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> Make stalking at scale the same as stalking by creeping in the bushes outside someone's house or following them around town. Tracking everything people do isn

> Make stalking at scale the same as stalking by creeping in the bushes outside someone's house or following them around town. Tracking everything people do isn't a "business model"—it's a crime. But the government benefits from Facebook (and Google's) stalking ability. Another recent example from HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28747699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28747699

handrous 5y ago
Oh, I know. Which is why it'll never happen, and why the "message" (as in McLuhan) of the medium of the Internet is authoritarianism.
- sam0x17 5y ago
  Saying it will never happen and doing nothing to help it happen is the first step to ensuring it will never happen.
- teucris 5y ago
  I think you’re getting downvotes by saying “it’ll never happen” which I find unfortunate because I think the observation that the Internet’s fundamental mode (“message”) as authoritarianism is incredibly interesting and worth discussing. The internet wasn’t created with this goal and yet it seems there is significant evidence to support this idea.
  - inanutshellus 5y ago
    > I think you’re getting downvotes by saying “it’ll never happen” which I find unfortunate Fatalism is how Bad Things survive in a committee-government such as ours. :-\
    - teucris 5y ago
      Clarification: I agree fatalism is bad, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a conversation around the rest of the comment.
      - inanutshellus 5y ago
        The fatalist comment from GP distracted entirely from the value-add content and I added to that distraction. Blurg. :-\
        handrous 5y ago
        Sorry y'all. I am prone to thinking technological determinism's more right than not, and to seeing the stable outcome of "games" as inevitable unless the terms of the games themselves can be altered, and there's usually not much interest in doing that. Maybe that makes me part of the problem, but I'm pretty sure nothing in the actual world would change if I flipped around to a "we can, actually, realistically, fix this" attitude. Realistically, I'm not going to throw the significant resources behind anything that'd be required to have slightly-better-than-winning-the-Powerball odds of making an actual difference, which makes me the same as 99.999% of people, at least. I ain't rich enough to pay others to care about and work toward the causes I'd support in my place, to a degree that it'd actually affect anything, so that'd mostly be lots and lots of actual hours of my life, for a ticket at a slim chance of anything getting better. Nah. Donate a little to charity while knowing it's not enough to do much. Vote when I manage to forget that the world in which I did vote and the one in which I didn't are identical aside from that I "get to" complain about non-voters and tell them they don't get to have opinions, in one of them. That's it.
        inanutshellus 5y ago
        Yessir, understood. There's just no positive outcome from agreeing with one's adversary that "resistance is futile". Just say the same thing, without the whinging at the beginning and then we can have a discussion, futile or not.
pueblito 5y ago
> But the government benefits from Facebook (and Google's) stalking ability. That doesn’t make it ok
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  Who said it did? What this does mean is that it's highly unlikely the government is going to do what the OP suggested. Facebook et. al. are the honeypots of dreams for governments.
  - adventured 5y ago
    What the government wants to accomplish with the Facebook hearings, political grandstanding and blathering, is a harness, control to their political power benefit. They're playing a political game of conquest. There is no scenario where they're going to destroy it. As a rule, DC doesn't like power competition, and they absolutely do not tolerate it from the private sector. One of the dumbest things Bill Gates ever did was crack a joke that he was as powerful as the President [1]. They're fine with people being enormously rich or famous, and having some modest influence derived from that, it has to be under their feet however, it has to squarely fall beneath their political power. There's nothing the savages in DC dislike more than private power that doesn't pledge fealty. They will break Zuckerberg and force him to retire from Facebook if he doesn't capitulate. One way or another they will get what they want. Zuckerberg's only choice is whether he gives it to them willingly, or they take it from him. He is delusional if he believes his voting interest in Facebook leaves him primarily in control of Facebook's destiny at this point, such that he can stand against Congress. Zuckerberg is fighting them so adamantly, for now, because he still views Facebook as his. That's part of his latest response, in which he has clearly shifted positioning, and now proclaims FB will stop apologizing. The DC power is particularly agitated by that, they view it as a more direct challenge to their authority. And it's that point on which he is mistaken, Facebook no longer belongs to him in regards to control. What's going on now is the action required to formally begin removing his sole control over Facebook. The political power views people like Zuckerberg as being allowed to exist, allowed to operate, in a permission sense. It's important to understand how the bureaucrats in DC view the world. Gates for a long time thought he could hide up in the Pacific Northwest, stay out of DC politics, and just keep playing in his software kingdom (eventually the tech industry and Microsoft got too big for that). The Google founders, along with Schmidt, realized a lot earlier on that they had to be deep into DC lobbying to try to preempt, shape, the inevitable political harness. During the anti-trust questioning, Gates got emotional about what he perceived to be the government trying to kill Microsoft [2]; what that response really was, is Gates feeling like control over his kingdom was being taken from him; and that's exactly the spot Zuckerberg is in now. [1] "Bill said, 'Of course, I have as much power as the president has.' Melinda's eyes got wide, and she kicked him under the table, so then he tried to play it off as a joke. But it was too late." https://www.wired.com/2000/11/microsoft-7/ https://www.wired.com/2000/11/microsoft-7/ [2] "What startled [DOJ anti-trust chief] Klein was the personal terms in which Gates made these points. "It wasn't just, You're going to kill my business; it was, You're going to kill me. And clearly we, the government, were the instrument of this great personal affliction."

handrous 5y ago

Oh, I know. Which is why it'll never happen, and why the "message" (as in McLuhan) of the medium of the Internet is authoritarianism.

sam0x17 5y ago
Saying it will never happen and doing nothing to help it happen is the first step to ensuring it will never happen.
teucris 5y ago
I think you’re getting downvotes by saying “it’ll never happen” which I find unfortunate because I think the observation that the Internet’s fundamental mode (“message”) as authoritarianism is incredibly interesting and worth discussing. The internet wasn’t created with this goal and yet it seems there is significant evidence to support this idea.
- inanutshellus 5y ago
  > I think you’re getting downvotes by saying “it’ll never happen” which I find unfortunate Fatalism is how Bad Things survive in a committee-government such as ours. :-\
  - teucris 5y ago
    Clarification: I agree fatalism is bad, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a conversation around the rest of the comment.
    - inanutshellus 5y ago
      The fatalist comment from GP distracted entirely from the value-add content and I added to that distraction. Blurg. :-\
      - handrous 5y ago
        Sorry y'all. I am prone to thinking technological determinism's more right than not, and to seeing the stable outcome of "games" as inevitable unless the terms of the games themselves can be altered, and there's usually not much interest in doing that. Maybe that makes me part of the problem, but I'm pretty sure nothing in the actual world would change if I flipped around to a "we can, actually, realistically, fix this" attitude. Realistically, I'm not going to throw the significant resources behind anything that'd be required to have slightly-better-than-winning-the-Powerball odds of making an actual difference, which makes me the same as 99.999% of people, at least. I ain't rich enough to pay others to care about and work toward the causes I'd support in my place, to a degree that it'd actually affect anything, so that'd mostly be lots and lots of actual hours of my life, for a ticket at a slim chance of anything getting better. Nah. Donate a little to charity while knowing it's not enough to do much. Vote when I manage to forget that the world in which I did vote and the one in which I didn't are identical aside from that I "get to" complain about non-voters and tell them they don't get to have opinions, in one of them. That's it.
        inanutshellus 5y ago
        Yessir, understood. There's just no positive outcome from agreeing with one's adversary that "resistance is futile". Just say the same thing, without the whinging at the beginning and then we can have a discussion, futile or not.

pueblito 5y ago

> But the government benefits from Facebook (and Google's) stalking ability. That doesn’t make it ok

LurkingPenguin 5y ago
Who said it did? What this does mean is that it's highly unlikely the government is going to do what the OP suggested. Facebook et. al. are the honeypots of dreams for governments.
- adventured 5y ago
  What the government wants to accomplish with the Facebook hearings, political grandstanding and blathering, is a harness, control to their political power benefit. They're playing a political game of conquest. There is no scenario where they're going to destroy it. As a rule, DC doesn't like power competition, and they absolutely do not tolerate it from the private sector. One of the dumbest things Bill Gates ever did was crack a joke that he was as powerful as the President [1]. They're fine with people being enormously rich or famous, and having some modest influence derived from that, it has to be under their feet however, it has to squarely fall beneath their political power. There's nothing the savages in DC dislike more than private power that doesn't pledge fealty. They will break Zuckerberg and force him to retire from Facebook if he doesn't capitulate. One way or another they will get what they want. Zuckerberg's only choice is whether he gives it to them willingly, or they take it from him. He is delusional if he believes his voting interest in Facebook leaves him primarily in control of Facebook's destiny at this point, such that he can stand against Congress. Zuckerberg is fighting them so adamantly, for now, because he still views Facebook as his. That's part of his latest response, in which he has clearly shifted positioning, and now proclaims FB will stop apologizing. The DC power is particularly agitated by that, they view it as a more direct challenge to their authority. And it's that point on which he is mistaken, Facebook no longer belongs to him in regards to control. What's going on now is the action required to formally begin removing his sole control over Facebook. The political power views people like Zuckerberg as being allowed to exist, allowed to operate, in a permission sense. It's important to understand how the bureaucrats in DC view the world. Gates for a long time thought he could hide up in the Pacific Northwest, stay out of DC politics, and just keep playing in his software kingdom (eventually the tech industry and Microsoft got too big for that). The Google founders, along with Schmidt, realized a lot earlier on that they had to be deep into DC lobbying to try to preempt, shape, the inevitable political harness. During the anti-trust questioning, Gates got emotional about what he perceived to be the government trying to kill Microsoft [2]; what that response really was, is Gates feeling like control over his kingdom was being taken from him; and that's exactly the spot Zuckerberg is in now. [1] "Bill said, 'Of course, I have as much power as the president has.' Melinda's eyes got wide, and she kicked him under the table, so then he tried to play it off as a joke. But it was too late." https://www.wired.com/2000/11/microsoft-7/ https://www.wired.com/2000/11/microsoft-7/ [2] "What startled [DOJ anti-trust chief] Klein was the personal terms in which Gates made these points. "It wasn't just, You're going to kill my business; it was, You're going to kill me. And clearly we, the government, were the instrument of this great personal affliction."