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Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. Facebook's "mo

by Barjak 8y ago

Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. Facebook's "monopoly" is at least subject to the whim of the market, as the Delete Facebook campaign shows. Look at last week. The senate was on their high-horse, admonishing facebook for privacy infringements, totally unaware of the irony they are an appendage of the same entity which created the NSA and continues to eavesdrop on all of our conversations. We can all opt out of Facebook. Thankfully many have. But NSA surveillance is involuntary. Why are we more worried about a voluntary and foreseeable risk than an involuntary rights violation? Don't interpret this as saying Facebook acted appropriately.

leggomylibro 8y ago
>We can all opt out of Facebook. Thankfully many have. I'm pretty sure that is not accurate. We can't opt out of Facebook without significant effort which most people aren't even aware is possible and which can prevent some websites from working (NoScript, router rules, etc). They use the 'share' buttons built into most websites to collect information about and profit off of people who never signed up for the service, never agreed to their EULA, and never consented to interact with the company.
- mannykannot 8y ago
  For example, someone could tag your face in a photograph even if you don't have a Facebook account.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    And they don't even have to tag a face. Facebook does facial recognition on every face in a photograph. So you could be in the background of a picture taken in a restaurant by someone else and now suddenly you have a profile. Appear in the background of enough photos and Facebook can use other data to eventually figure out who you are, even if don't have a computer or smartphone.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > Appear in the background of enough photos and Facebook can use other data to eventually figure out who you are, even if don't have a computer or smartphone Facebook faces a class action lawsuit for "improperly us[ing] facial recognition technology on their uploaded photographs" under an Illinois law "that says a private entity such as Facebook can't collect and store a person's biometric facial information without their written consent" [1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/16/603056662/facebook-faces-class-action-lawsuit-challenging-its-use-of-facial-recognition-da https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/16/603056662...
- notriddle 8y ago
  Meh. Most websites wouldn't add share buttons if people didn't click them, and the photograph correlation is only possible because many, many people upload photographs to Facebook. If the social network dies, so will the surveillance system.
Wurlitzer 8y ago
I didn't vote for Zuckerberg.
- rootlocus 8y ago
  People who use facebook daily do though.
- Hoasi 8y ago
  True, but you didn't pick your country of birth either—although it is possible, for some, to chose their country at a later date. Voting is only a partial choice (at best).
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    I know quite a few people who have never in their lives voted for the elected President - some are in their 50s and vote in every single election. Many have no other country which would let them in and better suit their desires. That doesn't make democracy bad, but it's absolutely bizarre seeing people in these threads equate "you get to vote" with "you're voluntarily accepting your government". As you say, you don't get to pick where you're born, and the chance to vote doesn't necessarily change anything for you personally.
    - dTal 8y ago
      As an aside, your unlucky acquaintances present an intruiging statistical anomaly. Pure random chance would cause a failure rate like that about 0.1% of the time - I imagine the rate is considerably lower for real people, who by definition are more likely to vote for the winner. It's not so surprising to know one such person - 1 in 5 if you know 200 people - but you know 'quite a few', which rapidly brings it to thousands to one against. You should definitely consider putting some money on whoever they aren't voting for next election. Unless of course they vote for third party candidates every election, in which case failure is guaranteed and voting is an entirely symbolic act.
      - 8y ago
mattmanser 8y ago
It does all the people who fought, died, campaigned and worked to institute democracies over dictatorships or feudal lords a great dis-service to tout this drivel. You want to make the NSA an election issue? You can go campaign on it. Setup a party, gather people to your cause. Vote. You can't do anything even remotely similar to influence google or facebook.
- knuththetruth 8y ago
  Their employees can with labor organization. Strikes to end these kinds of abuses at Google and Facebook would end them. The thing the management of these companies fear more than anything is their employees realizing the power inherent in collectively withdrawing their labor from them.
  - mLuby 8y ago
    Only possible because government sits above companies and regulates them (and their ability to break strikes).
    - knuththetruth 8y ago
      History says otherwise. People won what we think of the “legal” right to strike only after acting collectively and disruptively against key industrial nodes which relied on their labor to function (mainly in the energy sector, e.g. the coal miners in England). They forced governments to render their actions “legal.” Because of its centrality in the modern economy, tech workers are in a similar position today. They have the power to withdraw their labor from companies and restore a more equitable balance to ceaseless assault on labor by Capital that has pushed this country into decline since the 1970s.
      - mLuby 8y ago
        Interesting – thanks for the correction!
- bsbechtel 8y ago
bhauer 8y ago
Agreed. I am no fan of Zuckerberg and do not use Facebook, but this seems like a non-issue from my point of view. Perhaps it would have been more palatable if phrased as "People over countries," which is a maxim I may myself use to make a saccharin vision statement. The point is voluntary exchange over the involuntary constraints one endures as part of a country. From there, evolving to "Market over countries" is also satisfying to me although probably a bit disarming to others. And then another hop takes you to the "Companies over countries" of Zuckerberg. That's not a vision statement I would use, because I have no particular love for companies outside of what they can do for me. But taken simply on absolute measures, I still favor the freedom I enjoy when interacting with companies versus even the most free of countries. In all but the most extreme cases (usually those involving government-provided monopolies) I can disassociate myself with a company with little effort.
- leereeves 8y ago
  "Companies over countries" on it's own might be defensible, but combined with watching Mark Zuckerberg raise his fist with a slight smile and say, “Domination!” as a way of closing out our weekly Friday all-hands meeting suggests a dystopian future.
pfortuny 8y ago
As of today and the West, countries as we understand them are the basis of the rule of law. Companies have no independent justice system. Despite their shortcomings I back countries...
entropyneur 8y ago
> Why are we more worried about a voluntary and foreseeable risk than an involuntary rights violation? Cognitive dissonance would be my guess. Admitting to ourselves how helpless we are against the actual powers of this world is too uncomfortable. Much easier is to demand "democratic oversight" over the management of some nonsense-sharing app that you could have simply never used in the first place. Because hey, you might even get it.
galactus 8y ago
> " A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. Facebook's "monopoly" is at least subject to the whim of the market" Some countries are at least subject to the "whim" of democracy.
- pitaj 8y ago
  Democracy is just tyranny of the majority.
frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
>A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. Facebook's "monopoly" is at least subject to the whim of the market, as the Delete Facebook campaign shows. Not really. In countries with representative government not only does that state have a monopoly on law/force but all people are granted an equal say in the state. The market may be good at some things but would you desire a governmental system where the rich having more power than the poor was baked into the system? [0] I think most would resist that. >We can all opt out of Facebook. Thankfully many have. But NSA surveillance is involuntary. Well actually we can't. We've found out recently that Facebook tracks even non-users. Besides you could go so far as to say that you can opt out of NSA surveillance by rejecting email and cell phones. Even if your work requires an email and a business phone you're certainly not required to share personal information over them. So what makes surveillance of your private emails more involuntary than surveillance of your private FB messages? >Why are we more worried about a voluntary and foreseeable risk than an involuntary rights violation? I think if you went around and asked regular people with Facebook accounts whether they voluntarily gave fine detail location data and browsing histories to Facebook they would reject that. Certainly they would reject foreseeability. Further I'm not sure you can even call rule by market regime more voluntary than rule by representative government. Both require loads of coercion. [0] I'm aware that our own representative democracies have been corroded by the effects of wealth but there is at least a path towards eliminating that influence. In a market system there isn't, it's the core feature of the market.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > . The market may be good at some things but would you desire a governmental system where the rich having more power than the poor was baked into the system? Most countries around the world are led by the upper class who has large access to capital. Even in democracies power goes to the wealthy, and you dont get to vote for lower class representatives.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
    >Most countries around the world are led by the upper class who has large access to capital. Yes and that's bad so we certainly shouldn't expand the power that people with lots of capital have. >Even in democracies power goes to the wealthy, and you dont get to vote for lower class representatives. That's not an intrinsic feature of democracies but it is of markets.
agentultra 8y ago
> Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. A nation state is backed by armies, monetary obligations, and the need to co-operate with other nation states in each others' best interests (optimally). In order to protect its citizens and monetary interests and obligations most modern, well-functioning markets are regulated by these nation states. Facebook doesn't care about users, laws, and lacks any sense of moral or ethical standards. While I enjoy the benefits of being able to freely start a business I believe that a well-functioning market requires guidance and planning from broader, more conservative social structures in order to benefit everyone.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > Facebook doesn't care about users, laws, and lacks any sense of moral or ethical standards. its difficult to say with a straight face that a government that runs trillions of deficits, spies constantly on its population, and engages in so called defensive wars abroad, cares about its citizens. The lack of responsibility is rampant among government figures.
  - prolepunk 8y ago
    You are comparing badly functioning government with businesses functioning as intended. At least there's ability to enforce governmental responsibility through elections and free press. Facebook can be leveraged in no other way then through government regulation, even if you opt out from facebook it still watches you, and good luck even understanding of what's going on if you're not a technical person.
    - AndrewBissell 8y ago
      > At least there's ability to enforce governmental responsibility through elections and free press. Yes, for example, voters in the U.S. elect presidential candidates who promise to scale back our military presence overseas, and then it happens! Voters also get what they want when they elect candidates promising to reform Wall Street, make government more transparent, or end the culture of graft & corruption in Washington. Or take the issue of NSA surveillance, mentioned above. Since there were zero candidates on offer from either major party who promised even a sliver of reform, and no major media outlet even raised the issue, we can conclude that the voters have "opted in" to this program, and we should all learn to just live with it.
tboyd47 8y ago
You can't really compare governments to companies. A state exists by its perceived right to rule over its citizens' lives, something that's generally only nullified by war or an armed rebellion of some kind, both things that result in massive casualties and wanton destruction. Companies are born and die all the time, not to mention combined, split apart, and traded on the marketplace like barrels of oil every day.
parenthephobia 8y ago
If we must make this comparison, most actual companies are totalitarian dictatorships. > We can all opt out of Facebook. Can we? What is the practical effect of doing so? Will they stop tracking us on the web? Will they stop gathering data about us via people with whom we are associated? Facebook is a crowd-sourced global surveillance program from which there is no real opt-out and over which there are no checks and balances because most of the people running it don't even think they're running a surveillance program.
gus_massa 8y ago
Most people interpret “Companies over countries” as “My company over my country”. It's an heresy only if it is my country. As an example, a lot of people is mad because Intel didn't tell (officially) to the US government about Spectre&Meltdown before the disclosure date. Should they also had toll it to Russia, China, UK and France?
clairity 8y ago
it may not be heresy but it is naive. a market economy requires a supporting political environment from which to develop. you need both, and both need tending by citizens. nothing about a company makes it implicitly better than a government (being able to start a company is good for you, but how do i know you're not a jerk?), and both need vigilance to keep in line.
- pitaj 8y ago
  Companies compete for your time, money, and labor. Governments have no competition. Even if you think natural monopolies are a true facet of free markets, Facebook is not a natural monopoly. MySpace is a simple counterexample to that idea.
  - clairity 8y ago
    that's an inadequate rebuttal built on an idealization of free markets (we should strive for fair markets, not free-for-all markets). of course competition for governments lay in ideas, thoughts, policies, and actions, not markets. in various forms of democracy, politicians vie for our votes, and that forms a web of constraints against greedy self-interest. besides, there are many goverments, and many levels of governments, all jostling with each other for the title of "best". there's no need to revere free markets and abhor goverments (we should be vigilant of both). economic and political arenas are but two facets of our complex societies.
ddingus 8y ago
Governments aren't companies. In the case of the USA, their root authority comes from consent of the governed, who do that in order to maximize their own personal freedom and opportunity. More. But I got a dead device.. Back. Business operates under license, and that comes with terms, the rules, law. It serves us, as do markets, and when that doesn't happen, the license can be revoked, or new terms come into play so it all does. Government is about the general welfare too. Very different purpose from a corporation, and a necessary one. Under all of that lies the basic idea of citizens defining their society, for their own welfare. When we set those basic ideas aside, we get the sort of mess we have today. Zuck has this backward, and favors lords and fiefdoms over a just society. His ideas are old world, old money ideas more closely aligned with ideas of leadership, how a society runs more in line with kings, divine right, wealth, purity, and other obviously unjust ways to define and manage power. This nation was formed on the idea of rejecting all of that. Thomas Paine derives most of this in "Rights of Man" and "Age of reason", where the first reference speaks to self governance and what free people means, and the second speaks to why the church is not a center of power either, both straight up rejections of both forms of old world governance.
908087 8y ago
> We can all opt out of Facebook Care to explain how non-users who have been having their data harvested via back channels such as their friends/family, data brokers like Acxiom, and trackers on non-FB sites, can "opt out of Facebook"? Sure, technically skilled people can "opt out" of portions of this in a sense, but that leaves billions of people still powerless in this regard. I'd also love to know how to opt out of the wider societal damage Facebook has encouraged and enabled.. and no, "Move to a shack in the woods if you don't like it" is not a valid answer here.
otempomores 8y ago
Oh look a libertarian butterfly shedding its democratic cocoon. Never has a post convinced me more to vote pro state.. No matter how extreme
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> But NSA surveillance is involuntary. Why are we more worried about a voluntary and foreseeable risk than an involuntary rights violation? Americans do not broadly support reforming the NSA [1][2]. The reason for that is the same behind someone always posting, when HN discusses Facebook's shenanigans, "why is this news?" The public needs to see bodies to mobilise. The last few decades were filled with cable TV hosts and technologists screaming about existential threats to democracy. Most didn't pan out. The price we pay for our boys who cried wolf is a public demand for tangibility. We don't have a case where the NSA's activities caused big, tangible, specific and easily-understood harm. We do with Facebook. Moreover, the NSA's leadership responded competently to criticism. Facebook's CEO and even rank-and-file reacted petulantly, which fuelled the fire. > Don't interpret this as saying Facebook acted appropriately. I'm glad you say this. Policy isn't zero sum. I, too, want to reform the NSA. But that isn't happening today. We do, however, in state houses, through our Attorneys General and in the EU, have a chance at dealing some heavy blows to Facebook. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/06/11/190638738/pew-majority-of-americans-support-nsa-phone-tracking https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/06/11/190638738... (2013) [2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/19/americans-feel-the-tensions-between-privacy-and-security-concerns/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/19/americans-fe...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
osteele 8y ago
“Would it not be a great satisfaction to the king to know at a designated moment every year the number of his subjects, in total and by region, with all the resources, wealth & poverty of each place; [the number] of his nobility and ecclesiastics of all kinds, of men of the robe, of Catholics and of those of the other religion, all separated according to the place of their residence? … [Would it not be] a useful and necessary pleasure for him to be able, in his own office, to review in an hour’s time the present and past condition of a great realm of which he is the head, and be able himself to know with certitude in what consists his grandeur, his wealth, and his strengths?” — Marquis de Vauban, proposing an annual census to Louis XIV in 1686.[1] Others have noted powers that a country has, that a company doesn't. The converse holds too. It's interesting to re-read James C. Scott's "Seeing Like a State" with social networks in mind. Facebook can “read” its users (and many non-users) in ways that states only wish they could. “Filipinos were instructed by the decree of November 21, 1849, to take on permanent Hispanic surnames.[…] Filipinos generally lacked individual surnames, which might ‘distinguish them by families,’ and that their practice of adopting baptismal names drawn from a small group of saints’ names resulted in great ‘confusion.’ The remedy was the catalogo, a compendium not only of personal names but also of nouns and adjectives drawn from flora, fauna, minerals, geography, and the arts and intended to be used by the authorities in assigning permanent, inherited surnames. Each local official was to be given a supply of surnames sufficient for his jurisdiction, ‘taking care that the distribution be made by letters [of the alphabet].’ In practice, each town was given a number of pages from the alphabetized catalogo, producing whole towns with surnames beginning with the same letter. […] the traces of this administrative exercise are still perfectly visible across the landscape: ‘For example, in the Bikol region, the entire alphabet is laid out like a garland over the provinces of Albay, Sorsogon, and Catanduanes which in 1849 belonged to the single jurisdiction of Albay. Beginning with A at the provincial capital, the letters B and C mark the towns along the coast beyond Tabaco to Tiwi. We return and trace along the coast of Sorsogon the letters E to L; then starting down the Iraya Valley at Daraga with M, we stop with S to Polangui and Libon, and finish the alphabet with a quick tour around the island of Catanduanes.‘”[2] The modern corporation doesn't require the cooperation, or even permission, of local officials in order to index the populace. Mark Koyama criticizes[3] Scott: “It is hard to avoid the impression that Scott underrates the adaptability and flexibility of markets. Yes, markets can result in homogeneity; but the market process is also a driver of creative experimentation and innovation. Too much bland standardization, and markets provide incentives for entrepreneurs to create products that appear idiosyncratic or unusual. The market as a process can certainly appear ruthless and much that is valuable can be lost as a result in the hurly burly of the market place. But everyday experience provides pretty convincing evidence that markets tend to be more capable of self-correction than are state planners and bureaucrats.” Maybe there's a case to be made that the market is working in the case of Facebook, but it's not obvious. [1] James C. Scott, _Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed_. Yale University Press (March 30, 1998). p. 11. Excerpt https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/scott-state.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sc.... [2] Ibid, p. 67 [3] Mark Koyama, "Some Thoughts on “Seeing Like a State”", Medium (July 13, 2017). https://medium.com/@MarkKoyama/some-thoughts-on-seeing-like-a-state-6b151be25479 https://medium.com/@MarkKoyama/some-thoughts-on-seeing-like-... [4] Bradford Delong, October 24, 2007. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/james-scott-and.html http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/james-scott-and.html [5] Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Seeing Like a State”. March 16, 2017. http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like-a-state/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like...
danjc 8y ago
hearsay
titzer 8y ago
> Why are we more worried about a voluntary and foreseeable risk than an involuntary rights violation? Addiction and psychological hacks start to blur the boundary of what is "voluntary." Regardless of that discussion, there is a problem of "reverse herd immunity" where some large fraction of the population is constantly manipulated by a systematically controlled echo chamber run by a corporation that is coopted by, frankly, bad actors. You can opt out all you want, but democracy can be compromised by mass mind control that is now not only technically possible, but clearly in beta.

by Barjak 8y ago

leggomylibro 8y ago

>We can all opt out of Facebook. Thankfully many have. I'm pretty sure that is not accurate. We can't opt out of Facebook without significant effort which most people aren't even aware is possible and which can prevent some websites from working (NoScript, router rules, etc). They use the 'share' buttons built into most websites to collect information about and profit off of people who never signed up for the service, never agreed to their EULA, and never consented to interact with the company.

mannykannot 8y ago
For example, someone could tag your face in a photograph even if you don't have a Facebook account.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  And they don't even have to tag a face. Facebook does facial recognition on every face in a photograph. So you could be in the background of a picture taken in a restaurant by someone else and now suddenly you have a profile. Appear in the background of enough photos and Facebook can use other data to eventually figure out who you are, even if don't have a computer or smartphone.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Appear in the background of enough photos and Facebook can use other data to eventually figure out who you are, even if don't have a computer or smartphone Facebook faces a class action lawsuit for "improperly us[ing] facial recognition technology on their uploaded photographs" under an Illinois law "that says a private entity such as Facebook can't collect and store a person's biometric facial information without their written consent" [1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/16/603056662/facebook-faces-class-action-lawsuit-challenging-its-use-of-facial-recognition-da https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/16/603056662...
notriddle 8y ago
Meh. Most websites wouldn't add share buttons if people didn't click them, and the photograph correlation is only possible because many, many people upload photographs to Facebook. If the social network dies, so will the surveillance system.

Wurlitzer 8y ago

I didn't vote for Zuckerberg.

rootlocus 8y ago
People who use facebook daily do though.
Hoasi 8y ago
True, but you didn't pick your country of birth either—although it is possible, for some, to chose their country at a later date. Voting is only a partial choice (at best).
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  I know quite a few people who have never in their lives voted for the elected President - some are in their 50s and vote in every single election. Many have no other country which would let them in and better suit their desires. That doesn't make democracy bad, but it's absolutely bizarre seeing people in these threads equate "you get to vote" with "you're voluntarily accepting your government". As you say, you don't get to pick where you're born, and the chance to vote doesn't necessarily change anything for you personally.
  - dTal 8y ago
    As an aside, your unlucky acquaintances present an intruiging statistical anomaly. Pure random chance would cause a failure rate like that about 0.1% of the time - I imagine the rate is considerably lower for real people, who by definition are more likely to vote for the winner. It's not so surprising to know one such person - 1 in 5 if you know 200 people - but you know 'quite a few', which rapidly brings it to thousands to one against. You should definitely consider putting some money on whoever they aren't voting for next election. Unless of course they vote for third party candidates every election, in which case failure is guaranteed and voting is an entirely symbolic act.
    - 8y ago

mattmanser 8y ago

It does all the people who fought, died, campaigned and worked to institute democracies over dictatorships or feudal lords a great dis-service to tout this drivel. You want to make the NSA an election issue? You can go campaign on it. Setup a party, gather people to your cause. Vote. You can't do anything even remotely similar to influence google or facebook.

knuththetruth 8y ago
Their employees can with labor organization. Strikes to end these kinds of abuses at Google and Facebook would end them. The thing the management of these companies fear more than anything is their employees realizing the power inherent in collectively withdrawing their labor from them.
- mLuby 8y ago
  Only possible because government sits above companies and regulates them (and their ability to break strikes).
  - knuththetruth 8y ago
    History says otherwise. People won what we think of the “legal” right to strike only after acting collectively and disruptively against key industrial nodes which relied on their labor to function (mainly in the energy sector, e.g. the coal miners in England). They forced governments to render their actions “legal.” Because of its centrality in the modern economy, tech workers are in a similar position today. They have the power to withdraw their labor from companies and restore a more equitable balance to ceaseless assault on labor by Capital that has pushed this country into decline since the 1970s.
    - mLuby 8y ago
      Interesting – thanks for the correction!
bsbechtel 8y ago

bhauer 8y ago

Agreed. I am no fan of Zuckerberg and do not use Facebook, but this seems like a non-issue from my point of view. Perhaps it would have been more palatable if phrased as "People over countries," which is a maxim I may myself use to make a saccharin vision statement. The point is voluntary exchange over the involuntary constraints one endures as part of a country. From there, evolving to "Market over countries" is also satisfying to me although probably a bit disarming to others. And then another hop takes you to the "Companies over countries" of Zuckerberg. That's not a vision statement I would use, because I have no particular love for companies outside of what they can do for me. But taken simply on absolute measures, I still favor the freedom I enjoy when interacting with companies versus even the most free of countries. In all but the most extreme cases (usually those involving government-provided monopolies) I can disassociate myself with a company with little effort.

leereeves 8y ago
"Companies over countries" on it's own might be defensible, but combined with watching Mark Zuckerberg raise his fist with a slight smile and say, “Domination!” as a way of closing out our weekly Friday all-hands meeting suggests a dystopian future.

pfortuny 8y ago

As of today and the West, countries as we understand them are the basis of the rule of law. Companies have no independent justice system. Despite their shortcomings I back countries...

entropyneur 8y ago

> Why are we more worried about a voluntary and foreseeable risk than an involuntary rights violation? Cognitive dissonance would be my guess. Admitting to ourselves how helpless we are against the actual powers of this world is too uncomfortable. Much easier is to demand "democratic oversight" over the management of some nonsense-sharing app that you could have simply never used in the first place. Because hey, you might even get it.

galactus 8y ago

> " A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. Facebook's "monopoly" is at least subject to the whim of the market" Some countries are at least subject to the "whim" of democracy.

pitaj 8y ago
Democracy is just tyranny of the majority.

frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago

>A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. Facebook's "monopoly" is at least subject to the whim of the market, as the Delete Facebook campaign shows. Not really. In countries with representative government not only does that state have a monopoly on law/force but all people are granted an equal say in the state. The market may be good at some things but would you desire a governmental system where the rich having more power than the poor was baked into the system? [0] I think most would resist that. >We can all opt out of Facebook. Thankfully many have. But NSA surveillance is involuntary. Well actually we can't. We've found out recently that Facebook tracks even non-users. Besides you could go so far as to say that you can opt out of NSA surveillance by rejecting email and cell phones. Even if your work requires an email and a business phone you're certainly not required to share personal information over them. So what makes surveillance of your private emails more involuntary than surveillance of your private FB messages? >Why are we more worried about a voluntary and foreseeable risk than an involuntary rights violation? I think if you went around and asked regular people with Facebook accounts whether they voluntarily gave fine detail location data and browsing histories to Facebook they would reject that. Certainly they would reject foreseeability. Further I'm not sure you can even call rule by market regime more voluntary than rule by representative government. Both require loads of coercion. [0] I'm aware that our own representative democracies have been corroded by the effects of wealth but there is at least a path towards eliminating that influence. In a market system there isn't, it's the core feature of the market.

ekianjo 8y ago
> . The market may be good at some things but would you desire a governmental system where the rich having more power than the poor was baked into the system? Most countries around the world are led by the upper class who has large access to capital. Even in democracies power goes to the wealthy, and you dont get to vote for lower class representatives.
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
  >Most countries around the world are led by the upper class who has large access to capital. Yes and that's bad so we certainly shouldn't expand the power that people with lots of capital have. >Even in democracies power goes to the wealthy, and you dont get to vote for lower class representatives. That's not an intrinsic feature of democracies but it is of markets.

agentultra 8y ago

> Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. A nation state is backed by armies, monetary obligations, and the need to co-operate with other nation states in each others' best interests (optimally). In order to protect its citizens and monetary interests and obligations most modern, well-functioning markets are regulated by these nation states. Facebook doesn't care about users, laws, and lacks any sense of moral or ethical standards. While I enjoy the benefits of being able to freely start a business I believe that a well-functioning market requires guidance and planning from broader, more conservative social structures in order to benefit everyone.

ekianjo 8y ago
> Facebook doesn't care about users, laws, and lacks any sense of moral or ethical standards. its difficult to say with a straight face that a government that runs trillions of deficits, spies constantly on its population, and engages in so called defensive wars abroad, cares about its citizens. The lack of responsibility is rampant among government figures.
- prolepunk 8y ago
  You are comparing badly functioning government with businesses functioning as intended. At least there's ability to enforce governmental responsibility through elections and free press. Facebook can be leveraged in no other way then through government regulation, even if you opt out from facebook it still watches you, and good luck even understanding of what's going on if you're not a technical person.
  - AndrewBissell 8y ago
    > At least there's ability to enforce governmental responsibility through elections and free press. Yes, for example, voters in the U.S. elect presidential candidates who promise to scale back our military presence overseas, and then it happens! Voters also get what they want when they elect candidates promising to reform Wall Street, make government more transparent, or end the culture of graft & corruption in Washington. Or take the issue of NSA surveillance, mentioned above. Since there were zero candidates on offer from either major party who promised even a sliver of reform, and no major media outlet even raised the issue, we can conclude that the voters have "opted in" to this program, and we should all learn to just live with it.

tboyd47 8y ago

You can't really compare governments to companies. A state exists by its perceived right to rule over its citizens' lives, something that's generally only nullified by war or an armed rebellion of some kind, both things that result in massive casualties and wanton destruction. Companies are born and die all the time, not to mention combined, split apart, and traded on the marketplace like barrels of oil every day.

parenthephobia 8y ago

If we must make this comparison, most actual companies are totalitarian dictatorships. > We can all opt out of Facebook. Can we? What is the practical effect of doing so? Will they stop tracking us on the web? Will they stop gathering data about us via people with whom we are associated? Facebook is a crowd-sourced global surveillance program from which there is no real opt-out and over which there are no checks and balances because most of the people running it don't even think they're running a surveillance program.

gus_massa 8y ago

Most people interpret “Companies over countries” as “My company over my country”. It's an heresy only if it is my country. As an example, a lot of people is mad because Intel didn't tell (officially) to the US government about Spectre&Meltdown before the disclosure date. Should they also had toll it to Russia, China, UK and France?

clairity 8y ago

it may not be heresy but it is naive. a market economy requires a supporting political environment from which to develop. you need both, and both need tending by citizens. nothing about a company makes it implicitly better than a government (being able to start a company is good for you, but how do i know you're not a jerk?), and both need vigilance to keep in line.

pitaj 8y ago
Companies compete for your time, money, and labor. Governments have no competition. Even if you think natural monopolies are a true facet of free markets, Facebook is not a natural monopoly. MySpace is a simple counterexample to that idea.
- clairity 8y ago
  that's an inadequate rebuttal built on an idealization of free markets (we should strive for fair markets, not free-for-all markets). of course competition for governments lay in ideas, thoughts, policies, and actions, not markets. in various forms of democracy, politicians vie for our votes, and that forms a web of constraints against greedy self-interest. besides, there are many goverments, and many levels of governments, all jostling with each other for the title of "best". there's no need to revere free markets and abhor goverments (we should be vigilant of both). economic and political arenas are but two facets of our complex societies.

ddingus 8y ago

Governments aren't companies. In the case of the USA, their root authority comes from consent of the governed, who do that in order to maximize their own personal freedom and opportunity. More. But I got a dead device.. Back. Business operates under license, and that comes with terms, the rules, law. It serves us, as do markets, and when that doesn't happen, the license can be revoked, or new terms come into play so it all does. Government is about the general welfare too. Very different purpose from a corporation, and a necessary one. Under all of that lies the basic idea of citizens defining their society, for their own welfare. When we set those basic ideas aside, we get the sort of mess we have today. Zuck has this backward, and favors lords and fiefdoms over a just society. His ideas are old world, old money ideas more closely aligned with ideas of leadership, how a society runs more in line with kings, divine right, wealth, purity, and other obviously unjust ways to define and manage power. This nation was formed on the idea of rejecting all of that. Thomas Paine derives most of this in "Rights of Man" and "Age of reason", where the first reference speaks to self governance and what free people means, and the second speaks to why the church is not a center of power either, both straight up rejections of both forms of old world governance.

908087 8y ago

> We can all opt out of Facebook Care to explain how non-users who have been having their data harvested via back channels such as their friends/family, data brokers like Acxiom, and trackers on non-FB sites, can "opt out of Facebook"? Sure, technically skilled people can "opt out" of portions of this in a sense, but that leaves billions of people still powerless in this regard. I'd also love to know how to opt out of the wider societal damage Facebook has encouraged and enabled.. and no, "Move to a shack in the woods if you don't like it" is not a valid answer here.

otempomores 8y ago

Oh look a libertarian butterfly shedding its democratic cocoon. Never has a post convinced me more to vote pro state.. No matter how extreme

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> But NSA surveillance is involuntary. Why are we more worried about a voluntary and foreseeable risk than an involuntary rights violation? Americans do not broadly support reforming the NSA [1][2]. The reason for that is the same behind someone always posting, when HN discusses Facebook's shenanigans, "why is this news?" The public needs to see bodies to mobilise. The last few decades were filled with cable TV hosts and technologists screaming about existential threats to democracy. Most didn't pan out. The price we pay for our boys who cried wolf is a public demand for tangibility. We don't have a case where the NSA's activities caused big, tangible, specific and easily-understood harm. We do with Facebook. Moreover, the NSA's leadership responded competently to criticism. Facebook's CEO and even rank-and-file reacted petulantly, which fuelled the fire. > Don't interpret this as saying Facebook acted appropriately. I'm glad you say this. Policy isn't zero sum. I, too, want to reform the NSA. But that isn't happening today. We do, however, in state houses, through our Attorneys General and in the EU, have a chance at dealing some heavy blows to Facebook. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/06/11/190638738/pew-majority-of-americans-support-nsa-phone-tracking https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/06/11/190638738... (2013) [2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/19/americans-feel-the-tensions-between-privacy-and-security-concerns/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/19/americans-fe...

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osteele 8y ago

“Would it not be a great satisfaction to the king to know at a designated moment every year the number of his subjects, in total and by region, with all the resources, wealth & poverty of each place; [the number] of his nobility and ecclesiastics of all kinds, of men of the robe, of Catholics and of those of the other religion, all separated according to the place of their residence? … [Would it not be] a useful and necessary pleasure for him to be able, in his own office, to review in an hour’s time the present and past condition of a great realm of which he is the head, and be able himself to know with certitude in what consists his grandeur, his wealth, and his strengths?” — Marquis de Vauban, proposing an annual census to Louis XIV in 1686.[1] Others have noted powers that a country has, that a company doesn't. The converse holds too. It's interesting to re-read James C. Scott's "Seeing Like a State" with social networks in mind. Facebook can “read” its users (and many non-users) in ways that states only wish they could. “Filipinos were instructed by the decree of November 21, 1849, to take on permanent Hispanic surnames.[…] Filipinos generally lacked individual surnames, which might ‘distinguish them by families,’ and that their practice of adopting baptismal names drawn from a small group of saints’ names resulted in great ‘confusion.’ The remedy was the catalogo, a compendium not only of personal names but also of nouns and adjectives drawn from flora, fauna, minerals, geography, and the arts and intended to be used by the authorities in assigning permanent, inherited surnames. Each local official was to be given a supply of surnames sufficient for his jurisdiction, ‘taking care that the distribution be made by letters [of the alphabet].’ In practice, each town was given a number of pages from the alphabetized catalogo, producing whole towns with surnames beginning with the same letter. […] the traces of this administrative exercise are still perfectly visible across the landscape: ‘For example, in the Bikol region, the entire alphabet is laid out like a garland over the provinces of Albay, Sorsogon, and Catanduanes which in 1849 belonged to the single jurisdiction of Albay. Beginning with A at the provincial capital, the letters B and C mark the towns along the coast beyond Tabaco to Tiwi. We return and trace along the coast of Sorsogon the letters E to L; then starting down the Iraya Valley at Daraga with M, we stop with S to Polangui and Libon, and finish the alphabet with a quick tour around the island of Catanduanes.‘”[2] The modern corporation doesn't require the cooperation, or even permission, of local officials in order to index the populace. Mark Koyama criticizes[3] Scott: “It is hard to avoid the impression that Scott underrates the adaptability and flexibility of markets. Yes, markets can result in homogeneity; but the market process is also a driver of creative experimentation and innovation. Too much bland standardization, and markets provide incentives for entrepreneurs to create products that appear idiosyncratic or unusual. The market as a process can certainly appear ruthless and much that is valuable can be lost as a result in the hurly burly of the market place. But everyday experience provides pretty convincing evidence that markets tend to be more capable of self-correction than are state planners and bureaucrats.” Maybe there's a case to be made that the market is working in the case of Facebook, but it's not obvious. [1] James C. Scott, _Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed_. Yale University Press (March 30, 1998). p. 11. Excerpt https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/scott-state.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sc.... [2] Ibid, p. 67 [3] Mark Koyama, "Some Thoughts on “Seeing Like a State”", Medium (July 13, 2017). https://medium.com/@MarkKoyama/some-thoughts-on-seeing-like-a-state-6b151be25479 https://medium.com/@MarkKoyama/some-thoughts-on-seeing-like-... [4] Bradford Delong, October 24, 2007. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/james-scott-and.html http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/james-scott-and.html [5] Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Seeing Like a State”. March 16, 2017. http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like-a-state/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like...

danjc 8y ago

hearsay

titzer 8y ago

> Why are we more worried about a voluntary and foreseeable risk than an involuntary rights violation? Addiction and psychological hacks start to blur the boundary of what is "voluntary." Regardless of that discussion, there is a problem of "reverse herd immunity" where some large fraction of the population is constantly manipulated by a systematically controlled echo chamber run by a corporation that is coopted by, frankly, bad actors. You can opt out all you want, but democracy can be compromised by mass mind control that is now not only technically possible, but clearly in beta.