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> Regulating tech is a great idea (assuming the regulations are thoughtful and productive, of course), I’m not nearly as enthusiastic for these calls to bring

> Regulating tech is a great idea (assuming the regulations are thoughtful and productive, of course), I’m not nearly as enthusiastic for these calls to bring heavy regulation on to the tech industry. Articles like this have a hypothetical ideal mental image of regulations that will punish only the bad guys while protecting themselves and the content they like. There’s also an implicit assumption that regulation will only apply to Facebook, without bringing negative effects on to the sites and services the tech community prefers. This article may be well-meaning in intentions, but how would such regulation work in practice? Writing regulation that outlaws companies from forbidding customer API automation sounds good if you’re a tech user who wants to automate some clicks, but would that also mean that spammers must have free reign on the API as well? How would such a law be structured to force sites to allow consumers to use “good” tools while also allowing them to catch and stop the “bad” tools like auto-friend bots? Some of these arguments are starting to feel like utopian fallacies where people want impossibly perfect regulations applied with the assumption that only their enemies will be affected. I’m also surprised to see authors like Cory Doctorow advocating for more government control and regulation of popular internet communication sites. Once we open that Pandora’s box of government control, it’s hard to imagine future politicians won’t be teaching for it as a way to push their agenda.

jdonaldson 5y ago
Lately, it seems like our only remaining choice as a civilization is to decide if we want to be exploited or controlled.
- jes 5y ago
  All of us are controlled, all the time, by how reality happens to unfold. With some practice, it’s possible to accept that this is just how the world is, and to no longer be bothered by it.
- simonh 5y ago
  It's either/or?
jboy55 5y ago
Just imagine the politician of your nightmares being in control of the regulations. I think the real issue is that people live in black holes of misinformation on the internet because that is where they want to be. When I look at the many Herman Cain Award threads on reddit, it seems the predominate original source of most posts is groups that the user signed up for. This isn't new, before Facebook, there were usenet and forums, AM Radio and even mailing lists and magazines.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  > Just imagine the politician of your nightmares being in control of the regulations. Exactly this! Every time I see someone proposing some new expansion of government reach and power, it seems to be considered only from the angle of “just think of what the (people I think of as the) good guys could do with this increased authority!” “Yeah, but what could the bad guys do with this increased authority? Because as sure as the sun rises in the East, whoever you think of as the bad guys will eventually come to power and have this authority…”
  - dcow 5y ago
    You can 1) make something illegal without 2) requiring any sort of regulation.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Yes, there’s a technical legal distinction between a law (legislative) and a regulation (executive), but nothing in my comment above was intended to signify that I want one or the other to have broad authority to protect their incumbency or exercise power over the People to a greater extent than today.
  - erentz 5y ago
    Why does it have to mean giving anyone power? We could for example enact privacy laws that make it illegal to share personal data. That gives no one power, and takes away power from corporations. We could enact laws that prevent targeted advertising, which would make it pointless to gather a lot of the data they gather in the first place. That doesn’t make the bad politician any more powerful. So on.
dcow 5y ago
That box is already open. Respectfully your comment kinda reads like you assume tech is some new untouched frontier unexploited and ripe for the picking. We’re way past that and we must decide as a society how we want to navigate a world of global software services and immense data collection. Doctorow has always been against government central control of information. I suspect he’s against any overly large centralized information control regime because it has the same practical impact to people’s everyday lives. It’s not weird to see him (or anyone) call for “regulation” when the regulation being asked for pertains to enforcing we as a society retain certain rights with respect to how we interact with our world. That’s the whole point… don’t get distracted on some “govt control vs no control” axis. Nobody is asking the govt to tell you how to run your business, they’re just asking that we make it illegal to abuse users in the way Facebook has by permabanning the developer of a genuinely socially good tool that is obviously not spam for the insane “it automates user interactions” blanket reason. My password manager automates user interactions… GTFO FB. Also laws aren’t regulation. You can make something illegal without imposing back-pressure on every new venture in the space it pertains to.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  > Nobody is asking the govt to tell you how to run your business, they’re just asking that we make it illegal to abuse users in the way Facebook has by permabanning the developer of a genuinely socially good tool that is obviously not spam for the insane “it automates user interactions” blanket reason. I don't know if it's cognitive dissonance, or some other phenomenon at play, but it seems to me like people in tech are unwilling to accept that the problems are systemic. Having a roster of mustache-twirling villains is convenient fiction, and having those companies punished/broken apart and calling it a day is doing something, but that doesn't prevent a different company from doing the same thing in a year. There is a tension between wanting the government to do something - but not wanting it to do too much (lest it affects our stock options, or make our jobs harder? I don't know)
  - dcow 5y ago
    I mean I think the “I’m a private company I am not bound by tue constitution” is a little dated. Companies effectively run the world and practically have a lot of power over individuals. There is essentially zero difference between a large company impinging on shared liberties and the government. Maybe we should start by applying a broader set of protections to citizens in order to start addressing the systemic issues?
dasil003 5y ago
Totally agreed on the utopian fallacy angle, it's really hard to come up with effective regulation ideas that won't create unintended distortions at best, and new innovation-killing moats at worst. But we have to try. As imperfect as government is, it is the only power that we have over giant corporations. Existing regulation and agency structure is completely unsuitable for the world we live in today. So far tech has relied on creative destruction as compute power grew and form factors shrunk rapidly, leading to ever increasing waves of adoption, and "software eating the world". However at this point most people have a smartphone in their pocket and the attention economy is maxed out. A lot of future innovation will be capital (and data) intensive, and with adoption already saturated, the natural power of Google, Facebook, and Amazon will not be naturally disrupted the way PCs disrupted mainframes or the web disrupted Windows hegemony. Of course there's nothing worse than bad regulation, and historically tech regulation has been a minefield due to the general cluelessness of congress. The good news is that this will improve with turnover and younger staffers helping build a broader understanding of the issues. Hopefully we can start to pivot away from distractions like section 230 and asking corporations to be arbiters of truth, and instead focus on anti-trust and data privacy angles, with specific focus on size and power.
- dcow 5y ago
  Why do we have to regulate? It seems an alternate yet much more difficult path would be that we could grow a societal backbone and make certain destructive practices illegal instead of trying to figure out a central list of allowed practices and licenses and policies and permits and bureaucracy etc. For example, it’s pretty clear that internet scale data markets and user attention platforms harm the individual. Why is step one always to reach for a regulatory solution instead of a slightly more radical “outlaw such machines and then figure things out from there” approach? A naive example might be a law stating: “It is illegal to profit from the sale of advertisements to your own users.” In the same vein, why cant we outlaw DRM because it’s bad for users and tell movie studios we care more about users health and well being than we do about your “piracy” problem?
  - simonh 5y ago
    Outlaw what specifically though? You're falling into the same trap OP is calling out, that your extremely vague hand wavey proposed laws would only ban "the bad guys".

jdonaldson 5y ago

Lately, it seems like our only remaining choice as a civilization is to decide if we want to be exploited or controlled.

jes 5y ago
All of us are controlled, all the time, by how reality happens to unfold. With some practice, it’s possible to accept that this is just how the world is, and to no longer be bothered by it.
simonh 5y ago
It's either/or?

jboy55 5y ago

Just imagine the politician of your nightmares being in control of the regulations. I think the real issue is that people live in black holes of misinformation on the internet because that is where they want to be. When I look at the many Herman Cain Award threads on reddit, it seems the predominate original source of most posts is groups that the user signed up for. This isn't new, before Facebook, there were usenet and forums, AM Radio and even mailing lists and magazines.

sokoloff 5y ago
> Just imagine the politician of your nightmares being in control of the regulations. Exactly this! Every time I see someone proposing some new expansion of government reach and power, it seems to be considered only from the angle of “just think of what the (people I think of as the) good guys could do with this increased authority!” “Yeah, but what could the bad guys do with this increased authority? Because as sure as the sun rises in the East, whoever you think of as the bad guys will eventually come to power and have this authority…”
- dcow 5y ago
  You can 1) make something illegal without 2) requiring any sort of regulation.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Yes, there’s a technical legal distinction between a law (legislative) and a regulation (executive), but nothing in my comment above was intended to signify that I want one or the other to have broad authority to protect their incumbency or exercise power over the People to a greater extent than today.
- erentz 5y ago
  Why does it have to mean giving anyone power? We could for example enact privacy laws that make it illegal to share personal data. That gives no one power, and takes away power from corporations. We could enact laws that prevent targeted advertising, which would make it pointless to gather a lot of the data they gather in the first place. That doesn’t make the bad politician any more powerful. So on.

dcow 5y ago

That box is already open. Respectfully your comment kinda reads like you assume tech is some new untouched frontier unexploited and ripe for the picking. We’re way past that and we must decide as a society how we want to navigate a world of global software services and immense data collection. Doctorow has always been against government central control of information. I suspect he’s against any overly large centralized information control regime because it has the same practical impact to people’s everyday lives. It’s not weird to see him (or anyone) call for “regulation” when the regulation being asked for pertains to enforcing we as a society retain certain rights with respect to how we interact with our world. That’s the whole point… don’t get distracted on some “govt control vs no control” axis. Nobody is asking the govt to tell you how to run your business, they’re just asking that we make it illegal to abuse users in the way Facebook has by permabanning the developer of a genuinely socially good tool that is obviously not spam for the insane “it automates user interactions” blanket reason. My password manager automates user interactions… GTFO FB. Also laws aren’t regulation. You can make something illegal without imposing back-pressure on every new venture in the space it pertains to.

sangnoir 5y ago
> Nobody is asking the govt to tell you how to run your business, they’re just asking that we make it illegal to abuse users in the way Facebook has by permabanning the developer of a genuinely socially good tool that is obviously not spam for the insane “it automates user interactions” blanket reason. I don't know if it's cognitive dissonance, or some other phenomenon at play, but it seems to me like people in tech are unwilling to accept that the problems are systemic. Having a roster of mustache-twirling villains is convenient fiction, and having those companies punished/broken apart and calling it a day is doing something, but that doesn't prevent a different company from doing the same thing in a year. There is a tension between wanting the government to do something - but not wanting it to do too much (lest it affects our stock options, or make our jobs harder? I don't know)
- dcow 5y ago
  I mean I think the “I’m a private company I am not bound by tue constitution” is a little dated. Companies effectively run the world and practically have a lot of power over individuals. There is essentially zero difference between a large company impinging on shared liberties and the government. Maybe we should start by applying a broader set of protections to citizens in order to start addressing the systemic issues?

dasil003 5y ago

Totally agreed on the utopian fallacy angle, it's really hard to come up with effective regulation ideas that won't create unintended distortions at best, and new innovation-killing moats at worst. But we have to try. As imperfect as government is, it is the only power that we have over giant corporations. Existing regulation and agency structure is completely unsuitable for the world we live in today. So far tech has relied on creative destruction as compute power grew and form factors shrunk rapidly, leading to ever increasing waves of adoption, and "software eating the world". However at this point most people have a smartphone in their pocket and the attention economy is maxed out. A lot of future innovation will be capital (and data) intensive, and with adoption already saturated, the natural power of Google, Facebook, and Amazon will not be naturally disrupted the way PCs disrupted mainframes or the web disrupted Windows hegemony. Of course there's nothing worse than bad regulation, and historically tech regulation has been a minefield due to the general cluelessness of congress. The good news is that this will improve with turnover and younger staffers helping build a broader understanding of the issues. Hopefully we can start to pivot away from distractions like section 230 and asking corporations to be arbiters of truth, and instead focus on anti-trust and data privacy angles, with specific focus on size and power.

dcow 5y ago
Why do we have to regulate? It seems an alternate yet much more difficult path would be that we could grow a societal backbone and make certain destructive practices illegal instead of trying to figure out a central list of allowed practices and licenses and policies and permits and bureaucracy etc. For example, it’s pretty clear that internet scale data markets and user attention platforms harm the individual. Why is step one always to reach for a regulatory solution instead of a slightly more radical “outlaw such machines and then figure things out from there” approach? A naive example might be a law stating: “It is illegal to profit from the sale of advertisements to your own users.” In the same vein, why cant we outlaw DRM because it’s bad for users and tell movie studios we care more about users health and well being than we do about your “piracy” problem?
- simonh 5y ago
  Outlaw what specifically though? You're falling into the same trap OP is calling out, that your extremely vague hand wavey proposed laws would only ban "the bad guys".