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The Internet and the Third Estate

182 points by theNJR 7y ago

NotSammyHagar 7y ago
Another great piece. The world is changing, in the same way that the printing press caused change, people to break away from the control of the church. For many years it has been American views of freedom of the press that had a lot of sway in the world. > And then China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries. ... There’s no guarantee [American notions of free speech] ... values will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese. > We’re beginning to see this in social media. While our services, like WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in the US. Scary to think that China can force censorship here via TikTok. I'm not a tiktok user, but that's terrifying. Hidden, defacto commercial censorship. (edited to remove the > on the last thing above, that was my comment)
- newfangle 7y ago
  There is hidden and overt censorship. I actually find it absurd that we allow our children to use social media software developed by a hostile foreign power.
- proc0 7y ago
  It's western values vs. brainless sheeple asian values. I'm sorry but the atrocities of China are condoned by its people.
  - WaxProlix 7y ago
    This is the sort of thougt-terminating cliche that western Sinophobia enables. If you simultaneously believe that Chinese people are just as capable of critical thought as Americans and that they often support their government, then you need to engage with that support in good faith and try to figure out why it'd be the case. Instead, I think we often look at this as 'if p and q then X; certainly not X; probably q; therefore not p; QED' For a nation that is overwhelmingly okay with (often vocally supportive of) our own actual concentration camps, we're weirdly obsessed with the faraway 're-education' camps of our main economic and socio-political rival. (I do want to say that I think China is, really, objectively worse when it comes to human rights violations than the US itself is. I just find the unanimity of our criticism vs that of ourselves or, say, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Brazil, or other US-aligned states to leave a sour taste in my mouth.) Edit: I forgot to tie this back in to the originally linked article. Basically, when we engage in criticism, we should in turn be critical of the interests of those whom that criticism serves. Zuckerberg wants us to believe in a Fifth Estate, of, for, and by the masses. We all probably know that this is double-speak aimed at protecting his own personal power and bottom line, but that narrative enables and supports external criticism, focused on his rivals the scary Chinese, rather than the already vast power that Facebook wields over us.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      Americans are pretty unanimous in criticizing Saudi Arabia. The government often ends up on their side for geopolitical reasons, but the vast majority of American citizens and American media agree Saudi Arabia is a bad country doing terrible things.
      - WaxProlix 7y ago
        I think you're right about SA actually. While we all sort of forgot about it quickly afterwards, nobody was really in favor of what happened to Jamal Kashoggi, for instance. There are better examples I could have used there, especially if I were to go back into recent history.
    - TurkishPoptart 7y ago
      Thank you for saying this. Scholars are still trying to untangle the complex socio-cultural factors that kept the Soviet regime in power. Some of the newer theories concern language and value when trying to understand the relationships between Soviet citizens and the state itself, Soviet citizens among each other, as well as one's inner perception of themselves within the context of the system and the people within it. It's even harder when we don't have the benefit of hindsight when we have to analyze the present. >For a nation that is overwhelmingly okay with (often vocally supportive of) our own actual concentration camps, we're weirdly obsessed with the faraway 're-education' camps of our main economic and socio-political rival. This is the only point I think I disagree with. I haven't met any Americans in favor of the detention camps at the border. The big difference is that, in the Xinjiang province, the Uighur population is being detained and "re-educated" due to their ethnic and religious identity, which to Americans, sounds barbaric and Nazi-like.
      - WaxProlix 7y ago
        I don't know about that. There are plenty of people within the Trump base that are pro-detention centers; I don't expect you'd run into a lot of them in day to day life if you're an HN frequenter but not all of them advertise with crazy bumper sticker fiestas. I think I saw a ~41% approval in a WaPo article once, for instance. I've got some family in rural areas and their communities hold very different values to mine (and, by extension, maybe yours). As to the detention centers, they almost exclusively target the Hispanic (okay, and sometimes middle eastern) populations in areas; or do we think that the percentage of white Europeans in those centers is reflective of the number of invalid- or expired-visa, or otherwise illegitimately in-country European people?
  - scarmig 7y ago
    "brainless sheeple asian values"? Many people would say that e.g. citizens of Taiwan are at least as critical thinking as citizens of the USA. Some would say even more so. Even within mainland China, you're understating the amount of free thought going on. As far as Western values go, you only have to go back as far as 2003 to see a nation whipped up into a hysterical rage against some imagined enemy, to the point where that nation bombed the shit out of that country and caused the deaths of half a million people.
    - khuey 7y ago
      If there's lots of "free thought going on", but none of it can be expressed due to iron-fisted suppression by the government, does it matter?
    - proc0 7y ago
      Right, I'm only talking about mainland China. It seems to me Taiwanese people are more/less on the same side as Hong Kong, in that they both dislike Chinese government. This is precisely what I'm talking about. What is it about mainland Chinese that either approve of all these human rights violation or turn a blind-eye. Either way they are siding with the Chinese government, and it seems that is how they see themselves, as an extension of the government. So then the question is, why would we also not blame the people who are basically saying they are part of the government, or at best they will not hold their own government accountable?
  - yourbandsucks 7y ago
    Re: brainless sheeple asians Consider how easy it was to get you to believe cartoonish generalities about a billion people you've never met. Who's the sheep?
    - proc0 7y ago
      I can't think of any other explanation why so many people condone China government to that extent. When was the last Chinese protest? Why is it so many countries have citizens protesting all the time, yet I bet this never happens in China. I'm just making some observations, granted I didn't choose the best words.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - yourbandsucks 7y ago
        I appreciate the engagement. I'm not Chinese and either way I wouldn't speak for 1.6B people. I'll just note that there have been way more revolutions in China than in America over any timeframe, and they were all terrible. Things are going great for average Chinese people right now, and they have living memory of revolution, bloodshed, starvation, etc. Why fuck with it? Lock in the economic gains, and slow-march towards democracy. Xi is trying to move things in the wrong direction on the freedom front, and that's bad. The solution here is alliance with Chinese intellectuals, not opposition to 'China' that forces them onto their people's side.
        proc0 7y ago
        Sure, fair point on siding with the people. I'll just add there is an element of holding the people accountable for what their government is doing, which is also why Americans got some flak during the Iraq war. I'll try to read more on this though.
  - dang 7y ago
    If you post like this again we will ban you. Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome here, let alone this kind of slur. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
cowpig 7y ago
> The third concern is what has dominated the news cycle as of late: Facebook’s decision to not fact-check any posts or ads from politicians. This is largely being framed as aiding President Trump in particular, which is probably both true and also an unsurprising complaint from the Second Estate used to having monopoly control over fact-checking. Does he mean the American second estate, i.e. the legislative branch? Or does he mean the Nobility? And what does he mean by Monopoly Control? And what is he trying to imply with the word "unsurprising" here?
- naringas 7y ago
  I think he means the European second state, the one after the church-backed monarch state, i.e. nation state. (I also think his use of the nth-state analogy is slightly is confusing). I think he is referring to the media establishment's (i.e. TV news) monopoly over fact checking. and it's unsurprising because of course they would like to keep that same power they had before the internet
  - cowpig 7y ago
    Isn't the media the fourth estate? I can't find any way to interpret this excerpt such that it makes sense. How does anyone have "monopoly control over fact checking"? And I also can't think of a way to favorably interpret that statement, given that I consider fact-checking to be an integral component of any information dissemination system. Like many of Ben Thompson's articles, I find his ideas here compelling, but I also find myself feeling like he's an industry apologist and it clouds his thinking/makes him myopic.
    - dmvinson 7y ago
      I think he made a logical leap based around the US political parties and wealthy elites' influence over the fourth estate - sanctioned political debates on CNN, sources of information with perceived authority such as Fox News, etc. While I also think it's explained poorly, there may be a connection here to his point about the largest advertisers (politician and large corporations) who fund the media which is meant to check them.
bovermyer 7y ago
That's an excellent read and gives me much to think about. In particular, I need to reassess my understanding of Facebook's role in political discourse.
oflannabhra 7y ago
Thompson has recently been on a tear. Two of his recent articles (this and China Cultural Clash [0]) are some of his best writing yet. Actually, I'd say they are some of his best thinking yet. Whether you agree with him or not, I think it is clear that he is asking the right questions, at a time when most people are not. More than even asking the right questions, I think he is seeing much more clearly, and forwardly, than is common. I'm not sure I agree with all of his framing. For example, I'm not sure I agree that the invention of the printing press directly lead to nation states 450 years later. However, there is definitely more than a nugget of truth in his framing of the future, here. I think hindsight will judge him quite well, in more than just technology. [0] - https://stratechery.com/2019/the-china-cultural-clash/ https://stratechery.com/2019/the-china-cultural-clash/
dmvinson 7y ago
Ben Thompson continues to amaze. Pointing out the pointlessness of controlling the impact of tech by limiting Facebook's influence is important. Authoritarian China's biggest advantage is its ability to pick winners and multiply their impact by leveraging how decisive their decision making can be. Where this fails is at finding local maximums. The winners China picks will be the best of what's available right now, which for a while has often been a Chinese clone of what's working in America, adapted to local preferences. America's startup culture and competitiveness is our biggest advantage, and so I wish the US and EU would do more to force tech. companies to fight it out instead of picking winners by regulating the industry and controlling what Facebook and Google can do. Instead of just putting cumbersome regulations like the GDPR around user data, also dictate companies above a certain size have to have open APIs and easily exportable/programmatically accessible user data. Obviously this must be balanced by granular controls, but how can upstarts be incumbents when the data moats are so large. The APIs of Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. are pretty abysmal and continue to become worse with no punishment. Yet, that programmatic access to data is probably the only way an upstart could compete outside of a complete paradigm shift.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  > America's startup culture and competitiveness is our biggest advantage It's not an advantage against China though when they can do both of: - Block US apps from the Chinese market - Encourage wholesale copying of the best features from US companies If I were to start a FB clone of <insert any social app> in the US, it would fail miserably. China can ban the US version and simultaneously fund a clone for the Chinese market. Combined with the fact that Chinese networks (e.g. TikTok) have full access to the US market, this makes competition very asymmetric.
rayiner 7y ago
> “China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries. Until recently, the internet in almost every country outside China has been defined by American platforms with strong free expression values. There’s no guarantee these values will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese.” (Quoting Zuckerberg) I’m pleasantly surprised to hear Zuckerberg articulate this thought. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot over the past decade or so. At one time it seemed investable that key American values like free speech would become universal. We thought our engagement with China and the Middle East would hasten adoption of our culture and values. That future is far from certain now. Americans need to think really hard about what kind of world they want their kids to grow up in.
- someguydave 7y ago
  It’s in his interest to make the US government believe Facebook needs to be big to counter China.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Shivetya 7y ago
    No. What the best interest of us all is to realize that all not hate speech, especially politically related, needs to not be burdened by restrictions on such by any government. the only entities too big are the Chinese and American governments and both for the same reason, they are very willing to suppress speech which does not further their goals as countries or that of their politicians. In the US that means they have to resort to scare tactics because our freedom of speech and assembly are protected if not heralded at times. so they have to scare you into believing the democratic process is threatened, that elections are threatened, that your very way of life is threatened, unless you of course give them power to suppress speech they claim meets those requirements. Fortunately courts would stop most attempts but politicians truly think the court of public opinion can be used to influence the courts too. So yeah I get it, the fad is to hate of Facebook but I would take multiple companies the size of facebook before I let any politician tell me what speech is acceptable when it comes to politics or the like. putting a muzzle on facebook opens the door to muzzling all blogs and sites and that is something the press and politicians would love to have, control over the message again. edit: just blundered into this story [0] - while more dire than what we are discussing one must understand that China isn't far from what Venezuela is now but for the people there this is what they gave up when they allowed the politicians to control the message and what is and what is not acceptable [0] https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/10/20/my-socialist-hell-the-death-of-free-speech-in-venezuela/ https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/10/20/my-so...
icodestuff 7y ago
> The third concern is what has dominated the news cycle as of late: Facebook’s decision to not fact-check any posts or ads from politicians. This is largely being framed as aiding President Trump in particular, which is probably both true and also an unsurprising complaint from the Second Estate used to having monopoly control over fact-checking. > The broader issue is that the third concern and first concern are so clearly in direct opposition to each other. If Facebook has the potential for immense influence on politics, why on earth would anyone want the company policing political speech? Maybe because they're fact-checking lots of other things to promote themselves as a platform you can find facts on? I don't know, I'd think if there was any ostensible non-partisan shared value in a democracy, it'd be a desire for factual information. Spun and biased, sure, but fundamentally factual. (In reality, I don't think this is true anymore, at least from the head of the executive branch and his sycophants, but this shared value is not irreparably broken nationwide.) If Facebook isn't going to fact-check anything, then that's one thing, but if they're going to fact-check some things, it's far from unreasonable for them to fact-check political ads.
Tomte 7y ago
> Europe’s Three Estates Wikipedia says the same in the context of the press as the fourth estate, and I think it's wrong, at least from a German point of view. While it is correct that the medieval Estates (or "Stände") were the nobility, the clergy and the people, nobody has ever called the press the fourth "Stand". The press is the fourth "Gewalt" (or "Power"), and that is a clear reference to the three powers in the state: the legislature, the executive and the legislature. It's interesting how those two trinities mix with the press in different languages and societies.
- noja 7y ago
  and judicial
- Torwald 7y ago
  > nobody has ever called the press the fourth "Stand". Because unlike in the UK, the press as a Gewalt in a political system with Gewaltenteilung (division of power), appeared only after the society divided in estates (Ständegesellschaft) ceased to be. It's a timeline issue.
juped 7y ago
>It’s also a framing that is, appropriately enough, uniquely American; in the United States, the first three estates are commonly thought to be the three branches of government: the executive, legislative, and judicial. The author of this article may have misunderstood it this way but I guarantee that this is not commonly thought in the United States.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  In the US, the press is occasionally referred to as the fourth branch of government (after the legislative, executive, and judiciary). Occasionally others are proposed: lobbyists, special interests, the intelligence services. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government
  - juped 7y ago
    That's a different term used to mean entirely different things.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      My point is that Ben Thompson seems to have confused the terms "fourth branch" and "fourth estate" in his essay. Which is not among his better ones. The usage of "branches of government", the three Constitutional ones (leg, exec, judicial), and various others generally posited as a fourth, or occasionally higher, branch. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government I'm entirely unfamiliar with a notion of estates in the US independent of Continental or British traditions. That seems to be a novel creation, or mis-remembering, of Thompson. DDG finds nothing aside from the European usage under fourth/fifth estate, specific to the US: https://duckduckgo.com/?q="united+states"+"fourth+estate"&ia=about https://duckduckgo.com/?q="united+states"+"fourth+estate"&ia...
      - juped 7y ago
        Estates are real and they aren't branches of government - more like divisions of society. I agree regarding the confusion in the essay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates_of_the_realm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates_of_the_realm
dredmorbius 7y ago
The "fifth estate" usage as referencing bloggers long predates any recent social media apologia. Wikipedia article history shows the reference already by 2009: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fifth_Estate&oldid=308845816 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fifth_Estate&oldi... It cites Stephen D Cooper (2006). Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the Fifth Estate. Marquette Books. ISBN 0922993475. It's possible that there are yet other estates to be discovered: https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/102989723532565277 https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/102989723532565277 And of course there was the 2013 film of the same title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Estate_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Estate_(film)
ajudson 7y ago
The discussion of the press reminds me of the propaganda model of media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
40acres 7y ago
Generally I think Zuckerberg is correct, Facebook is very powerful no doubt. But that power is vested upon by it's users. There clearly was a lot of misinformation going around during the 2016 election and at some point we have to look back on ourselves and ask: "why are we so gullible"? There is a balance between Facebook moderating it's platform and controlling speech and I think we are near that line. Labeling articles as misleading or doing some fact checks along with making sure that there are no bots and extreme hate speech is near the limit of my expectations of what a platform should do in terms of moderation.
dredmorbius 7y ago
There's a glaring issue with Ben Thompson's essay, in that so far as I'm aware there is no independent US tradition of "estates" independent of either Continental or British European formulation. Rather, there are the three Constitutional branches of government, the legislative, executive, and judicial. One can find informal references to fourth (and occasionally higher) branches of government. But not "estates" as such, within the US. Otherwise, you will find frequent usage of "fourth estate" in the traditional European sense, almost always referencing the press. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22united+states%22+%22fourth+estate%22&ia=about https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22united+states%22+%22fourth+esta... I'm trying to decide if this is a major or minor flaw with Thompson's essay. Either way, the claim without reference suggests a sloppyness or lack of diligence, which calls into question his larger points. And there are certainly questions to be asked. The claim that the so-called Fifth Estate is free of gatekeepers is specious, as Jon Evans pointed out at TechCrunch (posted yesterday to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21306086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21306086): Facebook isn’t free speech, it’s algorithmic amplification optimized for outrage. Whether the gatekeeping is one of blocking specific types of content, or amplifying others to the point that unwanted messages are completely drowned out really doesn't much matter. Attention, individual or collective, is finite, and whatever means are used to deny it, the end effect is the same: a message is lost.
reilly3000 7y ago
I find it incredibly ironic that Mark Zuckerberg claims that the 5th estate he helped create has no gatekeepers. In fact, Facebook finds itself the largest gatekeeper of speech the world has ever known. How our society deemed it fair and prudent to allow a private corporation to 'moderate' and prioritize billions of communications a day... that I'll never understand.
calimac 7y ago
He’s a nefarious actor lying through his teeth with a straight face and talking out of both sides of his mouth in an Orwellian way. It's creepy when he talks and does not blink like a normal human. His censorship is alive and well. He has silenced hundreds of upstanding accounts who did not share his radical leftist views and consequentially molding the views of millions of Facebook users. Indirectly suck has reigned in the other opposing voices who care about their income to not speak openly to save their livelihood.

182 points by theNJR 7y ago

Another great piece. The world is changing, in the same way that the printing press caused change, people to break away from the control of the church. For many years it has been American views of freedom of the press that had a lot of sway in the world. > And then China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries. ... There’s no guarantee [American notions of free speech] ... values will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese. > We’re beginning to see this in social media. While our services, like WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in the US. Scary to think that China can force censorship here via TikTok. I'm not a tiktok user, but that's terrifying. Hidden, defacto commercial censorship. (edited to remove the > on the last thing above, that was my comment)

newfangle 7y ago
There is hidden and overt censorship. I actually find it absurd that we allow our children to use social media software developed by a hostile foreign power.
proc0 7y ago
It's western values vs. brainless sheeple asian values. I'm sorry but the atrocities of China are condoned by its people.
- WaxProlix 7y ago
  This is the sort of thougt-terminating cliche that western Sinophobia enables. If you simultaneously believe that Chinese people are just as capable of critical thought as Americans and that they often support their government, then you need to engage with that support in good faith and try to figure out why it'd be the case. Instead, I think we often look at this as 'if p and q then X; certainly not X; probably q; therefore not p; QED' For a nation that is overwhelmingly okay with (often vocally supportive of) our own actual concentration camps, we're weirdly obsessed with the faraway 're-education' camps of our main economic and socio-political rival. (I do want to say that I think China is, really, objectively worse when it comes to human rights violations than the US itself is. I just find the unanimity of our criticism vs that of ourselves or, say, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Brazil, or other US-aligned states to leave a sour taste in my mouth.) Edit: I forgot to tie this back in to the originally linked article. Basically, when we engage in criticism, we should in turn be critical of the interests of those whom that criticism serves. Zuckerberg wants us to believe in a Fifth Estate, of, for, and by the masses. We all probably know that this is double-speak aimed at protecting his own personal power and bottom line, but that narrative enables and supports external criticism, focused on his rivals the scary Chinese, rather than the already vast power that Facebook wields over us.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Americans are pretty unanimous in criticizing Saudi Arabia. The government often ends up on their side for geopolitical reasons, but the vast majority of American citizens and American media agree Saudi Arabia is a bad country doing terrible things.
    - WaxProlix 7y ago
      I think you're right about SA actually. While we all sort of forgot about it quickly afterwards, nobody was really in favor of what happened to Jamal Kashoggi, for instance. There are better examples I could have used there, especially if I were to go back into recent history.
  - TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    Thank you for saying this. Scholars are still trying to untangle the complex socio-cultural factors that kept the Soviet regime in power. Some of the newer theories concern language and value when trying to understand the relationships between Soviet citizens and the state itself, Soviet citizens among each other, as well as one's inner perception of themselves within the context of the system and the people within it. It's even harder when we don't have the benefit of hindsight when we have to analyze the present. >For a nation that is overwhelmingly okay with (often vocally supportive of) our own actual concentration camps, we're weirdly obsessed with the faraway 're-education' camps of our main economic and socio-political rival. This is the only point I think I disagree with. I haven't met any Americans in favor of the detention camps at the border. The big difference is that, in the Xinjiang province, the Uighur population is being detained and "re-educated" due to their ethnic and religious identity, which to Americans, sounds barbaric and Nazi-like.
    - WaxProlix 7y ago
      I don't know about that. There are plenty of people within the Trump base that are pro-detention centers; I don't expect you'd run into a lot of them in day to day life if you're an HN frequenter but not all of them advertise with crazy bumper sticker fiestas. I think I saw a ~41% approval in a WaPo article once, for instance. I've got some family in rural areas and their communities hold very different values to mine (and, by extension, maybe yours). As to the detention centers, they almost exclusively target the Hispanic (okay, and sometimes middle eastern) populations in areas; or do we think that the percentage of white Europeans in those centers is reflective of the number of invalid- or expired-visa, or otherwise illegitimately in-country European people?
- scarmig 7y ago
  "brainless sheeple asian values"? Many people would say that e.g. citizens of Taiwan are at least as critical thinking as citizens of the USA. Some would say even more so. Even within mainland China, you're understating the amount of free thought going on. As far as Western values go, you only have to go back as far as 2003 to see a nation whipped up into a hysterical rage against some imagined enemy, to the point where that nation bombed the shit out of that country and caused the deaths of half a million people.
  - khuey 7y ago
    If there's lots of "free thought going on", but none of it can be expressed due to iron-fisted suppression by the government, does it matter?
  - proc0 7y ago
    Right, I'm only talking about mainland China. It seems to me Taiwanese people are more/less on the same side as Hong Kong, in that they both dislike Chinese government. This is precisely what I'm talking about. What is it about mainland Chinese that either approve of all these human rights violation or turn a blind-eye. Either way they are siding with the Chinese government, and it seems that is how they see themselves, as an extension of the government. So then the question is, why would we also not blame the people who are basically saying they are part of the government, or at best they will not hold their own government accountable?
- yourbandsucks 7y ago
  Re: brainless sheeple asians Consider how easy it was to get you to believe cartoonish generalities about a billion people you've never met. Who's the sheep?
  - proc0 7y ago
    I can't think of any other explanation why so many people condone China government to that extent. When was the last Chinese protest? Why is it so many countries have citizens protesting all the time, yet I bet this never happens in China. I'm just making some observations, granted I didn't choose the best words.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - yourbandsucks 7y ago
      I appreciate the engagement. I'm not Chinese and either way I wouldn't speak for 1.6B people. I'll just note that there have been way more revolutions in China than in America over any timeframe, and they were all terrible. Things are going great for average Chinese people right now, and they have living memory of revolution, bloodshed, starvation, etc. Why fuck with it? Lock in the economic gains, and slow-march towards democracy. Xi is trying to move things in the wrong direction on the freedom front, and that's bad. The solution here is alliance with Chinese intellectuals, not opposition to 'China' that forces them onto their people's side.
      - proc0 7y ago
        Sure, fair point on siding with the people. I'll just add there is an element of holding the people accountable for what their government is doing, which is also why Americans got some flak during the Iraq war. I'll try to read more on this though.
- dang 7y ago
  If you post like this again we will ban you. Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome here, let alone this kind of slur. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

cowpig 7y ago

naringas 7y ago
I think he means the European second state, the one after the church-backed monarch state, i.e. nation state. (I also think his use of the nth-state analogy is slightly is confusing). I think he is referring to the media establishment's (i.e. TV news) monopoly over fact checking. and it's unsurprising because of course they would like to keep that same power they had before the internet
- cowpig 7y ago
  Isn't the media the fourth estate? I can't find any way to interpret this excerpt such that it makes sense. How does anyone have "monopoly control over fact checking"? And I also can't think of a way to favorably interpret that statement, given that I consider fact-checking to be an integral component of any information dissemination system. Like many of Ben Thompson's articles, I find his ideas here compelling, but I also find myself feeling like he's an industry apologist and it clouds his thinking/makes him myopic.
  - dmvinson 7y ago
    I think he made a logical leap based around the US political parties and wealthy elites' influence over the fourth estate - sanctioned political debates on CNN, sources of information with perceived authority such as Fox News, etc. While I also think it's explained poorly, there may be a connection here to his point about the largest advertisers (politician and large corporations) who fund the media which is meant to check them.

bovermyer 7y ago

That's an excellent read and gives me much to think about. In particular, I need to reassess my understanding of Facebook's role in political discourse.

oflannabhra 7y ago

Thompson has recently been on a tear. Two of his recent articles (this and China Cultural Clash [0]) are some of his best writing yet. Actually, I'd say they are some of his best thinking yet. Whether you agree with him or not, I think it is clear that he is asking the right questions, at a time when most people are not. More than even asking the right questions, I think he is seeing much more clearly, and forwardly, than is common. I'm not sure I agree with all of his framing. For example, I'm not sure I agree that the invention of the printing press directly lead to nation states 450 years later. However, there is definitely more than a nugget of truth in his framing of the future, here. I think hindsight will judge him quite well, in more than just technology. [0] - https://stratechery.com/2019/the-china-cultural-clash/ https://stratechery.com/2019/the-china-cultural-clash/

dmvinson 7y ago

Ben Thompson continues to amaze. Pointing out the pointlessness of controlling the impact of tech by limiting Facebook's influence is important. Authoritarian China's biggest advantage is its ability to pick winners and multiply their impact by leveraging how decisive their decision making can be. Where this fails is at finding local maximums. The winners China picks will be the best of what's available right now, which for a while has often been a Chinese clone of what's working in America, adapted to local preferences. America's startup culture and competitiveness is our biggest advantage, and so I wish the US and EU would do more to force tech. companies to fight it out instead of picking winners by regulating the industry and controlling what Facebook and Google can do. Instead of just putting cumbersome regulations like the GDPR around user data, also dictate companies above a certain size have to have open APIs and easily exportable/programmatically accessible user data. Obviously this must be balanced by granular controls, but how can upstarts be incumbents when the data moats are so large. The APIs of Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. are pretty abysmal and continue to become worse with no punishment. Yet, that programmatic access to data is probably the only way an upstart could compete outside of a complete paradigm shift.

aidenn0 7y ago
> America's startup culture and competitiveness is our biggest advantage It's not an advantage against China though when they can do both of: - Block US apps from the Chinese market - Encourage wholesale copying of the best features from US companies If I were to start a FB clone of <insert any social app> in the US, it would fail miserably. China can ban the US version and simultaneously fund a clone for the Chinese market. Combined with the fact that Chinese networks (e.g. TikTok) have full access to the US market, this makes competition very asymmetric.

rayiner 7y ago

> “China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries. Until recently, the internet in almost every country outside China has been defined by American platforms with strong free expression values. There’s no guarantee these values will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese.” (Quoting Zuckerberg) I’m pleasantly surprised to hear Zuckerberg articulate this thought. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot over the past decade or so. At one time it seemed investable that key American values like free speech would become universal. We thought our engagement with China and the Middle East would hasten adoption of our culture and values. That future is far from certain now. Americans need to think really hard about what kind of world they want their kids to grow up in.

someguydave 7y ago
It’s in his interest to make the US government believe Facebook needs to be big to counter China.
- deleted 7y ago
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- Shivetya 7y ago
  No. What the best interest of us all is to realize that all not hate speech, especially politically related, needs to not be burdened by restrictions on such by any government. the only entities too big are the Chinese and American governments and both for the same reason, they are very willing to suppress speech which does not further their goals as countries or that of their politicians. In the US that means they have to resort to scare tactics because our freedom of speech and assembly are protected if not heralded at times. so they have to scare you into believing the democratic process is threatened, that elections are threatened, that your very way of life is threatened, unless you of course give them power to suppress speech they claim meets those requirements. Fortunately courts would stop most attempts but politicians truly think the court of public opinion can be used to influence the courts too. So yeah I get it, the fad is to hate of Facebook but I would take multiple companies the size of facebook before I let any politician tell me what speech is acceptable when it comes to politics or the like. putting a muzzle on facebook opens the door to muzzling all blogs and sites and that is something the press and politicians would love to have, control over the message again. edit: just blundered into this story [0] - while more dire than what we are discussing one must understand that China isn't far from what Venezuela is now but for the people there this is what they gave up when they allowed the politicians to control the message and what is and what is not acceptable [0] https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/10/20/my-socialist-hell-the-death-of-free-speech-in-venezuela/ https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/10/20/my-so...

icodestuff 7y ago

> The third concern is what has dominated the news cycle as of late: Facebook’s decision to not fact-check any posts or ads from politicians. This is largely being framed as aiding President Trump in particular, which is probably both true and also an unsurprising complaint from the Second Estate used to having monopoly control over fact-checking. > The broader issue is that the third concern and first concern are so clearly in direct opposition to each other. If Facebook has the potential for immense influence on politics, why on earth would anyone want the company policing political speech? Maybe because they're fact-checking lots of other things to promote themselves as a platform you can find facts on? I don't know, I'd think if there was any ostensible non-partisan shared value in a democracy, it'd be a desire for factual information. Spun and biased, sure, but fundamentally factual. (In reality, I don't think this is true anymore, at least from the head of the executive branch and his sycophants, but this shared value is not irreparably broken nationwide.) If Facebook isn't going to fact-check anything, then that's one thing, but if they're going to fact-check some things, it's far from unreasonable for them to fact-check political ads.

Tomte 7y ago

> Europe’s Three Estates Wikipedia says the same in the context of the press as the fourth estate, and I think it's wrong, at least from a German point of view. While it is correct that the medieval Estates (or "Stände") were the nobility, the clergy and the people, nobody has ever called the press the fourth "Stand". The press is the fourth "Gewalt" (or "Power"), and that is a clear reference to the three powers in the state: the legislature, the executive and the legislature. It's interesting how those two trinities mix with the press in different languages and societies.

noja 7y ago
and judicial
Torwald 7y ago
> nobody has ever called the press the fourth "Stand". Because unlike in the UK, the press as a Gewalt in a political system with Gewaltenteilung (division of power), appeared only after the society divided in estates (Ständegesellschaft) ceased to be. It's a timeline issue.

juped 7y ago

>It’s also a framing that is, appropriately enough, uniquely American; in the United States, the first three estates are commonly thought to be the three branches of government: the executive, legislative, and judicial. The author of this article may have misunderstood it this way but I guarantee that this is not commonly thought in the United States.

dredmorbius 7y ago
In the US, the press is occasionally referred to as the fourth branch of government (after the legislative, executive, and judiciary). Occasionally others are proposed: lobbyists, special interests, the intelligence services. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government
- juped 7y ago
  That's a different term used to mean entirely different things.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    My point is that Ben Thompson seems to have confused the terms "fourth branch" and "fourth estate" in his essay. Which is not among his better ones. The usage of "branches of government", the three Constitutional ones (leg, exec, judicial), and various others generally posited as a fourth, or occasionally higher, branch. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government I'm entirely unfamiliar with a notion of estates in the US independent of Continental or British traditions. That seems to be a novel creation, or mis-remembering, of Thompson. DDG finds nothing aside from the European usage under fourth/fifth estate, specific to the US: https://duckduckgo.com/?q="united+states"+"fourth+estate"&ia=about https://duckduckgo.com/?q="united+states"+"fourth+estate"&ia...
    - juped 7y ago
      Estates are real and they aren't branches of government - more like divisions of society. I agree regarding the confusion in the essay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates_of_the_realm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates_of_the_realm

dredmorbius 7y ago

The "fifth estate" usage as referencing bloggers long predates any recent social media apologia. Wikipedia article history shows the reference already by 2009: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fifth_Estate&oldid=308845816 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fifth_Estate&oldi... It cites Stephen D Cooper (2006). Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the Fifth Estate. Marquette Books. ISBN 0922993475. It's possible that there are yet other estates to be discovered: https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/102989723532565277 https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/102989723532565277 And of course there was the 2013 film of the same title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Estate_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Estate_(film)

ajudson 7y ago

The discussion of the press reminds me of the propaganda model of media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

40acres 7y ago

Generally I think Zuckerberg is correct, Facebook is very powerful no doubt. But that power is vested upon by it's users. There clearly was a lot of misinformation going around during the 2016 election and at some point we have to look back on ourselves and ask: "why are we so gullible"? There is a balance between Facebook moderating it's platform and controlling speech and I think we are near that line. Labeling articles as misleading or doing some fact checks along with making sure that there are no bots and extreme hate speech is near the limit of my expectations of what a platform should do in terms of moderation.

dredmorbius 7y ago

There's a glaring issue with Ben Thompson's essay, in that so far as I'm aware there is no independent US tradition of "estates" independent of either Continental or British European formulation. Rather, there are the three Constitutional branches of government, the legislative, executive, and judicial. One can find informal references to fourth (and occasionally higher) branches of government. But not "estates" as such, within the US. Otherwise, you will find frequent usage of "fourth estate" in the traditional European sense, almost always referencing the press. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22united+states%22+%22fourth+estate%22&ia=about https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22united+states%22+%22fourth+esta... I'm trying to decide if this is a major or minor flaw with Thompson's essay. Either way, the claim without reference suggests a sloppyness or lack of diligence, which calls into question his larger points. And there are certainly questions to be asked. The claim that the so-called Fifth Estate is free of gatekeepers is specious, as Jon Evans pointed out at TechCrunch (posted yesterday to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21306086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21306086): Facebook isn’t free speech, it’s algorithmic amplification optimized for outrage. Whether the gatekeeping is one of blocking specific types of content, or amplifying others to the point that unwanted messages are completely drowned out really doesn't much matter. Attention, individual or collective, is finite, and whatever means are used to deny it, the end effect is the same: a message is lost.

reilly3000 7y ago

I find it incredibly ironic that Mark Zuckerberg claims that the 5th estate he helped create has no gatekeepers. In fact, Facebook finds itself the largest gatekeeper of speech the world has ever known. How our society deemed it fair and prudent to allow a private corporation to 'moderate' and prioritize billions of communications a day... that I'll never understand.

calimac 7y ago

He’s a nefarious actor lying through his teeth with a straight face and talking out of both sides of his mouth in an Orwellian way. It's creepy when he talks and does not blink like a normal human. His censorship is alive and well. He has silenced hundreds of upstanding accounts who did not share his radical leftist views and consequentially molding the views of millions of Facebook users. Indirectly suck has reigned in the other opposing voices who care about their income to not speak openly to save their livelihood.