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Can you elaborate a bit on how anyone "but" Facebook has a bad time by applying the existing regulatory frameworks? You mention itsy-bitsy start-up boards, but
by csydas 7y ago
Can you elaborate a bit on how anyone "but" Facebook has a bad time by applying the existing regulatory frameworks? You mention itsy-bitsy start-up boards, but really none of the concerns being address in courts world wide have anything to do with minor boards and everything to do with Facebook's lack of control over their advertisers, the amount of information being shared out to said advertisers, their position as a news platform (upon Facebook's own insistence) plus their lack of vetting (keep in mind, this isn't about them generating content or user posted content, it's about Facebook's algorithms purposefully promoting this content; this is much different than some nutcase spinning up a site on a VM somewhere an trying to SEO as much as they can to get some attention from random google searches on hot-topic subjects).
Social media walks a strange line where it seems that its proponents both want to be treated as legitimate news, but not held to the same standards of veracity and validation of the claims that traditional news sources purport to follow*. Such scrutiny of Facebook isn't a concern for a start up unless they're already engaging in bad-faith practices and/or problematic practices per stringent Privacy Law (i.e., EU law).
Simply put, Facebook can see that their ability to expand past the US strongly (more than it already has) is gated by the public perception of what Facebook is/does. I'm no in the EU proper but close enough and get various Warnings/messages about Facebook from facebook itself...and for me it's empty.
But make no mistake, Facebook really is trying to muddy the waters by pretending that existing legislation targets or directly affects persons who are not engaged in the non-sense which was required before.
- andrewflnr 7y agoI feel that I should not have to justify the idea that applying laws designed around a certain set of assumptions, in a situation that violates those assumptions, is likely to produce bad outcomes. I feel that this should be the default belief. But since you asked so nicely... The case of treating FB as a telco is obvious: no accountability. I think we're agreed that this is no good. A news outlet (a) explicitly has their credibility on the line with regard to their output and (b) is very selective in what they publish (for better or worse). Neither of these is really the case for Facebook. For a given link, only the poster's and linkee's credibility is on the line. Facebook defaults to allowing posts, and is only somewhat selective in what it allows and promotes. If this means Facebook is legally equivalent to the New York Times, then so are HN, reddit, Pinterest, etc. Treating FB as a new agency requires all of these sites to take responsibility for the opinions of all of their users. This will discourage medium-sized sites where hand-moderation (doable for small forums) is just becoming infeasible, and more importantly have a chilling effect on people's online activity, because you'll never quite know when the admins of the site you're posting on, or their robotic minions, will panic about your controversial link. Better for them to delete your post just in case they get in trouble with the law, and maybe better for you to not bother and stay silent. This is also no good. Of course that's just one scenario. Details may differ across the multiverse. But one thing that doesn't change is that basing policy on something other than reality always finds a way to go wrong.