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An alternative perspective…should FB and Google continue to offer their services so that they can inform and assist international authorities with stopping it?

An alternative perspective…should FB and Google continue to offer their services so that they can inform and assist international authorities with stopping it? It just seems like platform bans do very little other than move the activity into more shadowy places.

blunte 5y ago
I'm not convinced the authorities in those countries really object to the practices. Normally I would agree about bans pushing the activity into shadowy places, but at least in this case it would probably limit the exposure to just the countries with the bad practices. Basically it would hopefully limit more international trade of people. From the opposite perspective, since Facebook unfortunately seems to be a common place for businesses to promote themselves, cutting off a country (with clear explanation why) would perhaps make some of its businesses put pressure on the government to enact some changes. Basically it would limit economic activities, and most individuals/businesses/governments don't want that.
acdha 5y ago
There's a balance here but it really is important to consider how much less effective those shadowy places would be without free use of tools built by billions of dollars of developer and SRE time. Facebook and Google give them platforms they could never afford on their own and there's a big question of access when it comes to things like recruiting being more effective when it can happen on a legitimate mainstream platform. Now, there is some question about the value of cooperation with international authorities but that is undercut by the long history of not working with those organizations and concealing problems rather than reporting them. I'm not sure that can happen without something like a regulatory requirement with personal liability for senior management in the event of non-compliance — they need to fear this at least as much as, say, a financial firm fears lying to the SEC.

blunte 5y ago

I'm not convinced the authorities in those countries really object to the practices. Normally I would agree about bans pushing the activity into shadowy places, but at least in this case it would probably limit the exposure to just the countries with the bad practices. Basically it would hopefully limit more international trade of people. From the opposite perspective, since Facebook unfortunately seems to be a common place for businesses to promote themselves, cutting off a country (with clear explanation why) would perhaps make some of its businesses put pressure on the government to enact some changes. Basically it would limit economic activities, and most individuals/businesses/governments don't want that.

acdha 5y ago

There's a balance here but it really is important to consider how much less effective those shadowy places would be without free use of tools built by billions of dollars of developer and SRE time. Facebook and Google give them platforms they could never afford on their own and there's a big question of access when it comes to things like recruiting being more effective when it can happen on a legitimate mainstream platform. Now, there is some question about the value of cooperation with international authorities but that is undercut by the long history of not working with those organizations and concealing problems rather than reporting them. I'm not sure that can happen without something like a regulatory requirement with personal liability for senior management in the event of non-compliance — they need to fear this at least as much as, say, a financial firm fears lying to the SEC.