Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 821 posts

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#321

Post by rolltiide »

dmoy wrote: post #287
bko wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hey do you mind if we just skip the paperwork part and just control currency, while actually being a social media tech giant This is a gross mischaracterization of what Libra is. Libra is a token that's backed 1 to 1 on some basket of currencies and mostly government bonds. The Libra foundation makes money by taking a portion of the investment return to fund themselves, much like a brokerage takes a bit of the retu…

> portion of the investment return I'm not super on top of a lot of the details here, but I thought Libra was like a currency. What investment return?

The foundation and validators have various ways of making a return

The users do not.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#322

Post by mosselman »

KhoomeiK wrote: post #256
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #225

I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section: Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to…

> Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to some foobar in the last century, which I'm sure everyone is aware of. Ironic that aforementioned foobar in the last century was a governmental entity that existed entirely within the limits of regulation. Not to…

So people or governments are not allowed to make mistakes and learn from them? If, apparently, something likewise happened in the past and caused lots of problems, the German government should just let it happen now just so that it isn't 'ironic'?

Not to mention the fact that the German government around the second world war was completely different from the current German government in terms of the actual people making it up.

Is it 'ironic' when governments try to improve equal rights for men and women just because there is oppression of either of the two in their past? What nonsense.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#323

Post by the-dude »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #225

I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section: Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to…

From a history perspective : the hyperinflation leading up to the 3rd Reich.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#324

Post by fizx »

totalZero wrote: post #251
dannyr wrote: post #90

I dislike Facebook but I kind of feel sorry for them now because any ambitious thing that they'll attempt will probably be blocked by governments now. Facebook and Zuckerberg deserves it though.

Let's be honest, just because something is ambitious doesn't mean it's good for the world. Facebook has tremendous impact on the world already, and events like the Cambridge Analytica scandal have demonstrated that Facebook can't manage its own empire. After a company grows beyond its ability to maintain order within its own activities, it should always prune down toward its essential businesses and reform itself bef…

> After a company grows beyond its ability to maintain order within its own activities, it should always prune down toward its essential businesses and reform itself before the next stage of growth.

Why?

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#325

Post by ThomPete »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #225

I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section: Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to…

Germany is notoriously anti credit cards so no surprise when it comes to them. Its a stupid move of course but my guess is that they are worried it will be successful and threaten the EURO.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#326

Post by tryptophan »

I'm surprised at the amount of hate that libra seems to be getting, even on the tech-startup forum of HN. Are we all becoming a bunch of Luddite conservatives? When I look my own life an experiences, I can't really say I feel any of the alleged horrors cast down upon us by big tech. I get that privacy is an issue, but ... it is avoidable. I host my own cloud(nextcloud), use tracking blockers, avoid signups...etc.

Personally, I think its an interesting project, with both interesting technical, monetary, and political problems that will be encountered. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#327

Post by cityzen »

logicchains wrote: post #89
grezql wrote: post #3

I wish they just blocked facebook altogether. It has caused people more pain than good

Citation needed? Most people I know happily use it to communicate and post funny (or at least trying to be funny) posts, or are older people who post lots of family pictures. The views of people on Hackernews don't seem very representative of those of the general population, maybe because hating on Facebook is an excellent excuse for people to feel superior to the general population. "I know better than those ignoran…

"Most people I know appear to happily use it..."

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#328

Post by SomeOldThrow »

pjc50 wrote: post #296
rsync wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Germany has zero interest in devaluation; in fact they've been accused of being far too strict in Euro monetary policy, with the 0-2% inflation target." Germany has, and has had, an immense interest in keeping their currency artificially devalued and they have achieved this by entering into a fixed exchange currency union with countries like Italy and Portugal and Spain. The PIIGS currency is, relatively, overvalued…

Of course, if the crypto advocates win, then Portugal, Spain, Germany, and everyone else will be in a "currency union"...

Is there any sign of a crypto currency that people want to use? Libra is an unregulated, centralized bank account that hides behind a blockchain. I still think it might succeed on social effects if it allows e.g. organizing betting pools and paying out without Libra backers getting their hands dirty—if anyone can sell that it’s Facebook, a reliable social institution, for better or worse. But generally there’s no strategy for luring people into the market and away from cash or cards.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#329

Post by ThomPete »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #294
Hermel wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a very typical German mindset. You implicitly assume that nothing good can come out of Libra so it should be banned from the beginning. The pragmatic approach is to wait and see what happens. Most likely, it won’t be as successful as you assume it will be. Also, there are plenty of other forms of private money out there that you don’t seem to have a problem with (e.g. credit cards), as well as foreign currenci…

Sorry, no. This is just reckless. I'm trying hard to assume good faith here. "Wait and see" is a good approach to see whether your new electric city bus line is working or whether people prefer your website logo in red. You can never, ever take back what became basic necessities on a nation level while being even remotely democratic. Once people have it, they won't give it back. And you seriously think Facebook is to…

CA was not facebooks making and favebooks own algorithms are far superior to CA.

Crypto currencies are not going away and both Getmany and France are hurting their own entrepreneurs.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#330

Post by eastendguy »

ThomPete wrote: post #325
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #225

I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section: Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to…

Germany is notoriously anti credit cards so no surprise when it comes to them. Its a stupid move of course but my guess is that they are worried it will be successful and threaten the EURO.

Why is Germany (the state) "anti credit card"? It is accepted everywhere.

You might mean that some Germans don't like CC and prefer cash for privacy reasons. But that is a personal decision.

Post reply on HN