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We Can’t Trust Facebook to Regulate Itself

maxharris 9y ago
I could easily write a headline such as, "We can't trust the New York Times to regulate itself," and be just as misguided as the headline above, for the same reasons.
- krrishd 9y ago
  What are those reasons? Genuinely curious what you disagree with.
- SapphireSun 9y ago
  He's right. NYT flips from a reasonable centrist publication to a war monger at the first hint of fighting. How many bodies do they have on them from lending legitimacy to Afghanistan and Iraq let alone Vietnam?
- beejamin 9y ago
  It might be true that the NYT can't be trusted to regulate itself for the same reasons raised in the article - primarily that it has no incentive to do so, and lots of incentives not to. That said, I care a lot more about Facebook being properly regulated than I do about the NYT, simply because of the amount and scope of data that Facebook has.
- blrgeek 9y ago
  Actually both journalists and media are regulated. Perhaps you should address specifics of why regulation is not required in this case, rather than attack the messenger?
  - nv-vn 9y ago
    By what regulations? They are allowed to publish pretty much anything other than libel.
    - makomk 9y ago
      Yeah, and the US definition of libel is incredibly narrow, especially for public figures. Basically, unless you can prove they intentionally lied, forget it. As the Rolling Stone demonstrated, they can go into a story with a pre-existing bias against the subject, skip normal journalistic checks, conceal from readers just how weak the story is and how much it relies on a single source, and say something false and damaging, and that's still not enough; the only thing they could be got on was the odd technicality of counting adding a note to the story after they knew it was wrong as republishing it.
- duckMuppet 9y ago
  I think this is a bad analogy.. The NYT is a left leaning paper, but people who have some intellectual honesty already know this.. Even if the Times went completely far far far left, they aren't the only game in town. I can choose to read any of a number of other papers, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist etc.. What alternative is there fire FB?? Mastodon.. Hubzilla..? They're great, if someone has the capability to run the service. I'd argue that most users can't be bothered to learn more than a chromebook let alone understand how to run their own server. When you have a monopoly like this, it either needs government regulation, ( which is generally bad because it tends to hurt other similar companies), or break them up, i think this is the ideal option, but i don't know in this case.. Break it up by forcing all their code to open source, of perhaps force them to run it more federated or diaspora like and mandating interoperability with these other services.. I'm not sure what the answer is. Of course the real answer is nobody has to use Facebook.. But for a lot of people, that's not an option they're interested in, and since fb literally have all the data, it likely needs regulation which i find very distasteful and terrifying.
  - dvt 9y ago
    Why do we need to break up FB? That makes no sense to me. In previous antitrust cases, there was always the economic argument (to help out up-and-coming competitors or to prevent price gouging). But Snapchat clearly showed that new players can compete. Are we breaking them up because they have "too much information"? What does that even mean? A move like that would be beyond unprecedented.
    - volgo 9y ago
      The point for government to breakup anything is to prevent monopoly. NYTimes is far from a monopoly - there are tons of news site with more traffic. But there's no competitor that comes close to Facebook
      - dvt 9y ago
        And the purpose of preventing a monopoly is, yet again, generally an economic one: to prevent price gouging or help out smaller competitors. Neither of those applies to FB.
- fahayekwasright 9y ago
  Hacker News is just as ideological as the NYT.
- tzm 9y ago
  Regulation is a form of consumer protection that provides where corporate policies fail. The data the FB owns is vastly more rich and personally identifiable than what NYT owns on its users. Hard to accept a comparison to NYT.
- pimmen 9y ago
  And I could retort; can you file a defamation suit towards Facebook for something their users did? Can you file a defamation suit against NYTIMES for something their reporters did?
TAForObvReasons 9y ago
> Facebook needs to be regulated more tightly, or broken up so that no single entity controls all of its data. What would a break-up of Facebook look like? The most famous modern example is the breakup of Bell, but the infrastructure lent itself to a natural geographical split. It's not entirely obvious if a geographic split would work for FB, and it's not entirely obvious along what planes one could split up the company.
- krrishd 9y ago
  Not necessarily related to the problems discussed by the article, but I could definitely see a logical split in terms of the non-Facebook.com platforms that Facebook has acquired (Instagram, Whatsapp, etc). Facebook being able to eat up any and every new form of social media is worrisome in its own right. This recent article in particular discusses some pretty solid points: https://stratechery.com/2017/why-facebook-shouldnt-be-allowed-to-buy-tbh/ https://stratechery.com/2017/why-facebook-shouldnt-be-allowe...
  - GCA10 9y ago
    During the U.S. government's long antitrust investigation of IBM (1969-1982) the company basically stopped making any acquisitions -- because it felt those were sure to be vetoed and to reinforce trust-busters' belief that something bad was afoot. A long-running antitrust probe of FB or other tech giants might have a similar chilling effect on growth plans, even if the case itself doesn't result in big changes.
- volgo 9y ago
  The most relevant example would be the break up of NBC / ABC [1] in the early days of broadcasting. They were simply split into two companies that do exactly the same thing, but were now natural competitors We could do the same with Facebook. Force them to segregate out different demographics (maybe by continent) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Red_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Red_Network
  - jabretti 9y ago
shmerl 9y ago
You can't force Facebook to be decentralized. Quit using it, and use real decentralized social networks. The point about trust is correct though. One surely should not trust Facebook.
Kequc 9y ago
Other people could make competitors, and more importantly, people who are using Facebook could switch. It happened to MySpace. Makes a lot more sense to me than turning it into a public utility or breaking it up anyway. Just stop using it, it really isn't that important.
- yequalsx 9y ago
  Facebook learned the lesson of MySpace; buy any competitor that looks like it's gaining traction. Facebook has the resources to engage in this strategy. It's going to be a lot harder to disrupt Facebook as a company than it was to disrupt MySpace. I'm not claiming this is a reason to regulate Facebook. Just that saying MySpace was disrupted is not a reason to not regulate Facebook.
  - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
    Facebook won't be able to buy up a distributed open-source p2p alternative.
    - pat2man 9y ago
      A p2p alternative isn't likely to be able to compete due to the massive income generated by Facebook's advertising platform.
      - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
        Not necessarily. For instance, Facebook still can't get rid of email.
      - xj9 9y ago
        actually, that's the point of p2p: it doesn't cost developers anything. I don't have to "win" at market share to make it either, just enough mass to develop a self-sustaining community of users and developers. I don't have to make a ton of money for it to be worth it either. my infrastructure costs are effectively zero, so I'm really paying for my time. I can use liberapay and crypto to take donations/tips, I can sell my expertise in p2p as a contractor, &c. the most important point is that I can keep going indefinitely as long as I don't get bored, because you can't outspend me if it doesn't cost me anything to keep going.
WallWextra 9y ago
Can we trust the New York Times to regulate itself either?
- SBArbeit 9y ago
  Yes. It has been for over a century. That's why they have editors, ombudsmen, etc.
  - empath75 9y ago
    They also have many competitors.
- shangxiao 9y ago
  I find this to be a legitimate question. At least in my country all news outlets have a political bias one way or another, including those run by the government itself. Is there something about NY times (I don't read it) that warrants a downvote on OP's comment?
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    Yes, the simple fact that it's not a de-facto monopoly with network effects.
cwyers 9y ago
The headline is probably right, but we can't trust the government to regulate it either and markets seem to be broken so there really aren't good options here.
ProAm 9y ago
Why does it need to be regulated? What ever happened to 'don't believe everything you read' and 'do your research'? No one has ever said Facebook holds anything remotely truthful, it's a social network. Your friends are not 100% honest or accurate. Same goes for Twitter, Reddit, Quora,...etc... It's always been a YMMV scenario, but for entertainment.
- stochastic_monk 9y ago
  The problem is that people trust their friends on facebook. How do you protect the people who can't use critical thinking to get answers? Using your reasoning, you might ask why it's bad to let vulnerable elderly individuals be hoodwinked out of their savings. What happened to their responsibility? It seems to me that the people as a body are incapable of managing themselves and so they need safeguards. (Wow, that makes me sound like a dictator.)
  - dvt 9y ago
    > Using your reasoning, you might ask why it's bad to let vulnerable elderly individuals be hoodwinked out of their savings. What happened to their responsibility? It's a bit different because in your case, we're actively reducing harm. You can't just say "censorship will fix it" or "oversight will fix it" unless we're talking about specific scenarios. Which is why, in general censorship and oversight doesn't really fix anything. This is also why laws are very detailed and specific. It would be nice to say "be good to one another" and be done with it.
    - stochastic_monk 9y ago
      I agree. It would take a very specific set of interventions. What could do good? A disclaimer every time you log in saying "Pro tip: get your news from reliable sources, not your facebook feed."? Are there any ways people could be prompted to do the right thing? The question is then: what can be done? Just because it's hard to know how to handle the problem doesn't mean we shouldn't try to.
  - ProAm 9y ago
blrgeek 9y ago
For splitting Facebook into face babies, look at p&l lines, geographic lines, what could become api boundaries,different apps, and different apps within fb wall. So one and more of WhatsApp vs Instagram vs fb vs messenger FB video vs FB ads vs fb news FB EU vs US vs India vs... FB identity vs fb communication vs fb ads There was no precursor to regulating standard oil in the last century, and no precursor to regulating Google, FB, Amazon, this century. Doesn't mean it's not warranted.
matchagaucho 9y ago
I worked at FB during the same time, and while I admire Sandy's sentiment in principle, this article is conflating what 3rd party Developers were doing with user data.... not FB. In fact, Zynga, and many other social gaming Developers, practically went out of business as FB started to enforce data usage policies.
- impossiblegame 9y ago
  So Facebook allowed some of their developers to run roughshod with users’ data while practically driving others out of business for doing the same? What differentiated the survivors?
- netsharc 9y ago
  But Facebook was allowing 3rd party developers access to a lot of data. I've even seen my profile on a 3rd party site where the developer said "Facebook granted me access.". It's like the NSA saying "We collect your information, but we have laws to prevent their abuse.". First you have to be caught, and then they'll punish you. There are no technical limitations. This is like someone like Equifax saying "Here's our database server credentials, but connecting to it or querying is illegal.".
  - matchagaucho 9y ago
    Review the app perms before opt-in. "This app is requesting access to Full Name, Email, Friends, etc..." FB trusted Developers to do the right thing with that data through T&Cs.
ihsw2 9y ago
And again, the big lie about Russia continues to propagate. It really is embarrassing.
CalChris 9y ago
Splitting Facebook into Face and Book will change nothing. Face will sell you out or Book will sell you out. Your choice. Instead, Facebook needs to be forced by regulators to become SafeBook. Zuckerberg will whine like a stuck pig. So be it.
randiantech 9y ago
I dont trust NYTIMES to regulate itself either, or any other major news outlet there. Or any oil company, or big food corporation, or any militar company. Or the department of defense. I just dont know what is the ideal solution ,but state regulation is not the answer. It looks very dangerous.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  I really wonder if the NYT does this piece to bargain a deal with facebook of some sort. Which kind of company calls for regulation on another company? The nerve! However, I do sympathize on how much facebook is getting from its network effected position. It looks impossible to dethrone. Same for google. I think the change has to come from how users deal with their own data. If you as a consumer had unlimited access to your data, you could potentially resell it to someone else, forcing facebook and the likes to compete on price. The key here is that the data has to be owned by the consumer, not by facebook itself.
- shrimpx 9y ago
  How do you distrust governments and Google, Apple, Facebook, Samsung, HTC, Verizon, Comcast, etc., while still using the internet meaningfully, or really, participate in society meaningfully? In the current climate pretty much everybody understands, on some level, that by using "the internet" you are letting unknown third parties create a market out of your private life at no compensation to you beyond access to their "service". Yet we all continue tapping away on our shiny screens. In many ways it's really a deplorable, unacceptable situation.
  - daveFNbuck 9y ago
    It sounds like you distrust these companies too while using the internet meaningfully. Distrusting someone doesn't necessarily mean you avoid any interaction with them at all.
  - aerotwelve 9y ago
    Everyone understands that letting third parties sell your personal data at no cost to you is what happens when you use the internet, but it doesn't have to be that way. With some meaningful regulation, we could put a stop to this overnight. The internet existed and flourished before this manipulative business model became the norm, and it would exist if we outlawed it. We wouldn't even need to outlaw it, just require explicit written consent to sell personal data. Can you imagine the ramifications? Once you eliminate the lazy, tired, and frankly intellectually barren model of "make a mediocre service that sucks enough personal data from our users so we can sell ads against them", startups could go back to designing products that solve interesting problems that people are willing to pay for!
Blazespinnaker 9y ago
Linked in is way more brutal than Facebook. I(and all my friends)can take fb or leave it, put any kind of random info / pictures. LinkedIn though.. I am stuck!
- collectively 9y ago
  What do you use LinkedIn for?
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  LinkedIn is less of a monopoly.
partiallypro 9y ago
There's nothing more on this earth that Google would want than to split up Facebook. Essentially destroying its biggest digital advertising competition. I don't trust Facebook or Google...but I also don't trust the government to regulate them (in the regard to the topic of this piece); or for government to be unduly influenced by either company's competitors trying to stifle the companies, or the possibility of limiting speech. There are so many things that can go wrong in getting government involved in this aspect.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mikro 9y ago
This reminds me of a recent TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...
wybiral 9y ago
A lot of the comments here seem to focus on the issue of regulating FB because of their social media output and potential for spreading fake news, etc. But the thing I would want more regulation on is their possession of personal data and the tools to target people using that data. The same applies to all similar advertising-first platforms. If all of this data and the tools to analyze it are as powerful as the data giants seem to suggest by their marketing and actions (given the increase in collection, storage, and analysis)... Then maybe we, as a society, need to have a conversation about that. And possibly regulation of some kind is an outcome of that conversation.
- fbonetti 9y ago
  Honest question: why is it a problem that Facebook has personal data and uses it in their advertising platform? No one is forced to give their data to Facebook. It's not a public utility. It's an entertainment site, first and foremost.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    I do see a problem that I dont know what data facebook has about me and how they are using it. If we consider that data to be part of your identity, there is no reason for facebook to have the exclusive access to it. I want it myself. By having it myself, I have the technical capacity to cut the middleman, which is better for me and for the advertisers that target me.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Supposedly you can download it[1], or ask for it if you don't have an account[2]. (This is not a defense of FB, only trying to be useful) [1] https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467/ https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467/ [2] https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/180237885820953 https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/180237885820953
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
akulbe 9y ago
Maybe FB does need regulation... I don't trust FB to do it. Obviously. I trust the government even less. There's got to be a better solution.
golergka 9y ago
Am I the only one who noticed a big flow of hit pieces on Facebook from papers like NYT and Guardian lately? The thing is, I actually agree with the overall message, and that's why such a change of heart from the media is so noticeable - I've been talking about this for years, and I never saw opinions like that in the MSM. But now it seems like there's an article like that every week on the HN front page. What happened?
- Tempest1981 9y ago
  Concern over Facebook being a powerful tool used to influence elections.
hishnash 9y ago
The issue I see with adding gov level regulation to Facebook (or any other media) is it very quickly becomes a tool for oppressive regimes. If Facebook builds in the tools so governments can control exactly what is posted on them then expect every single nation in the world to require access to these tools overnight. Even nations we might think of as being very condition of the right of their citizens have content they deem illegal and would if they could be required by their own laws to compel Facebook to let them control this. This, in the end, would not just be about public content but also about all private content, messages sent over FB messenger etc. Do we want a popover to show up next time we share a hypothetical "dick pick" with a 'lover' saying 'awaiting review from your local authorities'? God forbid you are on holiday/changing planes in a religious extream region of the world and find yourself carted off to jail for 10 years for this.
- te_chris 9y ago
  There's nothing stopping governments doing this already. Facebook operates financially within their jurisdiction the minute ad transactions with companies and citizens registerd in that territory happen. Governments can cut this off, and it would behove FB to get in front of this.
maix 9y ago
We should act
maix 9y ago
Fake news are dangerous !
saiya-jin 9y ago
jeez what a title... you can't trust company X to regulate itself, be it McDonald, Pepsi, Google or US government (which is for profit too, just in a bit different way)
lps41 9y ago
We need to regulate private data amassed by internet giants the same way we regulate data gathered by credit reporting agencies. The Fair Credit Reporting Act [1]: - regulates what data credit agencies can store, - mandates that people be able to access data about themselves, - mandates that third parties cannot access a person's data without the person's consent every single time, - mandates that people must be able to correct false information in their credit file, - mandates that people be able to place a "freeze" on uses of their credit data Each of these things translates quite nicely to private data that internet giants gather on us. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Reporting_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Reporting_Act
taway994 9y ago
My worry is MANY Facebook employees having access to key profile data and not all their data logs can be downloaded. For example, I know that a current employee accessed data on profiles I had viewed and shared it with another friend. Unclear how they secure PII and how such abuse can be reported.
Steeeve 9y ago
It's ridiculous to think that regulation is any sort of solution. It's even more ridiculous for somebody to suggest that in 2017 when we have such shining examples of altruistic heads of regulatory agencies. (Ajit Pai, Scott Pruitt, etc.) Someone is always going to be thinking about the bottom line, but come on now. Facebook isn't the only internet business that the russians used to influence people. Have you looked at reddit over the last 3 years? Any and every site with influence is going to get gamed by every government who has the bandwidth to play ball. You can't regulate your way around that. Look at how the Trump administration is currently using Twitter. Is that proper? no, but it's great for Twitter. Should they refuse to service him? Governments shouldn't be looked to for solutions. Government is TERRIBLE at solving any problems. If change is required or desired, you go about making change happen the good old fashioned way - by getting others to agree with you.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  > It's even more ridiculous for somebody to suggest that in 2017 when we have such shining examples of altruistic heads of regulatory agencies. (Ajit Pai, Scott Pruitt, etc.) The recent "regulate Facebook" furor (as seen near-daily at the NYT) seems to feed into a larger pattern of this. There are a lot of establishment-friendly, technocratic people who don't seem to have adjusted their worldviews to accommodate the last ~18 months. These are people who argued over the last eight years that we need the trustworthy, knowledgeable parts of government (roughly defined as "executive branch bureaucracies") to rein in the excesses of productive-yet-reckless businesses. And then Trump became president and appointed a string of regulatory heads who support entrenched businesses and oppose the existence of their own departments. And seemingly, no one noticed. Whether or not Tom Wheeler and Michelle Lee were qualified to regulate the tech sector, Ajit Pai and Andrei Iancu aren't. My opinions on regulation are not strictly libertarian. But I'm absolutely baffled by watching left-leaning voices work their hardest to empower grossly incompetent regulators who disagree with all of their goals.
SirensOfTitan 9y ago
I don't think we can break up Google or Facebook like AT&T or Standard Oil. The data economy requires new antitrust tools, which the Economist wrote about recently: "A break-up would be highly disruptive and slow down innovation. It is likely that a Googlet or a Babyface would quickly become dominant again."[1] Federated social networks will never catch on if they require more work from the user for likely less utility. Facebook is also nothing like MySpace. This comparison is tired: Facebook is orders of magnitude larger than MySpace ever was. It's not going to get squashed away by a competitor, especially given its ability (alongside Google, Amazon) to buy up would-be competitors while they're young. I also quite dislike the idea of regulating Facebook as a utility, as I dislike the idea of that tight coupling with government. Facebook quickly becomes a tool for coercion, propaganda, and oppression. There needs to be a new set of rules built around enforcing competition around the data economy. The real risk is that a couple small players completely shut the door to new competition (which leads to more improper use of data as a few players have all of it). Regulators need to get smarter about blocking mergers (like FB and WhatsApp). New rules, like enforcing data sharing, need to be explored (although this reveals a big risk for data privacy). [1]: https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21721634-how-it-shaping-up-data-giving-rise-new-economy https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21721634-how-it-shap...
- ethbro 9y ago
  > There needs to be a new set of rules built around enforcing competition around the data economy. Agreed. In the US, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the last major attempt at FCC rework. Our world looks nothing like 1996. My emphasis would be on a more utilized regulatory authority over two methods of entrenchment: (1) data & (2) cloud infrastructure. Service providers past a certain market share should be limited in how they're able to wield these against competition. If they choose to utilize either for their own, non-neutral services, they should be required to offer them to external parties under reasonable terms that allow for existential-caliber competition. I realize we failed at this with carriers, but I don't see how the alternative is anything other than a mono-, duo-, or tri-opoly that's able to simply buy any threat to its revenue before the company is able to scale.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
rdxm 9y ago
lol....gee, ya think!?!??!?
- sctb 9y ago
  We asked you not to post like this, so we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and commit to posting within guidelines in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
b0rsuk 9y ago
Of course you can't trust anyone to judge himself fairly. That's the definition of conflict of interest. I suppose USA has a soft spot for Facebook because the company it's one of their champions. It's a farce. It reminds me of church pedophilia in Poland. Various transgressions commited by priests are left for the Church to handle with its internal procedures. Which is usually just sweeping under the carpet, like moving a pedo priest to a different region. The faithful do their part - denial, and ostracism for people who criticize Church too loud.
varelse 9y ago
At the risk of falling prey to "WhatAboutism" it is hard for me to be concerned here when we give such free reign to credit agencies and other traditional corporate entities who can't be arsed to even keep their data secure. That has affected and inconvenienced me personally as opposed to the annoying buzz from the dumbasses who used to get their reality from a daily two hour hate from a minority of right-leaning pundits and who now thrive on fake news from Facebook and Twitter. Their pre-existing intellectual incuriosity is the root problem IMO, not the current medium on which they gorge their ignorance. And by the time the same clowns in Congress who think it's hunky dory to tax grad student tuition waivers craft anything to regulate Facebook, there will be a new and scarier kid on the block extracting and analyzing the information at a whole new unforeseen level. As others have said, large corporations are effectively the malevolent AIs Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking keep squawking about. Good luck with regulating that.
- existencebox 9y ago
  I'd typically be the first person to call you out on distracting from the core point, but in this case I agree wholeheartedly; I don't think you fall prey to the typical anti-patterns of whataboutism in that the broader context of American regulation and our prioritization of goals is very relevant to this discussion. The entire "Fake news" epidemic seems absurd to me. (and frankly, an intentional distraction) Tabloids have been around literally my entire life. The only difference now is that people apparently can no longer distinguish them from fact. (Not to mention as far back as our first presidents, you can find newspaper articles trumpeting that e.g. Jefferson was in a pact with Satan and his alcoholism would overturn the country. Somehow America prevailed then; what is different now.) Meanwhile, we have public schools in some states that can't afford more than 4 days a week, politicians for whom lying is absolutely a pathology with no one holding them accountable, and a literacy/numeracy rate far below many other first world countries. I have many thoughts on why this comes to pass but the cynic in me is focused heavily on that the incentives in the current system (for the current power-players at least) do not align with spending resources to have a highly educated population en-masse.
  - a235 9y ago
snvzz 9y ago
Facebook is an evil company that exists only to profit from harming society. Why not take over the domain name, dismantle the company and put its board on prison? That would make sense.
dqpb 9y ago
I would take this a step further and say we can't trust anyone to regulate anything. If it's not measurable and automateable, you can't trust it.

I could easily write a headline such as, "We can't trust the New York Times to regulate itself," and be just as misguided as the headline above, for the same reasons.

krrishd 9y ago
What are those reasons? Genuinely curious what you disagree with.
SapphireSun 9y ago
He's right. NYT flips from a reasonable centrist publication to a war monger at the first hint of fighting. How many bodies do they have on them from lending legitimacy to Afghanistan and Iraq let alone Vietnam?
beejamin 9y ago
It might be true that the NYT can't be trusted to regulate itself for the same reasons raised in the article - primarily that it has no incentive to do so, and lots of incentives not to. That said, I care a lot more about Facebook being properly regulated than I do about the NYT, simply because of the amount and scope of data that Facebook has.
blrgeek 9y ago
Actually both journalists and media are regulated. Perhaps you should address specifics of why regulation is not required in this case, rather than attack the messenger?
- nv-vn 9y ago
  By what regulations? They are allowed to publish pretty much anything other than libel.
  - makomk 9y ago
    Yeah, and the US definition of libel is incredibly narrow, especially for public figures. Basically, unless you can prove they intentionally lied, forget it. As the Rolling Stone demonstrated, they can go into a story with a pre-existing bias against the subject, skip normal journalistic checks, conceal from readers just how weak the story is and how much it relies on a single source, and say something false and damaging, and that's still not enough; the only thing they could be got on was the odd technicality of counting adding a note to the story after they knew it was wrong as republishing it.
duckMuppet 9y ago
I think this is a bad analogy.. The NYT is a left leaning paper, but people who have some intellectual honesty already know this.. Even if the Times went completely far far far left, they aren't the only game in town. I can choose to read any of a number of other papers, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist etc.. What alternative is there fire FB?? Mastodon.. Hubzilla..? They're great, if someone has the capability to run the service. I'd argue that most users can't be bothered to learn more than a chromebook let alone understand how to run their own server. When you have a monopoly like this, it either needs government regulation, ( which is generally bad because it tends to hurt other similar companies), or break them up, i think this is the ideal option, but i don't know in this case.. Break it up by forcing all their code to open source, of perhaps force them to run it more federated or diaspora like and mandating interoperability with these other services.. I'm not sure what the answer is. Of course the real answer is nobody has to use Facebook.. But for a lot of people, that's not an option they're interested in, and since fb literally have all the data, it likely needs regulation which i find very distasteful and terrifying.
- dvt 9y ago
  Why do we need to break up FB? That makes no sense to me. In previous antitrust cases, there was always the economic argument (to help out up-and-coming competitors or to prevent price gouging). But Snapchat clearly showed that new players can compete. Are we breaking them up because they have "too much information"? What does that even mean? A move like that would be beyond unprecedented.
  - volgo 9y ago
    The point for government to breakup anything is to prevent monopoly. NYTimes is far from a monopoly - there are tons of news site with more traffic. But there's no competitor that comes close to Facebook
    - dvt 9y ago
      And the purpose of preventing a monopoly is, yet again, generally an economic one: to prevent price gouging or help out smaller competitors. Neither of those applies to FB.
fahayekwasright 9y ago
Hacker News is just as ideological as the NYT.
tzm 9y ago
Regulation is a form of consumer protection that provides where corporate policies fail. The data the FB owns is vastly more rich and personally identifiable than what NYT owns on its users. Hard to accept a comparison to NYT.
pimmen 9y ago
And I could retort; can you file a defamation suit towards Facebook for something their users did? Can you file a defamation suit against NYTIMES for something their reporters did?

TAForObvReasons 9y ago

> Facebook needs to be regulated more tightly, or broken up so that no single entity controls all of its data. What would a break-up of Facebook look like? The most famous modern example is the breakup of Bell, but the infrastructure lent itself to a natural geographical split. It's not entirely obvious if a geographic split would work for FB, and it's not entirely obvious along what planes one could split up the company.

krrishd 9y ago
Not necessarily related to the problems discussed by the article, but I could definitely see a logical split in terms of the non-Facebook.com platforms that Facebook has acquired (Instagram, Whatsapp, etc). Facebook being able to eat up any and every new form of social media is worrisome in its own right. This recent article in particular discusses some pretty solid points: https://stratechery.com/2017/why-facebook-shouldnt-be-allowed-to-buy-tbh/ https://stratechery.com/2017/why-facebook-shouldnt-be-allowe...
- GCA10 9y ago
  During the U.S. government's long antitrust investigation of IBM (1969-1982) the company basically stopped making any acquisitions -- because it felt those were sure to be vetoed and to reinforce trust-busters' belief that something bad was afoot. A long-running antitrust probe of FB or other tech giants might have a similar chilling effect on growth plans, even if the case itself doesn't result in big changes.
volgo 9y ago
The most relevant example would be the break up of NBC / ABC [1] in the early days of broadcasting. They were simply split into two companies that do exactly the same thing, but were now natural competitors We could do the same with Facebook. Force them to segregate out different demographics (maybe by continent) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Red_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Red_Network
- jabretti 9y ago

shmerl 9y ago

You can't force Facebook to be decentralized. Quit using it, and use real decentralized social networks. The point about trust is correct though. One surely should not trust Facebook.

Kequc 9y ago

Other people could make competitors, and more importantly, people who are using Facebook could switch. It happened to MySpace. Makes a lot more sense to me than turning it into a public utility or breaking it up anyway. Just stop using it, it really isn't that important.

yequalsx 9y ago
Facebook learned the lesson of MySpace; buy any competitor that looks like it's gaining traction. Facebook has the resources to engage in this strategy. It's going to be a lot harder to disrupt Facebook as a company than it was to disrupt MySpace. I'm not claiming this is a reason to regulate Facebook. Just that saying MySpace was disrupted is not a reason to not regulate Facebook.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  Facebook won't be able to buy up a distributed open-source p2p alternative.
  - pat2man 9y ago
    A p2p alternative isn't likely to be able to compete due to the massive income generated by Facebook's advertising platform.
    - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
      Not necessarily. For instance, Facebook still can't get rid of email.
    - xj9 9y ago
      actually, that's the point of p2p: it doesn't cost developers anything. I don't have to "win" at market share to make it either, just enough mass to develop a self-sustaining community of users and developers. I don't have to make a ton of money for it to be worth it either. my infrastructure costs are effectively zero, so I'm really paying for my time. I can use liberapay and crypto to take donations/tips, I can sell my expertise in p2p as a contractor, &c. the most important point is that I can keep going indefinitely as long as I don't get bored, because you can't outspend me if it doesn't cost me anything to keep going.

WallWextra 9y ago

Can we trust the New York Times to regulate itself either?

SBArbeit 9y ago
Yes. It has been for over a century. That's why they have editors, ombudsmen, etc.
- empath75 9y ago
  They also have many competitors.
shangxiao 9y ago
I find this to be a legitimate question. At least in my country all news outlets have a political bias one way or another, including those run by the government itself. Is there something about NY times (I don't read it) that warrants a downvote on OP's comment?
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  Yes, the simple fact that it's not a de-facto monopoly with network effects.

cwyers 9y ago

The headline is probably right, but we can't trust the government to regulate it either and markets seem to be broken so there really aren't good options here.

ProAm 9y ago

Why does it need to be regulated? What ever happened to 'don't believe everything you read' and 'do your research'? No one has ever said Facebook holds anything remotely truthful, it's a social network. Your friends are not 100% honest or accurate. Same goes for Twitter, Reddit, Quora,...etc... It's always been a YMMV scenario, but for entertainment.

stochastic_monk 9y ago
The problem is that people trust their friends on facebook. How do you protect the people who can't use critical thinking to get answers? Using your reasoning, you might ask why it's bad to let vulnerable elderly individuals be hoodwinked out of their savings. What happened to their responsibility? It seems to me that the people as a body are incapable of managing themselves and so they need safeguards. (Wow, that makes me sound like a dictator.)
- dvt 9y ago
  > Using your reasoning, you might ask why it's bad to let vulnerable elderly individuals be hoodwinked out of their savings. What happened to their responsibility? It's a bit different because in your case, we're actively reducing harm. You can't just say "censorship will fix it" or "oversight will fix it" unless we're talking about specific scenarios. Which is why, in general censorship and oversight doesn't really fix anything. This is also why laws are very detailed and specific. It would be nice to say "be good to one another" and be done with it.
  - stochastic_monk 9y ago
    I agree. It would take a very specific set of interventions. What could do good? A disclaimer every time you log in saying "Pro tip: get your news from reliable sources, not your facebook feed."? Are there any ways people could be prompted to do the right thing? The question is then: what can be done? Just because it's hard to know how to handle the problem doesn't mean we shouldn't try to.
- ProAm 9y ago

blrgeek 9y ago

For splitting Facebook into face babies, look at p&l lines, geographic lines, what could become api boundaries,different apps, and different apps within fb wall. So one and more of WhatsApp vs Instagram vs fb vs messenger FB video vs FB ads vs fb news FB EU vs US vs India vs... FB identity vs fb communication vs fb ads There was no precursor to regulating standard oil in the last century, and no precursor to regulating Google, FB, Amazon, this century. Doesn't mean it's not warranted.

matchagaucho 9y ago

I worked at FB during the same time, and while I admire Sandy's sentiment in principle, this article is conflating what 3rd party Developers were doing with user data.... not FB. In fact, Zynga, and many other social gaming Developers, practically went out of business as FB started to enforce data usage policies.

impossiblegame 9y ago
So Facebook allowed some of their developers to run roughshod with users’ data while practically driving others out of business for doing the same? What differentiated the survivors?
netsharc 9y ago
But Facebook was allowing 3rd party developers access to a lot of data. I've even seen my profile on a 3rd party site where the developer said "Facebook granted me access.". It's like the NSA saying "We collect your information, but we have laws to prevent their abuse.". First you have to be caught, and then they'll punish you. There are no technical limitations. This is like someone like Equifax saying "Here's our database server credentials, but connecting to it or querying is illegal.".
- matchagaucho 9y ago
  Review the app perms before opt-in. "This app is requesting access to Full Name, Email, Friends, etc..." FB trusted Developers to do the right thing with that data through T&Cs.

ihsw2 9y ago

And again, the big lie about Russia continues to propagate. It really is embarrassing.

CalChris 9y ago

Splitting Facebook into Face and Book will change nothing. Face will sell you out or Book will sell you out. Your choice. Instead, Facebook needs to be forced by regulators to become SafeBook. Zuckerberg will whine like a stuck pig. So be it.

randiantech 9y ago

I dont trust NYTIMES to regulate itself either, or any other major news outlet there. Or any oil company, or big food corporation, or any militar company. Or the department of defense. I just dont know what is the ideal solution ,but state regulation is not the answer. It looks very dangerous.

conanbatt 9y ago
I really wonder if the NYT does this piece to bargain a deal with facebook of some sort. Which kind of company calls for regulation on another company? The nerve! However, I do sympathize on how much facebook is getting from its network effected position. It looks impossible to dethrone. Same for google. I think the change has to come from how users deal with their own data. If you as a consumer had unlimited access to your data, you could potentially resell it to someone else, forcing facebook and the likes to compete on price. The key here is that the data has to be owned by the consumer, not by facebook itself.
shrimpx 9y ago
How do you distrust governments and Google, Apple, Facebook, Samsung, HTC, Verizon, Comcast, etc., while still using the internet meaningfully, or really, participate in society meaningfully? In the current climate pretty much everybody understands, on some level, that by using "the internet" you are letting unknown third parties create a market out of your private life at no compensation to you beyond access to their "service". Yet we all continue tapping away on our shiny screens. In many ways it's really a deplorable, unacceptable situation.
- daveFNbuck 9y ago
  It sounds like you distrust these companies too while using the internet meaningfully. Distrusting someone doesn't necessarily mean you avoid any interaction with them at all.
- aerotwelve 9y ago
  Everyone understands that letting third parties sell your personal data at no cost to you is what happens when you use the internet, but it doesn't have to be that way. With some meaningful regulation, we could put a stop to this overnight. The internet existed and flourished before this manipulative business model became the norm, and it would exist if we outlawed it. We wouldn't even need to outlaw it, just require explicit written consent to sell personal data. Can you imagine the ramifications? Once you eliminate the lazy, tired, and frankly intellectually barren model of "make a mediocre service that sucks enough personal data from our users so we can sell ads against them", startups could go back to designing products that solve interesting problems that people are willing to pay for!

Blazespinnaker 9y ago

Linked in is way more brutal than Facebook. I(and all my friends)can take fb or leave it, put any kind of random info / pictures. LinkedIn though.. I am stuck!

collectively 9y ago
What do you use LinkedIn for?
adamnemecek 9y ago
LinkedIn is less of a monopoly.

partiallypro 9y ago

There's nothing more on this earth that Google would want than to split up Facebook. Essentially destroying its biggest digital advertising competition. I don't trust Facebook or Google...but I also don't trust the government to regulate them (in the regard to the topic of this piece); or for government to be unduly influenced by either company's competitors trying to stifle the companies, or the possibility of limiting speech. There are so many things that can go wrong in getting government involved in this aspect.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

mikro 9y ago

This reminds me of a recent TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...

wybiral 9y ago

A lot of the comments here seem to focus on the issue of regulating FB because of their social media output and potential for spreading fake news, etc. But the thing I would want more regulation on is their possession of personal data and the tools to target people using that data. The same applies to all similar advertising-first platforms. If all of this data and the tools to analyze it are as powerful as the data giants seem to suggest by their marketing and actions (given the increase in collection, storage, and analysis)... Then maybe we, as a society, need to have a conversation about that. And possibly regulation of some kind is an outcome of that conversation.

fbonetti 9y ago
Honest question: why is it a problem that Facebook has personal data and uses it in their advertising platform? No one is forced to give their data to Facebook. It's not a public utility. It's an entertainment site, first and foremost.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  I do see a problem that I dont know what data facebook has about me and how they are using it. If we consider that data to be part of your identity, there is no reason for facebook to have the exclusive access to it. I want it myself. By having it myself, I have the technical capacity to cut the middleman, which is better for me and for the advertisers that target me.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Supposedly you can download it[1], or ask for it if you don't have an account[2]. (This is not a defense of FB, only trying to be useful) [1] https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467/ https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467/ [2] https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/180237885820953 https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/180237885820953
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

akulbe 9y ago

Maybe FB does need regulation... I don't trust FB to do it. Obviously. I trust the government even less. There's got to be a better solution.

golergka 9y ago

Am I the only one who noticed a big flow of hit pieces on Facebook from papers like NYT and Guardian lately? The thing is, I actually agree with the overall message, and that's why such a change of heart from the media is so noticeable - I've been talking about this for years, and I never saw opinions like that in the MSM. But now it seems like there's an article like that every week on the HN front page. What happened?

Tempest1981 9y ago
Concern over Facebook being a powerful tool used to influence elections.

hishnash 9y ago

The issue I see with adding gov level regulation to Facebook (or any other media) is it very quickly becomes a tool for oppressive regimes. If Facebook builds in the tools so governments can control exactly what is posted on them then expect every single nation in the world to require access to these tools overnight. Even nations we might think of as being very condition of the right of their citizens have content they deem illegal and would if they could be required by their own laws to compel Facebook to let them control this. This, in the end, would not just be about public content but also about all private content, messages sent over FB messenger etc. Do we want a popover to show up next time we share a hypothetical "dick pick" with a 'lover' saying 'awaiting review from your local authorities'? God forbid you are on holiday/changing planes in a religious extream region of the world and find yourself carted off to jail for 10 years for this.

te_chris 9y ago
There's nothing stopping governments doing this already. Facebook operates financially within their jurisdiction the minute ad transactions with companies and citizens registerd in that territory happen. Governments can cut this off, and it would behove FB to get in front of this.

maix 9y ago

We should act

maix 9y ago

Fake news are dangerous !

saiya-jin 9y ago

jeez what a title... you can't trust company X to regulate itself, be it McDonald, Pepsi, Google or US government (which is for profit too, just in a bit different way)

lps41 9y ago

We need to regulate private data amassed by internet giants the same way we regulate data gathered by credit reporting agencies. The Fair Credit Reporting Act [1]: - regulates what data credit agencies can store, - mandates that people be able to access data about themselves, - mandates that third parties cannot access a person's data without the person's consent every single time, - mandates that people must be able to correct false information in their credit file, - mandates that people be able to place a "freeze" on uses of their credit data Each of these things translates quite nicely to private data that internet giants gather on us. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Reporting_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Reporting_Act

taway994 9y ago

My worry is MANY Facebook employees having access to key profile data and not all their data logs can be downloaded. For example, I know that a current employee accessed data on profiles I had viewed and shared it with another friend. Unclear how they secure PII and how such abuse can be reported.

Steeeve 9y ago

It's ridiculous to think that regulation is any sort of solution. It's even more ridiculous for somebody to suggest that in 2017 when we have such shining examples of altruistic heads of regulatory agencies. (Ajit Pai, Scott Pruitt, etc.) Someone is always going to be thinking about the bottom line, but come on now. Facebook isn't the only internet business that the russians used to influence people. Have you looked at reddit over the last 3 years? Any and every site with influence is going to get gamed by every government who has the bandwidth to play ball. You can't regulate your way around that. Look at how the Trump administration is currently using Twitter. Is that proper? no, but it's great for Twitter. Should they refuse to service him? Governments shouldn't be looked to for solutions. Government is TERRIBLE at solving any problems. If change is required or desired, you go about making change happen the good old fashioned way - by getting others to agree with you.

Bartweiss 9y ago
> It's even more ridiculous for somebody to suggest that in 2017 when we have such shining examples of altruistic heads of regulatory agencies. (Ajit Pai, Scott Pruitt, etc.) The recent "regulate Facebook" furor (as seen near-daily at the NYT) seems to feed into a larger pattern of this. There are a lot of establishment-friendly, technocratic people who don't seem to have adjusted their worldviews to accommodate the last ~18 months. These are people who argued over the last eight years that we need the trustworthy, knowledgeable parts of government (roughly defined as "executive branch bureaucracies") to rein in the excesses of productive-yet-reckless businesses. And then Trump became president and appointed a string of regulatory heads who support entrenched businesses and oppose the existence of their own departments. And seemingly, no one noticed. Whether or not Tom Wheeler and Michelle Lee were qualified to regulate the tech sector, Ajit Pai and Andrei Iancu aren't. My opinions on regulation are not strictly libertarian. But I'm absolutely baffled by watching left-leaning voices work their hardest to empower grossly incompetent regulators who disagree with all of their goals.

SirensOfTitan 9y ago

I don't think we can break up Google or Facebook like AT&T or Standard Oil. The data economy requires new antitrust tools, which the Economist wrote about recently: "A break-up would be highly disruptive and slow down innovation. It is likely that a Googlet or a Babyface would quickly become dominant again."[1] Federated social networks will never catch on if they require more work from the user for likely less utility. Facebook is also nothing like MySpace. This comparison is tired: Facebook is orders of magnitude larger than MySpace ever was. It's not going to get squashed away by a competitor, especially given its ability (alongside Google, Amazon) to buy up would-be competitors while they're young. I also quite dislike the idea of regulating Facebook as a utility, as I dislike the idea of that tight coupling with government. Facebook quickly becomes a tool for coercion, propaganda, and oppression. There needs to be a new set of rules built around enforcing competition around the data economy. The real risk is that a couple small players completely shut the door to new competition (which leads to more improper use of data as a few players have all of it). Regulators need to get smarter about blocking mergers (like FB and WhatsApp). New rules, like enforcing data sharing, need to be explored (although this reveals a big risk for data privacy). [1]: https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21721634-how-it-shaping-up-data-giving-rise-new-economy https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21721634-how-it-shap...

ethbro 9y ago
> There needs to be a new set of rules built around enforcing competition around the data economy. Agreed. In the US, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the last major attempt at FCC rework. Our world looks nothing like 1996. My emphasis would be on a more utilized regulatory authority over two methods of entrenchment: (1) data & (2) cloud infrastructure. Service providers past a certain market share should be limited in how they're able to wield these against competition. If they choose to utilize either for their own, non-neutral services, they should be required to offer them to external parties under reasonable terms that allow for existential-caliber competition. I realize we failed at this with carriers, but I don't see how the alternative is anything other than a mono-, duo-, or tri-opoly that's able to simply buy any threat to its revenue before the company is able to scale.
wu-ikkyu 9y ago

rdxm 9y ago

lol....gee, ya think!?!??!?

sctb 9y ago
We asked you not to post like this, so we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and commit to posting within guidelines in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

b0rsuk 9y ago

Of course you can't trust anyone to judge himself fairly. That's the definition of conflict of interest. I suppose USA has a soft spot for Facebook because the company it's one of their champions. It's a farce. It reminds me of church pedophilia in Poland. Various transgressions commited by priests are left for the Church to handle with its internal procedures. Which is usually just sweeping under the carpet, like moving a pedo priest to a different region. The faithful do their part - denial, and ostracism for people who criticize Church too loud.

varelse 9y ago

At the risk of falling prey to "WhatAboutism" it is hard for me to be concerned here when we give such free reign to credit agencies and other traditional corporate entities who can't be arsed to even keep their data secure. That has affected and inconvenienced me personally as opposed to the annoying buzz from the dumbasses who used to get their reality from a daily two hour hate from a minority of right-leaning pundits and who now thrive on fake news from Facebook and Twitter. Their pre-existing intellectual incuriosity is the root problem IMO, not the current medium on which they gorge their ignorance. And by the time the same clowns in Congress who think it's hunky dory to tax grad student tuition waivers craft anything to regulate Facebook, there will be a new and scarier kid on the block extracting and analyzing the information at a whole new unforeseen level. As others have said, large corporations are effectively the malevolent AIs Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking keep squawking about. Good luck with regulating that.

existencebox 9y ago
I'd typically be the first person to call you out on distracting from the core point, but in this case I agree wholeheartedly; I don't think you fall prey to the typical anti-patterns of whataboutism in that the broader context of American regulation and our prioritization of goals is very relevant to this discussion. The entire "Fake news" epidemic seems absurd to me. (and frankly, an intentional distraction) Tabloids have been around literally my entire life. The only difference now is that people apparently can no longer distinguish them from fact. (Not to mention as far back as our first presidents, you can find newspaper articles trumpeting that e.g. Jefferson was in a pact with Satan and his alcoholism would overturn the country. Somehow America prevailed then; what is different now.) Meanwhile, we have public schools in some states that can't afford more than 4 days a week, politicians for whom lying is absolutely a pathology with no one holding them accountable, and a literacy/numeracy rate far below many other first world countries. I have many thoughts on why this comes to pass but the cynic in me is focused heavily on that the incentives in the current system (for the current power-players at least) do not align with spending resources to have a highly educated population en-masse.
- a235 9y ago

snvzz 9y ago

Facebook is an evil company that exists only to profit from harming society. Why not take over the domain name, dismantle the company and put its board on prison? That would make sense.

dqpb 9y ago

I would take this a step further and say we can't trust anyone to regulate anything. If it's not measurable and automateable, you can't trust it.