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>Why can't this need be met by a corporation that gets paid for what they are doing? Because you can't serve two masters. For-profit corporations are going to

>Why can't this need be met by a corporation that gets paid for what they are doing? Because you can't serve two masters. For-profit corporations are going to side with profit over privacy when they conflict. >The size of the problem here is bounded by the amount of money the companies are making invading your privacy. Simple math [1] places it at about $20/year/user for Facebook, who are probably on the upper end of what they can make by doing this. So to incentivize a company not to stay in business via selling your data, that's the bar you have to leap. That $20 isn't just for costs it's also for profit. How cheaply could Facebook run if it didn't have to return any money to it's shareholders? That's a major case for either a non-profit or a nationalized service. >whenever you say "The $GOVERNMENT should...", you really ought to remember that "Donald Trump" is a valid expansion of the term $GOVERNMENT. Well here let's put it like this. When you leave something up to the $MARKET you should remember that 'literally anybody' (including Donald Trump) is a valid expansion of the term $MARKET. With government at least there is some (admittedly meager) level of democratic accountability. How much accountability is there in the market? I think we've seen how these privacy violations play out with Equifax already. Richard Smith, Mark Begor, Mark Zuckerberg these people are just interchangeable names/faces and no matter who you swap in and out of these roles the desires of a corporation in the market place to maintain and increase profitability will weigh on them the same. I prefer a system where these people are directly accountable to the people ie nationalized services, not a system where their accountability is obfuscated and mediated by the market.

jerf 9y ago
"How much accountability is there in the market?" You are proposing a black/white dichotomy where I proposed a partnership. Let the corporations provide the services, let the government write the rules of the playing field. Why would you trust the same government that is already not regulating Facebook to do any better if it has to implement something itself? Neither side, on its own, is sufficient. A system where both sides are doing their job is way better. Mind you, I have some compassion (for lack of a better word) for the government not regulating Facebook, on the grounds that to a first-order approximation, nobody saw how bad this was going to be in advance. Local commentators may vigorously object to this characterization, to which I'd reply that the concentration of the people who did see it coming (including, least of all, myself) is sky-high here compared to the general public.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >You are proposing a black/white dichotomy where I proposed a partnership. Let the corporations provide the services, let the government write the rules of the playing field. Why would you trust the same government that is already not regulating Facebook to do any better if it has to implement something itself? I'll admit I am proposing a black/white dichotomy in this instance. I don't do that for all markets but I do in this one. To me a free market is best when we really want the market to race to the bottom quickly and there are few externalities or complicating factors. This is very rare. A regulated market is best when there are complicating factors and externalities but we still want to engage in a race to the bottom. This is very common. Removing the market entirely is best when we don't want to race to the bottom. This is rare. Even though it's rare, I cannot think of a better example than Social Media. Facebook and these other companies have utilized mostly free markets to race to the bottom, we've made 95% of the gains already. Now Facebook is exposing it's users to all sorts of nasty costs that society does not want to bear in order to squeeze out profit. This is not being caused by some one-off feature of the market, it is being caused by the central feature of the market, profit motive. The only way to fix these problems are to remove profit motive. That means either nationalization or non-profit status. Here's two quotes from a recent Tim Wu interview that I think speak to what I'm trying to say here: >They're not. But, well, that's the problem. I think there's a sort of intrinsic problem with having for-profit entities with this business model in this position of so much public trust because they're always at the edge because their profitability depends on it. >Well, if Mark Zuckerberg is telling the truth when he says, what I care about is connecting people to their families and friends, that's a very lofty ambition. If that's what he really wants to do, he can do it. But it doesn't mean he'll be the most profitable company in the world. You know, utilities - which is what Facebook is, a social utility - have never been understood as profit centers before. [...] And there's a reason. The social sphere is a little bit different. And maybe we need to accept that it's not a source of major profit to be in people's personal lives. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597221954/facebook-previously-failed-to-keep-privacy-promises-ex-ftc-adviser-says https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597221954/facebook-previously...

jerf 9y ago

"How much accountability is there in the market?" You are proposing a black/white dichotomy where I proposed a partnership. Let the corporations provide the services, let the government write the rules of the playing field. Why would you trust the same government that is already not regulating Facebook to do any better if it has to implement something itself? Neither side, on its own, is sufficient. A system where both sides are doing their job is way better. Mind you, I have some compassion (for lack of a better word) for the government not regulating Facebook, on the grounds that to a first-order approximation, nobody saw how bad this was going to be in advance. Local commentators may vigorously object to this characterization, to which I'd reply that the concentration of the people who did see it coming (including, least of all, myself) is sky-high here compared to the general public.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
>You are proposing a black/white dichotomy where I proposed a partnership. Let the corporations provide the services, let the government write the rules of the playing field. Why would you trust the same government that is already not regulating Facebook to do any better if it has to implement something itself? I'll admit I am proposing a black/white dichotomy in this instance. I don't do that for all markets but I do in this one. To me a free market is best when we really want the market to race to the bottom quickly and there are few externalities or complicating factors. This is very rare. A regulated market is best when there are complicating factors and externalities but we still want to engage in a race to the bottom. This is very common. Removing the market entirely is best when we don't want to race to the bottom. This is rare. Even though it's rare, I cannot think of a better example than Social Media. Facebook and these other companies have utilized mostly free markets to race to the bottom, we've made 95% of the gains already. Now Facebook is exposing it's users to all sorts of nasty costs that society does not want to bear in order to squeeze out profit. This is not being caused by some one-off feature of the market, it is being caused by the central feature of the market, profit motive. The only way to fix these problems are to remove profit motive. That means either nationalization or non-profit status. Here's two quotes from a recent Tim Wu interview that I think speak to what I'm trying to say here: >They're not. But, well, that's the problem. I think there's a sort of intrinsic problem with having for-profit entities with this business model in this position of so much public trust because they're always at the edge because their profitability depends on it. >Well, if Mark Zuckerberg is telling the truth when he says, what I care about is connecting people to their families and friends, that's a very lofty ambition. If that's what he really wants to do, he can do it. But it doesn't mean he'll be the most profitable company in the world. You know, utilities - which is what Facebook is, a social utility - have never been understood as profit centers before. [...] And there's a reason. The social sphere is a little bit different. And maybe we need to accept that it's not a source of major profit to be in people's personal lives. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597221954/facebook-previously-failed-to-keep-privacy-promises-ex-ftc-adviser-says https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597221954/facebook-previously...