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There are no good solutions here. Should Facebook ignore Turkish law? Should they go by the US' terror organisation list instead? Should they maintain their o

There are no good solutions here. Should Facebook ignore Turkish law? Should they go by the US' terror organisation list instead? Should they maintain their own "terrorist list" alongside Turkey & the US'? Separate classifications of illegal or immoral content for in every jurisdiction? You think there are political biases in American FB or Twitter? ... Try FB in a language or political context that no FB executive even speaks. Meanwhile, there's chance (grumblings in europe, atm) that FB/Twitter will be subject to positive pressures as well. IE, making it illegal to exclude (eg) a political party from a platform. It doesn't take long before the same content is illegal in one jurisdiction and illegal to restrict in another. The Armenian Genocide comes to mind as a likely example. Zuck is like a case study in "no morals" corporate culture. OOH, saying yes to revenue streams worked out really well. FB "retargeting" and creepy personalized advertising won. The effectiveness of the ads, and revenue soared. Being "cutting edge" really, really paid off. It was creepy, but people got used to it. Scandals like Cambridge Analytica also passed. Other platforms (adwords) did it too, and FB doesn't stand out too much. On the other hand, having no morals makes it very hard to navigate issues like censorship & moderation in multiple jurisdictions. This is exactly the kind of work morals were invented for.

throwaway316943 6y ago
The only good solution is for social media to be a neutral service provider open to all. It would destroy Facebook’s business model but that’s a good thing.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  Or put another way, the problem isn't what facebook (or twitter) chooses to do... it's what they are. The problem is "neutral service provider" means something very different to nerds than it does to policy wonks that can actually do something about it. To us, FB should be a protocol like email, rss or www. That means there is no FB, no $1trn market cap, no $90bn revenue stream. To them, it means something like "common carrier." That means keeping fb, but regulating it so they can't exclude anyone. The whole thing will be written with an eye to keeping revenue streams intact. FB are already making the argument that such things will make it impossible for them to "compete with China." That already smells of too big to fail. The absurd thing here is that FB's service is not scarce at all. No matter what happens with fb, there will be no shortages of social media. FB can exist. It can be a $5trn company. It can cease to exist. It can shrink 1000X. The quantity and quality of online social media is not more or less because of those things. All those books about "abundance" 10-15 years ago were (in typical internet fashion) 10-15 years too early. FB is the real life example of abundance economics at work.
cblconfederate 6y ago
> no good solutions Yeah there are no good ones, facebook is clearly morally wrong, but they are not in the business of morals anyway. Let's see if their ever-socially-conscious advertisers will "pull out" their ads in protest again

throwaway316943 6y ago

The only good solution is for social media to be a neutral service provider open to all. It would destroy Facebook’s business model but that’s a good thing.

dalbasal 6y ago
Or put another way, the problem isn't what facebook (or twitter) chooses to do... it's what they are. The problem is "neutral service provider" means something very different to nerds than it does to policy wonks that can actually do something about it. To us, FB should be a protocol like email, rss or www. That means there is no FB, no $1trn market cap, no $90bn revenue stream. To them, it means something like "common carrier." That means keeping fb, but regulating it so they can't exclude anyone. The whole thing will be written with an eye to keeping revenue streams intact. FB are already making the argument that such things will make it impossible for them to "compete with China." That already smells of too big to fail. The absurd thing here is that FB's service is not scarce at all. No matter what happens with fb, there will be no shortages of social media. FB can exist. It can be a $5trn company. It can cease to exist. It can shrink 1000X. The quantity and quality of online social media is not more or less because of those things. All those books about "abundance" 10-15 years ago were (in typical internet fashion) 10-15 years too early. FB is the real life example of abundance economics at work.

cblconfederate 6y ago

> no good solutions Yeah there are no good ones, facebook is clearly morally wrong, but they are not in the business of morals anyway. Let's see if their ever-socially-conscious advertisers will "pull out" their ads in protest again