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"Facebook is not a public body: it's a powerful and rich global corporation with no democratic legitimacy" Facebook is a website. That is all. It does not ev

"Facebook is not a public body: it's a powerful and rich global corporation with no democratic legitimacy" Facebook is a website. That is all. It does not even produce content, let alone run a business in the real world (e.g., Amazon). It is a remarkable phenomenon, no doubt, but it is just a website, with billions of template pages each filled in with data from users. They do not do anything else at Facebook except maintain a website and conduct surveillance. That's it. If someone tomorrow started a website and offered to give out free web pages (i.e., not a paid blogging patform, not Wix, etc.) without any surveillance or ads/promotions, would you sign up? There will always be naysayers whenever we share thoughts of the possibilities. Surely, if someone told you in 2003 that he/she was going to start a website that would sign up billions of users who would submit photos of themselves and personal information to be published, most of you would dismiss the idea as impossible. There was no such thing as a single public website with _billions_ of pages of personal information voluntarily submitted. The same goes for Wikipedia. What if someone told you in 2001 they were going to start a website and grow it to 53 million pages? No doubt, naysaysers would have asked "How do you make money?" It is a website. Anyone can start one. Of course, Facebook is not fond of this reality hence the notion of "platform". It is still a website. The fact that anyone can start a website is the only democratic aspect of the www.

edmundsauto 6y ago
You are very dismissive of Facebook, yet I'm not sure what insight should be gleaned from this simplification. I'm open to understanding your point, but it sounds like your point is that Facebook is a website. And I'm not sure what insight that simplification allows me to unlock. Beyond being a website, it's also a mobile app, marketplace, communication platform, hardware manufacturer, and cultural driver. (Not to mention that it's a research organization, crisis response tool, ally to law enforcement, etc.) Would you similarly describe the US Constitution as a piece of paper? Such a simplistic reduction doesn't seem all that useful to me.
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  You write: "Beyond being a website, ..." This is what the author is upset about. He thinks Facebook believes it is something other than what it is, e.g., it behaves as if it were a nation state. When you continue: "it's also ...", you are simply referring to properties of computers, software, the internet and the www. This has been debated on HN before. Facebook is a website. If Facebook were implemented in distributed Rolodexes and analog photo albums I doubt you would be making such statements. As for the implication that a website, e.g., Facebook, can be compared to the US Consitution, this is the sort of thinking that sets off journalists and yields rants like the OP. Whereas you refer to my comment as "simplistic reduction", the author of the OP might refer to yours as "delusional thinking". The properties of the US Consitution that make it important do not come from the fact it is a piece of paper or the conveniences that paper allows. They come from what is written on the paper and the authors of the document. Facebook does not produce content. It manages a website full of content submitted by the public, then surveils and spams them to service advertisers and promoters, for a fee. The topic of the article is in fact how they purport to manage filtering that content. Much of the content on Facebook is very low quality. A website with billions of pages that takes submissions from the public, which has heaps of low quality content. Surprising. This is precisely what the web was designed for.
- deleted 6y ago
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edmundsauto 6y ago

You are very dismissive of Facebook, yet I'm not sure what insight should be gleaned from this simplification. I'm open to understanding your point, but it sounds like your point is that Facebook is a website. And I'm not sure what insight that simplification allows me to unlock. Beyond being a website, it's also a mobile app, marketplace, communication platform, hardware manufacturer, and cultural driver. (Not to mention that it's a research organization, crisis response tool, ally to law enforcement, etc.) Would you similarly describe the US Constitution as a piece of paper? Such a simplistic reduction doesn't seem all that useful to me.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
You write: "Beyond being a website, ..." This is what the author is upset about. He thinks Facebook believes it is something other than what it is, e.g., it behaves as if it were a nation state. When you continue: "it's also ...", you are simply referring to properties of computers, software, the internet and the www. This has been debated on HN before. Facebook is a website. If Facebook were implemented in distributed Rolodexes and analog photo albums I doubt you would be making such statements. As for the implication that a website, e.g., Facebook, can be compared to the US Consitution, this is the sort of thinking that sets off journalists and yields rants like the OP. Whereas you refer to my comment as "simplistic reduction", the author of the OP might refer to yours as "delusional thinking". The properties of the US Consitution that make it important do not come from the fact it is a piece of paper or the conveniences that paper allows. They come from what is written on the paper and the authors of the document. Facebook does not produce content. It manages a website full of content submitted by the public, then surveils and spams them to service advertisers and promoters, for a fee. The topic of the article is in fact how they purport to manage filtering that content. Much of the content on Facebook is very low quality. A website with billions of pages that takes submissions from the public, which has heaps of low quality content. Surprising. This is precisely what the web was designed for.
deleted 6y ago
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