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Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#71

Post by CaptSpify »

privaroonie wrote: post #49
ben_jones wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there really such a NEED for fb to exist that it was inevitable?!

Back in the early days of the web, I always wanted an easy way to have a personal "presence" online, to stay in touch with friends and have a sort of virtual "contact list". Friendster (in its original incantation) was probably the best realization of that. I'd say that sort of thing was more or less needed & inevitable, at least at the time. Facebook originally started as a "better" version Friendster (and its succe…

How do things like blogs and rss feeds not fill this gap? Is it simply ease of setup/use?

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#72

Post by rdtsc »

driverdan wrote: post #61
amrrs wrote: post #2

>The diplomatic game that unfolded in Vietnam has become increasingly common for Facebook. Yes, At least this should ring a bell to all those who still think they can write anything on FB about a Government and get away with it. Facebook while being pushed and portrayed as your personal diary is actually your digital repository only accessible for the most elite like Government. While an average FB user can easily sh…

> At least this should ring a bell to all those who still think they can write anything on FB about a Government and get away with it. They should be able to. Free speech is a human right. FB should not be helping governments violate human rights. > This reiterates the capitalist world that we live in where Democracy is just a myth. Those are two different things.

> Free speech is a human right. FB should not be helping governments violate human rights.

I think it is usually framed in as a human right against government intervention. That is the government can't shut you up if you want to criticize it. However FB is not the government. FB can stop and censor people because it is a private entity. Nobody has a right to use FB's resources (server time, bandwidth) for free to say whatever they want. They can be kicked out without any legal repercussion.

Now wonder what happens if the government gives incentives FB to act on its behalf. Maybe a carrot and stick approach, it can tax it higher, raid its offices or pay it off with contracts in response to FB silencing or blocking certain users. This is where it gets interesting.

What about if a 3rd party wants to silence some opinions and it has nothing to do with the government. Does free speech still apply. Let's say multi-billionaire wants to shape public opinion so it pays billions of dollars to FB or Google to silence and suppress competing opinions. No government in sight here. But it does feel like free speech is being violated. Or is it? Kinda interesting to think about.

And this is not just hypothetical after the election Facebook, Google and Twitter all jumped on the "we will work hard to fight Fake News" bandwagon. It was a nice impulse on the surface, but I think what they really meant was that they are offering those who have money to spend the ability to manipulate and control opinions and discussions since they are essentially monopolies of online social interaction and news dissemination.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#73

Post by int_19h »

skybrian wrote: post #31
AlexandrB wrote: post #8

I find that the headline and the article mischaracterizes what is happening. The "Wild Web" was reigned in long ago by commercial interests. A distributed web with many small nodes would still be hard to control and police effectively. However as much the web has been centralized by the likes of Google, Facebook, and large media conglomerates effective government censorship is once again possible. This is like a wild…

The wild Internet is definitely still there. The problem is that it got too hostile for most users due to spam, viruses, malware, phishing, trolls, doxing, and so on. It will get worse, as attackers adopt machine learning techniques and automate social engineering at scale. So users have a problem. Companies that solved it the right way became enormous, because protection from all that crap is something people want,…

The result, though, is not actual privacy protection. It's more that you choose to surrender your privacy to someone, in exchange for protection from other nasties.

It's almost like some kind of weird digital feudalism. You're free to come and go, and if you want, you can live in the wild and take your chances. But if you want the safety of the walls and armed defenders, that comes with a lot of strings attached. And if you ever want to move out of those walls, you leave your plot and your house, with everything valuable on them, behind.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#74

Post by bitwize »

doktrin wrote: post #29

Facebook is most likely a net negative in this world. I don't know if it's always been true, but I think it is now. I personally didn't realize how strong my feelings were until one of their recruiters contacted me. I'm far from a 'values' driven employee, but this was by far the easiest refusal of my career.

You want to talk easy refusals? I just had a recruiter come to me with a position at Monsanto.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#75

Post by arvinsim »

CaptSpify wrote: post #71
privaroonie wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the early days of the web, I always wanted an easy way to have a personal "presence" online, to stay in touch with friends and have a sort of virtual "contact list". Friendster (in its original incantation) was probably the best realization of that. I'd say that sort of thing was more or less needed & inevitable, at least at the time. Facebook originally started as a "better" version Friendster (and its succe…

How do things like blogs and rss feeds not fill this gap? Is it simply ease of setup/use?

Not all users are tech savvy. Some people just want one site to be their go-to when connecting with other users.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#76

Post by tluyben2 »

ben_jones wrote: post #43
robbrown451 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it is a net negative, but it kind of needs to be clarified because if Facebook didn't exist, it would be someone else. Maybe MySpace would have evolved to fill the niche, or maybe another company, or maybe even an open solution. I tend to think that it would be quite possible for a company to fill the Facebook niche in a much more positive way, while still making a profit. But they certainly won't be able to…

Was there really such a NEED for fb to exist that it was inevitable?!

I think so; not because it is so great but because it's more 'cheap tv' for people. Just stare at videos and how great your 'friends' are doing. Hype yourself up and feel your did something today as you wrote something or posted something and got more than your own like. My contacts are 90% people I know well and see regularly (a lot of them smart people) and yet my timeline feels fake and plastic; it is just easy watching and chewinggum for the eyes. All the cool pages and feeds catered to their audience, making headlines more sensational but providing nothing in terms of article behind it; who wants to actually read that stuff right? You can tell your mates that the apocalypse is coming this Saturday and noone will ask you what/why anyway and the headlines told you so.

It is some crazy ultimate circle jerk and echo chamber, made for incredibly easy consumption (the latter getting worse). For countries where deep thought about some subjects is forbidden, I guess it is worse.

I stopped using Facebook; only use messenger and occasionally upvote someone's birthday. But yes I believe it was and is inevitable because we are human and it is in us to consume mostly.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#77

Post by skybrian »

int_19h wrote: post #73
skybrian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wild Internet is definitely still there. The problem is that it got too hostile for most users due to spam, viruses, malware, phishing, trolls, doxing, and so on. It will get worse, as attackers adopt machine learning techniques and automate social engineering at scale. So users have a problem. Companies that solved it the right way became enormous, because protection from all that crap is something people want,…

The result, though, is not actual privacy protection. It's more that you choose to surrender your privacy to someone, in exchange for protection from other nasties. It's almost like some kind of weird digital feudalism. You're free to come and go, and if you want, you can live in the wild and take your chances. But if you want the safety of the walls and armed defenders, that comes with a lot of strings attached. And…

Well, "feudalism" is an exaggeration since you can belong to as many as you want, and sharing some things (such as republishing links) is not hard.

But there is always going to be some kind of a speedbump when sharing between places with different policies. When you have borders between things that are genuinely different (even if they're gratuitous differences), you have border issues. Bigger social networks mean you reach more people without going over a border, which encourages growth.

Borders are everywhere. In the enterprise space, you can look at the growth of Amazon and Google Cloud. In devtools, each programming language tends to be its own domain. (Which is why we call them "foreign" functions.)

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#78

Post by mirimir »

StavrosK wrote: post #64
didip wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always wondered about IPFS and its relationship with DNS. What's stopping authoritarian entity from poisoning/redirecting ipfs.io to static page?

Nothing, but what does it matter? There are loads of public gateways. I run one at https://www.eternum.io . Also, running your own node is trivial.

It's pretty trivial to run an IPFS gateway as a Tor hidden service. Also IPFS branches into Tor OnionCat's IPv6 /64. And nodes that link resources between clearnet and OnionCat /64. Or any other overlay network.

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#79

Post by mirimir »

doktrin wrote: post #29

Facebook is most likely a net negative in this world. I don't know if it's always been true, but I think it is now. I personally didn't realize how strong my feelings were until one of their recruiters contacted me. I'm far from a 'values' driven employee, but this was by far the easiest refusal of my career.

In the Guardian article[0], recently posted on HN[1], Franklin Foer argues:

> By the time Zuckerberg began extolling the virtues of hacking, he had stripped the name of most of its original meaning and distilled it into a managerial philosophy that contains barely a hint of rebelliousness.

I rather disagree. Indeed, I believe that Facebook has taken hacking to an extreme level. As the article argues, they're against free will. Not only are they're compromising users' privacy, they're arguing against privacy as a legitimate option. Because there's arguably no integrity in it:

> “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly,” Zuckerberg has said. “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

That's an extremely authoritarian, "we have the Truth, you are Wrong, and we will Prevail", attitude. And it totally ignores power imbalances, where having different images in different contexts is the only possibility for any freedom.

Compartmentalization with multiple personas is essential for survival in a pervasively authoritarian world.[2]

0) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/19/facebooks...

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15284020

2) https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/online-privacy-through-o...

Re: Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web

#80

Post by mirimir »

skybrian wrote: post #31
AlexandrB wrote: post #8

I find that the headline and the article mischaracterizes what is happening. The "Wild Web" was reigned in long ago by commercial interests. A distributed web with many small nodes would still be hard to control and police effectively. However as much the web has been centralized by the likes of Google, Facebook, and large media conglomerates effective government censorship is once again possible. This is like a wild…

The wild Internet is definitely still there. The problem is that it got too hostile for most users due to spam, viruses, malware, phishing, trolls, doxing, and so on. It will get worse, as attackers adopt machine learning techniques and automate social engineering at scale. So users have a problem. Companies that solved it the right way became enormous, because protection from all that crap is something people want,…

> The wild Internet is definitely still there.

It was there before Eternal September. And yes, it's still there, and far richer than it's ever been.

> The problem is that it got too hostile for most users due to spam, viruses, malware, phishing, trolls, doxing, and so on.

It's arguably those mainstream users who are problematic. In large part, they're the trolls. And the ones who are trolled, of course. And they're the bloody flesh in the water that's attracted all the sharks.

> It will get worse, as attackers adopt machine learning techniques and automate social engineering at scale.

No doubt.

> Sure, you can go outside the walls at any time, but how many people really want to?

Anyone with any sense will. The rest can have their AOL/CompuServe experience. And good riddance.

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