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As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

theguardian.com

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Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#111

Post by spectramax »

pfisherman wrote: post #87
spectramax wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fundamentally disagree with Twitter's ideological position. Banning the president, allowing Taliban leaders, it is a censorship extravaganza and the selling point is ecochambered short blips of outrage. What you're pointing out is also true - there is some good stuff on Twitter just like any platform. Most political content on Twitter is horrible, left / right - both. FB goes against silicon valley's zeitgeist and…

Well a big part of the distinction between FB and Twitter for me is the scale, scope, and competence of their surveillance and targeted influence (i.e. ads) capabilities and operations. Would Twitter be as evil as FB if they weren’t incompetent? Maybe. But that is not the world we live in. One area where I think we are talking past each other is referencing the consumer facing aspect vs the money making (B2B) aspect…

I can digest your take. I’d say that governments shouldn’t be on Twitter. I have conflicting internal voice - on one hand, I don't want any of these social media companies to allow populist movements to rise (that includes people like AOC that are running populist movements on Instagram and social media). On the other hand, I don't want any politician banned unless they ban all of them - on principle. President Trump was violating TOC left and right but Twitter allowed him for 4 years reaping engagement revenue, but all of sudden they were emboldened as soon as President Biden took office. These are weak companies with weak ideologies.

Make Politics Boring Again, I am down with this.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#112

Post by mawise »

anyonecancode wrote: post #99

Unless and until we come up with a different economic model for social media, we'll always have Facebook (or Twitter, or whatever successor toxic social media site comes next). Plenty of people here on HN have argued that the real problem is centralization, and I agree. Take whatever specific issue one might have with FB -- let's say disinformation, for instance. We have all these debates about censorship vs free spe…

I'll go even further and say that so long as the platform is run for-profit, this continues to be a problem.

I'm pursuing the idea of trying to better enable self-hosting of your online social presence with Haven[1], but it's difficult to get a framing that resonates quickly with people--in spite of the prevalence ofthese types of news stories.

[1] https://havenweb.org

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#113

Post by zo1 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67
pixelgeek wrote: post #22

What can be done to rein in Facebook? Nothing. Either shut it down or live with the impact but the time to 'do something' about Facebook was a long time ago. Before legislators in the US let it become this surveillance behemoth. Before it became a massive ad network. Reining it in also presumes that legislative methods will work. I think it is already clear that they don't. Shut it down.

> Reining it in also presumes that legislative methods will work. I think it is already clear that they don't. How is it clear? What legislation has been attempted? The simplest legislation--I could fit it on a page--would be to ban M&A by social media companies over a certain size and force break-ups of past mergers that would have violated that restriction had it been in place since, I don't know, February 4, 2004.

I think we let them get too big and now the discussion will very much revolve around the capital, value, industries and "jobs" that will be affected by a FB or social media ban or some other legislation.

You can't even effectively "mobilize" the populace for some sort of popular movement against social media because most of that sort of thing these days can only happen on social media. It's not even like we can have a revolution with 50k people and storm FB headquarters and "physically" stop the behemoth. It's headless for the most part. And good luck getting 50k people even. Pretty much All the platforms will stop you before you get anywhere because of "threats of violence".

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#114

Post by mark_l_watson »

numair wrote: post #91

Pro tip: there’s people other than Mark Zuckerberg who own those super-voting shares in Facebook, who keep his power unchecked. One of them is considered a darling investor in Silicon Valley and pretends to be a voice of social justice (and funds a lot of that sort of stuff). When your politicians put random employees and other paid shills in front of committees as proof that they’re being “tough on Facebook,” unders…

+1 I totally agree with you that it is a charade, or theater.

I try to spend only 1 or 2 minutes when I visit Facebook a couple of times a week. If everyone did that then their profits would tank. My bad for not just quitting but I am addicted to the Oculus Quest (a favorite toy).

I know many people whose digital life experience is always having Facebook open on their desktop. Productivity is almost a religion to me: aspects of peoples' digital lives that prevent us from long periods of single pointed concentration are bad. I use https://freedom.to to limit my use of HN, etc. to specific periods of the day when I am not working - I almost feel like that is a personal failure that I need to do that, but that is what it is.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#115

Post by Clubber »

pixelgeek wrote: post #72
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reining it in also presumes that legislative methods will work. I think it is already clear that they don't. How is it clear? What legislation has been attempted? The simplest legislation--I could fit it on a page--would be to ban M&A by social media companies over a certain size and force break-ups of past mergers that would have violated that restriction had it been in place since, I don't know, February 4, 2004.

They are still operating under an FTC order that they effectively ignore. They were fined and they deliberately took a bigger fine to protect their CEO. They ignored calls for their CEO to appear before parliament in the UK and Canada. Ignored. I am not fully aware of the state of legislative action in the UK from the Cambridge/Brexit issue but that hasn't gone anywhere. They are far too large to be legislated. They…

They donated $8M to US political campaigns in 2020. Everything else is just theater.

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/facebook-inc/totals?id=D000...

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#116

Post by dredmorbius »

gizmondo wrote: post #105
anyonecancode wrote: post #99

Unless and until we come up with a different economic model for social media, we'll always have Facebook (or Twitter, or whatever successor toxic social media site comes next). Plenty of people here on HN have argued that the real problem is centralization, and I agree. Take whatever specific issue one might have with FB -- let's say disinformation, for instance. We have all these debates about censorship vs free spe…

> In a world where there were _only_ smaller, more niche social media sites, fears around things like online radicalization would be much less How so?

Scale matters.

Coordinated large-scale propaganda (or advertising, but I repeat myself), as well as censorship, surveillance, and targeted manipulation, all benefit tremendously by a monopoly. These are in fact integral features of an information, communications, or media monopoly:

https://joindiaspora.com/posts/7bfcf170eefc013863fa002590d8e... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24771470)

I'm not entirely sure what the consequences of a bunch of smaller, freestanding forums and discussions would be, but my sense is that it would be better at generating different specific subculures and beliefs (many of which could well independently be poorly-grounded in reality or factual basis) ... but it wouldn't be as subject to the degree of mass propaganda, surveillance, and targeted manipulation.

There's the risk though that such a system might well be asymmetric as to decentralisation. If it's structured such that adversaries could utilise the system but defenders / the general public cannot enact sufficient defences, then what exists is a false decentralisation. Arguably, this is presently the case with FB, where advertisers and propagandists have far more effective tools and capabilities than those defending against them. I'm concerned that this could also effectively be the case with more distributed protocols --- Usnenet, the Fediverse, Diaspora*, etc. (All of which I use / have used in the past.)

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#117

Post by anyonecancode »

mawise wrote: post #112
anyonecancode wrote: post #99

Unless and until we come up with a different economic model for social media, we'll always have Facebook (or Twitter, or whatever successor toxic social media site comes next). Plenty of people here on HN have argued that the real problem is centralization, and I agree. Take whatever specific issue one might have with FB -- let's say disinformation, for instance. We have all these debates about censorship vs free spe…

I'll go even further and say that so long as the platform is run for-profit, this continues to be a problem. I'm pursuing the idea of trying to better enable self-hosting of your online social presence with Haven[1], but it's difficult to get a framing that resonates quickly with people--in spite of the prevalence ofthese types of news stories. [1] https://havenweb.org

I actually do think that in most cases it should be for-profit -- I just think that the profit can't be derived from your audience. For instance, a cafe that does online and in person orders and ALSO has an online social media hub, where people gather and interact and are also able to purchase goods from the cafe, I think would work because it's a social hub where the users are truly customers.

I think some institutions might work -- a forward-thinking library whose website isn't just an announcements and catalog site, but an actual social media hub -- but I think that'd be rare.

I don't think, by and large, private individual sites as social hubs would really work, as there's not enough draw to bring in a sufficiently large userbase to become a social hub.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#118

Post by nicbou »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #114
numair wrote: post #91

Pro tip: there’s people other than Mark Zuckerberg who own those super-voting shares in Facebook, who keep his power unchecked. One of them is considered a darling investor in Silicon Valley and pretends to be a voice of social justice (and funds a lot of that sort of stuff). When your politicians put random employees and other paid shills in front of committees as proof that they’re being “tough on Facebook,” unders…

+1 I totally agree with you that it is a charade, or theater. I try to spend only 1 or 2 minutes when I visit Facebook a couple of times a week. If everyone did that then their profits would tank. My bad for not just quitting but I am addicted to the Oculus Quest (a favorite toy). I know many people whose digital life experience is always having Facebook open on their desktop. Productivity is almost a religion to me:…

I just unfollowed everyone and unliked everything, and my profile has just enough for people to know they have the right guy. There's literally nothing for me to see or do on Facebook. It works great.

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#119

Post by wintermutestwin »

anyonecancode wrote: post #99

Unless and until we come up with a different economic model for social media, we'll always have Facebook (or Twitter, or whatever successor toxic social media site comes next). Plenty of people here on HN have argued that the real problem is centralization, and I agree. Take whatever specific issue one might have with FB -- let's say disinformation, for instance. We have all these debates about censorship vs free spe…

>a different economic model for social media

Non-profit would work great. The core functionality that people flock to these platforms for could be replicated on a shoestring budget as the stalker stuff is where the high $ engineering talents are focused (and pissing away our "best and brightest" on negative social outcomes).

Re: As a whistleblower prepares to speak out, what can be done to rein in Facebook?

#120

Post by user3939382 »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #70
user3939382 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should stop using the term misinformation and call it untruth. This deobfuscates what’s really happening, which is that: Extreme wealth and power has caused some self-appointed Deciders of Truth to band together and decide that anyone who does not pledge allegiance to anything they decide is true will be cast out of society as much as practically possible. I remember reading Plato’s The Republic when I was young a…

Do you really believe there is no such thing as a lie? I don’t want to trust Facebook as an arbiter of anything because their motivations do not align with anything other than personal profit, but people do completely fabricate things and present them as true.

At least with COVID, one day the same idea can be “misinformation” and the next it’s a blessed fact from the Deciders of Truth. Originally it was misinformation that masks protected you from COVID. So no it’s not as simple as a “lie”.
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