5 ms·

Don't be fooled. Zuckerberg is the head of the organization and has both created and internalized the economic logic of his organization, but the problem is sys

Don't be fooled. Zuckerberg is the head of the organization and has both created and internalized the economic logic of his organization, but the problem is systemic. If you put in someone else, they'll have a different style and might do a few things slightly different, but the economic logic is the same. Spying on the population is profitable, so such operations must be expanded to the maximum possible extent. We can't simply undertake anti-trust litigation against these companies. We must go further and outlaw this business model.

bongobongo 7y ago
It never ceases to amaze me how people who are opposed to government surveillance by accountable liberal constitutional democracies are OK with surveillance by unaccountable private interests who lie all the time and do harm in order to make money.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  The government has the ability to make me disappear. Facebook does not.
  - tehjoker 7y ago
    "Facebook Is Looking for Employees With National Security Clearances" "October 16, 2017, 4:00 AM EDT Updated on October 16, 2017, 12:23 PM EDT" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-is-said-to-seek-staff-with-national-security-clearance https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-...
  - arrosenberg 7y ago
    Facebook does have the opposite ability though - they could make one appear to be whoever they want. If they were inclined to use their data and technology maliciously, against an individual, I think it's likely they could ruin that life pretty quickly.
  - bongobongo 7y ago
    A liberal constitutional democracy does not have any more ability to make you disappear than Facebook does. And repressive governments already use Facebook to disappear their people: >The Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. Instead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for ethnic cleansing, according to former military officials, researchers and civilian officials in the country. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... So, the notion that it's somehow "safer" for Facebook to engage in omnipresent surveillance doesn't prove true.
    - phry 7y ago
      > A liberal constitutional democracy does not have any more ability to make you disappear than Facebook does. oh for sure bud "The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli...
      - na85 7y ago
        The US isn't a liberal constitutional democracy. It's an oligarchy with different laws for the rich and poor.
    - paulddraper 7y ago
      > A liberal constitutional democracy does not have any more ability to make you disappear than Facebook does. Yes, no true Scotsman would do such a thing.
      - bongobongo 7y ago
        You don’t really know what that means, do you?
  - gdy 7y ago
    But character assassination with all the data on you that FB has is trivial.
  - ishan1121 7y ago
    Be shadow banned by Fb & Google and your online presence is dead. You can scream and scream all you want but no one will hear you online.
- paulddraper 7y ago
  Government has a exclusive monopoly on taxation and physical force. Facebook is just some website. There's not even a comparison.
  - AlexandrB 7y ago
    Government is elected. Facebook is controlled by a single person who even the board cannot force out. There's not even a comparison.
    - paulddraper 7y ago
      Facebook was elected by the market. There have been other candidates to make bids: Google+, WeChat, etc.
starbugs 7y ago
It seems rather hard to find a legal way to outlaw the business model. I wonder whether there's a way to make spying so unprofitable that the business model simply isn't attractive anymore? Legislation that would force businesses to pay for collecting user data (maybe a tax on user data) might be a start, but I don't see how something like that could be implemented successfully.
- smuemd 7y ago
  FB is planetary scale psychoactive technology. Just make it a public health issue.
- closeparen 7y ago
  Democracies are accountable only to issues that affect turnout in swing districts. Businesses are accountable to everything that might send transactions to competitors. It’s quite difficult to stop using Facebook, but it’s effectively impossible to get an electoral outcome changed over a niche technical issue, or even a general one like the trains not working.
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    Agreed. Let's make gerrymandering illegal.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> We must go further and outlaw this business model Laws work best when they outlaw the harm, not the method. Strengthening privacy rights and pursuing antitrust action around that [1] will deter similar business models in the future. If Zuckerberg willfully violated the FTC consent decree, there are ways to make him pay that discincentivise similar behavior in future. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust...
- rchaud 7y ago
  FB is still only one head of the hydra. Amazon, LinkedIn, Google all profit off of the collection and use of personal data. A massive chunk of Silicon Valley's cash hoards depend on advertising. And when that much money is on the line, regulators tend to take on a 'light touch'.
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    Crime can look a lot like a hydra. Still, I don't think giving up the fight is a better solution.
fit2rule 7y ago
>We must go further and outlaw this business model. We need to make social-discovery and network services a function of the OS and not a 3rd-party service over which the user has no agency. In my opinion we are in this dilemma because OS vendors fell asleep at the wheel, and such things as a well-working, inbuilt common system service are instead a behind-the-walled-garden/-data-center service that has been usurped from the user. So, same as it ever was: the corporate control over social networking (and lets just call it that, because that's what these systems are) is only 'a thing' because our systems - our computers - and the OS they run, out of the box - have been usurped for the purpose. So, lets just continue with seeing iron-grip over single points of the network (i.e. Facebook, et al.) as the damage it is, indeed, and route around it. i.e. we don't need legal harassment - just better system services which allow discovery and sharing with our peers without discarding near-full agency to a sinister, shady, corporate third-party.

bongobongo 7y ago

It never ceases to amaze me how people who are opposed to government surveillance by accountable liberal constitutional democracies are OK with surveillance by unaccountable private interests who lie all the time and do harm in order to make money.

cameronbrown 7y ago
The government has the ability to make me disappear. Facebook does not.
- tehjoker 7y ago
  "Facebook Is Looking for Employees With National Security Clearances" "October 16, 2017, 4:00 AM EDT Updated on October 16, 2017, 12:23 PM EDT" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-is-said-to-seek-staff-with-national-security-clearance https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-...
- arrosenberg 7y ago
  Facebook does have the opposite ability though - they could make one appear to be whoever they want. If they were inclined to use their data and technology maliciously, against an individual, I think it's likely they could ruin that life pretty quickly.
- bongobongo 7y ago
  A liberal constitutional democracy does not have any more ability to make you disappear than Facebook does. And repressive governments already use Facebook to disappear their people: >The Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. Instead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for ethnic cleansing, according to former military officials, researchers and civilian officials in the country. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... So, the notion that it's somehow "safer" for Facebook to engage in omnipresent surveillance doesn't prove true.
  - phry 7y ago
    > A liberal constitutional democracy does not have any more ability to make you disappear than Facebook does. oh for sure bud "The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli...
    - na85 7y ago
      The US isn't a liberal constitutional democracy. It's an oligarchy with different laws for the rich and poor.
  - paulddraper 7y ago
    > A liberal constitutional democracy does not have any more ability to make you disappear than Facebook does. Yes, no true Scotsman would do such a thing.
    - bongobongo 7y ago
      You don’t really know what that means, do you?
- gdy 7y ago
  But character assassination with all the data on you that FB has is trivial.
- ishan1121 7y ago
  Be shadow banned by Fb & Google and your online presence is dead. You can scream and scream all you want but no one will hear you online.
paulddraper 7y ago
Government has a exclusive monopoly on taxation and physical force. Facebook is just some website. There's not even a comparison.
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  Government is elected. Facebook is controlled by a single person who even the board cannot force out. There's not even a comparison.
  - paulddraper 7y ago
    Facebook was elected by the market. There have been other candidates to make bids: Google+, WeChat, etc.

starbugs 7y ago

It seems rather hard to find a legal way to outlaw the business model. I wonder whether there's a way to make spying so unprofitable that the business model simply isn't attractive anymore? Legislation that would force businesses to pay for collecting user data (maybe a tax on user data) might be a start, but I don't see how something like that could be implemented successfully.

smuemd 7y ago
FB is planetary scale psychoactive technology. Just make it a public health issue.
closeparen 7y ago
Democracies are accountable only to issues that affect turnout in swing districts. Businesses are accountable to everything that might send transactions to competitors. It’s quite difficult to stop using Facebook, but it’s effectively impossible to get an electoral outcome changed over a niche technical issue, or even a general one like the trains not working.
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  Agreed. Let's make gerrymandering illegal.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> We must go further and outlaw this business model Laws work best when they outlaw the harm, not the method. Strengthening privacy rights and pursuing antitrust action around that [1] will deter similar business models in the future. If Zuckerberg willfully violated the FTC consent decree, there are ways to make him pay that discincentivise similar behavior in future. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust...

rchaud 7y ago
FB is still only one head of the hydra. Amazon, LinkedIn, Google all profit off of the collection and use of personal data. A massive chunk of Silicon Valley's cash hoards depend on advertising. And when that much money is on the line, regulators tend to take on a 'light touch'.
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  Crime can look a lot like a hydra. Still, I don't think giving up the fight is a better solution.

fit2rule 7y ago

>We must go further and outlaw this business model. We need to make social-discovery and network services a function of the OS and not a 3rd-party service over which the user has no agency. In my opinion we are in this dilemma because OS vendors fell asleep at the wheel, and such things as a well-working, inbuilt common system service are instead a behind-the-walled-garden/-data-center service that has been usurped from the user. So, same as it ever was: the corporate control over social networking (and lets just call it that, because that's what these systems are) is only 'a thing' because our systems - our computers - and the OS they run, out of the box - have been usurped for the purpose. So, lets just continue with seeing iron-grip over single points of the network (i.e. Facebook, et al.) as the damage it is, indeed, and route around it. i.e. we don't need legal harassment - just better system services which allow discovery and sharing with our peers without discarding near-full agency to a sinister, shady, corporate third-party.