12 ms·

Facebook’s experimental hate-speech policy seems to be working

68 points by leoschwartz 6y ago

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
> “The whole thing got fairly well contained, and that’s in big part because Facebook was able to take action.” So who gets to decide what gets “contained” on the internet now? The government has a really, really bad track record of using these sorts of “options” for suppressing dissent. Historically it’s been absolutely abusive.
- krapp 6y ago
  >So who gets to decide why gets “contained” on the internet now? The government has a really, really bad track record of using these sorts of “options” for suppressing dissent. Historically it’s been absolutely abusive. Whomever owns a platform gets to decide what gets published or not published on that platform. They get to make the rules, enforce them and change them as they will, where the law of the land permits. That has always been the case.
  - zests 6y ago
    Are you implying that Facebook is a publisher?
    - _jal 6y ago
      Are you implying 'publisher' is a special category with special legal privileges and/or obligations?
      - egao1980 6y ago
        more responsibility under US and other nations' laws. Basically publisher is liable for publishing hate speech - platforms are not.
        krapp 6y ago
        There is no liability for publishing hate speech in the US. There is also, crucially, no liability for not publishing hate speech in the US.
    - krapp 6y ago
      Section 230 makes no distinction between "publishers" and "platforms", at least not where the ability to moderate or editorialize content is concerned. It doesn't require a platform to be politically neutral, or to only moderate content which is strictly illegal, nor does it forbid the exercise of editorial discretion. Facebook is allowed to do what they're doing and the question of whether that makes them a "publisher" or "platform" isn't relevant. ... I'm just assuming that's where you were going with this. Here's an exhausting HN thread on an Ars Technica article explaining further: [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24803998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24803998 [1]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-internet-law-politicians-love-to-hate-explained/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - triceratops 6y ago
      They're the publisher of things they write and publish themselves. For example, the Facebook engineering blog. They are not the publisher of what their users post, even if they perform moderation of that content. That's the law. There's no "publisher"/"platform" hat that a company has to select before going into business.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago
  This isn't about government. Facebook is a corporation, it owns the platform, it decides what gets contained on its property (subject to applicable laws, of course, but not confined to only those laws). By signing up, you agree to their control over the platform. Control could be the bare minimum required by law, could be mercilessly removing any and all controversial speech - that's their discretion, just like it's completely your discretion whether to log on or to buzz off. They'll censor at whatever level works best for their core business of selling your attention to advertisers. Outside of applicable laws, you have no "rights" on this private platform you're provisionally allowed access to, and any attempt to sugar-coat that fact is just corporate PR-speak to avoid needless user attrition.
  - n0nc3 6y ago
    This is an extremely lazy argument. Our generation has seen entire sectors of the economy subsumed within monopolies. The consolidation is unprecedented in the modern era. These monopolies have a degree of political influence that makes them hard to distinguish from government in anything but a formal legal sense. We have seen what the financial sector has chosen to do with its political influence. Why would we expect anything different from new media companies like Facebook? People need to stop and ask themselves if the core enlightenment principles of toleration, free expression, and free association are worth protecting. Once abandoned, they will not be easy to resurrect.
    - Tainnor 6y ago
      Facebook and co. don't have monopolies on places where you can voice your opinion. Blogs still exist. Newspapers exist (even very extremists ones). Telegram exists, forums exist, etc. What Facebook and co. may have a monopoly on is channels of mass outreach. However, I don't think that there is or should be a right for your opinion to be widely disseminated by a third party.
      - n0nc3 6y ago
        I would say that Facebook is similar to a 18th century tavern. It's a place where people meet and talk. Fortunately for 18th century humans, there were many pub owners who exercised varying degrees of control over the activities of their patrons. Some banned radical politics, and some did not. In our present era of concentrated control, we have a small handful of pubs controlled by a similarly small number of wealthy oligarchs. Recall that the Green Dragon tavern was the unofficial headquarters of the American revolution.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  Facebook decides the rules and everyone can report content that break them, and then outsourced and stressed Facebook employees judge if the reported content fit the rules or not. In the article they mention a fast line for reports from a few organizations.
- logikomaha 6y ago
  This is such a tiring argument. Corporations are the stewards of their domains. If someone wants to exercise their own freedom of speech, they’re welcome to start their own self hosted blog. It won’t have the same reach, and it won’t be as visible, but it will be just as free as freedom of speech ever was. If someone started posting their un-cited drivel, racist rants, and society harming misinformation on my hard drive, I’d want it purged. It’s my responsible as a citizen to maintain the health of my system and maintain reasonable discourse with those I disagree with. Is it “oppression” or an “infringement of our rights” or the “nanny state” when a HackerNews mod deleted a racist post or personal attack on another community member? I think not...
  - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
    So, why so much outrage, when some non-US country bans LGBT groups on some of their platforms? Or trans groups? Or pro-choice (abortion) groups? Or pro Hong Kong groups? All of them are welcome to start their self hosted blogs, aren't they? You either have free speech, and host stuff you personally disagree with, or just call it 'moderation with political bias' (or some other kind of bias), if you only leave stuff you personally agree with. You never know, when you'll be the one facebook disagrees with, and then it's too late.
    - Tainnor 6y ago
      Because being anti-LGBT is morally wrong, that's why. It has nothing to do with legality or with freedom of expression. I really don't understand how we can start equating LGBT rights with outright hate speech.
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        Who gets to decide what definition of morals Facebook should use to answer these questions? Why should Facebook choose your particular moral framework to work with? Yeah, I know, you're right. Everybody else is sure that their moral framework is right, too. So why does yours get to rule? What is your basis for saying that yours is right and theirs is wrong? You may in fact be able to give a defense of your moral framework. That defense seems right to you, and to those who agree with you. But defenders of other moral frameworks can do that, too. Which self-consistent and defensible (per the adherents) moral framework should be the one to rule Facebook, and why?
- adkadskhj 6y ago
  And the same argument has been made about child porn and etc. Eg, people have said we can't use encryption because of it's ability to enable child predators. So yea, the power and ability to suppress content based on illegal activity has downsides - it's a necessity. We can't strictly avoid the topic entirely and allow everything everywhere for very obvious reasons. So if we're not allowing everything everywhere then we agree that there are lines, and those lines have to be drawn. So we're already on the "slippery slope", we're just debating where exactly to draw the lines. To me this stance from Facebook is one of the very few things i agree with from them. Much of the uninformed viral and outage based discourse is doing nothing but harming humanity in my eyes and tools to spread it are helping no one. We're in an information war time and while i support controversial information about race, gender identity and any other "hot topics"; i definitely do not support toxic discourse on these subjects that don't even attempt to inform or constructively discuss.
- a4444f 6y ago
  Wankers write history, hysterics write whiningly.
roenxi 6y ago
So hypothetically say the people who own big Oil & Gas stakes give Zuckerberg a Generous Gift of shares. Could we rely on Facebook to contain the dangerous hate speech spread by militant greens on their climate change delusions? I won't argue whether they can or can't, but they shouldn't. Let the political process handle political things.
- striking 6y ago
  I would like to just double check that you have fully read and understood the article as well as its surrounding context. Like, you're fully aware that there's a genocide happening against Muslim people in Myanmar[1], right? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
  - Ygg2 6y ago
    GP has a point. Will Facebook be just as judicious when it runs against its own interests? Or will it use tools designed to prevent hate speech to censor?
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Is there a reason to believe they would? I don't read my Facebook timeline anymore, but when I did I remember seeing quite a few anti-Facebook posts.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    Yeah. I wouldn't go anywhere near Myanmar for love or money. And it isn't Facebook's role in the world to be stepping in and trying to stabilise that sort of thing, nor is it their role to take sides in Myanmar elections. I think there is historical precedent in the East India Company for companies actually putting boots on the ground when they want a country stabilised for their economic interests. There are a lot of ways things can go wrong when companies are encouraged to decide who should and shouldn't be in charge.
    - 6y ago
shoreofwonder 6y ago
...in Myanmar, for a specific use case.
- egao1980 6y ago
  yep, you can still post whatever hate inciting texts about Russians for example.
- zackees 6y ago
  This move - to censor government officials in a host country, shows that big Tech can and will be weaponized (by the MSM media) against a local government.
  - Pils 6y ago
    > by the MSM media How exactly is the Main Stream Media media weaponizing big Tech? The Myanmar genocide is not "fake news."
    - zackees 6y ago
      It is fake news. The Muslims are being expelled not genocided. The term "genocide" has been so watered down by the UN that it now includes hurt feelings.
      - timothyduong 6y ago
        The Rohingya genocide occurred in 2016-2017 which killed thousands. Those remainder Rohingyans fled in the hundreds of thousands. Destruction of habitat or forced expulsion is close to genocide itself. We as humans destroy the habitat of animals causing extinction, how is this not the same case? Because the inhabitants have legs and can move elsewhere? What if they choose not to migrate? By the way, the reason they're expelled & fleeing is because the only other choice is death. There's no option to stay other than death and if you think that's not genocide then sure. I know where you stand. Regardless of whether it was expulsion or genocide, atrocities were committed and Facebook was a key factor into the lead up to what occurred: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide#Facebook's_role_in_the_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide#Facebook's_r...
tu7001 6y ago
Censorship seems to be working.
- weakfish 6y ago
  Did you read the article? It's in reference to the genocide in Myanmar.
throwawaymanbot 6y ago
lmao... needed a good laugh!
awillen 6y ago
It's bizarre to me that the government seems to expect Facebook to regulate speech, particularly around the election, when no matter what they do on that front, one party will accuse them of bias. I really wish that when Zuck was at the hearing about this, he had just said something along the lines of, "We want people to be able to post things that are true and not post things that are false. The problem is even you people in the Senate can't agree on what's true, so instead you're trying to make us, a private company, the arbiter of what's acceptable to say as it relates to US elections. Doesn't that seem insane to you? Let's do this - you guys form a bipartisan committee of Facebook truth deciders. When there's controversy over whether a post is true or not, we'll kick it over to you guys, and you let us know whether to keep it up or remove it. If a bipartisan Senate committee can't agree on what the truth is, then you all agree to stop complaining about the decisions we make on that front. Isn't that better than having a private company control election-related speech?"
- mam2 6y ago
  Zuck would be insane to that. Even if the situation is crazy its better for him to control it than to let it in the hands of the senate.
- Kalium 6y ago
  One of the things you absolutely cannot do, in the face of powerful people, is tell them that they are the problem. It gives them a common enemy - you. Humiliating them with the patent silliness of their positions just ads rage to the volatile mixture.
  - awillen 6y ago
    They've already made him the common enemy and are filled with rage about whatever they've deigned to be censorship. At least in highly-televised public hearings, you have the opportunity to impress upon the public the insanity of their elected officials' positions.
- tw04 6y ago
  > The problem is even you people in the Senate can't agree on what's true They absolutely can agree on what’s true. What they can’t do is admit what’s true when it’s politically inconvenient. Look at all the republicans who called out Trump for being a horrible human being before he was elected who now bow before him. Do you really think the last four years made Lindsey Graham decide he misjudged Trump’s character?
gigatexal 6y ago
I’m just here hoping FB goes the way of MySpace and the world wakes up and realizes how toxic the company is to the world at large. I’m hoping Apple’s tracking crackdowns slowly make FB’s entire business model futile.
rosmax_1337 6y ago
While the specific case in Myanmar is the subject of the article above, I think the interest in the topic is not due to us all being very involved in that conflict. (Excluding those who are infact involved in that conflict and reading HN) Certain industries are natural monopolies. The winners win more. When a certain corporation gains too much power in a very important industry, the society at large becomes uncomfortable with the amount of power unelected employees at that company begins to have. The result is that companies within certain sectors becomes subject to certain laws, or are made public sector. For example, most countries have made the road-keeping-and-making industry almost completely public sector. This means a private company can't just ban certain pedestrians or drivers from accessing the road. Because road-keeping-and-making is a natural monopoly, and is very important to society. Now, social media is very important to society, and it is also a natural monopoly. Youtube will not be outdone by a competitor, neither will Facebook, neither will Google. (Notice Alphabet Inc. owns two of those) It only follows that these companies should become subject to new laws that prohibit them from exercising their power over society, after all, they are not elected officials. But something doesn't work. What country will decide the policy of Facebook? The US? Then why should the US decide the social media sector policy of Myanmar. .Which naturally follows if they control the policy of Facebook. Social media, the internet and it's mega-corporations are either in a very good spot right now, or in a very bad spot, depending on how you view it. And I see no good solution. Certainly, if things keep going the way they are in the west, this trajectory of political censorship will probably lead to real conflict, like in Myanmar.
- Imnimo 6y ago
  >Youtube will not be outdone by a competitor, neither will Facebook, neither will Google What happened to MySpace?
  - rosmax_1337 6y ago
    It was outdone by Facebook, back when the industry was still growing. 10 years later, things have solidified.
    - 6y ago

68 points by leoschwartz 6y ago

> “The whole thing got fairly well contained, and that’s in big part because Facebook was able to take action.” So who gets to decide what gets “contained” on the internet now? The government has a really, really bad track record of using these sorts of “options” for suppressing dissent. Historically it’s been absolutely abusive.

krapp 6y ago
>So who gets to decide why gets “contained” on the internet now? The government has a really, really bad track record of using these sorts of “options” for suppressing dissent. Historically it’s been absolutely abusive. Whomever owns a platform gets to decide what gets published or not published on that platform. They get to make the rules, enforce them and change them as they will, where the law of the land permits. That has always been the case.
- zests 6y ago
  Are you implying that Facebook is a publisher?
  - _jal 6y ago
    Are you implying 'publisher' is a special category with special legal privileges and/or obligations?
    - egao1980 6y ago
      more responsibility under US and other nations' laws. Basically publisher is liable for publishing hate speech - platforms are not.
      - krapp 6y ago
        There is no liability for publishing hate speech in the US. There is also, crucially, no liability for not publishing hate speech in the US.
  - krapp 6y ago
    Section 230 makes no distinction between "publishers" and "platforms", at least not where the ability to moderate or editorialize content is concerned. It doesn't require a platform to be politically neutral, or to only moderate content which is strictly illegal, nor does it forbid the exercise of editorial discretion. Facebook is allowed to do what they're doing and the question of whether that makes them a "publisher" or "platform" isn't relevant. ... I'm just assuming that's where you were going with this. Here's an exhausting HN thread on an Ars Technica article explaining further: [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24803998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24803998 [1]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-internet-law-politicians-love-to-hate-explained/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - triceratops 6y ago
    They're the publisher of things they write and publish themselves. For example, the Facebook engineering blog. They are not the publisher of what their users post, even if they perform moderation of that content. That's the law. There's no "publisher"/"platform" hat that a company has to select before going into business.
kspacewalk2 6y ago
This isn't about government. Facebook is a corporation, it owns the platform, it decides what gets contained on its property (subject to applicable laws, of course, but not confined to only those laws). By signing up, you agree to their control over the platform. Control could be the bare minimum required by law, could be mercilessly removing any and all controversial speech - that's their discretion, just like it's completely your discretion whether to log on or to buzz off. They'll censor at whatever level works best for their core business of selling your attention to advertisers. Outside of applicable laws, you have no "rights" on this private platform you're provisionally allowed access to, and any attempt to sugar-coat that fact is just corporate PR-speak to avoid needless user attrition.
- n0nc3 6y ago
  This is an extremely lazy argument. Our generation has seen entire sectors of the economy subsumed within monopolies. The consolidation is unprecedented in the modern era. These monopolies have a degree of political influence that makes them hard to distinguish from government in anything but a formal legal sense. We have seen what the financial sector has chosen to do with its political influence. Why would we expect anything different from new media companies like Facebook? People need to stop and ask themselves if the core enlightenment principles of toleration, free expression, and free association are worth protecting. Once abandoned, they will not be easy to resurrect.
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    Facebook and co. don't have monopolies on places where you can voice your opinion. Blogs still exist. Newspapers exist (even very extremists ones). Telegram exists, forums exist, etc. What Facebook and co. may have a monopoly on is channels of mass outreach. However, I don't think that there is or should be a right for your opinion to be widely disseminated by a third party.
    - n0nc3 6y ago
      I would say that Facebook is similar to a 18th century tavern. It's a place where people meet and talk. Fortunately for 18th century humans, there were many pub owners who exercised varying degrees of control over the activities of their patrons. Some banned radical politics, and some did not. In our present era of concentrated control, we have a small handful of pubs controlled by a similarly small number of wealthy oligarchs. Recall that the Green Dragon tavern was the unofficial headquarters of the American revolution.
speedgoose 6y ago
Facebook decides the rules and everyone can report content that break them, and then outsourced and stressed Facebook employees judge if the reported content fit the rules or not. In the article they mention a fast line for reports from a few organizations.
logikomaha 6y ago
This is such a tiring argument. Corporations are the stewards of their domains. If someone wants to exercise their own freedom of speech, they’re welcome to start their own self hosted blog. It won’t have the same reach, and it won’t be as visible, but it will be just as free as freedom of speech ever was. If someone started posting their un-cited drivel, racist rants, and society harming misinformation on my hard drive, I’d want it purged. It’s my responsible as a citizen to maintain the health of my system and maintain reasonable discourse with those I disagree with. Is it “oppression” or an “infringement of our rights” or the “nanny state” when a HackerNews mod deleted a racist post or personal attack on another community member? I think not...
- ajsnigrutin 6y ago
  So, why so much outrage, when some non-US country bans LGBT groups on some of their platforms? Or trans groups? Or pro-choice (abortion) groups? Or pro Hong Kong groups? All of them are welcome to start their self hosted blogs, aren't they? You either have free speech, and host stuff you personally disagree with, or just call it 'moderation with political bias' (or some other kind of bias), if you only leave stuff you personally agree with. You never know, when you'll be the one facebook disagrees with, and then it's too late.
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    Because being anti-LGBT is morally wrong, that's why. It has nothing to do with legality or with freedom of expression. I really don't understand how we can start equating LGBT rights with outright hate speech.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Who gets to decide what definition of morals Facebook should use to answer these questions? Why should Facebook choose your particular moral framework to work with? Yeah, I know, you're right. Everybody else is sure that their moral framework is right, too. So why does yours get to rule? What is your basis for saying that yours is right and theirs is wrong? You may in fact be able to give a defense of your moral framework. That defense seems right to you, and to those who agree with you. But defenders of other moral frameworks can do that, too. Which self-consistent and defensible (per the adherents) moral framework should be the one to rule Facebook, and why?
adkadskhj 6y ago
And the same argument has been made about child porn and etc. Eg, people have said we can't use encryption because of it's ability to enable child predators. So yea, the power and ability to suppress content based on illegal activity has downsides - it's a necessity. We can't strictly avoid the topic entirely and allow everything everywhere for very obvious reasons. So if we're not allowing everything everywhere then we agree that there are lines, and those lines have to be drawn. So we're already on the "slippery slope", we're just debating where exactly to draw the lines. To me this stance from Facebook is one of the very few things i agree with from them. Much of the uninformed viral and outage based discourse is doing nothing but harming humanity in my eyes and tools to spread it are helping no one. We're in an information war time and while i support controversial information about race, gender identity and any other "hot topics"; i definitely do not support toxic discourse on these subjects that don't even attempt to inform or constructively discuss.
a4444f 6y ago
Wankers write history, hysterics write whiningly.

roenxi 6y ago

So hypothetically say the people who own big Oil & Gas stakes give Zuckerberg a Generous Gift of shares. Could we rely on Facebook to contain the dangerous hate speech spread by militant greens on their climate change delusions? I won't argue whether they can or can't, but they shouldn't. Let the political process handle political things.

striking 6y ago
I would like to just double check that you have fully read and understood the article as well as its surrounding context. Like, you're fully aware that there's a genocide happening against Muslim people in Myanmar[1], right? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
- Ygg2 6y ago
  GP has a point. Will Facebook be just as judicious when it runs against its own interests? Or will it use tools designed to prevent hate speech to censor?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Is there a reason to believe they would? I don't read my Facebook timeline anymore, but when I did I remember seeing quite a few anti-Facebook posts.
- roenxi 6y ago
  Yeah. I wouldn't go anywhere near Myanmar for love or money. And it isn't Facebook's role in the world to be stepping in and trying to stabilise that sort of thing, nor is it their role to take sides in Myanmar elections. I think there is historical precedent in the East India Company for companies actually putting boots on the ground when they want a country stabilised for their economic interests. There are a lot of ways things can go wrong when companies are encouraged to decide who should and shouldn't be in charge.
  - 6y ago

shoreofwonder 6y ago

...in Myanmar, for a specific use case.

egao1980 6y ago
yep, you can still post whatever hate inciting texts about Russians for example.
zackees 6y ago
This move - to censor government officials in a host country, shows that big Tech can and will be weaponized (by the MSM media) against a local government.
- Pils 6y ago
  > by the MSM media How exactly is the Main Stream Media media weaponizing big Tech? The Myanmar genocide is not "fake news."
  - zackees 6y ago
    It is fake news. The Muslims are being expelled not genocided. The term "genocide" has been so watered down by the UN that it now includes hurt feelings.
    - timothyduong 6y ago
      The Rohingya genocide occurred in 2016-2017 which killed thousands. Those remainder Rohingyans fled in the hundreds of thousands. Destruction of habitat or forced expulsion is close to genocide itself. We as humans destroy the habitat of animals causing extinction, how is this not the same case? Because the inhabitants have legs and can move elsewhere? What if they choose not to migrate? By the way, the reason they're expelled & fleeing is because the only other choice is death. There's no option to stay other than death and if you think that's not genocide then sure. I know where you stand. Regardless of whether it was expulsion or genocide, atrocities were committed and Facebook was a key factor into the lead up to what occurred: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide#Facebook's_role_in_the_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide#Facebook's_r...

tu7001 6y ago

Censorship seems to be working.

weakfish 6y ago
Did you read the article? It's in reference to the genocide in Myanmar.

throwawaymanbot 6y ago

lmao... needed a good laugh!

awillen 6y ago

It's bizarre to me that the government seems to expect Facebook to regulate speech, particularly around the election, when no matter what they do on that front, one party will accuse them of bias. I really wish that when Zuck was at the hearing about this, he had just said something along the lines of, "We want people to be able to post things that are true and not post things that are false. The problem is even you people in the Senate can't agree on what's true, so instead you're trying to make us, a private company, the arbiter of what's acceptable to say as it relates to US elections. Doesn't that seem insane to you? Let's do this - you guys form a bipartisan committee of Facebook truth deciders. When there's controversy over whether a post is true or not, we'll kick it over to you guys, and you let us know whether to keep it up or remove it. If a bipartisan Senate committee can't agree on what the truth is, then you all agree to stop complaining about the decisions we make on that front. Isn't that better than having a private company control election-related speech?"

mam2 6y ago
Zuck would be insane to that. Even if the situation is crazy its better for him to control it than to let it in the hands of the senate.
Kalium 6y ago
One of the things you absolutely cannot do, in the face of powerful people, is tell them that they are the problem. It gives them a common enemy - you. Humiliating them with the patent silliness of their positions just ads rage to the volatile mixture.
- awillen 6y ago
  They've already made him the common enemy and are filled with rage about whatever they've deigned to be censorship. At least in highly-televised public hearings, you have the opportunity to impress upon the public the insanity of their elected officials' positions.
tw04 6y ago
> The problem is even you people in the Senate can't agree on what's true They absolutely can agree on what’s true. What they can’t do is admit what’s true when it’s politically inconvenient. Look at all the republicans who called out Trump for being a horrible human being before he was elected who now bow before him. Do you really think the last four years made Lindsey Graham decide he misjudged Trump’s character?

gigatexal 6y ago

I’m just here hoping FB goes the way of MySpace and the world wakes up and realizes how toxic the company is to the world at large. I’m hoping Apple’s tracking crackdowns slowly make FB’s entire business model futile.

rosmax_1337 6y ago

While the specific case in Myanmar is the subject of the article above, I think the interest in the topic is not due to us all being very involved in that conflict. (Excluding those who are infact involved in that conflict and reading HN) Certain industries are natural monopolies. The winners win more. When a certain corporation gains too much power in a very important industry, the society at large becomes uncomfortable with the amount of power unelected employees at that company begins to have. The result is that companies within certain sectors becomes subject to certain laws, or are made public sector. For example, most countries have made the road-keeping-and-making industry almost completely public sector. This means a private company can't just ban certain pedestrians or drivers from accessing the road. Because road-keeping-and-making is a natural monopoly, and is very important to society. Now, social media is very important to society, and it is also a natural monopoly. Youtube will not be outdone by a competitor, neither will Facebook, neither will Google. (Notice Alphabet Inc. owns two of those) It only follows that these companies should become subject to new laws that prohibit them from exercising their power over society, after all, they are not elected officials. But something doesn't work. What country will decide the policy of Facebook? The US? Then why should the US decide the social media sector policy of Myanmar. .Which naturally follows if they control the policy of Facebook. Social media, the internet and it's mega-corporations are either in a very good spot right now, or in a very bad spot, depending on how you view it. And I see no good solution. Certainly, if things keep going the way they are in the west, this trajectory of political censorship will probably lead to real conflict, like in Myanmar.

Imnimo 6y ago
>Youtube will not be outdone by a competitor, neither will Facebook, neither will Google What happened to MySpace?
- rosmax_1337 6y ago
  It was outdone by Facebook, back when the industry was still growing. 10 years later, things have solidified.
  - 6y ago