13 ms·

Facebook and Speech

114 points by uptown 7y ago

collyw 7y ago
He doesn't say why it's a trap to think about facebook in terms of publisher versus carrier. Someone made an insightful comment here the other day saying that they (the tech companies) chose to play publisher and opened themselves up to whole lot of legal battles and complaints, when they should have stayed with the carrier option.
- dannyr 7y ago
  Carrier option likely means Facebook cannot use algorithms to recommend and rank posts that would drive engagement. Algorithms are a great factor as to why a Facebook got users hooked into its service and drives up ad revenue.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  I’d like to know why so many people treat the publisher vs. carrier issue as some natural law of speech, when it’s actually a fairly recent concept. To me it seems like a false dichotomy. Arguing from first principles, why should there be a binary choice between those two options?
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    I’d like to know why so many people treat the publisher vs. carrier issue as some natural law of speech How do you mean, exactly? I feel that I understand your point but am trying not to make any assumptions.
  - sintaxi 7y ago
    > why should there be a binary choice between those two options? Because the distinction is binary. You either censor what information people consume beyond what the law requires you to or you don't. publisher vs. carrier is the legal distinction between the two.
    - akersten 7y ago
      Citation badly needed. Please indicate the law that says "as soon as you moderate, you become responsible for all the other content on your platform." Because I don't think there is one. And I think that's an extremely strained interpretation of Section 230.
      - shkkmo 7y ago
        The argument is not legal, but semantic. Unless the post you are replying to is edited, you are asking for citation for a quote that was not made by the person you are replying to.
        akersten 7y ago
        Their post specifically stated a legal argument: >> publisher vs. carrier is the legal distinction between the two So I'm curious about the law that provides that. My quotation marks are to summarize the position being made - I use >> for direct quotes.
        shkkmo 7y ago
        Your summary seems rather inaccurate. The person you are responding to is merely pointing out that there is a binary distinction between those that exert editorial control over their content and those that don't and that "publisher" and "common carrier" are the legal terms that cover those two binary categories (which may not be strictly accurate.) There is nothing about responsibility, so you are putting words in their mouth.
        shkkmo 7y ago
        The legal protections for "common carriers" were established via Case Law in Smith v. California and extended to online platforms in Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. this was then limited to not cover online "publishers" who exert editorial control in Stratton Oakmont Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. Section 230 was intended to limit this last Case Law decision and extend the protections given to online "common carriers" to online "publishers".
  - lr4444lr 7y ago
    Because of liability. A newspaper or TV station can be sued for false content, not the printing company or the station engineers.
    - vkou 7y ago
      I can sue a TV station for telling lies on the air? Really? How much am I likely to win from this, because if it's true, I'm ready to start a legal crusade today. Oh, right... I won't get a penny. Free speech also means the freedom to tell bald-faced lies, without consequence.
      - jay_kyburz 7y ago
        Actually that's not true in a lot of the world. If you or your society are harmed by the lies, you can seek damages.
  - jerf 7y ago
    We need carriers, because we need people to be able to dedicate themselves to plumbing without having to worry about the terabytes crossing across them. If they did, the Internet would grind to a halt from all the necessary processing and blocking and examination. We want publishers to carry some responsibility, for various obvious reasons. It seems to me that once someone is being held a little bit responsible, they're going to be forced to act as being fully responsible and need the power to block a bit of content, which will then come with the full corresponding responsibility for blocking that piece of content. What do you see as a middle ground? (This is an honest question, not an argument.)
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      The middle ground to me is something like "people should be free to interact, but if they're going to say something I think is racist they need to do it elsewhere." (Substitute "racist" with whatever you wish in this scenario). At that point, the publisher vs. carrier crowd goes "well, that racist thing wasn't illegal, so now you have to be responsible for everything someone says." But I don't really care about what most of people say; I just don't want them to be racist. This isn't a standard we apply to most businesses. If I run a bar, I can generally remove a patron for saying something without the conduct I choose to allow coming under scrutiny. I agree re: carriers, for the reasons you stated. But to me that's a status mostly reserved for plumbing-type infrastructure, not a choice services have to make when they're deciding what type of content to host.
      - endtime 7y ago
        > But I don't really care about what most of people say; I just don't want them to be racist. I hope you're ready to be accused of being a sexist and anti-Semite by many people's definitions. Not to mention that I hope you know that watermelon, dancing, math, and balloons are racist (according to someone with 1000 Tumblr followers, probably), and so have no place on your platform. The point being that determining what is and isn't racist can be a pretty hard problem.
        jakelazaroff 7y ago
  - geggam 7y ago
    Not really new. Scribes, news reporters, telegrams and telephones all throughout history have enjoyed immunity from the content they didnt generate. Ever hear "Don't kill the messenger?"
  - greggman2 7y ago
    Is it a recent concept? The "concept" seems as old as time. If you say it it's your responsibility. If I say it it's mine. Your editing of my speech is your speech therefore if you edit it becomes your responsibility. A simple example just for clarity. I say "I hate my sister when she doesn't clean up but I love my sister more than anything". If you edit that to "I hate my sister" you've changed the meaning. That edit is your speech and hence your responsibility.
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      Social networks aren't "editing" anyone's speech, though. They're simply limiting its reach, or not hosting it in the first place.
      - greggman2 7y ago
        They are selecting which content to show. That's no different then editing. It's easy to post 2 posts where missing the context of one other the other changes the entire meaning. So by not displaying one or the other they've edited the meaning and are therefore arguably responsible for the new meaning
- throwaway_bad 7y ago
  The comment thread is worth linking to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21275269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21275269 In particular the Naval Ravikant interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44&t=3661 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44&t=3661
- mikedilger 7y ago
  Author makes many dubious and unsubstantiated claims: * Claims to know what the heart of the matter is, and that it is power * Claims those recommending antitrust are "mostly stuck in the industrial age" * Claims publisher vs carrier dichotomy is a "trap" without explanation Nonetheless, when he started talking about an API I got pretty excited.
  - jay_kyburz 7y ago
    I don't get the API thing? Who is going to say what functions and data are exposed? Why do these services have to pay to host these extra services? Just because we say so? What businesses does it apply to? Does my business have to have open databases?
rubbingalcohol 7y ago
> In the EU all bank accounts are now required to have an API. This has massively reduced the power of incumbent banks, allowing for rapid innovation in the banking and payments sector. The same would and could happen if platform such as Facebook and Twitter were required to have an API. I agree with the author's assertion of a problem, but this is really confusing. Both Facebook and Twitter DO have APIs. Granted the APIs are proprietary and subject to significant restrictions on acceptable use and functionality. However, providing even a full-featured API doesn't change the effect of the platforms owning a person's user account and persona, or their ability to suck people in to waste countless hours watching their ad targeting feed algorithms. Only true decentralization of social graph hosting will really address the core issue of centralized power.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Forcing Facebook and Twitter to have truly open APIs would be amazing. We'd have everything from custom clients, custom News Feed algorithms and much more.. Heck, they can even require ads to be served, the point is we'd be in a far better situation than we are now.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - brenden2 7y ago
    We're more likely to see new networks with open APIs than trying to convince a leopard to change its spots.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Forcing Facebook to have truly open API means forcing them to allow Cambridge Analytica to vacuum up everyone's data.
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      Open API doesn't mean all data available to everyone all the time. You'd still have ACLs and privacy options. It would just mean that the data and interactions you as a user already have in Facebook's proprietary walled garden, would be API callable from 3rd parties. Today you cannot see my FB page if we're not friends, an open API wouldn't allow you to access my data either. If we were friends, you could use your custom FB client to look at my page though, which would be very user friendly.
crustacean 7y ago
It’s only going to stop when being on Facebook is seen as shameful.
- 2sk21 7y ago
  I agree and I think this is going to happen at some point.
RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
I stared in shock as the red mist speckled my glasses. After a few moments I managed to stammer a response. "My god, that worker just fell in! Why haven't you stopped the machine? Why isn't anyone doing anything?" The foreman who was leading my tour made a plaintive gesture and stared into space for a moment. "It's complex, you see. The machine is certainly dangerous. That's the third worker this hour." "The third?!" "Every 10 minutes, like clockwork. But on the other hand, the machine is quite valuable. You must understand. Our competition all has machines just like it, and if we stopped ours, well, it wouldn't make much of a difference, would it? They're building more every day and we simply must keep up. That's the business." "But those are people- human lives!" The foreman looked tired. He'd given this speech many times. "Our workers sign all the necessary releases. They're fully informed. Our legal team will assure you there's a great deal of paperwork involved, and we cross every T and dot every I. Totally above-board. I didn't build the damn machine, I just keep it running, and this is how it's done in the industry. Now, if you'll all follow me- just step over that mess for now, the cleanup crew are already on their way- I'll show you the way to our recruiting department. Turnover is a bit high here, but we've been working on some great new internship programs with elementary schools..."
- mLuby 7y ago
  Did you write that? It's reminiscent of Kafka's In the Penal Colony.
  - Hydraulix989 7y ago
    If you did write that, it's absolutely brilliant, and I hope to read more from you!
    - RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
      Yes, I wrote it. Thank you.
      - simonebrunozzi 7y ago
jfengel 7y ago
I don't see what opening Facebook's API would buy us. You'd get different interpretations of the feed, but you'd still be siloed into whatever feed it was you accessed. Cambridge Analytica used FB's data to manipulate the feed and thus the users, but no feed algorithm is going to prevent that. Just the opposite: people would find it even easier to choose a feed algorithm that siloed them further. You could jump to a different one -- but would you? I don't think it would return nearly as much power to users as he imagines. FB won't make quite the same mistakes as they have in the past, but an enormous amount of information is still public knowledge -- putting your social life in public is the whole point of a social network. People enjoy putting themselves out there and voluntarily, voraciously consume what others put there too. No tech tweak is going to change that, or limit the consequences.
- moosey 7y ago
  Based on the history of facebook and its news feed, I believe that the news feed or activity feed in general, unless it is a dumb pipe, should be considered human psychological experimentation. Under this premise, I would submit that not facebook, but instead its curated feeds, should be made illegal. But then again, the same logic could be applied to advertising/marketing... well, at least some of it, perhaps most.
mLuby 7y ago
This is the best case for users I can think of if social media were forced to allow APIs: Different products/companies exist to fulfill each of these roles: - host the firehose of tweets/posts/snaps/grams. Likely the husks of Facebook/Twitter/SnapChat/Instagram. - filter/sort firehose for user given their preferences time/popularity/relevance etc. - GUI to display posts to user by Web/Mobile/VR/SMS/Postcard etc. Aggregate social media readers do (did) this. - GUI to (re)post/comment on/react to/edit/delete user content to the firehose. These already exist: HootSuite/Buffer - firehose analysis for marketing, etc. - firehose-level moderation/flagging/censorship/tagging The problem is there is far more user value in vertically integrating some or all of these functions than there is in keeping them decentralized. Most users will prefer one product that filter/sorts AND displays posts to two products where one filter/sorts and the other displays.
- throwaway381728 7y ago
  The problem with open API access is preventing Cambridge Analytica like abuse.
  - zpallin 7y ago
    Except Cambridge Analytica occurred in a closed-access scenario. It's a problem either way.
    - bduerst 7y ago
      CA scraped Facebook APIs. It's only "closed" in the sense that you needed an account and token to access the open API.
      - dominotw 7y ago
        > CA scraped Facebook APIs what does it mean to scrape an API. I usually hear that word for html website scraping.
        7y ago
LordHumungous 7y ago
> The second trap is misunderstanding network effects. Network effects, also known as efficiencies of scale, exist in every industry. This was as true of the railroads and the telephone companies as it is of tech companies. That's the whole reason corporations tend to become monopolies in the first place.
kd3 7y ago
An API in and of itself is not going to prevent censorship if Facebook still controls the backend.
zachguo 7y ago
TBH, as a Chinese expat, all these utilitarian arguments give me Deja Vu of how the Chinese government defended GFW.
- wsinks 7y ago
  Can you elaborate on this? I don't know about how they defended the Great Firewall (had to look up that acronym) And I was thinking about the utilitarian argument for the world... that argument sides with China on the surface. From Webster, "Utiliatarianism" is the aim of action should be the largest possible balance of pleasure over pain or the greatest happiness of the greatest number. China is the largest country by population in the world. A very quick argument would be 'We have the most people, so anything that's good for our people is good for the world." That thinking justifies ghettos - the minority would upset the majority, and the most pleasure for the majority is what utilitarianism is. That has me worried - it's a simple argument that is wrong on deeper inspection. What do you think as a Chinese expat? What was CCP's argument for the Great Firewall? Population reference: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-by-percentage-of-world-population.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-by-percentage-...
- tdb7893 7y ago
  Is there anything specific you are worried about? With arguments context matters a lot and hearing similar arguments in two different places isn't really surprising.
carapace 7y ago
I think we are seeing the divergence of humanity into Morlocks and Eloi. Most people can't begin to understand the kind of power that FB/Google has accrued due to the enormous and detailed information they are hoovering up. The vast majority of people are digital serfs. I don't know what, if anything, to do about it. I do not think requiring Skynet to have an API will be very helpful though.
amelius 7y ago
The best way to get an open social API may be a "Ship of Theseus" approach, where users run a scraper that copies their FB data to a new service, and keeps their FB data synced with the new service. As more people join the new service, eventually all FB logins will be by the scrapers, and at that point FB can be dropped.
- mikelyons 7y ago
  Isn't this explicitly against the Facebook terms of service?
  - amelius 7y ago
    Probably. But it's still the user's data. Also compare this to a tool like YouTube-dl which is against YouTube's ToS, but is still used by many people.
maxhedrome 7y ago
Ma Bell was still ridiculously powerful, but as long as it’s competing with something, we go on. I recommend just don’t use Facebook at all. Teach children what the fuck vanity means, and that you don’t need 1 million followers to have real friends.

114 points by uptown 7y ago

He doesn't say why it's a trap to think about facebook in terms of publisher versus carrier. Someone made an insightful comment here the other day saying that they (the tech companies) chose to play publisher and opened themselves up to whole lot of legal battles and complaints, when they should have stayed with the carrier option.

dannyr 7y ago
Carrier option likely means Facebook cannot use algorithms to recommend and rank posts that would drive engagement. Algorithms are a great factor as to why a Facebook got users hooked into its service and drives up ad revenue.
jakelazaroff 7y ago
I’d like to know why so many people treat the publisher vs. carrier issue as some natural law of speech, when it’s actually a fairly recent concept. To me it seems like a false dichotomy. Arguing from first principles, why should there be a binary choice between those two options?
- dvtrn 7y ago
  I’d like to know why so many people treat the publisher vs. carrier issue as some natural law of speech How do you mean, exactly? I feel that I understand your point but am trying not to make any assumptions.
- sintaxi 7y ago
  > why should there be a binary choice between those two options? Because the distinction is binary. You either censor what information people consume beyond what the law requires you to or you don't. publisher vs. carrier is the legal distinction between the two.
  - akersten 7y ago
    Citation badly needed. Please indicate the law that says "as soon as you moderate, you become responsible for all the other content on your platform." Because I don't think there is one. And I think that's an extremely strained interpretation of Section 230.
    - shkkmo 7y ago
      The argument is not legal, but semantic. Unless the post you are replying to is edited, you are asking for citation for a quote that was not made by the person you are replying to.
      - akersten 7y ago
        Their post specifically stated a legal argument: >> publisher vs. carrier is the legal distinction between the two So I'm curious about the law that provides that. My quotation marks are to summarize the position being made - I use >> for direct quotes.
        shkkmo 7y ago
        Your summary seems rather inaccurate. The person you are responding to is merely pointing out that there is a binary distinction between those that exert editorial control over their content and those that don't and that "publisher" and "common carrier" are the legal terms that cover those two binary categories (which may not be strictly accurate.) There is nothing about responsibility, so you are putting words in their mouth.
        shkkmo 7y ago
        The legal protections for "common carriers" were established via Case Law in Smith v. California and extended to online platforms in Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. this was then limited to not cover online "publishers" who exert editorial control in Stratton Oakmont Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. Section 230 was intended to limit this last Case Law decision and extend the protections given to online "common carriers" to online "publishers".
- lr4444lr 7y ago
  Because of liability. A newspaper or TV station can be sued for false content, not the printing company or the station engineers.
  - vkou 7y ago
    I can sue a TV station for telling lies on the air? Really? How much am I likely to win from this, because if it's true, I'm ready to start a legal crusade today. Oh, right... I won't get a penny. Free speech also means the freedom to tell bald-faced lies, without consequence.
    - jay_kyburz 7y ago
      Actually that's not true in a lot of the world. If you or your society are harmed by the lies, you can seek damages.
- jerf 7y ago
  We need carriers, because we need people to be able to dedicate themselves to plumbing without having to worry about the terabytes crossing across them. If they did, the Internet would grind to a halt from all the necessary processing and blocking and examination. We want publishers to carry some responsibility, for various obvious reasons. It seems to me that once someone is being held a little bit responsible, they're going to be forced to act as being fully responsible and need the power to block a bit of content, which will then come with the full corresponding responsibility for blocking that piece of content. What do you see as a middle ground? (This is an honest question, not an argument.)
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    The middle ground to me is something like "people should be free to interact, but if they're going to say something I think is racist they need to do it elsewhere." (Substitute "racist" with whatever you wish in this scenario). At that point, the publisher vs. carrier crowd goes "well, that racist thing wasn't illegal, so now you have to be responsible for everything someone says." But I don't really care about what most of people say; I just don't want them to be racist. This isn't a standard we apply to most businesses. If I run a bar, I can generally remove a patron for saying something without the conduct I choose to allow coming under scrutiny. I agree re: carriers, for the reasons you stated. But to me that's a status mostly reserved for plumbing-type infrastructure, not a choice services have to make when they're deciding what type of content to host.
    - endtime 7y ago
      > But I don't really care about what most of people say; I just don't want them to be racist. I hope you're ready to be accused of being a sexist and anti-Semite by many people's definitions. Not to mention that I hope you know that watermelon, dancing, math, and balloons are racist (according to someone with 1000 Tumblr followers, probably), and so have no place on your platform. The point being that determining what is and isn't racist can be a pretty hard problem.
      - jakelazaroff 7y ago
- geggam 7y ago
  Not really new. Scribes, news reporters, telegrams and telephones all throughout history have enjoyed immunity from the content they didnt generate. Ever hear "Don't kill the messenger?"
- greggman2 7y ago
  Is it a recent concept? The "concept" seems as old as time. If you say it it's your responsibility. If I say it it's mine. Your editing of my speech is your speech therefore if you edit it becomes your responsibility. A simple example just for clarity. I say "I hate my sister when she doesn't clean up but I love my sister more than anything". If you edit that to "I hate my sister" you've changed the meaning. That edit is your speech and hence your responsibility.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    Social networks aren't "editing" anyone's speech, though. They're simply limiting its reach, or not hosting it in the first place.
    - greggman2 7y ago
      They are selecting which content to show. That's no different then editing. It's easy to post 2 posts where missing the context of one other the other changes the entire meaning. So by not displaying one or the other they've edited the meaning and are therefore arguably responsible for the new meaning
throwaway_bad 7y ago
The comment thread is worth linking to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21275269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21275269 In particular the Naval Ravikant interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44&t=3661 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44&t=3661
mikedilger 7y ago
Author makes many dubious and unsubstantiated claims: * Claims to know what the heart of the matter is, and that it is power * Claims those recommending antitrust are "mostly stuck in the industrial age" * Claims publisher vs carrier dichotomy is a "trap" without explanation Nonetheless, when he started talking about an API I got pretty excited.
- jay_kyburz 7y ago
  I don't get the API thing? Who is going to say what functions and data are exposed? Why do these services have to pay to host these extra services? Just because we say so? What businesses does it apply to? Does my business have to have open databases?

rubbingalcohol 7y ago

> In the EU all bank accounts are now required to have an API. This has massively reduced the power of incumbent banks, allowing for rapid innovation in the banking and payments sector. The same would and could happen if platform such as Facebook and Twitter were required to have an API. I agree with the author's assertion of a problem, but this is really confusing. Both Facebook and Twitter DO have APIs. Granted the APIs are proprietary and subject to significant restrictions on acceptable use and functionality. However, providing even a full-featured API doesn't change the effect of the platforms owning a person's user account and persona, or their ability to suck people in to waste countless hours watching their ad targeting feed algorithms. Only true decentralization of social graph hosting will really address the core issue of centralized power.

cameronbrown 7y ago
Forcing Facebook and Twitter to have truly open APIs would be amazing. We'd have everything from custom clients, custom News Feed algorithms and much more.. Heck, they can even require ads to be served, the point is we'd be in a far better situation than we are now.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- brenden2 7y ago
  We're more likely to see new networks with open APIs than trying to convince a leopard to change its spots.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Forcing Facebook to have truly open API means forcing them to allow Cambridge Analytica to vacuum up everyone's data.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    Open API doesn't mean all data available to everyone all the time. You'd still have ACLs and privacy options. It would just mean that the data and interactions you as a user already have in Facebook's proprietary walled garden, would be API callable from 3rd parties. Today you cannot see my FB page if we're not friends, an open API wouldn't allow you to access my data either. If we were friends, you could use your custom FB client to look at my page though, which would be very user friendly.

crustacean 7y ago

It’s only going to stop when being on Facebook is seen as shameful.

2sk21 7y ago
I agree and I think this is going to happen at some point.

RodgerTheGreat 7y ago

I stared in shock as the red mist speckled my glasses. After a few moments I managed to stammer a response. "My god, that worker just fell in! Why haven't you stopped the machine? Why isn't anyone doing anything?" The foreman who was leading my tour made a plaintive gesture and stared into space for a moment. "It's complex, you see. The machine is certainly dangerous. That's the third worker this hour." "The third?!" "Every 10 minutes, like clockwork. But on the other hand, the machine is quite valuable. You must understand. Our competition all has machines just like it, and if we stopped ours, well, it wouldn't make much of a difference, would it? They're building more every day and we simply must keep up. That's the business." "But those are people- human lives!" The foreman looked tired. He'd given this speech many times. "Our workers sign all the necessary releases. They're fully informed. Our legal team will assure you there's a great deal of paperwork involved, and we cross every T and dot every I. Totally above-board. I didn't build the damn machine, I just keep it running, and this is how it's done in the industry. Now, if you'll all follow me- just step over that mess for now, the cleanup crew are already on their way- I'll show you the way to our recruiting department. Turnover is a bit high here, but we've been working on some great new internship programs with elementary schools..."

mLuby 7y ago
Did you write that? It's reminiscent of Kafka's In the Penal Colony.
- Hydraulix989 7y ago
  If you did write that, it's absolutely brilliant, and I hope to read more from you!
  - RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
    Yes, I wrote it. Thank you.
    - simonebrunozzi 7y ago

jfengel 7y ago

I don't see what opening Facebook's API would buy us. You'd get different interpretations of the feed, but you'd still be siloed into whatever feed it was you accessed. Cambridge Analytica used FB's data to manipulate the feed and thus the users, but no feed algorithm is going to prevent that. Just the opposite: people would find it even easier to choose a feed algorithm that siloed them further. You could jump to a different one -- but would you? I don't think it would return nearly as much power to users as he imagines. FB won't make quite the same mistakes as they have in the past, but an enormous amount of information is still public knowledge -- putting your social life in public is the whole point of a social network. People enjoy putting themselves out there and voluntarily, voraciously consume what others put there too. No tech tweak is going to change that, or limit the consequences.

moosey 7y ago
Based on the history of facebook and its news feed, I believe that the news feed or activity feed in general, unless it is a dumb pipe, should be considered human psychological experimentation. Under this premise, I would submit that not facebook, but instead its curated feeds, should be made illegal. But then again, the same logic could be applied to advertising/marketing... well, at least some of it, perhaps most.

mLuby 7y ago

This is the best case for users I can think of if social media were forced to allow APIs: Different products/companies exist to fulfill each of these roles: - host the firehose of tweets/posts/snaps/grams. Likely the husks of Facebook/Twitter/SnapChat/Instagram. - filter/sort firehose for user given their preferences time/popularity/relevance etc. - GUI to display posts to user by Web/Mobile/VR/SMS/Postcard etc. Aggregate social media readers do (did) this. - GUI to (re)post/comment on/react to/edit/delete user content to the firehose. These already exist: HootSuite/Buffer - firehose analysis for marketing, etc. - firehose-level moderation/flagging/censorship/tagging The problem is there is far more user value in vertically integrating some or all of these functions than there is in keeping them decentralized. Most users will prefer one product that filter/sorts AND displays posts to two products where one filter/sorts and the other displays.

throwaway381728 7y ago
The problem with open API access is preventing Cambridge Analytica like abuse.
- zpallin 7y ago
  Except Cambridge Analytica occurred in a closed-access scenario. It's a problem either way.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    CA scraped Facebook APIs. It's only "closed" in the sense that you needed an account and token to access the open API.
    - dominotw 7y ago
      > CA scraped Facebook APIs what does it mean to scrape an API. I usually hear that word for html website scraping.
      - 7y ago

LordHumungous 7y ago

> The second trap is misunderstanding network effects. Network effects, also known as efficiencies of scale, exist in every industry. This was as true of the railroads and the telephone companies as it is of tech companies. That's the whole reason corporations tend to become monopolies in the first place.

kd3 7y ago

An API in and of itself is not going to prevent censorship if Facebook still controls the backend.

zachguo 7y ago

TBH, as a Chinese expat, all these utilitarian arguments give me Deja Vu of how the Chinese government defended GFW.

wsinks 7y ago
Can you elaborate on this? I don't know about how they defended the Great Firewall (had to look up that acronym) And I was thinking about the utilitarian argument for the world... that argument sides with China on the surface. From Webster, "Utiliatarianism" is the aim of action should be the largest possible balance of pleasure over pain or the greatest happiness of the greatest number. China is the largest country by population in the world. A very quick argument would be 'We have the most people, so anything that's good for our people is good for the world." That thinking justifies ghettos - the minority would upset the majority, and the most pleasure for the majority is what utilitarianism is. That has me worried - it's a simple argument that is wrong on deeper inspection. What do you think as a Chinese expat? What was CCP's argument for the Great Firewall? Population reference: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-by-percentage-of-world-population.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-by-percentage-...
tdb7893 7y ago
Is there anything specific you are worried about? With arguments context matters a lot and hearing similar arguments in two different places isn't really surprising.

carapace 7y ago

I think we are seeing the divergence of humanity into Morlocks and Eloi. Most people can't begin to understand the kind of power that FB/Google has accrued due to the enormous and detailed information they are hoovering up. The vast majority of people are digital serfs. I don't know what, if anything, to do about it. I do not think requiring Skynet to have an API will be very helpful though.

amelius 7y ago

The best way to get an open social API may be a "Ship of Theseus" approach, where users run a scraper that copies their FB data to a new service, and keeps their FB data synced with the new service. As more people join the new service, eventually all FB logins will be by the scrapers, and at that point FB can be dropped.

mikelyons 7y ago
Isn't this explicitly against the Facebook terms of service?
- amelius 7y ago
  Probably. But it's still the user's data. Also compare this to a tool like YouTube-dl which is against YouTube's ToS, but is still used by many people.

maxhedrome 7y ago

Ma Bell was still ridiculously powerful, but as long as it’s competing with something, we go on. I recommend just don’t use Facebook at all. Teach children what the fuck vanity means, and that you don’t need 1 million followers to have real friends.