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Maybe future generations will realize how shitty FB is and stop using it (one can hope!) A bigger problem is FB owns much better products like WhatsApp - it is

Maybe future generations will realize how shitty FB is and stop using it (one can hope!) A bigger problem is FB owns much better products like WhatsApp - it is easy to quit FB than WhatsApp in my opinion

scarface74 6y ago
So you mean the solution to the FB “problem” is people using their own free will and it doesn’t involve the Nanny State?
- netcan 6y ago
  Nanny-state/libertarian arguments against antitrust are misguided. I am against a nanny state. Deeply against it. It gets abused of power. is invariably useless and freedom is important for its own sake. Monopolies extend these problems into the commercial realm. Nanny companies instead of Nanny State. Facebook is worse than most state media monopolies. It's like living in a company town and complaining about the nanny state. Just let the company rule us in peace.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Facebook doesn’t have coercive power to force me to do anything. The government does. It’s not Libertarianism. It’s a fundamental distrust of governments.
    - netcan 6y ago
      That's what I mean. Your distrust should extend to things that have the same qualities as "government." At the more monopolistic end of the spectrum, and in many real life examples, they're a type of government... in the sense that they govern. This can also be true of very powerful religious institutions. Power, coercive or otherwise, is more complex than that. If all media is state media, that's something to seriously distrust. If all media is FB, the church of england church... same problems. Whether or not media is "coercive" is uninteresting semantics. Whether it's big tech or ccp "soft power" is a technicality. Abusable power is abusable power, and being nannied is a symptom. Sure, you can still kinda hide from Facebook. Takes a little effort, but whatever. You can also get around the great firewall, if you really want to. A lot of chinese people do, some of the time. Most of the time though, most people read the state approved internet. Most of the time, most people are within the influence of the FB machine... and it's still gaining power.
      - scarface74 6y ago
        Can Facebook have me arrested? Take my property via “civil forfeiture” or “imminent domain”? Can they force me to pay taxes? Do they employ police who can shoot me in the back to make me use their services? Can they hire people to choke me for nine minutes? Do their employees have military styled weapons who can be summoned to someone’s house just by making a false report? Comparing any modern private company’s power to the government is like comparing a flea to the sun.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Comparing any modern private company’s power to the government is like comparing a flea to the sun. Well, that's trivially true for corporations, since each corporation is itself an exercise of government power, so all of their power is a subset of government power.
        netcan 6y ago
        The only remedy to this is a history lesson. Do you know that the British Empire, and many of your colonies started as chartered monopolies? Not just history either. Anyway, what do those things have to do with the nanny state? Treating "government" as a monolith is like treating "capitalism" as a monolith. Comparing a police force to a media organisation is a bad comparison. You made it, not me.
        scarface74 6y ago
        You mean like the government that wants to outlaw end to end encryption, run by President who threaten to “shut down Twitter” because he said something they don’t like.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      Corporations are creations of governments - they literally can't exist as a separate entity without somebody strong enough blessing it (and then protecting their rights as a separate entity, by force if needed). Thus, if you distrust governments, you should automatically distrust any and all corporations. In fact, that is one way to deal with monopolies - instead of forcibly breaking them apart, let the government simply stop recognizing and enforcing abstract property rights on capital past a certain limit. That would be a solution that strictly reduces the size and power of the government, but I suspect you'd like it even less than anti-trust.
- justaguyhere 6y ago
  Nanny states are never a good idea. But lets say we prefer nanny state and lets say it works with FB. There is no guarantee that it will always work with every other shitty FB, or if it works, it might become China like, which is worse. The best long term solution is to educate people - make them understand how much of their privacy is being violated, how much harm social media is causing (broadly speaking here, I know social media can be good too, once in a while) etc. If the general public understands these, they might stop/reduce willingly giving so much of their data to FB. That said, not many people seemed to care (outside of tech circles) when Snowden happened :(
fr2null 6y ago
As part of the "future generation" (Maybe? I'm 18 years old), almost none of my peers use Facebook anymore. At least not actively. We do however still use WhatsApp and Instagram. While Instagram and WhatsApp are still used the most, by far, there are some other social media apps that are also heavily used. Most notably Snapchat and TikTok.
- cptnapalm 6y ago
  I recently signed in for the first time in a long while in order to chat with a friend of mine in the Navy. While my "friend's" list is about 700 people, it looked like no more than a couple of dozen of them actually post anything regularly. That's a big change from 3 or so years ago. Obligatory anecdotes are not data disclaimer.
netcan 6y ago
None of these are easy to quit because of network effects. Rick has to use FB because his grandkids' photos are there. Morty uses whatsapp because his soccer club posts practice times there. Network effects are essentially like infrastructure. The problem isn't shitty FB. FB can be as shitty as it wants to be. The problem is their power, especially as a media company.

scarface74 6y ago

So you mean the solution to the FB “problem” is people using their own free will and it doesn’t involve the Nanny State?

netcan 6y ago
Nanny-state/libertarian arguments against antitrust are misguided. I am against a nanny state. Deeply against it. It gets abused of power. is invariably useless and freedom is important for its own sake. Monopolies extend these problems into the commercial realm. Nanny companies instead of Nanny State. Facebook is worse than most state media monopolies. It's like living in a company town and complaining about the nanny state. Just let the company rule us in peace.
- scarface74 6y ago
  Facebook doesn’t have coercive power to force me to do anything. The government does. It’s not Libertarianism. It’s a fundamental distrust of governments.
  - netcan 6y ago
    That's what I mean. Your distrust should extend to things that have the same qualities as "government." At the more monopolistic end of the spectrum, and in many real life examples, they're a type of government... in the sense that they govern. This can also be true of very powerful religious institutions. Power, coercive or otherwise, is more complex than that. If all media is state media, that's something to seriously distrust. If all media is FB, the church of england church... same problems. Whether or not media is "coercive" is uninteresting semantics. Whether it's big tech or ccp "soft power" is a technicality. Abusable power is abusable power, and being nannied is a symptom. Sure, you can still kinda hide from Facebook. Takes a little effort, but whatever. You can also get around the great firewall, if you really want to. A lot of chinese people do, some of the time. Most of the time though, most people read the state approved internet. Most of the time, most people are within the influence of the FB machine... and it's still gaining power.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Can Facebook have me arrested? Take my property via “civil forfeiture” or “imminent domain”? Can they force me to pay taxes? Do they employ police who can shoot me in the back to make me use their services? Can they hire people to choke me for nine minutes? Do their employees have military styled weapons who can be summoned to someone’s house just by making a false report? Comparing any modern private company’s power to the government is like comparing a flea to the sun.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Comparing any modern private company’s power to the government is like comparing a flea to the sun. Well, that's trivially true for corporations, since each corporation is itself an exercise of government power, so all of their power is a subset of government power.
      - netcan 6y ago
        The only remedy to this is a history lesson. Do you know that the British Empire, and many of your colonies started as chartered monopolies? Not just history either. Anyway, what do those things have to do with the nanny state? Treating "government" as a monolith is like treating "capitalism" as a monolith. Comparing a police force to a media organisation is a bad comparison. You made it, not me.
        scarface74 6y ago
        You mean like the government that wants to outlaw end to end encryption, run by President who threaten to “shut down Twitter” because he said something they don’t like.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    Corporations are creations of governments - they literally can't exist as a separate entity without somebody strong enough blessing it (and then protecting their rights as a separate entity, by force if needed). Thus, if you distrust governments, you should automatically distrust any and all corporations. In fact, that is one way to deal with monopolies - instead of forcibly breaking them apart, let the government simply stop recognizing and enforcing abstract property rights on capital past a certain limit. That would be a solution that strictly reduces the size and power of the government, but I suspect you'd like it even less than anti-trust.
justaguyhere 6y ago
Nanny states are never a good idea. But lets say we prefer nanny state and lets say it works with FB. There is no guarantee that it will always work with every other shitty FB, or if it works, it might become China like, which is worse. The best long term solution is to educate people - make them understand how much of their privacy is being violated, how much harm social media is causing (broadly speaking here, I know social media can be good too, once in a while) etc. If the general public understands these, they might stop/reduce willingly giving so much of their data to FB. That said, not many people seemed to care (outside of tech circles) when Snowden happened :(

fr2null 6y ago

As part of the "future generation" (Maybe? I'm 18 years old), almost none of my peers use Facebook anymore. At least not actively. We do however still use WhatsApp and Instagram. While Instagram and WhatsApp are still used the most, by far, there are some other social media apps that are also heavily used. Most notably Snapchat and TikTok.

cptnapalm 6y ago
I recently signed in for the first time in a long while in order to chat with a friend of mine in the Navy. While my "friend's" list is about 700 people, it looked like no more than a couple of dozen of them actually post anything regularly. That's a big change from 3 or so years ago. Obligatory anecdotes are not data disclaimer.

netcan 6y ago

None of these are easy to quit because of network effects. Rick has to use FB because his grandkids' photos are there. Morty uses whatsapp because his soccer club posts practice times there. Network effects are essentially like infrastructure. The problem isn't shitty FB. FB can be as shitty as it wants to be. The problem is their power, especially as a media company.