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There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands

There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands the more users they will drive away and the more radical the demands on them will become. Hopefully this intensifies their downward spiral into irrelevance.

yakitori 9y ago
> There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands the more users they will drive away and the more radical the demands on them will become. Yep. This is why FB, GOOGL, etc needed to be "neutral". The day they caved in is the day their "promise" ended. The demands of censorship will continue. FB is deluding themselves if they think this is a one time deal. And not only that, other countries will start barring FB/GOOGL/etc when it becomes apparent that they are essentially biased political tools.
- KaoruAoiShiho 9y ago
  We're not yet in some cyberpunk world of sovereign corporations (not sure I'd prefer that anyway). Companies work within the political control of nation states. Dismantle state power if you want what you say to be possible, as it is it's just not.
  - saas_co_de 9y ago
    It seems that we are in the cyberpunk world of sovereign corporations when it comes to tax avoidance but not when it comes to free speech, so take from that what you will.
- superioritycplx 9y ago
  GOOGL caved in when Eric Schmidt joined Hillary's camp. http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric-schmidt-relationship-with-clintons-2016-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric-...
- jpalomaki 9y ago
  Is it possible to be "neutral" and yet keep sensible limits for what is allowed and what is not? Enforcing the rules is not straightforward and different parties tend to view things differently. Somebody sees hate speech, someone else valid criticism.
- zionic 9y ago
  IMO, the solution to this is to develop FOSS platforms that run similar to a mesh network, yet to the common user look like an app or a website. Russia can't direct "BitTorrent" to do something. And really, it seems like social networks are perfect for these kinds of swarm P2P systems where the protocol is some evolving standard and various clients can interact with it.
  - codedokode 9y ago
    I am not sure if Russia can ban BitTorrent, but sure they can ban a website or an app in App Store.
  - davidcbc 9y ago
    How are you going to get people to use your platform? That's the problem with all of these "Facebook but better!" ideas, the killer feature of a social network is the people and Facebook has them.
nradov 9y ago
There's no technical reason why Facebook can't present different views and filters on the same underlying data depending on which country an HTTP request comes from. Personally I find that kind of collaboration with censorship disturbing, but they clearly have the engineering talent and financial motivation to make it work. I doubt this will drive many users away. Most people just don't care. And most users' friends are in the same country so they'll still have consistent experiences.
- achamayou 9y ago
  That's the way map services already work in some cases, showing the commonly accepted borders and area names based on the user's detected location.
- solatic 9y ago
  (IANAL) To make that really work, you need to collate data from different databases located in different sovereignties. If somebody is on an American sanctions list, then Facebook USA making an account for that person on a database located on American soil violates the sanctions. That American citizens can't see the relevant account's data is irrelevant; if anything, it could actually amount to obstruction of justice if American investigators have a warrant to see the relevant data on an American server and it does not appear in the investigator's UI despite the warrant. The way to solve that is to have different legal entities own different sets of data that exist under different sovereignties and then draw upon the data from each sovereignty through established (although potentially entirely private to Facebook and its foreign subsidiaries operating the foreign servers) protocols.
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  That is not what is described in this article though. What is happening here is that Facebook is banning the accounts of political leaders in other countries at the behest of the US and Israel in order to disrupt the organizing efforts of those leaders with their own people. This has nothing to do with restricting what content is available in the US or Israel but is basically an act of war to disrupt the communications of a foreign enemy.
- bendews 9y ago
pjc50 9y ago
There may be no way to satisfy the demands, and countries will ban companies that don't comply. It's not a new problem; here's a 2003 article about Microsoft having trouble due to shipping a timezone map. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42823 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=...
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  > countries will ban companies that don't comply Not really. China and Russia are the only countries in the world with the political will to ban a company like Facebook or Google where the market actually matters. The US gov has no legal authority to ban anything. If you fold to them it is just because you are weak and scared or greedy for whatever the are offering you.
  - codedokode 9y ago
    US Govt doesn't need to ban anything because most of IT companies are in their jurisdiction and they can use a court.
    - saas_co_de 9y ago
      Use a court for what? We have a thing called a constitution with free speech rights here. The govt gets nothing by going to court. They get what they want by intimidation, threats and bribes. When someone in the US govt wants something from Google or Facebook they go to them and remind them about anti-trust law and the FTC and tell them that if they do what they are told they will have people in secret committees telling congressmen and senators that they are vital to national security and to leave them alone.
      - vfulco 9y ago
        A country I live in has a constitution with free speech, freedom of assembly and the press. When someone attempts to use those freedoms, they and their lawyers disappear. It's not worth the paper it's written on.
monaghanboy 9y ago
I haven't been on Facebook in over a decade; I didn't see that it had any positive effect on my life (quite the contrary), and I'm definitely not impressed by their lack of social conscience. Despite the excessive pay and "pedigree" that working for them would offer, I'd never do it. I hope that a growing number of people from my and future generations will think the same.
- cloakandswagger 9y ago
  Within my circles there has been a marked decrease in the perceived prestige of an engineering job at Facebook over the past few years. I'm sure it still requires a huge amount of talent and isn't lacking in meaty, difficult problems, but the core product just seems so unimportant.
  - monaghanboy 9y ago
    Have you found any meaningful correlation between "talent" (engineering or otherwise) and tenure at a well-known tech company? From my experience, and based on people I know that work at Facebook, e.g., getting your foot in the door is just a matter of studying medium/hard-level problems on Leetcode (speaking verbatim here). I'm not sure you need a strong foundation in systems programming or design, or even a strong track record of building great software to get hired at these kinds of companies. The metric is mostly Leetcode; it's for efficiency I guess, because of the sheer number of applicants. I've also worked closely with a few people from such companies. I'd say only one was a great engineer. And he definitely didn't have a high opinion of his former co-workers. The one company whose engineers I'd probably give the benefit of the doubt would be Netflix, because they're so intentional about "performance".
    - cloakandswagger 9y ago
      In my mind, that does apply when you're talking about entry level software development positions. If someone is an SDE1 (or equivalent) at Facebook/Google/Amazon, I assume they're smart, determined and they studied a lot for the standard whiteboard interview. If someone is a senior engineer at one of those companies, I assume they have a reasonable amount of talent. It's not easy to fake it or avoid expectations as a senior engineer.

yakitori 9y ago

> There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands the more users they will drive away and the more radical the demands on them will become. Yep. This is why FB, GOOGL, etc needed to be "neutral". The day they caved in is the day their "promise" ended. The demands of censorship will continue. FB is deluding themselves if they think this is a one time deal. And not only that, other countries will start barring FB/GOOGL/etc when it becomes apparent that they are essentially biased political tools.

KaoruAoiShiho 9y ago
We're not yet in some cyberpunk world of sovereign corporations (not sure I'd prefer that anyway). Companies work within the political control of nation states. Dismantle state power if you want what you say to be possible, as it is it's just not.
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  It seems that we are in the cyberpunk world of sovereign corporations when it comes to tax avoidance but not when it comes to free speech, so take from that what you will.
superioritycplx 9y ago
GOOGL caved in when Eric Schmidt joined Hillary's camp. http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric-schmidt-relationship-with-clintons-2016-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric-...
jpalomaki 9y ago
Is it possible to be "neutral" and yet keep sensible limits for what is allowed and what is not? Enforcing the rules is not straightforward and different parties tend to view things differently. Somebody sees hate speech, someone else valid criticism.
zionic 9y ago
IMO, the solution to this is to develop FOSS platforms that run similar to a mesh network, yet to the common user look like an app or a website. Russia can't direct "BitTorrent" to do something. And really, it seems like social networks are perfect for these kinds of swarm P2P systems where the protocol is some evolving standard and various clients can interact with it.
- codedokode 9y ago
  I am not sure if Russia can ban BitTorrent, but sure they can ban a website or an app in App Store.
- davidcbc 9y ago
  How are you going to get people to use your platform? That's the problem with all of these "Facebook but better!" ideas, the killer feature of a social network is the people and Facebook has them.

nradov 9y ago

There's no technical reason why Facebook can't present different views and filters on the same underlying data depending on which country an HTTP request comes from. Personally I find that kind of collaboration with censorship disturbing, but they clearly have the engineering talent and financial motivation to make it work. I doubt this will drive many users away. Most people just don't care. And most users' friends are in the same country so they'll still have consistent experiences.

achamayou 9y ago
That's the way map services already work in some cases, showing the commonly accepted borders and area names based on the user's detected location.
solatic 9y ago
(IANAL) To make that really work, you need to collate data from different databases located in different sovereignties. If somebody is on an American sanctions list, then Facebook USA making an account for that person on a database located on American soil violates the sanctions. That American citizens can't see the relevant account's data is irrelevant; if anything, it could actually amount to obstruction of justice if American investigators have a warrant to see the relevant data on an American server and it does not appear in the investigator's UI despite the warrant. The way to solve that is to have different legal entities own different sets of data that exist under different sovereignties and then draw upon the data from each sovereignty through established (although potentially entirely private to Facebook and its foreign subsidiaries operating the foreign servers) protocols.
saas_co_de 9y ago
That is not what is described in this article though. What is happening here is that Facebook is banning the accounts of political leaders in other countries at the behest of the US and Israel in order to disrupt the organizing efforts of those leaders with their own people. This has nothing to do with restricting what content is available in the US or Israel but is basically an act of war to disrupt the communications of a foreign enemy.
bendews 9y ago

pjc50 9y ago

There may be no way to satisfy the demands, and countries will ban companies that don't comply. It's not a new problem; here's a 2003 article about Microsoft having trouble due to shipping a timezone map. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42823 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=...

saas_co_de 9y ago
> countries will ban companies that don't comply Not really. China and Russia are the only countries in the world with the political will to ban a company like Facebook or Google where the market actually matters. The US gov has no legal authority to ban anything. If you fold to them it is just because you are weak and scared or greedy for whatever the are offering you.
- codedokode 9y ago
  US Govt doesn't need to ban anything because most of IT companies are in their jurisdiction and they can use a court.
  - saas_co_de 9y ago
    Use a court for what? We have a thing called a constitution with free speech rights here. The govt gets nothing by going to court. They get what they want by intimidation, threats and bribes. When someone in the US govt wants something from Google or Facebook they go to them and remind them about anti-trust law and the FTC and tell them that if they do what they are told they will have people in secret committees telling congressmen and senators that they are vital to national security and to leave them alone.
    - vfulco 9y ago
      A country I live in has a constitution with free speech, freedom of assembly and the press. When someone attempts to use those freedoms, they and their lawyers disappear. It's not worth the paper it's written on.

monaghanboy 9y ago

I haven't been on Facebook in over a decade; I didn't see that it had any positive effect on my life (quite the contrary), and I'm definitely not impressed by their lack of social conscience. Despite the excessive pay and "pedigree" that working for them would offer, I'd never do it. I hope that a growing number of people from my and future generations will think the same.

cloakandswagger 9y ago
Within my circles there has been a marked decrease in the perceived prestige of an engineering job at Facebook over the past few years. I'm sure it still requires a huge amount of talent and isn't lacking in meaty, difficult problems, but the core product just seems so unimportant.
- monaghanboy 9y ago
  Have you found any meaningful correlation between "talent" (engineering or otherwise) and tenure at a well-known tech company? From my experience, and based on people I know that work at Facebook, e.g., getting your foot in the door is just a matter of studying medium/hard-level problems on Leetcode (speaking verbatim here). I'm not sure you need a strong foundation in systems programming or design, or even a strong track record of building great software to get hired at these kinds of companies. The metric is mostly Leetcode; it's for efficiency I guess, because of the sheer number of applicants. I've also worked closely with a few people from such companies. I'd say only one was a great engineer. And he definitely didn't have a high opinion of his former co-workers. The one company whose engineers I'd probably give the benefit of the doubt would be Netflix, because they're so intentional about "performance".
  - cloakandswagger 9y ago
    In my mind, that does apply when you're talking about entry level software development positions. If someone is an SDE1 (or equivalent) at Facebook/Google/Amazon, I assume they're smart, determined and they studied a lot for the standard whiteboard interview. If someone is a senior engineer at one of those companies, I assume they have a reasonable amount of talent. It's not easy to fake it or avoid expectations as a senior engineer.