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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

#51

Post by PopeDotNinja »

mgraczyk wrote: post #47
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…

I always disliked Facebook and still don't care much for it, but having worked on ranking there for a few months, comments like this just sound incredibly naive. Facebook is not "specifically designed to cause addiction". It's designed by a complicated process with many people trying to maximize many competing metrics, some of which might go up when people are "addicted". In fact the complete opposite is one of the m…

It is designed to increase engagement. It ain't designed so you use it less and/or just enough.

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

#53

Post by ascar »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #19
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.

That's easy to fix, just apply the rules only to companies having more than a hundred shareholders, and count shareholders of the parent for any subsidiary. Then you can't restructure Facebook to have less than a hundred shareholders because the number of shareholders is independent of the internal corporate structure.

So any non-public company would be exempt?

There are multiple private multi billion dollar companies and I wouldn't be surprised, if they all have less than 100 shareholders.

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

#55

Post by another-dave »

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".

I thought that Facebook's stance was that it was a platform not a publisher? If you have no editorial oversight or opinion on the content you publish (cf. not taking down known false political advertising) can you then claim "free speech"?

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

#57

Post by topo1h »

Zuckerberg needs to be thrown in jail.

That's the only thing that will keep the next social media/mass media/big bank/big telco exec from leveraging people's data/weakness/biases and denying responsibility for unintended consequences.

There is no question of govt regulating this stuff. They can't even handle the illiterate Taliban after 20 years of spending 2 trillion, why the fuck do people believe govt can take on sophisticated actors like Facebook and Wall St.

Pure mass delusion.

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

#58

Post by tylerl »

symplee wrote: post #3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Except no. That's where the regulators fundamentally agree with the regulated company.

This is a different but also common phenomenon. Well established companies tend to favor strict compliance requirements with harsh penalties and difficult targets. The big companies can hit those targets because they can afford to sink time and money into activities that don't make money. Small companies can't.

It isn't necessarily about being anti-competitive. The requirements may be the right thing to do, and better for everyone. Except startups generally can't afford it. In fact, startups are usually absolutely crap at privacy, security, and other elements of social responsibility.

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

#59

Post by josephg »

mgraczyk wrote: post #47
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…

I always disliked Facebook and still don't care much for it, but having worked on ranking there for a few months, comments like this just sound incredibly naive. Facebook is not "specifically designed to cause addiction". It's designed by a complicated process with many people trying to maximize many competing metrics, some of which might go up when people are "addicted". In fact the complete opposite is one of the m…

On what basis are you claiming that that most teams at FB are optimising the product for well being as opposed to ‘engagement’ (addiction)? Do you have first hand knowledge? Do you know the people involved? Do you have citations?

I stopped using FB a few years ago after I had an argument with a friend on the platform. The algorithm decided to keep showing us one anothers’ content - I assume so we would both write more angry comments (“engagement!”). I ended up blocking the friend, then on reflection left the platform entirely, since as far as I can tell FB was optimising as intended to manipulate me.

Has it changed since then?

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

#60

Post by pyrale »

fastball wrote: post #49
quietbritishjim wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then you just base it off of the number of employees overall in the parent company, not the number of employees in the subsidiary.

Base it off user count too, problem solved.
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