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France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

reuters.com

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Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#121

Post by balfirevic »

aazaa wrote: post #27

> “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations” What a bizarre statement. Providing for security is also inherent to sovereignty of nations, but private security firms flourish. It's also odd in the context of Germany in particular where a private currency has been used for many years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer I suspect there's a lot more behind this sta…

> “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations”

Also, what the hell is that supposed to mean? If something is inherent to something else, it doesn't mean it's exclusive to it. Maybe something got lost in translation, but if not - they don't even know how to say whatever it is that they want to say.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#122

Post by CaptainZapp »

SanchoPanda wrote: post #17
mrtksn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you stop people obtaining it and using it through their buddies on the internet? Is libra tied to an account like game money? AFAIK it's a cryptocurrency? Haven't looked at the details but cryptocurrency implies it stays on some distributed ladger and no 3rd parties have control over the transactions. Isn't that the case?

You tell Facebook that if a French national is offered Libra you will fine them. If they complain they don't have the tech to prevent that. You fine them anyway. The theme here is that Facebook has lost the trust of too many important people, and maybe they just want to hurt what looks like another enormous American tech company that has been too careless and too aggressive.

If they complain that they're not able to identify who lives in France you bring the hammer of the law down; hard!

They would just have conclusively proven that they ignore KYC regulations and are running the biggest money laundring operation ever

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#123

Post by _r_o_y_ »

mrtksn wrote: post #72
pjmlp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Sadly it is not uncommon to see people going to jail for stealing a few chicken because they were hungry, while many company owners and politicians hardly face any jail time for their proven corruption affairs. Being popular and law seldom come hand in hand.

Stealing a chicken is very different from using something. Stealing chicken is no doubt immoral for most people but punishing the usage of something that Americans can use will not fly unless the USA becomes the arch-enemy and using Libra is perceived as treason and way or unfair enrichment. Stealing a chicken has a clearly defined victim and stealing, not even piracy or patent infringement is well understood and uni…

Tell that to all the people in jail for smoking weed.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#124

Post by kerng »

aniforprez wrote: post #9
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #2

Best thing I've read on Libra: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/24/971554-facebook-bitcoin...

AH the bit about the goal being to make payments fast makes a ton of sense. The rest of the world has left the US in the dust with extremely fast payments systems. In India, the UPI system has taken the country by storm with direct,instant bank-to-bank money transfers which take seconds to complete and have no fees attached for the consumer

Things like Venmo are popular in US to quickly send money here and there (not like bank transfers afaik). It's not available in Europe unfortunately.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#125

Post by detaro »

joes_hk wrote: post #67
speps wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your German example is a bit silly to use here given that its exchange rate is 1:1 with euros. There are other regional currencies in other countries, they don't usually operate independently from the country's own currency though.

Also on the "money" you can read "Vereinsinterner Regio-Gutschein" which means that in a legal sense this is a voucher not a currency.

Presumably, Facebook calling Libra "the Libra voucher system" wouldn't quite fix it though.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#126

Post by stickfigure »

atq2119 wrote: post #92
logicchains wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>more harm than benefit The "harm" Facebook causes is subjective. Some people actually get a lot of pleasure out of it; not everybody is an introverted, neurotic techie.

The studies linking Facebook usage to unhappiness don't restrict their samples to "neurotic techies".

...and use deeply suspect methodologies.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#127

Post by logicchains »

atq2119 wrote: post #92
logicchains wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>more harm than benefit The "harm" Facebook causes is subjective. Some people actually get a lot of pleasure out of it; not everybody is an introverted, neurotic techie.

The studies linking Facebook usage to unhappiness don't restrict their samples to "neurotic techies".

They also don't account for the fact that Facebook usage is correlated with screen usage, which is correlated with happiness, so the effect they measured could just be the effect of screen use.

"We found that teens who spent more time seeing their friends in person, exercising, playing sports, attending religious services, reading or even doing homework were happier. However, teens who spent more time on the internet, playing computer games, on social media, texting, using video chat or watching TV were less happy.

In other words, every activity that didn’t involve a screen was linked to more happiness, and every activity that involved a screen was linked to less happiness. The differences were considerable: Teens who spent more than five hours a day online were twice as likely to be unhappy as those who spent less than an hour a day." - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzn9d3/cell-phones-linked...

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#128

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

Avamander wrote: post #26
aniforprez wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AH the bit about the goal being to make payments fast makes a ton of sense. The rest of the world has left the US in the dust with extremely fast payments systems. In India, the UPI system has taken the country by storm with direct,instant bank-to-bank money transfers which take seconds to complete and have no fees attached for the consumer

Europe has SEPA (Instant). The Chinese have WeChat Pay and similar? I'm curious, what other solutions other countries have?

Almost all UK banks use Faster Payments, which means ordinary bank transfers are instant.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#130

Post by human20190310 »

dannyr wrote: post #90

I dislike Facebook but I kind of feel sorry for them now because any ambitious thing that they'll attempt will probably be blocked by governments now. Facebook and Zuckerberg deserves it though.

I think this is a great example of the power of local authority. If there were a single set of (literally) global rules, then global-scale companies could roll out dubious innovations easily.

However, if national or sub-national governments can impose restrictions, it forces companies to go the extra mile to appease a larger number of affected people, disrupting their rollout until everyone is on the same page.

California often serves this purpose within the US, creating regulations that have national impact because it's too large of a sub-unit to ignore.

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