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Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

foreignpolicy.com

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Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#41

Post by codingdave »

monort wrote: post #22
richardknop wrote: post #12

Facebook has to be broken down to pieces. I think it has reached a state where it cannot be allowed to continue as a single company being able to observe/monitor public and private communication / social interaction of so many people and not being regulated and controlled by the government.

Would you apply the same logic to government? Government has to be broken down to pieces. I think it has reached a state where it cannot be allowed to continue as a single government being able to observe/monitor public and private communication / social interaction of so many people and not being regulated and controlled by market forces.

Aside from the federal/state/local split, which has already been mentioned, the Constitution split Executive/Legislative/Judicial branches out at the federal level. We may have weakened the intent of those checks and balances in our current environment, but they certainly were designed into the system.

So yes, to answer your question - I would definitely would apply the same logic to government.

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#42

Post by free_everybody »

richardknop wrote: post #18
amelius wrote: post #5

I don't want to read about how bad the situation is, because I already know. I want to read about how we are going to find a solution.

Unfortunately, there is no solution in our current system. The only solution would be to accept that the western (current) capitalist decadent society is causing wealth and power to concentrate in a very narrow group of chosen people who end up having extreme power over masses of people that make up society today. The only way is to try to try to regulate this capitalist wet dream and try to break it down to smaller…

>regulate the capitalist wet dream

American culture really comes down to this. The driving force behind our "leaders" is a blind will to dominate and hoard wealth. It feels like we're reaching the point in history where this human instinct is backfiring tremendously.

I have a theory that one way of decentralizing power is to create protocol standards that help us share freely. For example, if the concept of a user was somewhat standardized across social media, social media companies could expose an API for sending cross-platform messages, tagging each other in photos, etc.

As the internet itself became standardized, so must our social media. Hell, what's stopping it from becoming a crowd-funded FOSS network of independent social media platforms? Costs a whole lot less to run a social media website if you're not trying to take over the world!

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#43

Post by icebraining »

frik wrote: post #33
feikname wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, HN hides a comment score until the user decides to see it.

How can one see the HN comment score? (except own comments) I think it was there some years ago, but vanished incl karma-ratio info when PG stept back.

You can't. And they were hidden before pg stepped back; in fact, he made a poll asking what people thought of the change: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#46

Post by feikname »

icebraining wrote: post #43
frik wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can one see the HN comment score? (except own comments) I think it was there some years ago, but vanished incl karma-ratio info when PG stept back.

You can't. And they were hidden before pg stepped back; in fact, he made a poll asking what people thought of the change: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605

I was under the impression that you could see it when clicking the "[-]" at the right side of the comment metadata. But it seems it's just the number of child comments, my mistake.

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#47

Post by shawn-butler »

wil421 wrote: post #37
monort wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you apply the same logic to government? Government has to be broken down to pieces. I think it has reached a state where it cannot be allowed to continue as a single government being able to observe/monitor public and private communication / social interaction of so many people and not being regulated and controlled by market forces.

We already break government up into federal, state and local governments. What you stated is literally how it already works.

That's how it may have used to work.

The abuse of the Commerce clause has expanded the regulatory power of the federal government almost unilaterally.

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#48

Post by knowThySelfx »

osrec wrote: post #13

Facebook itself seems to be quite comfortable with the world it has created; a place where every vulnerable (and even perhaps, not so vulnerable) mind can be influenced by information regardless of factual accuracy!

They've only added to the comfort by acquiring Whatsapp.

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#49

Post by beautifulfreak »

>Facebook can no longer deny its moral responsibility to try to understand how cyberspace, law, and politics collide in each of the countries where it operates, nor its responsibility to do something about it.

That sentence doesn't make sense. Do something about what? How those things collide? It's very unclear what the author thinks Facebook is supposed to do, or what he thinks Facebook is actually responsible for. Is this a call to regulate posts so there's no fake news, or more, to prevent all speech that can incite bad actions? In perilous regions of the world, sometimes people are arrested for their posts, and can be seen to be connected with others on Facebook, so that they also fall under suspicion. Is Facebook supposed to keep those users safe somehow? I mean, what's the author's gripe?

A better article would have mentioned that free speech, a "good thing," albeit sometimes dangerous, is powerfully fostered by Facebook. Give it some credit. It would also have been fairer if it had mentioned how difficult it is to detect and thwart bad actors who find ways to abuse any platform. (Removing trolls from small forums is hard enough.) Instead, it insinuates that Facebook is willfully indifferent. At least it isn't accused of colluding with the bad actors, as sometimes happens when US companies do business overseas.

Re: Facebook Can’t Cope with the World It’s Created

#50

Post by ThomPete »

I am still unconvinced Facebook played any role in the outcome of the 2016 election. It played a role in the the form of the discussion but the actual outcome it didn't.

Most people vote based on some very personal and everyday issues. Things they experience in their lives not discussions on facebook no matter how many times they like it.

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