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Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas

#121

Post by doctorcroc »

mindgam3 wrote: post #36

The guy who broke every single rule in his ruthless conquest of the internet is now asking for new rules. You have to admire the sheer audacity of this play. It does make sense though. He can finally see the tide of public opinion turning against him. Facebook's business metrics will be fine for a while but the pace at which they are losing people's trust is increasing. He needed to make a grand statement now while t…

Another point to consider is that the more the internet is regulated, the more difficult it is for new entrants to compete , as they have to comply first with existing laws. This is an easy way for incumbents to protect themselves from potentially swift-footed competitors.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas

#122

Post by mannykannot »

aestetix wrote: post #40

"Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity." -- Mark Zuckerberg[1], defending Facebook's "Real" Name policy. Based on his total disregard for privacy and his clear thirst for power, I want nothing coming from him or his company to ever influence actual policies. [1] http://www.siliconbeat.com/2014/01/30/quoted-mark-zuckerberg...

"Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity." -- Mark Zuckerberg

"Having two identities is a reflection of how much trust I have in your integrity." -- me, to Mark Zuckerberg.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas

#124

Post by mindgam3 »

doctorcroc wrote: post #121
mindgam3 wrote: post #36

The guy who broke every single rule in his ruthless conquest of the internet is now asking for new rules. You have to admire the sheer audacity of this play. It does make sense though. He can finally see the tide of public opinion turning against him. Facebook's business metrics will be fine for a while but the pace at which they are losing people's trust is increasing. He needed to make a grand statement now while t…

Another point to consider is that the more the internet is regulated, the more difficult it is for new entrants to compete , as they have to comply first with existing laws. This is an easy way for incumbents to protect themselves from potentially swift-footed competitors.

Fair point and agreed. Also discussed in an earlier comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19531722

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas

#125

Post by quadrangle »

bitxbit wrote: post #67
aestetix wrote: post #40

"Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity." -- Mark Zuckerberg[1], defending Facebook's "Real" Name policy. Based on his total disregard for privacy and his clear thirst for power, I want nothing coming from him or his company to ever influence actual policies. [1] http://www.siliconbeat.com/2014/01/30/quoted-mark-zuckerberg...

By now it's pretty clear, to me at least, that Zuckerberg simply doesn't get it. He could have fixed the issues for over a decade. And even in 2019, after all the evidence of mismanagement and public distrust, he still refuses to relinquish any control of the company. This is a tone-deaf opinion piece. I'd argue as far back as 2010 that indiscriminately selling user data was a bad idea especially when you are the sol…

As Roger McNamee is now excellently describing, the solution might be the sort of regulation Zuck does not want: regulation that makes it illegal to even get/gather/have a huge portion of all the data they amass.

Do note: Facebook doesn't sell data directly, they use it to sell ads. They actually buy data so that they can get more insights than what they get from only their own direct tracking.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas

#126

Post by SrslyJosh »

Great idea, Mark!

1. Nobody listens to anything Zuckerberg says.

2. Regulate social media platforms with >1M users. Require that they support federation through open standards with published, open-source reference implementations of all required software.

3. Enact EU-style privacy protections, with the explicit goal of destroying the tracking/surveillance industry, both on the net and off.

4. Require that service providers, regardless of size(1), keep hate speech off their platforms. This includes calls for the establishment of ethnostates and other speech that stops short of literal calls for genocide but that has an obvious, well-established trajectory in that direction.

(1) This may not be entirely practical, but it's a place to start. Also, the definition of "service provider" may be tricky to establish.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas

#128

Post by quadrangle »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #118
smhenderson wrote: post #53

F*ck MZ. He is the last person I want advice from on making the Internet better. FB is part of the problem and I have little to no hope they will ever be part of the solution.

Zuckerberg is a rational actor that's smart enough to know that he's not going to want any knee-jerk solution put together by idiot politicians. I'm confident that he doesn't want FB being permanently hobbled by laws or acts of Congress.

He's a rational actor who also somehow doesn't actually get it in a broad sense. Consider Kara Swisher's interview with him on Recode Decode… or Doug Rushkoff (Team Human book/podcast etc) wondered publicly if part of the problem was how Zuck dropped out of college. Rushkoff speculated about all these deeper philosophical, economic, political, humanism, etc. courses that might have got Zuck to actually get a more mature perspective instead of basically going right from adolescent snarky asshole to just applying that maturity level (albeit with a lot of intelligence) to his business.

He's rational in a sense, but he very well might not have ever stepped back far enough to really consider broader perspectives with an open mind, even as he reads and hears concerns. He probably reads them all with some strategic/tactical mindset that blocks him from truly getting the point.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas

#129

Post by FailMore »

I don't know how to think about FB and these issues. To grow platforms to the scale that FB has requires long term thinking which I think FB showed throughout (curtailing annoying notifications - e.g. Zynga games spam - which might have looked like 'improved engagement'). Social media is brand new to humanity and companies of all types have traditionally done pretty shitty things to make a buck (for example, in the mining industry). FB is a company where people express themselves - that's quite a new thing! And FB is learning that we need to trust it. I don't think what they are doing is disingenuous, they are too clever for that. Though they are getting beat up a lot right now, in the long run it's probably for the good of the company - learning the hard way. (I own FB shares.)

Re: Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas

#130

Post by tcbawo »

catern wrote: post #117
tcbawo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FINRA is a non-government, industry driven (self-regulatory) organization for the US stock market. It exists to discourage fraud and bad practices without requiring a heavy hand of government. The SEC mostly focuses on lawbreakers. Internet companies would do well to create a similar, open structure before government steps in to over-regulate.

Hmm, if you directly translated FINRA to internet companies, new startups would have to be licensed with the internet SRO (self-regulatory organization) before they could offer services to the public. That's an interesting idea, is it actually what you are suggesting?

I don't have a concrete proposal. I was just trying to illustrate that there may be a model inbetween total and zero regulation.

The line of demarcation could be storing personally identifying information, interfacing with advertising networks, or maybe even ownership of certain patent/intellectual property rights.

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