Facebook Pledges $130M to Fund “Supreme Court” for Content

I can't wait for this brave new world where you will need to implement a $130 million supreme court to start a new social network.

In fairness, here in the UK at least, the print media are going nuts about Facebook and Google failing to stop fake news and politicians' lies. Coincidentally they're bashing their competitors for something they themselves do just as much, make of that what you will...

That is one reason fb (and maybe Google too and twitter and whoever else) are donating: make an independent sock puppet, they can decide and you just point at the when people complain. They're a "sin eater".

Its not different to how music and movie companies have banded together in the past to deal with "moral" crusades. I guess this is like regulatory capture technically, but where you build the regulator yourself. "Regulatory farming" maybe?

Personally I'm very dubious about fb (or anyone else) setting up an "arbiter of truth" and deciding who can advertise and what they can claim. But I prefer to think it's a marketing/political ploy than a dastardly plot to control our reality. They make 1000 times more money selling us sugar and then diet pills than political bs, but the political bs is upsetting that market.

Here’s my comments and I hope to be as constructive as possible:

1) I listened to Zuckerburgs podcast on free speech. I felt that while it had the appearance of adhering to the principles of the first amendment I think the purpose of the podcast and the reasoning of its participants is that the first amendment in facebooks eyes shouldn’t be the only consideration.

For me personally, I am close to what con law people call absolutist. The first amendment means what it says. However the first amendment says nothing about tv, radio and the internet (for obvious reasons). That’s where I am willing to extend my definition to be first amendment + Supreme Court precedent. This is the standard I view as the gold standard of individual liberty. I stopped using Facebook last January as an experiment / New Years resolution to focus my time more effectively but I would say after hearing the podcast, intellectual and well meaning as it was, the positions presented are completely incompatible with my view of individual liberty. I may decide this new year to simply deactivate my account altogether for this reason.

2) there is a growing trend of companies acting like governments. For ex, look at the surveillance powers created by nest/amazon. Look at the efforts to use private satellites for sub 1m resolution surveillance (formerly the only application was defense/intelligence related). And now look at Facebook and Twitter deciding on new rules for speech/content. Facebook’s Supreme Court is a way to manage the complex arguments for going beyond our own legal system. It is borne, in my opinion, both as an means to enact rules to curb individual liberty but also to subvert the existing expensive and lengthy process of taking something to the Supreme Court. And that’s just in the US ... never mind countries that don’t have the legal infrastructure to decide these issues.

In short, this is Facebook deciding it can hack / disrupt government. There’s no coincidence this is happening at the same time that it is introducing libra.

I am not a citizen of Facebook. I’m less than a citizen. I’m simply a physical embodiment of a life whose digital representation is owned and marketed by a private company. And now it wants to govern my digital representation’s speech and money. And I don’t single out Facebook. How long before I can subscribe to a private Nest police force?

Government is slow. Government is inefficient. Government is corrupt. As far as I’m concerned governments sole purpose is to protect my individual liberty. What is facebooks sole purpose?

Traditional media political ads can't micro-target people that are more likely get sucked into their made up "facts" and conspiracy theories.

They also are broadly broadcast so that they can be dis-proven and discussed. Instead they are hidden away only shown to people that won't question it.

If facebook wants to do political ads then it needs to disconnect them from targeting, publish them for public display, publish who paid for the ad, and moderate them to some basic level of being truthful.

They all have an enormous effect on your life whether or not you use them. Yes, Google should be broken up too.