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Facebook asks for a moat of regulations it already meets

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Re: Facebook asks for a moat of regulations it already meets

#21

Post by plutonicks »

Meekro wrote: post #6

Back when the GDPR was still pending, the consensus on HN was that there was nothing to fear because European regulators emphasize the spirit of the law, rather than beating people over the head with the letter of the law like American regulators do. Anyway, the law went into effect and some guy got fined just over $2000 for using CC instead of BCC on his personal mailing list of 150 people. There are a bunch more ex…

GDPR "hurt" tech companies, but hurt the big ones less than the small ones.

The big tech companies have increased market dominance so it seems like spirit of the law was actually to crush competition so that there fewer players for the EU to regulate

Re: Facebook asks for a moat of regulations it already meets

#22

Post by WC3w6pXxgGd »

carboi wrote: post #2

a typical example of a big company trying to put up barriers to entry by using politicians who want to please the public with worthless (and damaging) regulations and policies.

Yep. It's a very common phenomenon called Regulatory Capture.

Re: Facebook asks for a moat of regulations it already meets

#23

Post by dredmorbius »

optimiz3 wrote: post #4

Depending on the regulation, IMO a sensible middle ground is to phase in regulations based on company size as measured by revenue and/or employee count. This avoids crushing upstarts while regulating companies large enough to matter.

Good idea, though I'd add another metric: market reach, in terms of, for the case of social media, users.

This might have other metrics though -- sources / sellers, for a market or middleman entity, some weighted metric of business customers for b2b suppliers (such that an F-10 company weighs more than an F-10000 company). For physical management (say, commodities), total tonage moved. Et cetera.

Re: Facebook asks for a moat of regulations it already meets

#25

Post by thaumasiotes »

blunderkid wrote: post #16

There should be only one regulation for fb, display following warning on all pages/screens: Statutory Warning: This product is specifically designed to cause behavioral addiction so you are guided down a slippery slope of over consumption & that is how this company makes money. Overuse of this product is known to cause - anxiety, depression, low self esteem, constant craving for attention, short attention spans, inab…

First amendment protections against compelled speech might interfere with this heavily editorialized "warning".

Re: Facebook asks for a moat of regulations it already meets

#26

Post by quietbritishjim »

plutonicks wrote: post #17
qtplatypus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have regulations by revenue/employee count then the companies will restructure themselves to be below those thresholds.

While true it is harder for companies to manipulate those 2 measures. E.g. could Facebook run with 20 staff? Would Facebook and its shareholders be satisfied with 20m in annual revenue. This scenario requires trade offs. My opinion is that monopoly, political and market dominance is a sub-optimal outcome

It could certainly run with 20 staff – it would just spend a lot of money on license fees to a separate Facebook Services Inc that provides software and server administration services. This is similar to how companies avoid tax e.g. IKEA and Starbucks.

It could similarly avoid large profits but avoiding large revenues works be trickier. But I'm not an expert in these things, so maybe it's possible if you really know what you're doing.

Re: Facebook asks for a moat of regulations it already meets

#28

Post by jakear »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #25
blunderkid wrote: post #16

There should be only one regulation for fb, display following warning on all pages/screens: Statutory Warning: This product is specifically designed to cause behavioral addiction so you are guided down a slippery slope of over consumption & that is how this company makes money. Overuse of this product is known to cause - anxiety, depression, low self esteem, constant craving for attention, short attention spans, inab…

First amendment protections against compelled speech might interfere with this heavily editorialized "warning".

Similar warnings are required on cigarettes, and there isn’t much difference between the two.

Re: Facebook asks for a moat of regulations it already meets

#30

Post by hubert1234 »

jakear wrote: post #28
thaumasiotes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First amendment protections against compelled speech might interfere with this heavily editorialized "warning".

Similar warnings are required on cigarettes, and there isn’t much difference between the two.

so lets put those warnings on all videogames too right, all chocolate products, all biscuit products, all products that are remotely manufactured for human pleasure. All soda products of course.
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