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Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

theguardian.com

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#211

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #193
simias wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that regulatory capture doesn't happen, I'm saying that it doesn't necessarily happen every time a new piece of regulation is introduced. Saying that any hypothetical regulation introduced after this Facebook fiasco (and all the other data breaches of late) will benefit Facebook and hurt competitors is not exactly what I would call level-headed skepticism. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't be very careful…

> Saying that any hypothetical regulation introduced after this Facebook fiasco (and all the other data breaches of late) will benefit Facebook and hurt competitors is not exactly what I would call level-headed skepticism. Can you name a piece of US federal legislation regulating a major industry passed in the last, say, 30 years, where this was not the case?

Vehicle safety regulations.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#212

Post by gregknicholson »

wyck wrote: post #144
extra88 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some regulatory requirements are manageable by a large, established company but not a startup. For instance, requiring human review of user content is going to be tough in a high growth phase.

America needs to look at citizen privacy laws like they have in Canada and the E.U. For example if I log into the Facebook business manager for a company I can see tons of data on Americans but not nearly as many details for Canadians, it's because of these laws. The new E.U. laws are even stricter with regards to personal data and how it's used, no matter who you are. Why there is no demand for this level of protect…

> Why there is no demand for this level of protection in the States by its citizens and representatives is crazy.

The U.S. is culturally much more opposed to government interference in citizens' interactions, compared to Europe. The U.S. started as a rebellion against an authoritarian government.

I suspect this is because a lot of the first Europeans who migrated to North America were the self-reliant type who actually would flourish best if left alone. What we see as help or protection, they see as interference. (This doesn't explain Canada. Inexplicability is one of Canada's many charms.)

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#213

Post by twoodfin »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #211
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying that any hypothetical regulation introduced after this Facebook fiasco (and all the other data breaches of late) will benefit Facebook and hurt competitors is not exactly what I would call level-headed skepticism. Can you name a piece of US federal legislation regulating a major industry passed in the last, say, 30 years, where this was not the case?

Vehicle safety regulations.

There aren’t very many small or startup auto makers, so it’s hard to assert that safety regulations don’t function as a barrier to entry. Not that it isn’t a good barrier to have!

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#214

Post by bonestamp2 »

austenallred wrote: post #71
kaitnieks wrote: post #38

Maybe I'm too cynical about politics, but it appears to me that the point of these hearings is not to solve or investigate anything, it's to generate soundbites that voters or potential future voters would like. It's not even that important what the reply is, as long as the politician asks the hard question and demonstrates his concern, and if it makes the news & press, that's victory for them.

Note how many of the senators who voted to expand surveillance programs and the NSA became suddenly very concerned for privacy. They just wanted to try and dunk on him and get in a sound bite.

And cover their own ass against contributions he made to their campaigns... "I was hard on him so his money doesn't buy my influence."

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#215

Post by bonestamp2 »

gaius wrote: post #12

If a person logs out of Facebook, and Facebook continues to track them anyway, then that’s clearly violating consent, and there was a meeting where someone said “we need a way to track people who explicitly do not want to be tracked” and everyone in the room nodded.

Facebook even tracks people who aren't Facebook members. It can build profiles on people who aren't members to learn more about people it can identify and suggest ads/products they might be interested in too.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#216

Post by twostoned »

kristianc wrote: post #173

Of course it was a sham. No one's interests are aligned to getting this solved. Facebook want to get away with as minimal regulation as possible, and any regulation that does happen it wants to harm its incumbents. Politicians want to get re-elected, and want regulation in so far as it harms the chances of anyone 'doing a Trump' and using social media to unseat their own Congressional seat. They're not that exercised…

Best summary that I've seen thus far.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#217

Post by loup-vaillant »

zrm wrote: post #190
loup-vaillant wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a flip side to this: in part thanks to this lack of regulation, anything outside the popular protocols tend to be blocked in an increasing number of network. I can see this becoming so bad that the only way to communicate freely would be to tunnel our stuff through TLS on port 443. (That is, doing what looks like HTTPS.)

> There's a flip side to this: in part thanks to this lack of regulation, anything outside the popular protocols tend to be blocked in an increasing number of network. That is definitely not the result of a lack of regulation. The networks doing that are predominantly not public networks like Comcast, they're private internal corporate networks. The issue is they're a large enough minority that they can't be ignored.…

I stand corrected, thanks.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#218

Post by e12e »

aphexairlines wrote: post #183
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was a sham because asking hard questions would require them to admit FB being an important asset for US own intelligence operations. If they drill too deep they'd need to face very uncomfortable questions about other platforms too, e.g Palantir (Thiel was right there lurking ;)). Facebook is the Internet in many countries (making them less resilient and even more prone to meddling than the US). And so looking at i…

Here's the Palantir section of the hearing. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/10... SEN. MARIA CANTWELL (D-WASH): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome Mr. Zuckerberg. Do you know who Palantir is? ZUCKERBERG: I do. CANTWELL: Some people refer to them as a Stanford Analytica. Do you agree? ZUCKERBERG: Senator, I have not heard that. CANTWELL: Okay. Do you think Palantir taught Cambridge Analytica, a…

> CANTWELL: Have you heard of Total Information Awareness? Do you know what I'm talking about?

> ZUCKERBERG: No, I do not.

Hard to believe someone who has spent the past decade looking at how to monetize data has never heard of TIA.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#219

Post by shkkmo »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #211
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying that any hypothetical regulation introduced after this Facebook fiasco (and all the other data breaches of late) will benefit Facebook and hurt competitors is not exactly what I would call level-headed skepticism. Can you name a piece of US federal legislation regulating a major industry passed in the last, say, 30 years, where this was not the case?

Vehicle safety regulations.

Ralph Nader would disagree.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/09/17/ralph-nade...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#220

Post by mkirklions »

danans wrote: post #209
mkirklions wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to say without seeing the proposals. Regulation can be awful or insignificant. My state requires strippers to fill out a license and pay 50$. Changed nothing. However, my state also requires you to put down 1M to start a bank. Thats definitely regulatory capture. Its too soon to know whats going to be required of data. Databases might become significantly worse to program and require teams to maintain at governm…

> Regulation can be awful or insignificant. No benefits at all, really? Remember pre-regulation leaded gasoline and cars without seat belts?

I think both of those examples had regulation where industry had already moved forward.

I dont know the history of leaded gasoline, but I worked in safety, and car companies were definitely moving toward safe vehicles.

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