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Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

theguardian.com

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Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#431

Post by Roboprog »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #259
Roboprog wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to lose sight of that: corporations are REQUIRED to be as ruthless as they can legally get away with, or they are literally in violation of the law in terms of making money for their owners. The law is the ONLY thing that curbs their bad behavior, other than publicity so bad that it (temporarily, until forgotten) causes a sales drop. Yeah, I'd like to see more corporate death sentences handed out, as well…

This is false. There is no such law that requires nothing but ruthless profit optimization. I invite you to disprove my claim by pointing to a relevant piece of legislation.

Perhaps it's an "emergent property" of the system of laws, and culture, that are in place?

How much "charity", percentage wise, do you think corporate management could actually take part in? (I don't mean P/R posing as charity costing 1% of net profit, I mean things like deciding to do something cleaner/safer which would cut net profit on a major product in half)

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#432

Post by dTal »

wonder_er wrote: post #303
wyager wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any organization, when it becomes sufficiently large, essentially becomes a government. Remind me when Facebook used violence to enforce laws or take taxes?

Along these lines, the argument says "Facebook is large, and should therefore be subjected to regulation". Government is far larger than Facebook, and far more insulated from the people than is Facebook. I can't imagine why we extend trust to the government to fix a situation where we don't trust facebook. It's all run by people, with their own competing goals. And lets not forget that facebook could collapse overnig…

>Government is... far more insulated from the people than is Facebook

Is it? Facebook doesn't hold elections. It seems entirely unaccountable to me, with no system of checks and balances to reign it in.

>facebook could collapse overnight if enough people decided to stop using it. I don't think a population could exert that level of influence over a government

They could and do, all the time. See: any successful rebellion ever. See also: the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#433

Post by dredmorbius »

smsm42 wrote: post #413
dredmorbius wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not literally thousands of forums that have Facebook's reach. Network effects, corporate acquisitions, walled-garden approaches, and similar mechanisms make an equivalent reach outside of Facebook difficult. http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-engagement-stati... http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/576d559e52bcd05c658... Global monthly active users, millions: * Facebook: 1,650 * Tumblr: 550 * I…

I highly doubt you need in your daily life to reach 1.6 billion of people. If you need to talk to your relatives and friends, there are thousands of options. Including, you know, talking to them. If you need to find people with similar interests, there are thousands of places where you can do it, unless your interests require talking to a billion people at once - at which point you are probably an advanced AI which i…

Psy's "Gangnam Style" video has been viewed 2.6 billion times (it broke the YouTube counter). Mind that this is YouTube rather than Facebook, though much of the video's sharing was through Facebook. So the capacity to reach some billions of people is possible and has been attained.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangnam_Style

I'm noting this as an example of a widely-shared piece of content that I'm aware of. I'm also having trouble turning up widely-shared content Facebook-specific stats.

"An Anatomy of Large Facebook Share Cascades" mentions a case of 600,000 re-shares. That's a substantial fraction of total Facebook users.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-ana...

A listing of ten-most-popular Facebook posts of 2014 gives values into the 3 million range.

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/12/22/facebook-most-shared...

What I've looked at is the distribution of posts on specific topics of intellectual interest, as compared with nonintellectual discussions. Total community size matters, though it's not a total determinant. Smaller communities with good discussion characteristics (say, Reddit) come close to matching Facebook on actual discussion, and very small communities such as Metafilter actually have very high ratios of relevant discussion, though these may omit specific domain or topic experts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...

On a similar basis, if you want to find any one particular subset of people, you're in general going to find that in a larger rather than smaller network. Of course, if you know which specific group you're trying to target, then there may be other networks of specific interest. In the case you make, of seeking out family, friends, or shared interests, in general, Facebook is that network, and the attempts of other networks to challenge Facebook on the basis of social graph has typically failed. Challengers who have succeeded have generally done so on other bases -- intrest graph (Reddit), specific subset networks (e.g., Slack), or 1:1 communications (Snapchat).

Of material I've posted for which I have available stats, I'm aware of reach on the order of thousands to tens of thousands of unique readers, and no, not on Facebook (I don't make use of the platform). That's pretty good, though I find that where there are very specific people I'm interested in corresponding with, reaching out to them specifically (usually through email) is the most effective means.

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#434

Post by vidarh »

palerdot wrote: post #308
vidarh wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that "gateways" to Facebook would be great, but of course Facebook would fight it with every weapon possible if it were to get any kind of traction.

Can you explain your thoughts a bit more on what might be that "gateway"?

Let's say you built a distributed social network where you can add plugins to communicate via different protocols... And one of them happen to know how to interact with Facebooks APIs or website, so that you would not need to care whether your contacts are facebook users or non facebook users.

The same way we have IM clients that can talk multiple protocols.

Facebook almost certainly would try to shut it down if it got any kind of traction, because the set of people you could interact with on this new platform would be a strict superset of Facebook users. It'd be bound to have clunky usability issues (e.g. group communication would be hard to get right with groups split across platforms), but it'd enable users to start extracting themselves from Facebook more and more if/when more of their friends decide to try it out.

I'd love to see someone try. I won't try myself for two reasons: I don't use Facebook enough to know what features would be necessary, and secondly it's likely to be a game of cat and mouse with Facebook both technically and legally.

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#435

Post by dredmorbius »

wyager wrote: post #417
dredmorbius wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any given API change, content promotion or censorship, freebooting support (or restrictions), represents a taking of usefruct or allocation amongst various parties. With little or no recourse to them.

> With little or no recourse to them. Did those parties enter into a contract with Facebook that said that Facebook owed recourse if they changed or censored something? Evidently not.

Does the victim of pollution, or of a highway rerouting, or a relocation of a major traffic draw for brick-and-mortar foot traffic, have any contractual claim to their previously-enjoyed benefit?

Power and rights are far more about the ability to effectively press a claim than specifically detailed binding pacts.

The matter was whether or not Facebook could effect a taking. Not the rights of recourse of others. You're dragging goalposts.

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#436

Post by aws_ls »

vidarh wrote: post #434
palerdot wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your thoughts a bit more on what might be that "gateway"?

Let's say you built a distributed social network where you can add plugins to communicate via different protocols... And one of them happen to know how to interact with Facebooks APIs or website, so that you would not need to care whether your contacts are facebook users or non facebook users. The same way we have IM clients that can talk multiple protocols. Facebook almost certainly would try to shut it down if it g…

I totally agree with the concept of "gateway". Kind of like a social protocol similar to SMTP(which is for emails), by which Facebook/G+/ inter-operate. That's the best solution and the only solution to fix this situation.

If needed, Facebook must be forced to open up. Its a wrong kind of monopoly.

>I'd love to see someone try. I won't try myself for two reasons: I don't use Facebook enough to know what features would be necessary, and secondly it's likely to be a game of cat and mouse with Facebook both technically and legally.

SMTP protocol[1] is created and maintained by IETF. Ditto for social. I wonder why don't Google, who didn't succeed with G+, submit a 'social' protocol already to IETF.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Mail_Transfer_Protocol

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#437

Post by 794CD01 »

untog wrote: post #347
794CD01 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theory is what matters.

That is the point on which you and I will have to disagree. Theory is useless if it has no bearing on reality.

There's the rub. It can be hard to tell whether theory doesn't have any bearing on reality at the moment due to circumstance, or whether the theory is inherently flawed.

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#438

Post by 794CD01 »

throwanem wrote: post #358
794CD01 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Off the top of my head, linkedin, google plus, whatsapp, instagram, wechat, vkontakte, and yikyak. I can keep going all day. Just because they are winning in the largest markets doesn't mean they have no competition. In contrast, I can't just decide "yeah I'd rather not be subject to US law, I'm going to declare myself a citizen of Petoria", and it's just that nobody WANTS to.

I feel it incumbent upon me here to mention that two of the companies in your list belong to one of those here under discussion. Something perhaps you've overlooked.

I didn't overlook it, it's irrelevant in this context. The Surface Pro and the surface book are both made by Microsoft, they are still competing products that consumers have to choose between.

Re: Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

#440

Post by throwanem »

794CD01 wrote: post #438
throwanem wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel it incumbent upon me here to mention that two of the companies in your list belong to one of those here under discussion. Something perhaps you've overlooked.

I didn't overlook it, it's irrelevant in this context. The Surface Pro and the surface book are both made by Microsoft, they are still competing products that consumers have to choose between.

But we were talking about competition between companies.
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