4 ms·

Facebook gets a lot of slack here on HN, and I share some critisism, but find this article by Zuckerberg is a step in right direction. One only hopes there is

by qnsi 8y ago

Facebook gets a lot of slack here on HN, and I share some critisism, but find this article by Zuckerberg is a step in right direction. One only hopes there is some free room for small companies from regulation, so this helpful regulation doesnt end as a moat for FB and others.

ryukafalz 8y ago
>One only hopes there is some free room for small companies from regulation, so this helpful regulation doesnt end as a moat for FB and others. This is what has me worried. If regulations go as far as requiring content filtering, it would effectively cement Facebook/YouTube/etc as the dominant internet platforms, because small competitors can't afford to build those systems just to get started.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  > >One only hopes there is some free room for small companies from regulation, so this helpful regulation doesnt end as a moat for FB and others. I assume Zuckerberg is primarily interested in this for exactly that goal.
madrox 8y ago
The trouble is that he has lost integrity as someone who is putting the needs of people first because of what Facebook has done. At this point, he will have a lot of opponents no matter what he says.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
Did you mean to write 'Facebook gets a lot of flack'? That would seem to make more sense given the rest of the sentence.
- qnsi 8y ago
  Sorry! Not my first language
- croisillon 8y ago
  i wondered about it too, i imagine it comes from "cut me some slack" = "cut the criticism", hence slack=criticism
  - np_tedious 8y ago
    In this context, "slack" and "flak"/"flack" are opposites
  - AgentME 8y ago
    In the phrase "cut me some slack", the speaker is asking for more slack. It's like "give me a slice of meat" or "cut some meat for me".
    - croisillon 8y ago
      ooooooh :) I learned something thank you!
- umvi 8y ago
  Also, it's "flak" (shortened form of German word for anti aircraft cannon) not "flack".
  - RandomInteger4 8y ago
    phlaque
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    Some dictionaries seem to have me believe either is correct. You’re right as far as the origin goes though.
    - asark 8y ago
      The most correct is the one least likely to cause confusion... or kick off a thread like this :-) Probably "flak", then.
SllX 8y ago
Flack or slack? They don’t get much slack ‘round these parts and in fact get lots of flack. I just checked the article. Proposal #1 is primarily there to limit Facebook’s liability. That said, it is incompatible with the First Amendment. A government or government sponsored regulatory body deciding what is socially harmful speech is precisely what the First Amendment guards against. You would have to go with a corporate governed body on a corporate volunteer basis for it to be a meaningful proposal. Essentially, Facebook can ban le Nazis, but the US Government can’t. 2 is arguably a good proposal, but it isn’t a new proposal. To the extent that the People in Power give a damn about protecting the integrity of elections, it is to protect their own seats. When election integrity is inconvenient, it gets pushed down as a non-issue. The real goal here is to force Facebook’s ad competitors to play on the same playing field as Facebook has been pressured into to stave off further regulation. This is regulation to protect their business, and if it happens to also protect what is left of the integrity of our elections, elections that the Russians didn’t make a considerable dent in the last time around despite their best efforts, great. There are however more effective measures to defend the integrity of our elections, if we care to. 3 and 4 are both items that Facebook could roll out globally if they cared, so I’m inclined to believe that on Facebook’s political calculus, they have determined that it is politically expedient for them to come out for GDPR-style rules globally, even if they could already provide their global user base the same tools, rights and privileges afforded their European users by GDPR. Data portability is a technical challenge that is relatively easily resolved. The primary politics involved in preventing this are corporate, not governmental, and back when Web 2.0 was hot stuff, open standards were both expected and the default. Facebook played an enormous role in data portability backsliding on the web. If Facebook wants to bring out data privacy protections and data portability, then I’ll believe it when I see it. There aren’t any laws preventing this now.
- int_19h 8y ago
  > A government or government sponsored regulatory body deciding what is socially harmful speech is precisely what the First Amendment guards against. You would have to go with a corporate governed body on a corporate volunteer basis for it to be a meaningful proposal. Essentially, Facebook can ban le Nazis, but the US Government can’t. We had something like that already, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist

by qnsi 8y ago

ryukafalz 8y ago

>One only hopes there is some free room for small companies from regulation, so this helpful regulation doesnt end as a moat for FB and others. This is what has me worried. If regulations go as far as requiring content filtering, it would effectively cement Facebook/YouTube/etc as the dominant internet platforms, because small competitors can't afford to build those systems just to get started.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
> >One only hopes there is some free room for small companies from regulation, so this helpful regulation doesnt end as a moat for FB and others. I assume Zuckerberg is primarily interested in this for exactly that goal.

madrox 8y ago

The trouble is that he has lost integrity as someone who is putting the needs of people first because of what Facebook has done. At this point, he will have a lot of opponents no matter what he says.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

Did you mean to write 'Facebook gets a lot of flack'? That would seem to make more sense given the rest of the sentence.

qnsi 8y ago
Sorry! Not my first language
croisillon 8y ago
i wondered about it too, i imagine it comes from "cut me some slack" = "cut the criticism", hence slack=criticism
- np_tedious 8y ago
  In this context, "slack" and "flak"/"flack" are opposites
- AgentME 8y ago
  In the phrase "cut me some slack", the speaker is asking for more slack. It's like "give me a slice of meat" or "cut some meat for me".
  - croisillon 8y ago
    ooooooh :) I learned something thank you!
umvi 8y ago
Also, it's "flak" (shortened form of German word for anti aircraft cannon) not "flack".
- RandomInteger4 8y ago
  phlaque
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  Some dictionaries seem to have me believe either is correct. You’re right as far as the origin goes though.
  - asark 8y ago
    The most correct is the one least likely to cause confusion... or kick off a thread like this :-) Probably "flak", then.

SllX 8y ago

Flack or slack? They don’t get much slack ‘round these parts and in fact get lots of flack. I just checked the article. Proposal #1 is primarily there to limit Facebook’s liability. That said, it is incompatible with the First Amendment. A government or government sponsored regulatory body deciding what is socially harmful speech is precisely what the First Amendment guards against. You would have to go with a corporate governed body on a corporate volunteer basis for it to be a meaningful proposal. Essentially, Facebook can ban le Nazis, but the US Government can’t. 2 is arguably a good proposal, but it isn’t a new proposal. To the extent that the People in Power give a damn about protecting the integrity of elections, it is to protect their own seats. When election integrity is inconvenient, it gets pushed down as a non-issue. The real goal here is to force Facebook’s ad competitors to play on the same playing field as Facebook has been pressured into to stave off further regulation. This is regulation to protect their business, and if it happens to also protect what is left of the integrity of our elections, elections that the Russians didn’t make a considerable dent in the last time around despite their best efforts, great. There are however more effective measures to defend the integrity of our elections, if we care to. 3 and 4 are both items that Facebook could roll out globally if they cared, so I’m inclined to believe that on Facebook’s political calculus, they have determined that it is politically expedient for them to come out for GDPR-style rules globally, even if they could already provide their global user base the same tools, rights and privileges afforded their European users by GDPR. Data portability is a technical challenge that is relatively easily resolved. The primary politics involved in preventing this are corporate, not governmental, and back when Web 2.0 was hot stuff, open standards were both expected and the default. Facebook played an enormous role in data portability backsliding on the web. If Facebook wants to bring out data privacy protections and data portability, then I’ll believe it when I see it. There aren’t any laws preventing this now.

int_19h 8y ago
> A government or government sponsored regulatory body deciding what is socially harmful speech is precisely what the First Amendment guards against. You would have to go with a corporate governed body on a corporate volunteer basis for it to be a meaningful proposal. Essentially, Facebook can ban le Nazis, but the US Government can’t. We had something like that already, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist