, because hate speech and fake news are engagement).
- partiallypro 9y ago
  Facebook isn't actively seeking to do this, people are just using the platform to spread information. Sure, Facebook should and likely will crack down on it...but I'd rather the governments not be involved in what can and can not be allowed on Facebook/Online. People have done this sort of thing for ages, Facebook is just the latest platform. How are governments supposed to deem what's appropriate when -this very- article states that the fake posts were shared by government accounts.
amelius 9y ago
I'm speculating the following will happen: Some group of people will write an open-source library that will make it possible to interface with Facebook in an unofficial way, e.g. through a headless browser. Facebook will oppose this, but the creators of the library will constantly update the library, and add AI to circumvent captchas and things like that. Using this library, other people will create applications to manage one's Facebook data. At that point, users will have more complete control over their own data. The applications will allow data to be exported to other, more open services (a competing service could ask: "would you like to import from Facebook?") And this will be the beginning of the end of Facebook.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  I’m pretty sure Facebook would do a lot more to prevent third-party access than put up a couple captchas. I wouldn’t be surprised by a cease-and-desist.
  - amelius 9y ago
    There's a tool called "youtube-dl" that does something similar for YouTube, and it still exists. It's not uploading to competing services though, but somebody could build it on top of it.
    - wolco 9y ago
      It doesn't require a login and works with public video pages. Facebook offers some public content but the majority is behind the wall.
    - saagarjha 9y ago
      I am sure that youtube-dl is against YouTube's terms of service, and the only reason why Google hasn't gone after it is because: 1. It's decentralized (i.e. anyone can just fork it and have a new working copy) 2. It's not worth going after, yet. Lawyers cost time and money. youtube-dl is an excellent project but I'm pretty sure once #2 becomes true they will receive a letter from Google's lawyers.
olivermarks 9y ago
"...shove Facebook to acknowledge and act on its responsibility as the most powerful distributor of news and information on Earth." 'News' is highly problematic here. News is packaged information. FB segments people into lots of distinct groupings and reinforces their belief patterns. I don't believe many people go to FB for information or 'News'...they go there for social reasons. I have no desire to consume information packaged by Facebook and presented to me as 'Facts'.
- karllager 9y ago
  > most powerful distributor of news and information on Earth Sandberg (somewhere else recently): "We are explicitly not a news company, we are a tech company."
  - cbcoutinho 9y ago
    Similar to how the Daily Show and SNL are not news, but have precariously fallen into a position of authenticity.
    - olivermarks 9y ago
      precariously or intentionally depending upon your level of paranoia....
  - mattkevan 9y ago
    What someone says they are and what they actually are can be very different.
  - gowld 9y ago
    And Fox News "we are explicitly not a news company, we are an entertainment company". And same from Alex Jones. Corporations shouldn't get to choose which laws they want to apply to them. Facebook is picking articles to put in NY feed, Facebook is a news company
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
quantumofmalice 9y ago
Gab will. Not because the current site is that good, but because Torba understands that a blockchain based distributed social network that is able to compensate content creators is the future: https://gab.ai/a/posts/13902759 https://gab.ai/a/posts/13902759 and he has the money to support building it, with gab subscriptions providing an infinite runway, the StartEngine 1M+ campaign, his legal warchest for the fight w/ Google, etc.
- jonknee 9y ago
  Did you read the article? It's not about competing social networks, it's about regulators. > Pressure is mounting, at home and abroad, from legislators, regulators and activists, all looking for various ways to nudge and, in some cases, shove Facebook to acknowledge and act on its responsibility as the most powerful distributor of news and information on Earth.
  - quantumofmalice 9y ago
    Right. I guess I should be more explicit in my prediction that the market will move faster than the governments will. I know that people here don't like Gab, but looking at it rationally they look like the most likely challenger in that the leadership understands the coming tech stack that will route around whatever governments and private consortiums come up with, and they have the cash on hand and ideological commitment to do it.
    - tstactplsignore 9y ago
      Dear lord, they have an image problem... I quickly checked the site and all of the content they show on the front page (is this like an automated sampling of recent posts?) is atrociously sexist and frankly really low bar content intelligence-wise. (I guess you can find equally dumb stuff throughout the twitterverse, but I can't believe they're using it to market on their homepage) I'm surprised, I thought early adopters would be more thoughtful silicon valley types. Can't see anyone I know switching to it any time soon.
empath75 9y ago
Facebook is eventually going to hurt its own reputation enough that people are going to stop using the platform. A social network/messaging app isn’t that hard to build and Facebook has been building a lot of extra shit on top of it that people don’t really need.
- jkeat 9y ago
  Any ideas out there on what could lead to a migration away from Facebook to say, Mastodon? [0] Facebook probably has the strongest network effect that’s ever existed. [0] https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about
  - NoGravitas 9y ago
    Better to link to https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/, instead of to that one instance. Better to spread traffic around.
- nradov 9y ago
  Most users don't care about reputation. Like most large tech companies, Facebook will be hurt when they miss a disruptive innovation or major social change.
- buddapalm 9y ago
  The network effects issue is real, some kind of open graph could potentially be the answer, as upstart social networks start with the disadvantage of having to connect everyone somehow. That said, I worry about the Myanmar thread: there, The Internet is synonymous with Facebook, and people trust it as an authority. The masses who are unequipped to think critically aren't going to be persuaded to choose something else as long as the platform keeps serving up paid "news" ads and click bait that reinforces their beliefs. The powerful ability for a platform to target specific humans or allow any one to represent a trustworthy new organisation is problematic. These are interesting places to start too.
- olyjohn 9y ago
  People risk their lives daily to read Facebook while doing things like walking across the street and driving. As long as people get their notification fix, they probably wont care that much.
losteverything 9y ago
Give me a photo sharing site that my kids use and I'm gone from FB. Has to be easy-peasy. Clip save pics. No cloud crap. Open and see the latest post. See others' comments. End
- nothis 9y ago
  Not sure if I'm missing something but... Instagram?
  - kilroy123 9y ago
    Instagram is Facebook though.
    - chiaro 9y ago
      Presents the question as to what functionality this would replace over fb then
  - losteverything 9y ago
    Never understood it.. I know it sounds dumb.. But fb tied to a person. Instagram not necessarily.. Anyway.. My adult kids will decide when to migrate off FB.. And we will follow
- nradov 9y ago
  I don't understand. How can you share photos online with "no cloud crap"? It's already pretty easy to set up your own private web server with photo gallery software, but very few users want the hassle.
  - losteverything 9y ago
    I'm the voyeur.. Wishing to see what kids post (of their kids). And coworkers. I have access to their cloud, dropbox, google, etc... But it's too hard and more importantly not their platform of choice to share. So FBs other stuff like news is not why we have FB. It's like turning in the Today show and hearing Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley at 7am to see my family's news, only. A morning habit. But i dont have to hear the news. Five minutes and I'm done.
adventured 9y ago
The way it's going to work is simple: Facebook will bleed engagement from young demographics up, because it's inherently uncool after reaching max audience. There's nothing Facebook can ever do about that. The way max engagement & max audience works, is that once you hit that sort of level, you have to kill or own every single new and or growing thing that ever exists in that particular market, forever forward, or you lose engagement. That's why Facebook has to try to take share from YouTube (Netflix, Hulu, et al) on video with Watch. If it hadn't been for Instagram, they'd be in big trouble already. One app saved the day, for now. The next Instagram-size service they attempt to buy, will likely fall under anti-trust review, and that will get worse by the year going forward. Once you max out on engagement and audience size, such as in the US market, there's nowhere else to go but down unless you start taking from other very big services. Facebook will start dropping little quadrants of engagement, that other services will pick up / steal. Most of those will never threaten the hyper network. Some of them will grow into substantial businesses the size of a Yelp-type business, or a Snapchat or Twitter. It's the gradual subdivision of Facebook; they'll never be able to buy enough Instagrams to prevent it. And to be clear, this process won't kill Facebook. Unlike search, social has numerous difficult human attributes to it, such as being cool. Those attributes make it nearly impossible to maintain a permanent position. Young people today do not like Facebook at all, they're reluctant hostages to the monopoly for now. Then throw on top the increasing populist anti-Facebook sentiment coursing through the culture, and sooner rather than later Facebook will be unable to buy its way out of being uncool. Their business will get three or four times larger yet, as they figure out ways to ad-abuse their existing user base, while bleeding engagement out of the younger demographics. Peak social monopoly has already been hit by Facebook.
- gowld 9y ago
  Facebook beats that by buying every potential competitor.
  - adventured 9y ago
    They're not going to be able to do that. Facebook wouldn't be allowed to buy either Snapchat or Twitter right now, it's already past that point in the monopoly curve. They could have still purchased Snapchat four or five years ago. Facebook of course is well aware of this. The only means they have left to cut off the next social competitors, is to get them extremely early, before regulatory authorities recognize an entity as a serious competitor. In the next few years, just the behavior they demonstrated in trying to kill Snapchat, is very likely to trigger Microsoft.v.Netscape-like attention. Already, as the monopoly hysteria against them builds and builds, what they did in attacking Snapchat will be held up as a prime demonstration of anti-competitive behavior. In fiscal 2018 they're going to be a ~$21 billion profit giant with extraordinary influence over everything in the US. Their life gets a lot harder from here forward, their monopoly is not squishy or vague, it's blatant and easy to spot. Amazon is an ideal example of vague dominance, they dominate ecommerce for now in the US (but still only with a ~40% share of that), but you still have large, very legitimate competitors in retail such as Walmart (~4x the retail sales of Amazon), Target, Costco, BestBuy, etc. On the way up Google had Microsoft lording over tech, providing convenient cover. Amazon has Walmart. Netflix has tons of competitors in video. Apple has never been in a monopoly position outside of music. Oracle has Salesforce, Microsoft, SAP, AWS and a dozen other relevant enterprise software companies. Cisco and Intel are among the few long-term stable tech monopolies. They've both operated under government watch for a long time. They're stuck in sandboxes. Cisco can't buy Juniper, and Intel can't buy AMD. Both are also gradually seeing their monopolies unwind or otherwise weaken. Microsoft is in a similar position. Facebook has Twitter and Snapchat in the US (to a lesser extent services like Reddit, which is a minnow to Facebook), neither of which are growing much these days (while Facebook's global scale continues to expand, slower now but still). If Facebook is smart they'll attempt to rapidly expand in all directions as cover for their social monopoly, so they can pretend to have competition all over the place.
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
What are the odds that this regulation effort gets compromised into something that is spun by politicians as a pro-consumer/citizen victory while also digging Facebook's and Google's moats a bit deeper? Basically, something where compliance is a small cost center for them, but a big hurdle for any would-be competitor trying to scale up. This is a pattern I've definitely heard discussed in the past, though I'm failing to come up with any concrete examples.
- mdpopescu 9y ago
  You can find some examples at [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    Have their been any attempts to outlaw regulatory capture? Rant: I can think of many more examples that are not on that list, and it seems like a comprehensive list would be extremely exhausting. For example, in Seattle I once needed access to a court hearing record, which Seattle law requires the public have "reasonable" accesse to. Instead of providing the records in a reasonable format, the audio was recorded in a proprietary, non-open source format called "On the Record." Getting and paying for not just the CD in person, but the player to work required me to boot into Windows, and even then I still encountered bugs that made life unreasonably difficult. A child could easily record hearings with free software in mp3 format, host them securely on the web, creating a lot of benefit and efficiency to society. And that is all a good example to bring attention to a second point: when people talk about ideas like income redistribution, jobs, and basic income, they worry about "where will the wealth come from, and who will produce useful value?" But come on, if we comb through the economy like a small business owner would through his company, we'd find already an enormous amount of people who aren't involved in producing anythint useful. Or in this case, something useful, but ridiculously inefficient; and in other cases, things which are detrimental to society. It's not uncommon to see on HN stories of corruption, or even science which missrepresents truth.
- cidibe 9y ago
technotarek 9y ago
I will. You will. Just quit.
bovermyer 9y ago
REIGN. It's REIGN. ENGLISH, WSJ! DO YOU SPEAK IT???
- megaman22 9y ago
  Nope... It's rein. As in those things you use to control a horse, or the act of doing so. Not what you do as a monarch.
  - gammarator 9y ago
    Relatedly, the idiom is "give them free rein": http://grammarist.com/spelling/free-rein-free-reign/ http://grammarist.com/spelling/free-rein-free-reign/
- nmg 9y ago
  sudo apt install dict dict rein | grep 'to rein'
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't post like this here.
boltzmannbrain 9y ago
The scene today is reminiscent of Apple and illegal music downloads circa 2007: > iPods were transactional products that could be filled with legal music, pirated music, podcasts, music of one’s own creation — it didn’t matter to anyone but the iPod’s owner. Apple sold a product that benefited from openness into a relatively lawless market and reaped the rewards [1]. Social media is largely a lawless market, and FB (amongst others) is reaping the rewards. In the case of the iPod, government regulation was the bandaid, and the cure was a new incumbent: streaming music services. Importantly, streaming music was only afforded by advances in mobile/wifi tech. So how is this like fake news in social media -- what are the analogies here? Again we’ll see government regulation with minimal effect, as noted in this WSJ article. And should there be a solution to FB’s propaganda problems, my bet is it’ll come from a service that alters the means by which we share (social) experiences online, just as the ability to stream music replaced the need to download it. What's more, the solution will likely come from outside the walls of FB. FB will tread on though, just like Apple, by embracing the novel tech; the iPod was supplanted by the iPhone, leveraging external streaming music services like Spotify and Pandora. So it's not exactly "who will rein in FB?" but rather "what". What technology will give us new means by which we interact with social media? There are dozens of ideas, but the billion dollar one will be that which eradicates the spread of propaganda, just as streaming services eradicated the dependence on pirated music a decade ago. [1] https://stratechery.com/2017/apple-and-the-oak-tree/ https://stratechery.com/2017/apple-and-the-oak-tree/
- boltzmannbrain 9y ago
  A main difference though is Apple saw illegal music downloading as a (read: the) lifeblood of the iPod and didn't discourage it -- the iPod would not have been a success without free music. FB however is attempting to thwart people from using its platform for political agenda (or at least they make it seem), while it's not necessarily illegal to post propaganda content.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > it's not necessarily illegal to post propaganda content It’s very illegal for a foreign government to purchase political ads aimed at Americans.
tscs37 9y ago
Considering the ePrivacy Law and the GDPR in the EU both being on track for becoming enforcing, I think the EU would be a good contender on reigning in facebook. The US seems largely content with making almost pyrrhic victories on this front.
phyller 9y ago
From the article: “None of those ads on Facebook would have been very effective if they said ‘paid for by Russia.’ ” They wouldn't say that. Just like all other political ads they would be funded through an organization with an appealing name, "Paid for by Americans for Freedom and Justice"
dmitrykan 9y ago
Any article that starts with biasing against some country (Russia, Iran, Finland, whatever) discourages from reading it. Because the authors unequivocally assume that guilt of a particular country is already a known truth and hence does not need a separate discussion -- so we can safely plunge into Facebook's issues of not being able to withstand such attacks. So, sorry, not going to read the article.
- yladiz 9y ago
  It's because the guilt of a particular country is a known truth, in this case Russia interfering with the 2016 US presidential election, according to all US intelligence officials when speaking on record. If you need a separate discussion (because there have been many) pick any news organization from the states and look up information about this topic.
  - dmitrykan 9y ago
    Like one Russian friend of mine joked: "if you need your tax system hacked, let us know." That it is published, does not necessarily mean, it is truth. It is a long standing play: the farthest is likely an enemy. Likely, Chinese hackers could do it or anybody who wanted to interfere. But if it was hacked, shows something for the ability of each individual government to protect themselves. Same is published of other, not only U.S., governments, like Britain. It far easier to claim a hack, than to acknowledge, that Trump was _actually_ voted for.
    - yladiz 9y ago
      Notice that I didn't say "hack", and much of the news doesn't focus on them "hacking" the election in the sense that they altered the vote to get Trump enough votes to win (I'm sure some have argued it but most sources deny that widespread voter fraud or vote altering happened). By now it's accepted that Trump did not win the popular vote but did win enough states to win the election, just like in 2000. The focus is on disinformation instead, like ads bought on Facebook, Twitter, etc., which has been shown to have happened.
darepublic 9y ago
Traditional media, Democrats and leftist social justice types find a common desire for censorship of the internet

185 points by eplanit 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

fny 9y ago

Note to those who don't/can't read the article: the title is slightly misleading. The author does not mean business challengers to Facebook but rather political challengers (i.e. legislators, regulators, activists.) Basically, the glory days of free-range hacking without government regulation appear limited, especially with the likes of Bruce Schneier[0], advocating for the same. Cherish these moments while they last.* If you want to help mitigate the governments reach and make sure policy is implemented wisely, support our lobbying power through the EFF (https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/) and FSF (https://www.fsf.org/ https://www.fsf.org/). Edit: Updated language above to make it more clear that I am not anti-regulation. [0]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/11/regulation_of_t.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/11/regulation_of... [*]: What I mean to say is that I can foresee a world where you are mandated by the government to perform certain services through specific providers. For example, the government could, in the interest of protecting user security, mandate that all apps must provide user registration and auth through a provider that has received XYZ certification (i.e. OAuth through Facebook, Google, Auth0)

jimmies 9y ago
I wish we had a sci-hub.cc for wsj, I think one would be useful. There are plenty of reasons a person would want access to those articles without wanting/having the means to pay. Personally, I don't care for wsj articles, but if they want to pull a clickbait title, I think it's fair for them to provide a read.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  http://archive.is/PRdIN http://archive.is/PRdIN
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > There are plenty of reasons a person would want access to those articles without wanting/having the means to pay There are plenty of reasons the Wall Street Journal does not want this, e.g. its paying journalists top dollar relative to industry. As a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, I'm quite fine with their paywall policies.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
shmerl 9y ago
Well, they can regulate IOT "be secure", but I'm worried more they'll regulate it "we want to always have access" or "you can't use open source OS on it because it gives you control".
- bsder 9y ago
  Define "be secure". I have a vested interest in IoT devices beings secure, and the idea of the US government defining "be secure" is laughable at best, terrifying at worst. You will pine for the bad, old days of "completely insecure" when you have a TSA-like entity defining your security.
  - astura 9y ago
    The NIST's Digital Identity Guidelines are very good. https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html
    - benchaney 9y ago
      Yes, but NIST recommendations are non binding. It is the ability to create legally binding standards that attracts rent seekers and prevents technical expertise from being the primary factor in decision making.
    - bsder 9y ago
      As far as they go, yes. But what about something like firmware updates? What should be the frequency of update? How long am I required to support a device? Which update networking modalities am I required to support? These aren't small decisions. They can make a product viable--or not. Having this in the hands of something with the proven competence of the TSA (har har) is far from desirable.
      - CommentCard 9y ago
        You make a good point. We seem to be in the "Wild West" phase of device software, where the companies making the product have created guidelines based on competitive design, development and maintenance/update standards rather than standards created by regulatory bodies. On one hand this can be abused to create artificial end-of-life scenarios by some hardware companies, but allows for a wide variety of choice in the companies providing alternatives. It also provides the end-user with less restrictions. Caveat emptor. On the other hand, a regulatory agency could reign in companies trying to artificially shorten the lifespan of a piece of hardware, but at the same time make the standard of support a huge barrier to entry that restricts choice to only the largest companies. There might be less rampant IoT exploits, but there'd also likely be less personal freedom to do what you want on your devices. Given how other industries like telecom and cable have trended, we'll probably get the worst of both worlds. There'll be expensive regulations that serve as barriers to entry for smaller companies, but the regulations won't do much to restrict corporate malfeasance.
chatmasta 9y ago
Total FUD. Not sure what you mean by “free range hacking,” but surely it has little to do with the regulations targeting activities of multinational conglomerates (Facebook), or any possible regulations for selling devices. You’re free to do whatever you want on your own devices. I don’t see how reasonable regulation meant to prevent tragedy of the commons (the only real application of regulation) will infringe on your ability to continue “free range hacking.”
- closeparen 9y ago
  Facebook is doing whatever it wants on its own devices (servers), that’s the whole problem. Regulation is likely to apply to anyone engaged in similar activities (providing interactive services over the internet) although we can certainly dream that it’ll come with a carve-out for small scale operators.
- fny 9y ago
  To clarify, I have no issue with the government requiring companies to disclose who has paid for advertising, the issue that I have is that its becoming increasingly prudent and attractive the government to regulate how we compute and how we respect private data, and if our voices aren't part of that conversation, we're screwed. Also, I take it you've never worked in a heavily regulated industry. It blows. While regulation is a good thing (PHI protection), it definitely has a chilling effect on innovation, and at times results in ill-informed policy (security via obscurity; pointless protective measures from know-nothing management.)
  - confounded 9y ago
    Our voices should be part of the conversation. I completely understand the fear about government regulation with respect to how we compute. For example Section 1201 of the DMCA, the CFAA both scare me, as do periodical “nerd harder” debates about backdoored encryption. But what is it that you’d like to do with people’s private data that you’re worried will be prevented? There are loads of apps right now that exfiltrate your address book, for example, to gather what you know about private individuals, without their knowledge or consent, to be exploited in an unregulated marketplace of personal data. Is that good? Do you think he EFF think it is, or the FSF?
wybiral 9y ago
> Cherish these moments while they last, and if you want to help mitigate the governments reach, support our lobbying power through the EFF (https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/) and FSF (https://www.fsf.org/ https://www.fsf.org/). I want reasonable restrictions on the governments AND the businesses in this case... To protect my digital freedom. Regulation isn't always evil. But realistically, I think the consumers are the most at fault for many of the issues that have been coming up lately (apathy towards privacy, lack of skepticism towards social media bots and advertising, willingness to put all their eggs in one basket, etc). I'm just not sure how we should address those issues.
- fny 9y ago
  > I want reasonable restrictions on the governments AND the businesses in this case... To protect my digital freedom. Regulation isn't always evil. I agree completely! I'm just saying we should support our lobbying power to make sure we have a voice when these decisions are made.
- alfredallan 9y ago
  > "I'm just not sure how we should address those issues" Neither is anyone else imo but I do think a good starting point might be creating actual awareness about said issues. And I don't mean issuing out public memos - which, imo, has been the approach so far. It might be better to use standard commercial/marketing tactics toward a different goal, i.e raising awareness. Create fud about privacy. Sure, it'll involve a bit of ingenuity and disingenuousness but the awareness will get raised. Make up lifelike examples and have them worked into the stories in popular sitcoms/movies. No guarantees it'll work, but I do believe it'll work better than simple blogs and informational videos, which imo might be too dull and dry for the average user.
- abandonliberty 9y ago
  >I think the consumers are the most at fault for many of the issues that have been coming up lately (apathy towards privacy, lack of skepticism towards social media bots and advertising, willingness to put all their eggs in one basket, etc). Blaming consumers is the least helpful way to think of this and is, intentionally or not, blatant intellectual dishonesty that saves people from a deeper examination or taking action. It's lazy, scapegoats the people, and helps ensure the situation persists. It's like blaming the American people for the Iraq war, p-hacking, or climate change denialism. Humans have a limited capacity for knowledge. The greater our expertise in one subject, the more other subjects we must sacrifice. Therefore we must rely on the expertise of others _most of the time_ making us very susceptible to influence. I am certain both you and I (or all) are equally guilty of ignorance and apathy of several other societal ills.
amelius 9y ago
> Basically, the glory days of free-range hacking without government regulation appear limited I think there is a difference between a small startup launching a new service, and a world-wide social telecommunications network with over 1B users.
allengeorge 9y ago
Equating Facebook with "free-range hacking" is laughable. That's exactly what companies like Facebook and Google want us to do.
madeofpalk 9y ago
> but rather political challengers (i.e. legislators, regulators, activists.) Interesting, but that's exactly what I thought of when I read the title.
tstactplsignore 9y ago
Companies like Facebook and Apple are already killing what I'd call "free-range hacking" with the gadget-ification of computing- we don't need to speculate about hypothetical future government plans, it's here now, and it's privatized!
ijafri 9y ago
+1 for [0] as the first footnote
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
feelin_googley 9y ago
Not to those who actually want to read the article: curl -o x.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20171029163834/https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/who-will-rein-in-facebook-challengers-are-lining-up-1509278405 # remove javascript sed -i '/<p>/,/<\/p>/!d' x.htm New address for article: file://x.htm
- znite 9y ago
  Or just copy OP url & add to pocket/instapaper ;)
  - hollander 9y ago
    Pro tip! (Not even the web archive URL, but the original works!)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

veb 9y ago

For those who want to read the article, one way you can do it is by posting it into the Facebook search bar, and then clicking one of the results - this bypasses the paywall. Or by clicking here: https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fwho-will-rein-in-facebook-challengers-are-lining-up-1509278405 https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...

chewbacha 9y ago
Ironic facebook link ftw
dredmorbius 9y ago
http://archive.is/PRdIN http://archive.is/PRdIN
wolco 9y ago
The link worked but thought my mobile was a desktop and put a huge banner that is uncloseable.
hetspookjee 9y ago
Oh the irony

WillReplyfFood 9y ago

Facebook is humanitys ilusions of grandeur. Which makes it valuable for advertisers. All a competitor needs to do is to facilitate the grandeur to become real. "Johnny read about your dream to make a wooden lifesized viking-boat, that you share with 5 others in your area. Johnny is a skilled carpenter and willing to train you, if you show him how to paraglide. Post the common learning experience on Realbook, to show who you really are, who you want to be, what mistakes happend. Others who tryied to build wooden boats, got stuck in there projects here, here and here. Others that succeeded and could help you on as mentors." Of course, that would be a real positive thing for the users. Who in there right mind would do such a thing? Im pretty sure, SV is unable to do so, without trying to fire-sale humanity goodness flavoured waver cookies.

LyndsySimon 9y ago
Everyone wants to dream; few people want to put in the work necessary to make them reality.
- WillReplyfFood 9y ago
  More would- if it was publicly visible how much effort they put behind there dreams..

tim333 9y ago

I'm not sure what the answer is but something should be done about Facebook's part in the problems in Myanmar. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/business/facebook-misinformation-abroad.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/business/facebook-misinfo...)

amigoingtodie 9y ago
Wow. That is horrendous.
- tim333 9y ago
  I was thinking if near the like button they had a report hate speech / fake news button and just didn't show stories much that where that was clicked it would probably make a difference.
  - thefreeman 9y ago
    Unfortunately, like any kind of downvote system, it would get abused as an "i disagree" button instead.
    - tim333 9y ago
      I was thinking something that didn't notify any users that anyone had pushed it, just made the algorithm share it less and if a lot of people push it maybe submit it to the moderators.
  - NoGravitas 9y ago
    They have a reporting system. It doesn't work (and currently, they don't have any incentive to make it work, because hate speech and fake news are engagement).
partiallypro 9y ago
Facebook isn't actively seeking to do this, people are just using the platform to spread information. Sure, Facebook should and likely will crack down on it...but I'd rather the governments not be involved in what can and can not be allowed on Facebook/Online. People have done this sort of thing for ages, Facebook is just the latest platform. How are governments supposed to deem what's appropriate when -this very- article states that the fake posts were shared by government accounts.

amelius 9y ago

I'm speculating the following will happen: Some group of people will write an open-source library that will make it possible to interface with Facebook in an unofficial way, e.g. through a headless browser. Facebook will oppose this, but the creators of the library will constantly update the library, and add AI to circumvent captchas and things like that. Using this library, other people will create applications to manage one's Facebook data. At that point, users will have more complete control over their own data. The applications will allow data to be exported to other, more open services (a competing service could ask: "would you like to import from Facebook?") And this will be the beginning of the end of Facebook.

saagarjha 9y ago
I’m pretty sure Facebook would do a lot more to prevent third-party access than put up a couple captchas. I wouldn’t be surprised by a cease-and-desist.
- amelius 9y ago
  There's a tool called "youtube-dl" that does something similar for YouTube, and it still exists. It's not uploading to competing services though, but somebody could build it on top of it.
  - wolco 9y ago
    It doesn't require a login and works with public video pages. Facebook offers some public content but the majority is behind the wall.
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    I am sure that youtube-dl is against YouTube's terms of service, and the only reason why Google hasn't gone after it is because: 1. It's decentralized (i.e. anyone can just fork it and have a new working copy) 2. It's not worth going after, yet. Lawyers cost time and money. youtube-dl is an excellent project but I'm pretty sure once #2 becomes true they will receive a letter from Google's lawyers.

olivermarks 9y ago

"...shove Facebook to acknowledge and act on its responsibility as the most powerful distributor of news and information on Earth." 'News' is highly problematic here. News is packaged information. FB segments people into lots of distinct groupings and reinforces their belief patterns. I don't believe many people go to FB for information or 'News'...they go there for social reasons. I have no desire to consume information packaged by Facebook and presented to me as 'Facts'.

karllager 9y ago
> most powerful distributor of news and information on Earth Sandberg (somewhere else recently): "We are explicitly not a news company, we are a tech company."
- cbcoutinho 9y ago
  Similar to how the Daily Show and SNL are not news, but have precariously fallen into a position of authenticity.
  - olivermarks 9y ago
    precariously or intentionally depending upon your level of paranoia....
- mattkevan 9y ago
  What someone says they are and what they actually are can be very different.
- gowld 9y ago
  And Fox News "we are explicitly not a news company, we are an entertainment company". And same from Alex Jones. Corporations shouldn't get to choose which laws they want to apply to them. Facebook is picking articles to put in NY feed, Facebook is a news company
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago

quantumofmalice 9y ago

Gab will. Not because the current site is that good, but because Torba understands that a blockchain based distributed social network that is able to compensate content creators is the future: https://gab.ai/a/posts/13902759 https://gab.ai/a/posts/13902759 and he has the money to support building it, with gab subscriptions providing an infinite runway, the StartEngine 1M+ campaign, his legal warchest for the fight w/ Google, etc.

jonknee 9y ago
Did you read the article? It's not about competing social networks, it's about regulators. > Pressure is mounting, at home and abroad, from legislators, regulators and activists, all looking for various ways to nudge and, in some cases, shove Facebook to acknowledge and act on its responsibility as the most powerful distributor of news and information on Earth.
- quantumofmalice 9y ago
  Right. I guess I should be more explicit in my prediction that the market will move faster than the governments will. I know that people here don't like Gab, but looking at it rationally they look like the most likely challenger in that the leadership understands the coming tech stack that will route around whatever governments and private consortiums come up with, and they have the cash on hand and ideological commitment to do it.
  - tstactplsignore 9y ago
    Dear lord, they have an image problem... I quickly checked the site and all of the content they show on the front page (is this like an automated sampling of recent posts?) is atrociously sexist and frankly really low bar content intelligence-wise. (I guess you can find equally dumb stuff throughout the twitterverse, but I can't believe they're using it to market on their homepage) I'm surprised, I thought early adopters would be more thoughtful silicon valley types. Can't see anyone I know switching to it any time soon.

empath75 9y ago

Facebook is eventually going to hurt its own reputation enough that people are going to stop using the platform. A social network/messaging app isn’t that hard to build and Facebook has been building a lot of extra shit on top of it that people don’t really need.

jkeat 9y ago
Any ideas out there on what could lead to a migration away from Facebook to say, Mastodon? [0] Facebook probably has the strongest network effect that’s ever existed. [0] https://mastodon.social/about https://mastodon.social/about
- NoGravitas 9y ago
  Better to link to https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/, instead of to that one instance. Better to spread traffic around.
nradov 9y ago
Most users don't care about reputation. Like most large tech companies, Facebook will be hurt when they miss a disruptive innovation or major social change.
buddapalm 9y ago
The network effects issue is real, some kind of open graph could potentially be the answer, as upstart social networks start with the disadvantage of having to connect everyone somehow. That said, I worry about the Myanmar thread: there, The Internet is synonymous with Facebook, and people trust it as an authority. The masses who are unequipped to think critically aren't going to be persuaded to choose something else as long as the platform keeps serving up paid "news" ads and click bait that reinforces their beliefs. The powerful ability for a platform to target specific humans or allow any one to represent a trustworthy new organisation is problematic. These are interesting places to start too.
olyjohn 9y ago
People risk their lives daily to read Facebook while doing things like walking across the street and driving. As long as people get their notification fix, they probably wont care that much.

losteverything 9y ago

Give me a photo sharing site that my kids use and I'm gone from FB. Has to be easy-peasy. Clip save pics. No cloud crap. Open and see the latest post. See others' comments. End

nothis 9y ago
Not sure if I'm missing something but... Instagram?
- kilroy123 9y ago
  Instagram is Facebook though.
  - chiaro 9y ago
    Presents the question as to what functionality this would replace over fb then
- losteverything 9y ago
  Never understood it.. I know it sounds dumb.. But fb tied to a person. Instagram not necessarily.. Anyway.. My adult kids will decide when to migrate off FB.. And we will follow
nradov 9y ago
I don't understand. How can you share photos online with "no cloud crap"? It's already pretty easy to set up your own private web server with photo gallery software, but very few users want the hassle.
- losteverything 9y ago
  I'm the voyeur.. Wishing to see what kids post (of their kids). And coworkers. I have access to their cloud, dropbox, google, etc... But it's too hard and more importantly not their platform of choice to share. So FBs other stuff like news is not why we have FB. It's like turning in the Today show and hearing Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley at 7am to see my family's news, only. A morning habit. But i dont have to hear the news. Five minutes and I'm done.

adventured 9y ago

The way it's going to work is simple: Facebook will bleed engagement from young demographics up, because it's inherently uncool after reaching max audience. There's nothing Facebook can ever do about that. The way max engagement & max audience works, is that once you hit that sort of level, you have to kill or own every single new and or growing thing that ever exists in that particular market, forever forward, or you lose engagement. That's why Facebook has to try to take share from YouTube (Netflix, Hulu, et al) on video with Watch. If it hadn't been for Instagram, they'd be in big trouble already. One app saved the day, for now. The next Instagram-size service they attempt to buy, will likely fall under anti-trust review, and that will get worse by the year going forward. Once you max out on engagement and audience size, such as in the US market, there's nowhere else to go but down unless you start taking from other very big services. Facebook will start dropping little quadrants of engagement, that other services will pick up / steal. Most of those will never threaten the hyper network. Some of them will grow into substantial businesses the size of a Yelp-type business, or a Snapchat or Twitter. It's the gradual subdivision of Facebook; they'll never be able to buy enough Instagrams to prevent it. And to be clear, this process won't kill Facebook. Unlike search, social has numerous difficult human attributes to it, such as being cool. Those attributes make it nearly impossible to maintain a permanent position. Young people today do not like Facebook at all, they're reluctant hostages to the monopoly for now. Then throw on top the increasing populist anti-Facebook sentiment coursing through the culture, and sooner rather than later Facebook will be unable to buy its way out of being uncool. Their business will get three or four times larger yet, as they figure out ways to ad-abuse their existing user base, while bleeding engagement out of the younger demographics. Peak social monopoly has already been hit by Facebook.

gowld 9y ago
Facebook beats that by buying every potential competitor.
- adventured 9y ago
  They're not going to be able to do that. Facebook wouldn't be allowed to buy either Snapchat or Twitter right now, it's already past that point in the monopoly curve. They could have still purchased Snapchat four or five years ago. Facebook of course is well aware of this. The only means they have left to cut off the next social competitors, is to get them extremely early, before regulatory authorities recognize an entity as a serious competitor. In the next few years, just the behavior they demonstrated in trying to kill Snapchat, is very likely to trigger Microsoft.v.Netscape-like attention. Already, as the monopoly hysteria against them builds and builds, what they did in attacking Snapchat will be held up as a prime demonstration of anti-competitive behavior. In fiscal 2018 they're going to be a ~$21 billion profit giant with extraordinary influence over everything in the US. Their life gets a lot harder from here forward, their monopoly is not squishy or vague, it's blatant and easy to spot. Amazon is an ideal example of vague dominance, they dominate ecommerce for now in the US (but still only with a ~40% share of that), but you still have large, very legitimate competitors in retail such as Walmart (~4x the retail sales of Amazon), Target, Costco, BestBuy, etc. On the way up Google had Microsoft lording over tech, providing convenient cover. Amazon has Walmart. Netflix has tons of competitors in video. Apple has never been in a monopoly position outside of music. Oracle has Salesforce, Microsoft, SAP, AWS and a dozen other relevant enterprise software companies. Cisco and Intel are among the few long-term stable tech monopolies. They've both operated under government watch for a long time. They're stuck in sandboxes. Cisco can't buy Juniper, and Intel can't buy AMD. Both are also gradually seeing their monopolies unwind or otherwise weaken. Microsoft is in a similar position. Facebook has Twitter and Snapchat in the US (to a lesser extent services like Reddit, which is a minnow to Facebook), neither of which are growing much these days (while Facebook's global scale continues to expand, slower now but still). If Facebook is smart they'll attempt to rapidly expand in all directions as cover for their social monopoly, so they can pretend to have competition all over the place.

0xcde4c3db 9y ago

What are the odds that this regulation effort gets compromised into something that is spun by politicians as a pro-consumer/citizen victory while also digging Facebook's and Google's moats a bit deeper? Basically, something where compliance is a small cost center for them, but a big hurdle for any would-be competitor trying to scale up. This is a pattern I've definitely heard discussed in the past, though I'm failing to come up with any concrete examples.

mdpopescu 9y ago
You can find some examples at [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
- wallace_f 9y ago
  Have their been any attempts to outlaw regulatory capture? Rant: I can think of many more examples that are not on that list, and it seems like a comprehensive list would be extremely exhausting. For example, in Seattle I once needed access to a court hearing record, which Seattle law requires the public have "reasonable" accesse to. Instead of providing the records in a reasonable format, the audio was recorded in a proprietary, non-open source format called "On the Record." Getting and paying for not just the CD in person, but the player to work required me to boot into Windows, and even then I still encountered bugs that made life unreasonably difficult. A child could easily record hearings with free software in mp3 format, host them securely on the web, creating a lot of benefit and efficiency to society. And that is all a good example to bring attention to a second point: when people talk about ideas like income redistribution, jobs, and basic income, they worry about "where will the wealth come from, and who will produce useful value?" But come on, if we comb through the economy like a small business owner would through his company, we'd find already an enormous amount of people who aren't involved in producing anythint useful. Or in this case, something useful, but ridiculously inefficient; and in other cases, things which are detrimental to society. It's not uncommon to see on HN stories of corruption, or even science which missrepresents truth.
cidibe 9y ago

technotarek 9y ago

I will. You will. Just quit.

bovermyer 9y ago

REIGN. It's REIGN. ENGLISH, WSJ! DO YOU SPEAK IT???

megaman22 9y ago
Nope... It's rein. As in those things you use to control a horse, or the act of doing so. Not what you do as a monarch.
- gammarator 9y ago
  Relatedly, the idiom is "give them free rein": http://grammarist.com/spelling/free-rein-free-reign/ http://grammarist.com/spelling/free-rein-free-reign/
nmg 9y ago
sudo apt install dict dict rein | grep 'to rein'
dang 9y ago
Please don't post like this here.

boltzmannbrain 9y ago

The scene today is reminiscent of Apple and illegal music downloads circa 2007: > iPods were transactional products that could be filled with legal music, pirated music, podcasts, music of one’s own creation — it didn’t matter to anyone but the iPod’s owner. Apple sold a product that benefited from openness into a relatively lawless market and reaped the rewards [1]. Social media is largely a lawless market, and FB (amongst others) is reaping the rewards. In the case of the iPod, government regulation was the bandaid, and the cure was a new incumbent: streaming music services. Importantly, streaming music was only afforded by advances in mobile/wifi tech. So how is this like fake news in social media -- what are the analogies here? Again we’ll see government regulation with minimal effect, as noted in this WSJ article. And should there be a solution to FB’s propaganda problems, my bet is it’ll come from a service that alters the means by which we share (social) experiences online, just as the ability to stream music replaced the need to download it. What's more, the solution will likely come from outside the walls of FB. FB will tread on though, just like Apple, by embracing the novel tech; the iPod was supplanted by the iPhone, leveraging external streaming music services like Spotify and Pandora. So it's not exactly "who will rein in FB?" but rather "what". What technology will give us new means by which we interact with social media? There are dozens of ideas, but the billion dollar one will be that which eradicates the spread of propaganda, just as streaming services eradicated the dependence on pirated music a decade ago. [1] https://stratechery.com/2017/apple-and-the-oak-tree/ https://stratechery.com/2017/apple-and-the-oak-tree/

boltzmannbrain 9y ago
A main difference though is Apple saw illegal music downloading as a (read: the) lifeblood of the iPod and didn't discourage it -- the iPod would not have been a success without free music. FB however is attempting to thwart people from using its platform for political agenda (or at least they make it seem), while it's not necessarily illegal to post propaganda content.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > it's not necessarily illegal to post propaganda content It’s very illegal for a foreign government to purchase political ads aimed at Americans.

tscs37 9y ago

Considering the ePrivacy Law and the GDPR in the EU both being on track for becoming enforcing, I think the EU would be a good contender on reigning in facebook. The US seems largely content with making almost pyrrhic victories on this front.

phyller 9y ago

From the article: “None of those ads on Facebook would have been very effective if they said ‘paid for by Russia.’ ” They wouldn't say that. Just like all other political ads they would be funded through an organization with an appealing name, "Paid for by Americans for Freedom and Justice"

dmitrykan 9y ago

Any article that starts with biasing against some country (Russia, Iran, Finland, whatever) discourages from reading it. Because the authors unequivocally assume that guilt of a particular country is already a known truth and hence does not need a separate discussion -- so we can safely plunge into Facebook's issues of not being able to withstand such attacks. So, sorry, not going to read the article.

yladiz 9y ago
It's because the guilt of a particular country is a known truth, in this case Russia interfering with the 2016 US presidential election, according to all US intelligence officials when speaking on record. If you need a separate discussion (because there have been many) pick any news organization from the states and look up information about this topic.
- dmitrykan 9y ago
  Like one Russian friend of mine joked: "if you need your tax system hacked, let us know." That it is published, does not necessarily mean, it is truth. It is a long standing play: the farthest is likely an enemy. Likely, Chinese hackers could do it or anybody who wanted to interfere. But if it was hacked, shows something for the ability of each individual government to protect themselves. Same is published of other, not only U.S., governments, like Britain. It far easier to claim a hack, than to acknowledge, that Trump was _actually_ voted for.
  - yladiz 9y ago
    Notice that I didn't say "hack", and much of the news doesn't focus on them "hacking" the election in the sense that they altered the vote to get Trump enough votes to win (I'm sure some have argued it but most sources deny that widespread voter fraud or vote altering happened). By now it's accepted that Trump did not win the popular vote but did win enough states to win the election, just like in 2000. The focus is on disinformation instead, like ads bought on Facebook, Twitter, etc., which has been shown to have happened.

darepublic 9y ago

Traditional media, Democrats and leftist social justice types find a common desire for censorship of the internet