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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 re

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?

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?