5 ms·

> Outright bans are clumsy, but imposing a cost or bar to entry, like most societies do with alcohol and drugs, might be constructive. With requiring payment c

> Outright bans are clumsy, but imposing a cost or bar to entry, like most societies do with alcohol and drugs, might be constructive. With requiring payment comes the ability to trace where the money came from. So you're essentially demanding: - that every social media account is easily connectable to the real citizen ID behind it. - that governments should assist social networks in their already rampant tracking of users by even enforcing it through legislature. - by that also that governments build infrastructure which can be used to track the political opinion of every citizen, because that's what they can do if every user account is linked to a real person. I can understand that the goals behind what you say are noble, but please take notice of this: When I use FB or whatever, I want to be completely anonymous. I neither want FB, nor random strangers there, nor the government to track what the real person behind my pseudonym posts on FB. And that should be the right of everyone. Mundane things such as posting your opinion on the internet should not have huge barriers of entry and possibly individual consequences attached to them. To not become a fascist country, you cannot regulate social media access.

adewinter 6y ago
1) why are you defending Facebook? 2) Facebook demands and aggressively enforces that your profile represents you and has your real name and other credentials associated with your identity. If your pseudonym gets reported it will definitely get banned. 3) > With requiring payment comes the ability to trace where the money came from. Yes that's true for literally every transaction on the internet when done with a credit card. Not sure why that's a problem. > And that should be the right of everyone. Facebook is a company selling a product. You do not and definitely should not have any "rights" on their private platform. Just like you do not and should not have the right to force a local business to trade with you if they do not want to.
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
  > 1) why are you defending Facebook? Because once such laws are enacted they surely will NOT only apply to FB but to all other social networks as well. Classic "pandora's box". > 2) Facebook demands and aggressively enforces that your profile represents you and has your real name and other credentials associated with your identity. If your pseudonym gets reported it will definitely get banned. How does FB doing a bad thing currently justify demanding the government to even one-up them and make it legally mandatory to do that bad thing? - I was aware of them doing this, and if that were the subject of the discussion I would have in fact demanded that they're legally forced to stop doing it. > Yes that's true for literally every transaction on the internet when done with a credit card. Not sure why that's a problem. Did you have to use your credit card to write this post? To post on any other forum for the past few decades? Would you be happy to give me your credit card data in real life before I start listening to anything you say there? > Facebook is a company selling a product. You do not and definitely should not have any "rights" on their private platform. Just like you do not and should not have the right to force a local business to trade with you if they do not want to. FB has taken possession of a now essentially public space of which the participation therein is a central component of having a social life. Try finding a party or any other kind of event to attend without FB access. If you take possession of a part of the commons along with that possession comes the duty to provide proper access to the citizens which are reliant upon it. E.g. if you own a piece of land below which there is an aquifer, the government will force you to provide access to the water so the public can drink. There is no reason why this should be any different in cyberspace.
beagle3 6y ago
> With requiring payment comes the ability to trace where the money came from. There's this thing called "cash". There are (and have been for at least a century) ways to transfer it from place to place, even electronically, in a mostly anonymous way - as mobile minutes, through western union, etc. The farther it has to go, the easier it is to track, but locally, it takes non-trivial effort to track transfer to the point that governments mostly do it when they actually have a reason rather than "just because". > When I use FB or whatever, I want to be completely anonymous. Well then, you're doing it wrong. You are violating FB's "real name" terms of service. And also, rest assured that almost everyone of the people you've talked to on Facebook has de-anonymized you, by having your real name in their address book somewhere which they uploaded to FB/WhatsApp/Instagram knowingly or unknowingly. > I neither want FB, nor random strangers there, nor the government to track what the real person behind my pseudonym posts on FB. Then FB is the wrong venue. With FB, the only winning move is not to play. They do an enormous amount of work to connect your online FB account with a real world identity. And the almost always succeed. If you care about your privacy, get off facebook. > To not become a fascist country, you cannot regulate social media access. To not become a fascist country, you have to regulate social media.
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
  > There's this thing called "cash". There are (and have been for at least a century) ways to transfer it from place to place, even electronically, in a mostly anonymous way - as mobile minutes, through western union, etc. The farther it has to go, the easier it is to track, but locally, it takes non-trivial effort to track transfer to the point that governments mostly do it when they actually have a reason rather than "just because". You are right that this COULD be designed in an anonymous way, e.g. with cryptocurrencies, sure :) It is however naive to believe that governments will actually do that if citizens allow them to require payment for social media access. It will very certainly wind up being trackable. > Well then, you're doing it wrong. You are violating FB's "real name" terms of service. And also, rest assured that almost everyone of the people you've talked to on Facebook has de-anonymized you, by having your real name in their address book somewhere which they uploaded to FB/WhatsApp/Instagram knowingly or unknowingly. That only applies if I tell my real name to any of those people, which I don't. > If you care about your privacy, get off facebook. It is impossible to get off of FB without being denied access to things which are a central part of social life, e.g. events. > > To not become a fascist country, you cannot regulate social media access. > To not become a fascist country, you have to regulate social media. I'm sorry, my wording was imprecise! Let me correct it please: To not become a fascist country, you have to regulate social media, but you MUST NOT deny access to it.
motohagiography 6y ago
Typically when someone uses the english idiom, "impose a cost," they are referring to adjusting incentives in a broader economic sense, and not payments.
thotsBgone 6y ago
> When I use FB or whatever, I want to be completely anonymous. Keep in mind it's already against the FB terms of service to use it anonymously. You're supposed to use your real full name. > With requiring payment comes the ability to trace where the money came from. One possible solution could be bitcoin. I'd be more worried about where the money is going, though. Do modern democracies need to be collecting even more money from us, to do god knows what with? Would this new tax come with a decrease in other taxes? Probably not. I think disincentivizing social media is a good idea, but a social media tax isn't the right move. Brainstorming some other ways of doing so: - Ban certain social media Skinner-box features like endless scrolling, recommendation algorithms, likes, whatever. This is more likely to get to the heart of the problem, but gives the government more control over the internet, private businesses, etc. - Create alternative social media platforms which don't use the same rage-inducing and addicting mechanisms. These will fail because they are by definition less addicting than the alternative. - Make current social media unusable by flooding it with spam. This could be accomplished "extra-legally", preferably using AI to make spam hard to detect. This is already being done to an extent by bad actors (Chinese Communist Party, though you don't need AI when you have over a billion cheap workers), but could be done on a larger scale not to sway opinion, but to ruin the platforms altogether. - Social media companies could use semantic analysis to downrank rage-bait and negativity and up-rank positivity and thoughtful discourse (though hopefully not that hollow "you go girl!!!" faux-positivity you sometimes see on social media). This is uncomfortable because it means social media companies get to engineer our conversations to be whatever they want, but they are already doing this, they're just doing it in a malevolent way. - Somehow educate the entire population on the dangers of social media the same way we did with cigarettes. Whether through a public information campaign, or by generally getting people to meditate and realize the true important things in life. This is a terrible solution, and obviously social media companies would fight it tooth and nail, but I only mention it because I've heard it seriously proposed too many times. If your solution is "educate everybody", but everybody is currently hooked up to disinformation machines, you're screwed. That's all I've got. Anyone else have any ideas?

adewinter 6y ago

1) why are you defending Facebook? 2) Facebook demands and aggressively enforces that your profile represents you and has your real name and other credentials associated with your identity. If your pseudonym gets reported it will definitely get banned. 3) > With requiring payment comes the ability to trace where the money came from. Yes that's true for literally every transaction on the internet when done with a credit card. Not sure why that's a problem. > And that should be the right of everyone. Facebook is a company selling a product. You do not and definitely should not have any "rights" on their private platform. Just like you do not and should not have the right to force a local business to trade with you if they do not want to.

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
> 1) why are you defending Facebook? Because once such laws are enacted they surely will NOT only apply to FB but to all other social networks as well. Classic "pandora's box". > 2) Facebook demands and aggressively enforces that your profile represents you and has your real name and other credentials associated with your identity. If your pseudonym gets reported it will definitely get banned. How does FB doing a bad thing currently justify demanding the government to even one-up them and make it legally mandatory to do that bad thing? - I was aware of them doing this, and if that were the subject of the discussion I would have in fact demanded that they're legally forced to stop doing it. > Yes that's true for literally every transaction on the internet when done with a credit card. Not sure why that's a problem. Did you have to use your credit card to write this post? To post on any other forum for the past few decades? Would you be happy to give me your credit card data in real life before I start listening to anything you say there? > Facebook is a company selling a product. You do not and definitely should not have any "rights" on their private platform. Just like you do not and should not have the right to force a local business to trade with you if they do not want to. FB has taken possession of a now essentially public space of which the participation therein is a central component of having a social life. Try finding a party or any other kind of event to attend without FB access. If you take possession of a part of the commons along with that possession comes the duty to provide proper access to the citizens which are reliant upon it. E.g. if you own a piece of land below which there is an aquifer, the government will force you to provide access to the water so the public can drink. There is no reason why this should be any different in cyberspace.

beagle3 6y ago

> With requiring payment comes the ability to trace where the money came from. There's this thing called "cash". There are (and have been for at least a century) ways to transfer it from place to place, even electronically, in a mostly anonymous way - as mobile minutes, through western union, etc. The farther it has to go, the easier it is to track, but locally, it takes non-trivial effort to track transfer to the point that governments mostly do it when they actually have a reason rather than "just because". > When I use FB or whatever, I want to be completely anonymous. Well then, you're doing it wrong. You are violating FB's "real name" terms of service. And also, rest assured that almost everyone of the people you've talked to on Facebook has de-anonymized you, by having your real name in their address book somewhere which they uploaded to FB/WhatsApp/Instagram knowingly or unknowingly. > I neither want FB, nor random strangers there, nor the government to track what the real person behind my pseudonym posts on FB. Then FB is the wrong venue. With FB, the only winning move is not to play. They do an enormous amount of work to connect your online FB account with a real world identity. And the almost always succeed. If you care about your privacy, get off facebook. > To not become a fascist country, you cannot regulate social media access. To not become a fascist country, you have to regulate social media.

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
> There's this thing called "cash". There are (and have been for at least a century) ways to transfer it from place to place, even electronically, in a mostly anonymous way - as mobile minutes, through western union, etc. The farther it has to go, the easier it is to track, but locally, it takes non-trivial effort to track transfer to the point that governments mostly do it when they actually have a reason rather than "just because". You are right that this COULD be designed in an anonymous way, e.g. with cryptocurrencies, sure :) It is however naive to believe that governments will actually do that if citizens allow them to require payment for social media access. It will very certainly wind up being trackable. > Well then, you're doing it wrong. You are violating FB's "real name" terms of service. And also, rest assured that almost everyone of the people you've talked to on Facebook has de-anonymized you, by having your real name in their address book somewhere which they uploaded to FB/WhatsApp/Instagram knowingly or unknowingly. That only applies if I tell my real name to any of those people, which I don't. > If you care about your privacy, get off facebook. It is impossible to get off of FB without being denied access to things which are a central part of social life, e.g. events. > > To not become a fascist country, you cannot regulate social media access. > To not become a fascist country, you have to regulate social media. I'm sorry, my wording was imprecise! Let me correct it please: To not become a fascist country, you have to regulate social media, but you MUST NOT deny access to it.

motohagiography 6y ago

Typically when someone uses the english idiom, "impose a cost," they are referring to adjusting incentives in a broader economic sense, and not payments.

thotsBgone 6y ago

> When I use FB or whatever, I want to be completely anonymous. Keep in mind it's already against the FB terms of service to use it anonymously. You're supposed to use your real full name. > With requiring payment comes the ability to trace where the money came from. One possible solution could be bitcoin. I'd be more worried about where the money is going, though. Do modern democracies need to be collecting even more money from us, to do god knows what with? Would this new tax come with a decrease in other taxes? Probably not. I think disincentivizing social media is a good idea, but a social media tax isn't the right move. Brainstorming some other ways of doing so: - Ban certain social media Skinner-box features like endless scrolling, recommendation algorithms, likes, whatever. This is more likely to get to the heart of the problem, but gives the government more control over the internet, private businesses, etc. - Create alternative social media platforms which don't use the same rage-inducing and addicting mechanisms. These will fail because they are by definition less addicting than the alternative. - Make current social media unusable by flooding it with spam. This could be accomplished "extra-legally", preferably using AI to make spam hard to detect. This is already being done to an extent by bad actors (Chinese Communist Party, though you don't need AI when you have over a billion cheap workers), but could be done on a larger scale not to sway opinion, but to ruin the platforms altogether. - Social media companies could use semantic analysis to downrank rage-bait and negativity and up-rank positivity and thoughtful discourse (though hopefully not that hollow "you go girl!!!" faux-positivity you sometimes see on social media). This is uncomfortable because it means social media companies get to engineer our conversations to be whatever they want, but they are already doing this, they're just doing it in a malevolent way. - Somehow educate the entire population on the dangers of social media the same way we did with cigarettes. Whether through a public information campaign, or by generally getting people to meditate and realize the true important things in life. This is a terrible solution, and obviously social media companies would fight it tooth and nail, but I only mention it because I've heard it seriously proposed too many times. If your solution is "educate everybody", but everybody is currently hooked up to disinformation machines, you're screwed. That's all I've got. Anyone else have any ideas?