He's right. China banned Facebook and no one is accusing Russia of hacking their elections. Clearly banning Facebook is the path forward for democracy and civil liberties. clearly.
A narrative in which any punishment leveled at Facebook is construed as an assault on free speech and civil liberty is _very_ convenient for Facebook.
Fining an automotive company that makes unsafe cars is not attacking personal freedom of movement. Fining hospitals that are unsanitary is not attacking your reproductive rights. Shutting down a bank that commits fraud is not an attack on free enterprise.
Facebook isn't a pillar of democracy; it's a for-profit business that inserts itself as a middle-man in human communication.
Ok fine I'll turn flippant curt mode off for a moment.
I don't actually like Facebook. I don't work for them. I don't use them. But if a government is going to ban something they should have a compelling reason. It's not a freedom of speech thing it's a freedom to do what you want with your time and money as an adult thing. I don't care if the thing is drugs, porn or Facebook, it shouldn't be banned. Banning Facebook because it's inconvenient to the establishment is the path towards becoming China. That was my point. We will wake up very soon to a world of banned sites and vpns all in the name of our protection.
A narrative in which any punishment leveled at Facebook is construed as an assault on free speech and civil liberty is _very_ convenient for Facebook.
Certainly it's convenient for Facebook. Does that prove it's not true?
Fining an automotive company that makes unsafe cars is not attacking personal freedom of movement.
Uh, you know publishers, even crappy publishers, have been protected historically in a different fashion than other sorts of industries. Historically, the concept of freedom of expression has generally been for the protection of what some people might consider "unsafe books". The production of an unsafe automobile isn't considered an example of "protected expression" but the production of an essay, book or other "container idea" is considered protected (with specific exceptions, of course).
Facebook isn't a pillar of democracy.
Free speech is seldom about protecting the expression ideas everyone likes - those usually don't need protection. Free speech is about prevent the state, in particular, from suppressing "bad", "wrong", "unpatriotic" etc ideas, because those are the targets of suppression.
And the pillars of democracy are those lawyers and judges that defend free speech, not the completely random assortment of people, some terrible, who practice freedom speech.
...it's a for-profit business that inserts itself as a middle-man in human communication.
Those publishers who've been sued and defend their right to publish various banned in the US (such as those of Henry Miller) were also for-profit businesses inserting themselves as middle-men in human communication. If we're living in a capitalist society, expression is going to require middle-men of one sort or another so suppressing these is going to be effectively suppressing free expression.
> If we're living in a capitalist society, expression is going to require middle-men of one sort or another so suppressing these is going to be effectively suppressing free expression.
Only because of this naive bare-minimum protocol stack of HTTP/DNS, which discourages users from owning their own identities, pushing all traffic to centralizing servers. A decade old phone has enough computing power to serve the majority of users' personal communication needs.
Ultimately centralized "social media" can only turn out to be yet another populist dumpster fire, ending up in the same state as the nightly newses, nytimes, etc - overwhelming sources of straight up government propaganda . The revolution will not be televised, and this still applies even when the TV has become a javascript browser.
This entire issue is essentially just debating between supporting a rock or a hard place, wherein actually they both suck. We're in this position purely because we the people allowed the surveillance companies way too much trust, and the only way out is to move past them.
> Fining hospitals that are unsanitary is not attacking your reproductive rights.
That would be perfectly acceptable if there were more than one service provider of these services, but in the case of MO - there isn't. There's a single Planned Parenthood clinic for the entire state, and they are being forced to shut down.
There used to be plenty, but thanks to other onerous laws their legislature put in place with the aim of making abortion defacto unavailable, those other clinics all had to shut down, leaving the single provider.
And now it looks like they'll have none to provide those services, which was their goal all along. How anyone can argue that isn't an attack on reproductive rights is beyond me.
If it were such that it was simple for another organization to come in and do what PP did, while abiding by all of those extra laws, it would have happened already.
The fact that it didn't, and the fact that PP couldn't do it themselves (it hasn't helped that their federal funding has been basically slashed to nothing for grandstanding reasons that were false to begin with), shows that those laws are working as intended, to make those seeking such care second-class citizens. It essentially makes it impossible for women and men to get proper low-cost reproductive health care in the state.
But they can still say "Well, it's all constitutional, so too bad!" as they thumb their nose to everyone else, especially their opposition.
Their citizens voted for this, though - I hope they enjoy their face without a nose; it's only going to get worse from here on out for them. All on the backs of disadvantaged women, of course.
In general, this is the standard playbook all the surveillance valley companies have been branding themselves with - setting themselves up as middlemen for some type of person-to-person interaction, taking credit for the interaction itself as if they're a necessary part of it, but absolving their responsibility for any downsides by passing the buck to their users. It's effectively a motte and bailey - the motte is the organic interaction, the bailey is the imposition of their opinionated business practices. Business practices which include optimizing for engagement (aka time wasted), building comprehensive surveillance profiles, marketing themselves as coherent service providers to recruit new peers, and charging hefty transaction fees.
Sure developing laws that would protect people and not allow monopolies is the job of lawmakers. If they were suggesting laws about users being able to take out their information, crossposting from competing platform, finding out why an add is shown and who have paid for it, all the power to them. But if they are suggesting to ban one particular site it shows their incompetence as lawmakers, and breaks regulations that have been applied on lawmakers themselves by constitution.
It doesn't necessarily need to be to solve the problem, it can be to force movement on the problem by both forcing awareness of the issue to users and impacting service overall, which is felt by the service provider.
China is not a good example because China both had many reasons for blocking Facebook and already has it blocked, so it's not doing anything new.
It's very telling that you used an obvious strawman like China and didn't see fit to mention Myanmar.
Despite complaints, FB left up numerous pages run by the Myanmar military that spread hate and disinformation against the Rohingya people, of whom thousands have been murdered, and hundreds of thousands have been made refugees. Facebook "eventually" deleted these pages, but well after the damage was done.[0]
> Google and Microsoft also announced that they support a Canadian initiative to protect the integrity of the election this fall — including removing hoax accounts and fake content.
Yes! Now let's get all the other media companies onboard!
It seems people want to eat their cake and have it too.
Close down FB. Why? Because they provide a platform to all ideas, noble, vile and in between. But we want to democratize the internet and give people a voice (but only those voices we at the moment approve of). But big media wants preeminence and don’t want to be usurped by diffused news sources. Who’ll establish lockstep narratives?
FB should become a platform. I don’t see it working as an impartial moderator of what’s right. I don’t see it working ala Wikipedia federation. The only way I see it working is devolving moderation to groups similar to Reddit or Flickr. Also have basic enforcement of local national laws (depending where the group is from) so if you’re from Russia but venture into s US group, don’t complain and vice versa.
Because they violated a lawful summons. Sovereign Parliaments in multiple countries issued summons to Facebook for Zuckerberg and Sandberg. Multiple times, they pulled a bait and switch. In the United States, this would be like blowing off Congress and then one’s contempt hearing in court.
> FB should become a platform
What does this mean? And what does a democracy do when Facebook refuses to show up to provide critical information for that discussion?
Blocking Facebook is extreme. Large financial penalties, and possibly criminal proceedings against Zuckerberg and Sanders for wilfully evading summons, are more apt. But the need for something to be done in reaction to such brazen lawlessness seems necessary. And keeping all lawful options on the table when considering a response is prudent.
The bell has been rung. If FB shut down tomorrow another filter bubble would take its place. It’s what news consumers, in particular politics junkies, want.
> If FB shut down tomorrow another filter bubble would take its place
If nothing more is done than shut them down then yes, the market's incentives wouldn't change. If those incentives are changed, however, lasting effects can be produced.
If Facebook were pursued under antitrust laws, as some are suggesting [1], it would set an precedent. Similarly, laws like GDPR (one among many options) could change the incentives around hoarding data and using it to target users with exploitative ads.
There are solutions. But they require debate. That requires Facebook's senior leadership show up to summons.
FB's network effects took years to develop as did its targeted ad-based business model, which the root of these misinformation issues.
Yes, another filter bubble might replace it, but certainly not overnight. Society and policymakers would then have some breathing room to decide how best these tools should be regulated, so the impact of misinformation campaigns can be minimized.
It sounds like you may be assuming that targeted advertising is the (or the main) reason filter bubbles exist. I claim that there's a more fundamental reason, namely the fact that most people don't like hearing facts or opinions that contradict their worldview.
To be sure, targeted advertising definitely supports filter bubbles, but I contend that even without any targeted advertising, if you give people a choice about what information they consume and a sufficient variety of sources from which to choose, they will end up effectively creating their own filter bubbles.
Nothing modern about it. Your friends, the village tavern you go to, printed media, traditional media. Filter bubbles have always existed. Facebook is not the first nor the worst.
There is nothing modern about seeking non-dissenting opinions. What is modern is how easy and automatic it is. If you aren't convinced, a simple google search will bring up plenty of research papers on the topic.
Did they summon Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook? Was it about Facebook the company, or Mark's personal affairs? I think it is obviously about Facebook, and it seems to me to be the exclusive perogative of Facebook to be represented by whomever they choose.
If FB or anybody else doesn't like Saudi Arabia (or any other country) to the point of not answering a summon, they can quit doing business there. Even FB can't have its cake and eat it too.
Why should Canadian parliament be able to summon a US citizen? Should other countries like China Turkey or Armenia be able to summon them as well? And should hacker news delete your profile if you do not follow 'lawful summons' to after talking about a certain square or genocide.
"But we want to democratize the internet and give people a voice"
There is a huge difference between "freedom of speech" and "freedom to others attention". The core rot in facebook is not that it allows people to say whatever they want, its that facebook promotes and amplifies what people says algorithmically in ways that are harmful. There are plenty of restrictions on "free speech" as implemented in the US, adding restrictions around algorithmic ranking based on engagement metrics should be an easy pill for the legal system to swallow.
FB certainly is guilty of collecting user data and using it unscrupulously and gathering it unscrupulously. But they can enact laws rather than grandstand and make it out to be a threat to democracy. It’s a threat to the established parties yes, but I’m not yet sure it’s by itself a threat to democracy,
The CA stuff was overblown and had very little impact. The bad thing behind the CA fiasco was sharing people's data the way they did (though that was neither new, nor hidden, that’s their stock in trade).
It seems people want to eat their cake and have it too.
But you could make exactly the same point about Facebook (and Youtube, and Twitter). They want the protection from liability that comes from being a common carrier, like the phone company or the post office, but they also want to take positions on current affairs, like a newspaper or a TV station. They must be made to choose which one they want to be.
federated alternatives to "Big media" already exist, in usable form for the average user. Signing onto Mastodon is barely any different than signing onto twitter. The only thing that's missing is a coordinated effort to actually move everyone out of the silos.
We can democratize discourse without having facebook in the loop who has the exact same incentives that big media has to monetize and curate what we say. Big Tech is no more democratic or acting in our interest than big media just because they've got a juicero machine in the office and a ping pong table in the lobby.
One can be sure if that Mastodon reached Facebook scale, there would be a stream of shock-horror stories about manipulation and unintended consequences.
The thing about the anti-Facebook sentiment is it seems split between those angry about the things Facebook hasn't stopped and those angry about the things Facebook has stopped. I don't think the later group understands that approach strong enough to shut down Facebook would quickly set it's sights on shutting down or controlling other broad platforms.
It absolutely is and should be an option to just shut down the damn sites. We already know they have a generally negative impact on society. Why do we need them? Relative to its size Facebook's platform really doesn't do anything that we would miss besides perhaps Birthday reminders.
I would however be keen to leave the messaging platforms open to avoid disrupting communication too severely. I also see some potential unintended consequences.
Even if we assume that your premise is correct, under what authority do we shut them down and how do we ensure this new power won't be abused in the future?
> under what authority do we shut them down and how do we ensure this new power won't be abused in the future?
Parliaments are sovereign. Facebook violated a lawful summons by pulling a bait and switch:
“McNamee's comments came as an international committee of MPs in Ottawa renewed their summons for Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg and company COO Sheryl Sandberg to appear and give evidence before them. Both ignored the first summons, choosing to send company representatives in their place.”
It's not a question of whether or not they can be shut down, it's whether or not they _should_. I'm in the US and am generally of the mind that the power of government should be limited as much as is reasonable in order to protect people's freedoms in the future. There is a very real danger in proposing one-off 'fixes' for every ill you see in the world as it sets a precedent which can be abused down the road.
By your definition numerous media outlets could just be shut down entirely. Is that really a good thing? Do we trust the government to decide which information is and is not acceptible for us to consume? I certainly don't.
I personally don't think they should be shut down. (Fines and potentially criminal proceedings, under contempt laws, for Zuckerberg and Sandberg would make more sense.) But they should face some consequences. Keeping all lawful options on the table is a good negotiating strategy.
With respect to metastasisation, that is a concern. But fortunately there isn't a rich history of lawful companies blowing off multiple countries' Parliaments. The one-offness of the situation isn't in countries reacting, but in how complacent they've been with it all.
Perhaps Congress could vote to stop Facebook if they choose, especially since it involves national security, terrorism, acts of war, international threats, etc.
I don't think this counts as a new power. Remember Lavabit[1]? The executive branch forced Lavabit to provide a backdoor to read their customers' email, or pay a $5,000/day fine. They threatened to imprison Levison if he told anyone it was happening, even his lawyer.
Keep in mind, we're talking about the same government that declares concentration camps legal [2], assassinates American citizens without due process [3], wiretaps nearly the entire free world [4], can shut down the entire Internet [5], and recklessly declares a state of national emergency as part of a temper tantrum [6].
> Why do we need them? Relative to its size Facebook's platform really doesn't do anything that we would miss besides perhaps Birthday reminders.
Loads of business around the world no longer maintain their own websites. The only place you will find their contact information is on their Facebook pages. Sometimes those businesses have added their contact info to Google Maps, or enthusiasts have added it to OpenStreetMap, but so often you have no way of communicating with an establishment without at least visiting its Facebook page.
The same can be said of many bands now. Facebook is how they get the world out about new releases and concert dates. Other sources can lag behind by weeks.
That's the narrative the media portrays these days. Couple years ago they were talking about Facebook bringing world peace. It's just writers chasing clicks.
Traditional media is extremely salty over their lose of control in "opinion making" and creating consensus.
Dont get me wrong, FB is not much better, but at least it's much more open and direct then traditional media.
Russia had very little to do with DJTJ, EVERY country tries to influence election in other countries.
Whenever there is an election anywhere in the world. Traditional media in the US fill the airwave with opinion making - both domestically and in foreign press.
This is why so many countries are skeptical of allowing US media to operate freely within their borders.
Both FB and traditional media have big agendas, but FB's agenda of selling ads is much more benign then whatever the state department wants.
Even if you're right, and the State is way more evil than Facebook, how does that affect the fact that Facebook is still terrible?
If I were to say "Ted Bundy isn't that bad...look at how many people Stalin killed!", you would rightly say that that's a dumb argument. Similarly, just because you can find Entity A acting worse than Entity B, that doesn't imply that Entity B is good, and it doesn't imply that we shouldn't do something about Entity B, just because we can find something worse.
> FB's agenda of selling ads is much more benign then whatever the state department wants.
I disagree with this, actually. Facebook's agenda of selling ads is the very thing that makes them toxic -- not because selling ads is a terrible thing, but because Facebook is so insistent on using people's personal data to do it.
Roger McNamee is not an idiot. Among his many accomplishments, he was an early Facebook backer.[a] He would not be recommending a shutdown of social media platforms without giving serious thought to the matter. Among the things he said, this passage stands out for me:
> [Social medial platforms] are the products of an American business culture with few rules, where misbehaviour seldom results in punishment. Smart people take what they can get and tell themselves they earned it. They feel entitled. Consequences are someone else's problem.
At the end of the day, though, the most effective path to reform would be to shut down the platforms at least temporarily. ... Any country can go first. The platforms have left you no choice. The time has come to call their bluff.
Companies with responsible business models will emerge overnight to fill the void.
> Companies with responsible business models will emerge overnight to fill the void.
Can't wait to see his standard applied to, say, a newspaper, which also are products of that American business culture. Somehow, I get the feeling it would go down a lot differently.
I'm still not sure what is meant by 'shut down' here - are we actually talking forbidding ISPs to route traffic to them? DNS blacklisting? Or just something like preventing them from having any physical presence (data centers, offices) until they start complying with summons? Because in the former case, I can't see how he possibly can think that's viable.
The idea of banning social media platforms is so ridiculous as to be prima facie evidence of idiocy. There's just no way to do it, at least not in a civilized country which respects human rights and the rule of law.
Well to be fair he could be malicious instead of stupid.
Facebook itself can go die in a dumpster fire as far as I care but it should be a natrual death - not one pushed by demagogues and old media interests transparently interested in forcing control to consolidate their power.
Roger McNamee might not be an idiot but ample evidences have shown that competence in one field doesn't translate well into other fields. It's just hubris to assume one is expert in everything.
I agree with McNamee's message, but he's grandstanding a bit too much here relative to his actual intentions.
1. I had the opportunity to hear him speak at Stanford in April and I asked him straight up why he isn't calling for Zuckerberg to resign given all his critiques of the company's policies and leadership. His answer was, "he's my friend". I don't know, that seems like a weak response from someone making regular headlines while building a personal brand as an anti-Facebook crusader.
2. He also still holds Facebook shares, which he acknowledges makes him "not the best messenger" [direct quote] for his FB morality play. His justification for holding on to his shares is [paraphrasing his words] "if I sold my shares I would be profiting immensely from Facebook while I criticize them, which would be weird." This is just such a bad argument. If he was really concerned about Facebook money being "dirty" he could simply donate it to any number of charities. Problem solved.
My problem is that he seems to be profiting from playing both sides of the Facebook game simultaneously. Just pick a side already.
I had the same reaction. Like, if you're really his friend, use that relationship to tell him something that is hard to hear. That's what friends are for, in theory at least.
You would love it because you know it in practice doesn't do anything. Human nature dictates this. If they actually acted on their critiques you wouldn't be friends for long. We all do this to varying degrees in our personal and professional lives.
Which is fundamentally why he gave the "he's my friend" answer. He disagrees with what's being done, but he himself won't do anything to negate what his friend is doing.
Okay, but human nature goes both ways. There’s all the messed up stuff, and also occasional bouts of doing the right thing, sometimes with a little help from your friends.
I believe the parent commenter is speaking to our “higher nature” for lack of a better term. It’s a bit cynical to assume that this doesn’t exist, and possibly a tad inappropriate to assume that the commenter shares your cynicism and is coming from the same place.
>and possibly a tad inappropriate to assume that the commenter shares your cynicism and is coming from the same place.
Your ascribed motivations to my outlook on this matter are not appreciated.
It is plenty sufficient to look at his actions and statement together. He plainly told you in no uncertain terms that he's not going to do anything about it, when asked about what he is doing, because he is Mark's friend. This is pretty standard human behavior, and it's why we have a whole host of laws and ethics regulations attempting to correct for it in both private and public organizations. That's not cynical, that's looking at known human behaviors and being practical about it.
Try to avoid shaming platitudes in what otherwise was a pretty vanilla rehash on what the guy directly said.
I don't think you understand my comment. If you are cynical about McNamee, I am in full agreement. But that's not what you appeared to be critiquing in your original comment.
> You would love it because you know it in practice doesn't do anything.
Seems fair to assume that this is in response to the parent comment "I would love if my harshest critic was my friend."
> This is pretty standard human behavior, and it's why we have a whole host of laws and ethics regulations attempting to correct for it in both private and public organizations. That's not cynical, that's looking at known human behaviors and being practical about it.
I'm wondering if the "shut down facebook" routine is a spoiler; it's so obviously not going to happen, but talking about it uses up time and energy that might be spent on actually fixing the problem.
The left has become muddled in its messaging these days. They see crisis and imminent calamity everywhere, but they can't articulate a clear rationale for why drastic action, like shutting down FB, should be undertaken, or what concrete goals they hope to achieve by doing it. All that is known for sure is that Facebook is the target du jour, and therefore calling for drastic action is a sure way to get media attention and clicks.
There is a simple reason why governments can't 'Call their bluff', because they are the ones bluffing. They brag about representing 400 million people, but in fact they are mostly corrupt bureaucrats who take money from various lobbyists and were elected simply as the lesser evil.
Facebook, despite its many flaws, is genuinely useful to many people, and governments can't simply shut down useful things, no matter how much they'd like to control communications. So governments even in semi-democratic countries have to carefully construct their lies, before they try to shut down a widely used site.
Rather than shutting down social media platforms, shut down the conditions that allow them to be. Bring modern capitalism to its knees and you will prevent another Facebook.
> Potts tried to excuse their absence by saying he was "not familiar with the procedures of Canadian Parliament and what requires an appearance."
The Global Policy Director of FB, with the head of Canadian public policy in tow, actually made this statement. It insults the intelligence of everyone at that hearing.
At this point, one can only assume that these absurd excuses are fully intentional. They are counting on Western governments's fears of being branded "censors" being too great for them to take any action besides "well, we tried".
I invite them to try it and see just how much merry hell the users raise. Facebook (which is what this is really all about) is based in the US snd while it might be possible to curtail their activity, shutting FB down is just not possible without throwing out the 1st Amendment.
That's not to say it wouldn't suck for FB, but FB doesn't have to have an active presence in every country to still serve those countries. All things considered, FB itself would have a hard time preventing users from unserved countries from using it's platform.
One thing that’s important to do in a discussion of regulating Facebook is to separate the conversation from personal evaluations of its founders and managers. A person does not need to be evil or even ill-intentioned to invent something destructive. Paul Müller wasn’t trying to hurt anyone when he discovered the pesticidal properties of DDT, and his Nobel Prize can be considered well-deserved. That shouldn’t stop us from evaluating the invention on its own merit, deciding to regulate or ban it, and doing so without any malice towards Müller, regardless of whether he is on our side or defensive of his invention. The invention is bigger than and separate from the inventor.
Just nationalize them. When was the last time Facebook introduced a great new feature that users liked, as opposed to some garbage adtech "innovation"?
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] threadFining an automotive company that makes unsafe cars is not attacking personal freedom of movement. Fining hospitals that are unsanitary is not attacking your reproductive rights. Shutting down a bank that commits fraud is not an attack on free enterprise.
Facebook isn't a pillar of democracy; it's a for-profit business that inserts itself as a middle-man in human communication.
I don't actually like Facebook. I don't work for them. I don't use them. But if a government is going to ban something they should have a compelling reason. It's not a freedom of speech thing it's a freedom to do what you want with your time and money as an adult thing. I don't care if the thing is drugs, porn or Facebook, it shouldn't be banned. Banning Facebook because it's inconvenient to the establishment is the path towards becoming China. That was my point. We will wake up very soon to a world of banned sites and vpns all in the name of our protection.
Certainly it's convenient for Facebook. Does that prove it's not true?
Fining an automotive company that makes unsafe cars is not attacking personal freedom of movement.
Uh, you know publishers, even crappy publishers, have been protected historically in a different fashion than other sorts of industries. Historically, the concept of freedom of expression has generally been for the protection of what some people might consider "unsafe books". The production of an unsafe automobile isn't considered an example of "protected expression" but the production of an essay, book or other "container idea" is considered protected (with specific exceptions, of course).
Facebook isn't a pillar of democracy.
Free speech is seldom about protecting the expression ideas everyone likes - those usually don't need protection. Free speech is about prevent the state, in particular, from suppressing "bad", "wrong", "unpatriotic" etc ideas, because those are the targets of suppression.
And the pillars of democracy are those lawyers and judges that defend free speech, not the completely random assortment of people, some terrible, who practice freedom speech.
...it's a for-profit business that inserts itself as a middle-man in human communication.
Those publishers who've been sued and defend their right to publish various banned in the US (such as those of Henry Miller) were also for-profit businesses inserting themselves as middle-men in human communication. If we're living in a capitalist society, expression is going to require middle-men of one sort or another so suppressing these is going to be effectively suppressing free expression.
Only because of this naive bare-minimum protocol stack of HTTP/DNS, which discourages users from owning their own identities, pushing all traffic to centralizing servers. A decade old phone has enough computing power to serve the majority of users' personal communication needs.
Ultimately centralized "social media" can only turn out to be yet another populist dumpster fire, ending up in the same state as the nightly newses, nytimes, etc - overwhelming sources of straight up government propaganda . The revolution will not be televised, and this still applies even when the TV has become a javascript browser.
This entire issue is essentially just debating between supporting a rock or a hard place, wherein actually they both suck. We're in this position purely because we the people allowed the surveillance companies way too much trust, and the only way out is to move past them.
That would be perfectly acceptable if there were more than one service provider of these services, but in the case of MO - there isn't. There's a single Planned Parenthood clinic for the entire state, and they are being forced to shut down.
There used to be plenty, but thanks to other onerous laws their legislature put in place with the aim of making abortion defacto unavailable, those other clinics all had to shut down, leaving the single provider.
And now it looks like they'll have none to provide those services, which was their goal all along. How anyone can argue that isn't an attack on reproductive rights is beyond me.
If it were such that it was simple for another organization to come in and do what PP did, while abiding by all of those extra laws, it would have happened already.
The fact that it didn't, and the fact that PP couldn't do it themselves (it hasn't helped that their federal funding has been basically slashed to nothing for grandstanding reasons that were false to begin with), shows that those laws are working as intended, to make those seeking such care second-class citizens. It essentially makes it impossible for women and men to get proper low-cost reproductive health care in the state.
But they can still say "Well, it's all constitutional, so too bad!" as they thumb their nose to everyone else, especially their opposition.
Their citizens voted for this, though - I hope they enjoy their face without a nose; it's only going to get worse from here on out for them. All on the backs of disadvantaged women, of course.
China is not a good example because China both had many reasons for blocking Facebook and already has it blocked, so it's not doing anything new.
Despite complaints, FB left up numerous pages run by the Myanmar military that spread hate and disinformation against the Rohingya people, of whom thousands have been murdered, and hundreds of thousands have been made refugees. Facebook "eventually" deleted these pages, but well after the damage was done.[0]
[0] https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/facebook-un-myanmar-geno...
Yes! Now let's get all the other media companies onboard!
Close down FB. Why? Because they provide a platform to all ideas, noble, vile and in between. But we want to democratize the internet and give people a voice (but only those voices we at the moment approve of). But big media wants preeminence and don’t want to be usurped by diffused news sources. Who’ll establish lockstep narratives?
FB should become a platform. I don’t see it working as an impartial moderator of what’s right. I don’t see it working ala Wikipedia federation. The only way I see it working is devolving moderation to groups similar to Reddit or Flickr. Also have basic enforcement of local national laws (depending where the group is from) so if you’re from Russia but venture into s US group, don’t complain and vice versa.
No, because they're monetarily incentivized to be harmful to individuals and societies.
Because they violated a lawful summons. Sovereign Parliaments in multiple countries issued summons to Facebook for Zuckerberg and Sandberg. Multiple times, they pulled a bait and switch. In the United States, this would be like blowing off Congress and then one’s contempt hearing in court.
> FB should become a platform
What does this mean? And what does a democracy do when Facebook refuses to show up to provide critical information for that discussion?
Blocking Facebook is extreme. Large financial penalties, and possibly criminal proceedings against Zuckerberg and Sanders for wilfully evading summons, are more apt. But the need for something to be done in reaction to such brazen lawlessness seems necessary. And keeping all lawful options on the table when considering a response is prudent.
It is, however, what advertisers want. Because "enragement", "stickiness", etc.
It is merely what consumers fall for.
Not that I'm saying it's right, but that's the way it is.
If nothing more is done than shut them down then yes, the market's incentives wouldn't change. If those incentives are changed, however, lasting effects can be produced.
If Facebook were pursued under antitrust laws, as some are suggesting [1], it would set an precedent. Similarly, laws like GDPR (one among many options) could change the incentives around hoarding data and using it to target users with exploitative ads.
There are solutions. But they require debate. That requires Facebook's senior leadership show up to summons.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust...
Yes, another filter bubble might replace it, but certainly not overnight. Society and policymakers would then have some breathing room to decide how best these tools should be regulated, so the impact of misinformation campaigns can be minimized.
To be sure, targeted advertising definitely supports filter bubbles, but I contend that even without any targeted advertising, if you give people a choice about what information they consume and a sufficient variety of sources from which to choose, they will end up effectively creating their own filter bubbles.
There is a huge difference between "freedom of speech" and "freedom to others attention". The core rot in facebook is not that it allows people to say whatever they want, its that facebook promotes and amplifies what people says algorithmically in ways that are harmful. There are plenty of restrictions on "free speech" as implemented in the US, adding restrictions around algorithmic ranking based on engagement metrics should be an easy pill for the legal system to swallow.
The CA stuff was overblown and had very little impact. The bad thing behind the CA fiasco was sharing people's data the way they did (though that was neither new, nor hidden, that’s their stock in trade).
But you could make exactly the same point about Facebook (and Youtube, and Twitter). They want the protection from liability that comes from being a common carrier, like the phone company or the post office, but they also want to take positions on current affairs, like a newspaper or a TV station. They must be made to choose which one they want to be.
We can democratize discourse without having facebook in the loop who has the exact same incentives that big media has to monetize and curate what we say. Big Tech is no more democratic or acting in our interest than big media just because they've got a juicero machine in the office and a ping pong table in the lobby.
The thing about the anti-Facebook sentiment is it seems split between those angry about the things Facebook hasn't stopped and those angry about the things Facebook has stopped. I don't think the later group understands that approach strong enough to shut down Facebook would quickly set it's sights on shutting down or controlling other broad platforms.
I would however be keen to leave the messaging platforms open to avoid disrupting communication too severely. I also see some potential unintended consequences.
Parliaments are sovereign. Facebook violated a lawful summons by pulling a bait and switch:
“McNamee's comments came as an international committee of MPs in Ottawa renewed their summons for Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg and company COO Sheryl Sandberg to appear and give evidence before them. Both ignored the first summons, choosing to send company representatives in their place.”
By your definition numerous media outlets could just be shut down entirely. Is that really a good thing? Do we trust the government to decide which information is and is not acceptible for us to consume? I certainly don't.
I personally don't think they should be shut down. (Fines and potentially criminal proceedings, under contempt laws, for Zuckerberg and Sandberg would make more sense.) But they should face some consequences. Keeping all lawful options on the table is a good negotiating strategy.
With respect to metastasisation, that is a concern. But fortunately there isn't a rich history of lawful companies blowing off multiple countries' Parliaments. The one-offness of the situation isn't in countries reacting, but in how complacent they've been with it all.
Perhaps Congress could vote to stop Facebook if they choose, especially since it involves national security, terrorism, acts of war, international threats, etc.
I don't think this counts as a new power. Remember Lavabit[1]? The executive branch forced Lavabit to provide a backdoor to read their customers' email, or pay a $5,000/day fine. They threatened to imprison Levison if he told anyone it was happening, even his lawyer.
Keep in mind, we're talking about the same government that declares concentration camps legal [2], assassinates American citizens without due process [3], wiretaps nearly the entire free world [4], can shut down the entire Internet [5], and recklessly declares a state of national emergency as part of a temper tantrum [6].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit#Suspension_and_gag_ord... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure... 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_kill_switch 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergency_Concerning_...
Loads of business around the world no longer maintain their own websites. The only place you will find their contact information is on their Facebook pages. Sometimes those businesses have added their contact info to Google Maps, or enthusiasts have added it to OpenStreetMap, but so often you have no way of communicating with an establishment without at least visiting its Facebook page.
The same can be said of many bands now. Facebook is how they get the world out about new releases and concert dates. Other sources can lag behind by weeks.
Dont get me wrong, FB is not much better, but at least it's much more open and direct then traditional media.
Russia had very little to do with DJTJ, EVERY country tries to influence election in other countries.
Whenever there is an election anywhere in the world. Traditional media in the US fill the airwave with opinion making - both domestically and in foreign press.
This is why so many countries are skeptical of allowing US media to operate freely within their borders.
Both FB and traditional media have big agendas, but FB's agenda of selling ads is much more benign then whatever the state department wants.
Even if you're right, and the State is way more evil than Facebook, how does that affect the fact that Facebook is still terrible?
If I were to say "Ted Bundy isn't that bad...look at how many people Stalin killed!", you would rightly say that that's a dumb argument. Similarly, just because you can find Entity A acting worse than Entity B, that doesn't imply that Entity B is good, and it doesn't imply that we shouldn't do something about Entity B, just because we can find something worse.
I disagree with this, actually. Facebook's agenda of selling ads is the very thing that makes them toxic -- not because selling ads is a terrible thing, but because Facebook is so insistent on using people's personal data to do it.
> [Social medial platforms] are the products of an American business culture with few rules, where misbehaviour seldom results in punishment. Smart people take what they can get and tell themselves they earned it. They feel entitled. Consequences are someone else's problem.
At the end of the day, though, the most effective path to reform would be to shut down the platforms at least temporarily. ... Any country can go first. The platforms have left you no choice. The time has come to call their bluff.
Companies with responsible business models will emerge overnight to fill the void.
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_McNamee
Can't wait to see his standard applied to, say, a newspaper, which also are products of that American business culture. Somehow, I get the feeling it would go down a lot differently.
I'm still not sure what is meant by 'shut down' here - are we actually talking forbidding ISPs to route traffic to them? DNS blacklisting? Or just something like preventing them from having any physical presence (data centers, offices) until they start complying with summons? Because in the former case, I can't see how he possibly can think that's viable.
Facebook itself can go die in a dumpster fire as far as I care but it should be a natrual death - not one pushed by demagogues and old media interests transparently interested in forcing control to consolidate their power.
1. I had the opportunity to hear him speak at Stanford in April and I asked him straight up why he isn't calling for Zuckerberg to resign given all his critiques of the company's policies and leadership. His answer was, "he's my friend". I don't know, that seems like a weak response from someone making regular headlines while building a personal brand as an anti-Facebook crusader.
2. He also still holds Facebook shares, which he acknowledges makes him "not the best messenger" [direct quote] for his FB morality play. His justification for holding on to his shares is [paraphrasing his words] "if I sold my shares I would be profiting immensely from Facebook while I criticize them, which would be weird." This is just such a bad argument. If he was really concerned about Facebook money being "dirty" he could simply donate it to any number of charities. Problem solved.
My problem is that he seems to be profiting from playing both sides of the Facebook game simultaneously. Just pick a side already.
Which is fundamentally why he gave the "he's my friend" answer. He disagrees with what's being done, but he himself won't do anything to negate what his friend is doing.
I believe the parent commenter is speaking to our “higher nature” for lack of a better term. It’s a bit cynical to assume that this doesn’t exist, and possibly a tad inappropriate to assume that the commenter shares your cynicism and is coming from the same place.
Your ascribed motivations to my outlook on this matter are not appreciated.
It is plenty sufficient to look at his actions and statement together. He plainly told you in no uncertain terms that he's not going to do anything about it, when asked about what he is doing, because he is Mark's friend. This is pretty standard human behavior, and it's why we have a whole host of laws and ethics regulations attempting to correct for it in both private and public organizations. That's not cynical, that's looking at known human behaviors and being practical about it.
Try to avoid shaming platitudes in what otherwise was a pretty vanilla rehash on what the guy directly said.
> You would love it because you know it in practice doesn't do anything.
Seems fair to assume that this is in response to the parent comment "I would love if my harshest critic was my friend."
> This is pretty standard human behavior, and it's why we have a whole host of laws and ethics regulations attempting to correct for it in both private and public organizations. That's not cynical, that's looking at known human behaviors and being practical about it.
Facebook, despite its many flaws, is genuinely useful to many people, and governments can't simply shut down useful things, no matter how much they'd like to control communications. So governments even in semi-democratic countries have to carefully construct their lies, before they try to shut down a widely used site.
The Global Policy Director of FB, with the head of Canadian public policy in tow, actually made this statement. It insults the intelligence of everyone at that hearing.
At this point, one can only assume that these absurd excuses are fully intentional. They are counting on Western governments's fears of being branded "censors" being too great for them to take any action besides "well, we tried".
That's not to say it wouldn't suck for FB, but FB doesn't have to have an active presence in every country to still serve those countries. All things considered, FB itself would have a hard time preventing users from unserved countries from using it's platform.