5 ms·

Yea, the narrative in mainstream circles keep saying this is another data grab. It's understandable given Facebook's history, but it's ignoring the fact that th

Yea, the narrative in mainstream circles keep saying this is another data grab. It's understandable given Facebook's history, but it's ignoring the fact that they don't need more data to make this venture worthwhile. It's a massive opportunity all on its own, on the face of it.

gridlockd 7y ago
Anybody who uses VISA or PayPal but then wouldn't use Libra because of "privacy concerns" probably doesn't realize how invasive these other companies are. Libra will not require a Facebook account and will supposedly not be tied to a Facebook account, so the danger should be about the same.
- basch 7y ago
  If this product brings us from a world of venmo, paypal, facebook payments, wechat etc to one where I can use any of their clients to send money to any of the other clients, I consider it a huge win. It's so silly that my friends and I have to agree on the same money app to send money to each other. Imagine if I had to convince every person to use firefox before I could send them a url, or if they needed hotmail and gmail to receive messages. Calibra vs Zelle here we come.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    It takes 5 minutes per life to sign up for a zelle /venmo/WeChat account , plus one minute per device.
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      If you actually read the terms of service, it takes an hour. Plus, you'll have to agree to them.
  - CaptainZapp 7y ago
    What's wrong with cash?
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      Nothing, besides the fact that you have to physically carry it around to transfer it.
    - basch 7y ago
      lack of a transaction record. "i paid you this then" plus, facebook payments are already so fast, i can take the money out from an atm one minute after the transfer is initiated.
- salawat 7y ago
  Frankly, I find the entire fintech/payment processor/credit environment to be at times little more than a parasite that I'd like to see go away. That won't happen though. Capital needs to flow as freely as possible; and the current players at least make that work. Libra, however, has no substantive purpose in the long run other than to finally tap into the rent-seeking upper layers of the financial system. It seems to be the tech industry's fallback when they can't think of anything more innovative to do. Start up a financial services division, and tap into those delicious fees from the "underbanked". Make no mistake; the data grab possibilities are real barring explicit intervention by regulators. Any advertisement company based on data collection for ad targeting has far too much potential value to reap out of actually tapping into the transaction details of user's. Having the "world's biggest social network graph" at your disposal on top of a distributed ledger from which can be derived a parallel graph of financial activity represents a gold mine in terms of panoptic levels of informational awareness. People don't seem to quite get it yet that a big enough pile of seemingly unidentifiable data points can be combined to create something as good as a fingerprint or DNA strand. In government work, this is explicitly highlighted anddrilled into every employee, every year (at least at the Federal level). Caveat emptor. Embrace your localized economies; beware of those seeking to add you to their "customer base" for the sake of 'your convenience'. They wouldn't be going out of their way to get you onboard if they didn't have anything to gain in the long run.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    I fail to see how any of this isn't already happening or how Libra is making any of it worse.

gridlockd 7y ago

Anybody who uses VISA or PayPal but then wouldn't use Libra because of "privacy concerns" probably doesn't realize how invasive these other companies are. Libra will not require a Facebook account and will supposedly not be tied to a Facebook account, so the danger should be about the same.

basch 7y ago
If this product brings us from a world of venmo, paypal, facebook payments, wechat etc to one where I can use any of their clients to send money to any of the other clients, I consider it a huge win. It's so silly that my friends and I have to agree on the same money app to send money to each other. Imagine if I had to convince every person to use firefox before I could send them a url, or if they needed hotmail and gmail to receive messages. Calibra vs Zelle here we come.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  It takes 5 minutes per life to sign up for a zelle /venmo/WeChat account , plus one minute per device.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    If you actually read the terms of service, it takes an hour. Plus, you'll have to agree to them.
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  What's wrong with cash?
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    Nothing, besides the fact that you have to physically carry it around to transfer it.
  - basch 7y ago
    lack of a transaction record. "i paid you this then" plus, facebook payments are already so fast, i can take the money out from an atm one minute after the transfer is initiated.
salawat 7y ago
Frankly, I find the entire fintech/payment processor/credit environment to be at times little more than a parasite that I'd like to see go away. That won't happen though. Capital needs to flow as freely as possible; and the current players at least make that work. Libra, however, has no substantive purpose in the long run other than to finally tap into the rent-seeking upper layers of the financial system. It seems to be the tech industry's fallback when they can't think of anything more innovative to do. Start up a financial services division, and tap into those delicious fees from the "underbanked". Make no mistake; the data grab possibilities are real barring explicit intervention by regulators. Any advertisement company based on data collection for ad targeting has far too much potential value to reap out of actually tapping into the transaction details of user's. Having the "world's biggest social network graph" at your disposal on top of a distributed ledger from which can be derived a parallel graph of financial activity represents a gold mine in terms of panoptic levels of informational awareness. People don't seem to quite get it yet that a big enough pile of seemingly unidentifiable data points can be combined to create something as good as a fingerprint or DNA strand. In government work, this is explicitly highlighted anddrilled into every employee, every year (at least at the Federal level). Caveat emptor. Embrace your localized economies; beware of those seeking to add you to their "customer base" for the sake of 'your convenience'. They wouldn't be going out of their way to get you onboard if they didn't have anything to gain in the long run.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  I fail to see how any of this isn't already happening or how Libra is making any of it worse.