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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

#61

Post by izacus »

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.

Why is having all your medical data leaked on the web by a 5 person company any less damaging than by a 5000 person company? Or all of your internet history? Your face recordings?

What you're really just creating here is an economy for small companies to steal and datamine your data and then resell it to others.

For all the constant grinding about FB/Google on this website, small startups are usually a significantly larger privacy catastrophe with little morals and very little security. Most of them don't even consider privacy and security as something to be thought of while they're throwing out their MVP.

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

#62

Post by sakisv »

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 may very well be a naive sounding comment, but at the same time I think your comment reads at least as naive if not more. Think about it for a moment:

First, as an employee there is a tendency to find and only focus on the good aspects of your employer. This is not a bad thing, it's what helps us get out of the bed in the morning and go to work. It can wrap your perception though and make you more biased.

Second, you were part of a company and like any other company it wants to maximize its profits, i.e. maximize the engagement. I really want to believe you (and in some degree I actually do) that there are teams that focus on users' wellbeing (however this is measured) but in the end of the day, if it will come down to decide if I will be shown a post that has higher chance of generating profit VS a post that will make me feel better, in the vast majority of cases it will show me the first kind. You don't make money by being nice, unless you can combine the two. Facebook has done everything that it could to destroy any good will that we may have had to trust that it wants to combine the two (think about the experiment about influencing people's mood from a couple of years ago)

A banner with a text similar to what blunderkid wrote would be not only fair and accurate but the least we could do. And Facebook has only itself to blame for it.

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

#63

Post by Slikey »

winrid wrote: post #46
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 would argue this site can make you feel the same way :)

I AM NOT ADDICTED

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

#64

Post by beatpanda »

The multi-billion dollar question is whether someone with serious technical acumen is prepared to step up and fight for a law that meaningfully restrains surveillance capitalism while allowing startups to compete. Or build a compliance-as-a-service business and give it away to startups for free.

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

#65

Post by quietbritishjim »

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.

The problem is, there's no legal distinction between a company that own shares but is "really" part of the same company, vs a completely separately company owning shares e.g. a pension fund.

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

#66

Post by DanBC »

kmlx wrote: post #56
nullc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially no one I know now smokes. Something was effective.

wasn't it taxes?

In the UK it mostly was increased prices, coupled with free smoking cessation services, and with changes in law to make smoking illegal inside many buildings (workplaces, shops, pubs, cafés etc).

Vaping was useful to move remaining smokers to different nicotine delivery mechanisms.

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

#67

Post by optimiz3 »

izacus wrote: post #61
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.

Why is having all your medical data leaked on the web by a 5 person company any less damaging than by a 5000 person company? Or all of your internet history? Your face recordings? What you're really just creating here is an economy for small companies to steal and datamine your data and then resell it to others. For all the constant grinding about FB/Google on this website, small startups are usually a significantly…

False dichotomy. You can still have stuff penalties for leaking PII.

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

#68

Post by ptah »

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 actually intentionally designed to be habit forming i.e. "addictive" https://www.wired.com/2014/12/how-to-build-habit-forming-pro...

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

#69

Post by adventured »

kmlx wrote: post #56
nullc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially no one I know now smokes. Something was effective.

wasn't it taxes?

You're being downvoted, and you're correct.

The single most important thing they did to turn the tide against smoking, to create a strong disincentive, was to make it a lot more expensive of a habit. Cigarettes used to be inexpensive when I was growing up in the 1980s. Now you'll nearly spend a car payment on just a pack per day. Chain smoker? There went your rent for the month.

Chinese men are the most voracious smokers in human history, they consume nearly half of all cigarettes smoked on the planet. They don't know cigarettes are bad for them? Of course they do. The imagery would make little difference unto itself. Smoking hasn't been made wildly expensive in China yet, that's the single biggest issue. It's also not enough of a socially excluding behavior yet in China; the party could take care of that if they wanted to (they will eventually, it will be a health & social wellness thing they aggressively focus on in the future; they allow it for now, for obvious reasons, as a placative).

The second most important thing authorities did to curb smoking, was the imagery & information campaign. That has been quite successful, it's distinctly branded as an ugly, nasty, killer, social excluding taboo habit now.

The third most important thing the authorities did, is push regulations such that smokers became quasi socially excluded and couldn't easily smoke anywhere considered a public space and at work. They added friction to the smoking process, making it a far bigger hassle.

The recipe was: much higher cost, persistent information campaign, added friction, social exclusion.

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

#70

Post by mfDjB »

The article points out that Brussels are alright making regulations around artificial intelligence etc:

"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in Brussels lobbying the European Union’s regulators as they form new laws to govern artificial intelligence, content moderation and more"

Does anyone know what they are thinking of doing in this regard? And what problems they are attempting to solve?

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