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Normal is however things are/were. Atm, the norms are whatever environment Google, FB, etc. grew up under, over the last decade. Before that, it was even more

Normal is however things are/were. Atm, the norms are whatever environment Google, FB, etc. grew up under, over the last decade. Before that, it was even more anarchic. Before that, the internet didn't exist. Global-scale many-to-many media and communications didn't exist. I don't understand the desire to argue for an internet descibed by analogy to phone or radio or somesuch. The comparison isn't that strong, and the outcome is not desirable. The internet exposed the flaws in those, if anything has informed anything. Is this devils' advocacy? I do understand incumbents. They're safer and more protected the more rules get made. I understand politicians who are trying to deal with some other problem (financing terrorism, child porn), and don't understand or care about side effects. I understand the naive public, who just want their leaders to just solve these problems they keep taalking about. I understand judges ruling on specific cases, without regard (not their job) for the delay facto policy implications. The HN-er who wants an internet rulebook, I don't get it.

alkonaut 9y ago
> Before that, it was even more anarchic. Before that, the internet didn't exist. Bulk data collection and massive privacy invasions weren't a problem, that's what I'm saying. > I don't understand the desire to argue for an internet descibed by analogy to phone or radio or somesuch Not sure that's what I did, but I'm definitely saying that states should be able to regulate/taxate all business, and internet business can't be excluded. > The HN-er who wants an internet rulebook, I don't get it. Not sure what your argument is, nor what you thought my argument was. The article is about a company (in this case Google) facing legal action for doing something that was (possibly) against a law somewhere. I think it sounds completely reasonable that this is possible.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  I was commenting in the context of of the discussion, the article and the commentary (yours and the ones further up). >>It's going to become increasingly expensive and politically complex to operate an Internet company at Internet scale. ...something something, incumbents will be fine. Like financial services, old media and other markets, the internet is at risk of becoming inaccessible in large part to upstart initiatives, commercial or noncommercial.
- freeflight 9y ago
  > Bulk data collection and massive privacy invasions weren't a problem, that's what I'm saying. That's quite debatable, from Stasi methods to NSA trying to collect bulk phone calls, there've been plenty of examples for bulk data collections and massive privacy invasions predating social media and the Internet. 20 years ago nobody cared much what information you shared about yourself on the www, as it wasn't monetized, barely anything was as many users back then had been hoping for something like a "post-privacy society" to emerge. The problems started when companies wanted to commercialize the www, que ad-revenue economy and massive aggregation of personal information on-top of that. Creating a situation where monolithic companies and governments suddenly have a very similar goal: Categorizing and collecting "people" in every imaginable way. Facebook is pretty much building a database of all the people of the world, governments have struggled to build something like that, on a national scale, for far longer and regularly failed. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised about shady backroom deals along the lines of "We let you get away with breaking this immensely complex legal framework if you give us access to your database of phone numbers/selfies/whatever" actually being a thing.

alkonaut 9y ago

> Before that, it was even more anarchic. Before that, the internet didn't exist. Bulk data collection and massive privacy invasions weren't a problem, that's what I'm saying. > I don't understand the desire to argue for an internet descibed by analogy to phone or radio or somesuch Not sure that's what I did, but I'm definitely saying that states should be able to regulate/taxate all business, and internet business can't be excluded. > The HN-er who wants an internet rulebook, I don't get it. Not sure what your argument is, nor what you thought my argument was. The article is about a company (in this case Google) facing legal action for doing something that was (possibly) against a law somewhere. I think it sounds completely reasonable that this is possible.

dalbasal 9y ago
I was commenting in the context of of the discussion, the article and the commentary (yours and the ones further up). >>It's going to become increasingly expensive and politically complex to operate an Internet company at Internet scale. ...something something, incumbents will be fine. Like financial services, old media and other markets, the internet is at risk of becoming inaccessible in large part to upstart initiatives, commercial or noncommercial.
freeflight 9y ago
> Bulk data collection and massive privacy invasions weren't a problem, that's what I'm saying. That's quite debatable, from Stasi methods to NSA trying to collect bulk phone calls, there've been plenty of examples for bulk data collections and massive privacy invasions predating social media and the Internet. 20 years ago nobody cared much what information you shared about yourself on the www, as it wasn't monetized, barely anything was as many users back then had been hoping for something like a "post-privacy society" to emerge. The problems started when companies wanted to commercialize the www, que ad-revenue economy and massive aggregation of personal information on-top of that. Creating a situation where monolithic companies and governments suddenly have a very similar goal: Categorizing and collecting "people" in every imaginable way. Facebook is pretty much building a database of all the people of the world, governments have struggled to build something like that, on a national scale, for far longer and regularly failed. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised about shady backroom deals along the lines of "We let you get away with breaking this immensely complex legal framework if you give us access to your database of phone numbers/selfies/whatever" actually being a thing.