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Silicon Valley brought this to itself. I used to warn of this before, too, that they can't continue to do "evil stuff" and expect to have people's backing when

by mtgx 9y ago

Silicon Valley brought this to itself. I used to warn of this before, too, that they can't continue to do "evil stuff" and expect to have people's backing when the governments will come after them to regulate them for whatever reason. But they continued because they saw that nobody leaves them over the crap they pull so they thought there must be no consequences to their anti-consumer moves. The only downside I see is that governments will use this excuse to bring more censorship and anti-encryption laws, too, and I hate that Silicon Valley companies put is in a position where we have to either put up with their crap or side with governments and get some bad internet laws passed. But right now, I think it's time to rein in on the Silicon Valley companies over their abuse of user data. Then we can deal with the abuse of user data by ISPs, data brokers, and everyone else. Ideally, this would be solved with a GDPR-like law, so that even ISPs "lose" in this scenario, and the consumers win. If we're lucky we may be able to stave off the government from trying to put an anti-encryption bill into the whole thing.

Reedx 9y ago
That's like what the game industry went through in the early 90s. When Mortal Kombat and the like were generating controversy and getting the attention of regulators, the industry proactively created the ESRB.
- cavanasm 9y ago
  In that particular instance they had a clear playbook to follow, which was the film industry. I don't know there's quite as direct a parallel between game content and user data sharing / selling as there was between game content and film content.
- jerf 9y ago
  There's a big difference though. "The video game industry" wasn't really in the business of creating video games that offended cultural norms. It had a subcomponent of that industry that did it, sure, but even that subcomponent would have survived by making different games with regulation. There is a lot of Silicon Valley right now whose core business is doing the things that are very likely to be regulated out of existence. So I'd say self-regulation isn't an option at this point, as "self-regulation" is asking Facebook to return to unprofitability with no prospect of profit in the future, the destruction of huge swathes of the ad industry, any number of other companies based around data mining and selling and abusing information asymmetries... there's no way the wolves are going to self-regulate themselves into dogs.

by mtgx 9y ago

Reedx 9y ago

That's like what the game industry went through in the early 90s. When Mortal Kombat and the like were generating controversy and getting the attention of regulators, the industry proactively created the ESRB.

cavanasm 9y ago
In that particular instance they had a clear playbook to follow, which was the film industry. I don't know there's quite as direct a parallel between game content and user data sharing / selling as there was between game content and film content.
jerf 9y ago
There's a big difference though. "The video game industry" wasn't really in the business of creating video games that offended cultural norms. It had a subcomponent of that industry that did it, sure, but even that subcomponent would have survived by making different games with regulation. There is a lot of Silicon Valley right now whose core business is doing the things that are very likely to be regulated out of existence. So I'd say self-regulation isn't an option at this point, as "self-regulation" is asking Facebook to return to unprofitability with no prospect of profit in the future, the destruction of huge swathes of the ad industry, any number of other companies based around data mining and selling and abusing information asymmetries... there's no way the wolves are going to self-regulate themselves into dogs.