6 ms·

"We explicitly violated the terms of service for a website and you'll never guess what happened next."

tarakat 4y ago
The company retaliated against their employees through unrelated services it happens to also own? Is this the kind of free market we want? Turf wars?
- voidwtf 4y ago
  Each employee willingly participated. I understand the feeling, but these weren’t random people that had nothing to do with a company action. These were all individuals who took part in the act. I agree it’s petty, and yes this is what many free market proponents want (unless free market is just a convenient guise to get what they want).
  - tarakat 4y ago
    > I agree it’s petty The pettiness isn't the problem, the extra-legal power that consolidation of capital and media enables is. Competition in the market ceases to be about the best product at the best price, and becomes a game of strategic alliances and power abuse instead. Edit: To clarify once more: Facebook may have a legitimate interest in keeping this company off Instagram. What it does not have is a moral right to use unrelated properties for retaliation. This is what I meant by "extra-legal" - it's using its market power to punish a company, instead of the courts. If Instagram was independent, it could not engage in this sort of business-warfare.
    - voidwtf 4y ago
      This wasn’t competition though. This was straight up theft of resources/services. What? “extra-legal”? Don’t mix this with other behaviors Meta/Facebook/Instagram engage in, I hate them for all the bullsht they get away with too. However, this isn’t that, this is someone trying to build a platform on top of someone else’s platform explicitly against their terms of service and without reimbursing them.
      - Taywee 4y ago
        It's hard to be sympathetic to a company that operates morally dubious amounts of data harvesting. If a program enables you to gain more privacy while using the internet, it's a moral good. I don't consider it to be stealing any resources or services. It's little different than an ad and tracker blocker on a browser. Any client-side user agent should have the right to act on behalf of the user. If it's not illegal to build this kind of program yourself to protect yourself, it shouldn't be illegal for another company to build it and profit from it. A company like Facebook shouldn't have the right to strategically stifle innovation and improvement, in a way that makes the market better for the consumer. That undermines the entire point of capitalism, which is to benefit maximally for the consumer by forcing companies to out-do each other. It reads more like anti-competitive behavior to me, and Facebook refusing to try to properly adapt to somebody making their product better than they can do themselves. If Ford produced an on-board tracking device that tracked your use of the car to sell to advertisers, and another company sold a device that disabled the tracker permanently, there would be no good reason for Ford to be able to forcefully ban the company from buying their cars. Even if the car was sold at a loss because the ad revenue subsidized the remainder and then some. People are hungry for privacy and a better experience. Facebook needs to learn to adapt for the good of the consumer, or die by letting other companies eat their lunch. This is good capitalism. It sucks for Facebook, but it's good for the public.
        etchalon 4y ago
        You had an argument up and until the idea that Ford wouldn't have a "good reason" to retaliate against a company that was causing them to lose money. Not attempting to stop that act would be, for a public company, a violation of their duties to shareholders.
        josephcsible 4y ago
        We're not saying they shouldn't attempt to stop them. We're saying they shouldn't be able to stop them.
        voidwtf 4y ago
  - notjtrig 4y ago
    If a comedian is deplatformed should they ban the production team, ban Alex Jones' sound guy maybe, what about the people who voted for Trump, willing participation? I could imagine certain protests being demonized and their attendants removed from meta for violating terms of service. The real question is do they virtually round up the avatars for public deletions, or do they just disappear them? I think a lot of people would enjoy virtual public executions, if anyone from meta is listening.
    - voidwtf 4y ago
      I was careful in my choice of the word participated. I chose to use that word as I intended it to only include people who worked on the product. If anyone at the company who did not work on the development of the product was banned then I wholly disagree with their suspension. Also, while I enjoy your alliteration, it’s also an extremely steep “slippery slope” argument. It’s certainly not an argument I was trying to entertain.
      - voidwtf 4y ago
        p.s. to entertain your comedian argument, I think there are some situations where that may be correct. If a comedian tells vile racist jokes, I believe the writer of the joke, the talent manager who knew the comedians content, the person who booked the comedian knowing the content, and the venue who knowingly provided the platform for the content should all be similarly shunned.
        heisenbit 4y ago
        And the student selling tickets at the counter and the lady cleaning the bathrooms. But not the venture capitalists who put up the million funding?
- etchalon 4y ago
  I don't know what definition of free market would exclude the idea that private companies can take actions to protect their property.
  - tarakat 4y ago
    The kind that realizes that government is not the only threat to a functional free market, that does not devolve into feudalism. I am pointing out the failure of lack of antitrust enforcement, not claiming that an unrestricted free market is the ideal, no matter where it leads.
    - voidwtf 4y ago
      Agreed about antitrust enforcement, Instagrams marriage to Facebook should have never been allowed to proceed. At some point we let “free market” supersede a market with competition. When you become large enough that you can leverage non-tangible assets to borrow enough money to buy out all your threatening competition. Or when you become large enough that you can secure patents for every little obvious development, original or not, and litigate every potential competitor out of existence. At that point I don’t think it’s a free market. Throw in some lobbying, protectionists policies, and now you have a captured market.
    - etchalon 4y ago
      The disagreement seems to be other what "free" means and to whom "free" refers.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    "can" and "want" are very different things.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    The one that says meaningful competition will exist.
    - etchalon 4y ago

The company retaliated against their employees through unrelated services it happens to also own? Is this the kind of free market we want? Turf wars?

voidwtf 4y ago
Each employee willingly participated. I understand the feeling, but these weren’t random people that had nothing to do with a company action. These were all individuals who took part in the act. I agree it’s petty, and yes this is what many free market proponents want (unless free market is just a convenient guise to get what they want).
- tarakat 4y ago
  > I agree it’s petty The pettiness isn't the problem, the extra-legal power that consolidation of capital and media enables is. Competition in the market ceases to be about the best product at the best price, and becomes a game of strategic alliances and power abuse instead. Edit: To clarify once more: Facebook may have a legitimate interest in keeping this company off Instagram. What it does not have is a moral right to use unrelated properties for retaliation. This is what I meant by "extra-legal" - it's using its market power to punish a company, instead of the courts. If Instagram was independent, it could not engage in this sort of business-warfare.
  - voidwtf 4y ago
    This wasn’t competition though. This was straight up theft of resources/services. What? “extra-legal”? Don’t mix this with other behaviors Meta/Facebook/Instagram engage in, I hate them for all the bullsht they get away with too. However, this isn’t that, this is someone trying to build a platform on top of someone else’s platform explicitly against their terms of service and without reimbursing them.
    - Taywee 4y ago
      It's hard to be sympathetic to a company that operates morally dubious amounts of data harvesting. If a program enables you to gain more privacy while using the internet, it's a moral good. I don't consider it to be stealing any resources or services. It's little different than an ad and tracker blocker on a browser. Any client-side user agent should have the right to act on behalf of the user. If it's not illegal to build this kind of program yourself to protect yourself, it shouldn't be illegal for another company to build it and profit from it. A company like Facebook shouldn't have the right to strategically stifle innovation and improvement, in a way that makes the market better for the consumer. That undermines the entire point of capitalism, which is to benefit maximally for the consumer by forcing companies to out-do each other. It reads more like anti-competitive behavior to me, and Facebook refusing to try to properly adapt to somebody making their product better than they can do themselves. If Ford produced an on-board tracking device that tracked your use of the car to sell to advertisers, and another company sold a device that disabled the tracker permanently, there would be no good reason for Ford to be able to forcefully ban the company from buying their cars. Even if the car was sold at a loss because the ad revenue subsidized the remainder and then some. People are hungry for privacy and a better experience. Facebook needs to learn to adapt for the good of the consumer, or die by letting other companies eat their lunch. This is good capitalism. It sucks for Facebook, but it's good for the public.
      - etchalon 4y ago
        You had an argument up and until the idea that Ford wouldn't have a "good reason" to retaliate against a company that was causing them to lose money. Not attempting to stop that act would be, for a public company, a violation of their duties to shareholders.
        josephcsible 4y ago
        We're not saying they shouldn't attempt to stop them. We're saying they shouldn't be able to stop them.
      - voidwtf 4y ago
- notjtrig 4y ago
  If a comedian is deplatformed should they ban the production team, ban Alex Jones' sound guy maybe, what about the people who voted for Trump, willing participation? I could imagine certain protests being demonized and their attendants removed from meta for violating terms of service. The real question is do they virtually round up the avatars for public deletions, or do they just disappear them? I think a lot of people would enjoy virtual public executions, if anyone from meta is listening.
  - voidwtf 4y ago
    I was careful in my choice of the word participated. I chose to use that word as I intended it to only include people who worked on the product. If anyone at the company who did not work on the development of the product was banned then I wholly disagree with their suspension. Also, while I enjoy your alliteration, it’s also an extremely steep “slippery slope” argument. It’s certainly not an argument I was trying to entertain.
    - voidwtf 4y ago
      p.s. to entertain your comedian argument, I think there are some situations where that may be correct. If a comedian tells vile racist jokes, I believe the writer of the joke, the talent manager who knew the comedians content, the person who booked the comedian knowing the content, and the venue who knowingly provided the platform for the content should all be similarly shunned.
      - heisenbit 4y ago
        And the student selling tickets at the counter and the lady cleaning the bathrooms. But not the venture capitalists who put up the million funding?
etchalon 4y ago
I don't know what definition of free market would exclude the idea that private companies can take actions to protect their property.
- tarakat 4y ago
  The kind that realizes that government is not the only threat to a functional free market, that does not devolve into feudalism. I am pointing out the failure of lack of antitrust enforcement, not claiming that an unrestricted free market is the ideal, no matter where it leads.
  - voidwtf 4y ago
    Agreed about antitrust enforcement, Instagrams marriage to Facebook should have never been allowed to proceed. At some point we let “free market” supersede a market with competition. When you become large enough that you can leverage non-tangible assets to borrow enough money to buy out all your threatening competition. Or when you become large enough that you can secure patents for every little obvious development, original or not, and litigate every potential competitor out of existence. At that point I don’t think it’s a free market. Throw in some lobbying, protectionists policies, and now you have a captured market.
  - etchalon 4y ago
    The disagreement seems to be other what "free" means and to whom "free" refers.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  "can" and "want" are very different things.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  The one that says meaningful competition will exist.
  - etchalon 4y ago