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Facebook is helping to set up a new pro-tech advocacy group
- sigzero 6y agoYou will have to forgive me if I don't trust Facebook to do anything but that which is good for Facebook.
- na85 6y agoDisgusting. Everything about this is simply disgusting.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hakka-nyu-su 6y agoParticularly the fact that Zuckerberg and other companies are using China as a bogeyman to extract favorable tax and other policy concessions while exploiting Chinese immigrant labor.
- nogabebop23 6y agoIt's not the labour that is their end game, unless you're talking about their users.
- smitty1e 6y agoTrotsky: "You may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is interested in you." https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky Merely recoiling from the horror of activities that some may rationalize is no source of safety.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- minikites 6y agoI'm sure Facebook will prioritize the interests of the common man in their advocacy.
- meddlepal 6y agoSurprised it's taken this long. Tech has for too long pretended Washington and politics don't matter.
- coldpie 6y agoEvery company in that article needs to be broken up, and also investigated for their roles in enabling and encouraging extremism. The ad-driven frenzy for clicks at all costs needs to be reigned in.
- travisoneill1 6y agoEncouraging extremism isn't illegal.
- Nasrudith 6y agoInvestigated for things that aren't even remotely a crime isn't a very good idea and is also a form of extremism ironically. The central asseration of driving it while a convenient scapegoat also assumes facts not in evidence and outright contradicted. Alex Jones has been driving extremism in concrete and proven ways by hawking his own crap for funding.
- projektfu 6y agoThere are congressional investigations as well which are meant to inform legislation, not indict criminals.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI feel like the group has a point. We should regulate Facebook to some degree, and I'm glad to know about their involvement here, but some people think the company should be destroyed and I don't see what they're hoping to accomplish. The realistic present alternative to a world dominated by Facebook proper and Instagram is a world dominated by WeChat and Weibo.
- annadane 6y agoIt's just, I'd feel more sympathetic if Facebook hadn't spent the last several years being unethical
- annadane 6y agoReally, downvotes? I guess the shills are out in force today.
- Nasrudith 6y agoRegulate how exactly? While better than the indistinguishable from bots "destroy/break up Facebook" ad nausuem repetition I have seen plenty of calls for regulation with zero thought as to what regulations they would add. The few examples I have seen proposed are either blatantly unconstitutional, ineffectual, and/or obviously doomed to backfire. Politician's syllogism (we need to do something and this is something) gets us nowhere.
- dublinben 6y agoOne possible regulation that should resonate with the HN crowd would be a real form of due process or arbitration for users who have been censored. If platforms like Facebook are going to be the universal arbiters of acceptable public speech, then we ought to have formal recourse when they silence us. As it stands, we are completely at the mercy of the algorithm or outsourced contractors.
- rasengan 6y agoNo. Protocol based Internet was the right idea - walled gardens are nation states recreated on the Internet.
- swalsh 6y agoSometimes I feel like "The People" need the equivalent of the NRA. An advocacy group that will advocate for their tech civil rights. The real power of the NRA is not the money donated to it, but the huge group of single issue voters they can whirl up at a moments notice.
- weeksie 6y agoThat's the EFF. It exists. Donate to it.
- diebeforei485 6y agoI find the EFF to be way too lefty and not necessarily doing a great job.
- robotron 6y agoWhat is "lefty" about them? They support rights regardless of political leaning.
- phatfish 6y agoI suspect it is simply that they advocate for the rights of the average person over those rights being taken by the powerful. That seems to be all that you need to do to be considered "the left" in brainwashed land.
- vorpalhex 6y agoThat's sort of the problem: The People (at least, a subset of them) are the ones who created and support the NRA. The People (at least, a subset of them) are also the ones who run and support Brady. "The People" includes a large amount of people who disagree with you - regardless of what your belief system is. Arguing that your enemies are some privately sponsored or corporate backed shill is a tactic going back to ancient Rome.
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- nogabebop23 6y ago>> political advocacy group Nice way to position your lobbyist.
- thephyber 6y agoTo be fair, lobbyists and advocates are both just mouthpieces for special interests. "political advocacy group" just takes some of the stink off of the connotations of "lobbyist".
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago> The American Edge Project is dedicated to the bipartisan proposition that American innovators are an essential part of U.S. economic health, national security and individual freedoms This will be interesting. On one hand, I definitely agree with that quote in the article. On the other hand, you often see highly tech-invested commenters on this website argue that it no longer makes sense to work for a startup because the FAANGs have amassed so much wealth and power that they can always be a better deal, even when the startup succeeds. So at the very least in seems the tech giants are stifling innovation in some way. It's also important to note that all of the tech giants amassed their power through acquisitions, not just organic growth (e.g. Facebook and Instagram/WhatsApp, Google and Android/YouTube).
- Nasrudith 6y agoWhat about Amazon? Wholefoods is the main notable purchase and they were were essentially a peripheral expansion/afterthought. NetFlix I can't even think of a single merger.
- yardie 6y agoAmazon: Audible, IMDB, Goodreads, Comixology, the Book Depository, Woot, Ring, Eero. They've been gobbling up other online media stores for decades. It's to the point you just assume a new store is an Amazon subsidiary or will be soon.
- apocalyptic0n3 6y agoDon't forget Twitch as well. That was a massive acquisition. And Alexa, Box Office Mojo, Zappos, LoveFilm (an early Netflix competitor), and Curse. If I recall correctly, they also own a stake in Wikia/Fandom too. And that doesn't even go into the dozens of book stores and book data companies they've acquired over the last 20+ years. Amazon has gobbled up tons of smaller companies in order to make themselves stronger and more diverse. I'm not sure why Nasrudith singled them out as someone who hasn't really.
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- zelias 6y agoLuckily the top Google search result for "American Edge Project" is this handy website about knives: https://www.americanedgesharpening.com/ https://www.americanedgesharpening.com/
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- Hokusai 6y ago> Facebook is helping to set up a new pro-tech advocacy group to battle Washington My guess is that Facebook is going to look for its own specific interest not so much "pro-tech". That makes sense and it is the normal PR naming to make it more palatable. I can see that Facebook lobbing sometimes is going to align with "tech" needs and other it would play opposite to it. I cannot read the article, so, anyone knows if organizations like EFF would be included in this advocacy group, it includes just Facebook or which companies it includes?
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoYup, that's pretty much what I'm getting. It'll be an exercise in doublespeak; on the one hand they will push for internet access for all, but on the other to do away with net neutrality so that they can offer free internet access to Facebook and co but paid for non-facebook, like they tried (and failed) in iirc India. They want to push the Libra cryptocurrency so they can literally print digital e-monies and get a chunk of that dank payment processing revenue. They want to not be held accountable for swaying public interest, because they already are - consciously or not. They are pushing to get more and more power, less and less government oversight. Pesky consumer protection laws, pfft, not for us.
- xenocyon 6y ago> if organizations like EFF would be included in this advocacy group Obviously not. The EFF is antithetical to Facebook's goals; it advocates for freedom from not only governmental but also corporate surveillance.
- extra88 6y agoYes, the group is not "pro-tech," it's "pro-trust" AKA anti-antitrust. They're anti-regulation that they don't write themselves.
- dmos62 6y agoThis looks like the start of a new misinformation campaign. Unregulation is anti-tech, not pro-tech: tech of today is in a strangle hold of corporate anti-competition tricks. Calling Facebook's lobbying efforts pro-tech is a cruel joke, but most people aren't well informed enough to tell.
- aabeshou 6y agofreedom in America usually means freedom of the elite to do whatever they want, and freedom of the workers from being protected
- KoftaBob 6y agoI've always wondered why big tech and its seemingly unlimited cash hasn't been able to out-lobby NIMBY groups in the bay area, and spur more housing construction. Hopefully this is one of the things they'd be able to accomplish with an advocacy/lobbying group.
- throwawaymanbot 6y agoIf thiels involved im against it. Its a big lobbying firm. Nothing good can come from it. It means dilution of privacy and other good things.. for the sake of who exactly??
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.md/CytY7 https://archive.md/CytY7
- unnamedprophet 6y agoIt's about damn time. One of the clearest things on display during Zuckerberg's Senate grilling is that tech as an industry has proportionally smaller influence when compared to other industries (automotive, airline, finance) despite having a larger share of the economic pie. Tech is also a newer player than other companies in those industries, so it's natural that the balance of power has not yet swayed in favor of tech terms of Washington politics. Infiltrating politics through lobbying, advocacy or people in seat doesn't outright necessarily jive with our ideal notions of a democracy but it's the way that the game is played.
- Barrin92 6y agoI'm not really sure what the purpose is of openly celebrating regulatory capture and the decline of our public institutions as they are being undermined in their independence by yet another interest group
- pstuart 6y agoThat's an interesting observation. I'm in the camp that FB has significant influence in the administration via Peter Thiel, who I'm guessing has lots of friends in high places. There's also the part where FB controls billions of eyeballs. I don't worry for them in the slightest.