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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?

#121

Post by [deleted] »

numair wrote: post #109
thesausageking wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg controls 58% of the voting shares. No one else on the board matters.

He controls them. He doesn’t own them. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS275871279920151202 > At Facebook, Zuckerberg’s stake, worth some $45 billion, comes with more than 53 percent of the votes in any shareholder poll, according to company filings. That rises to nearly 60 percent including stock owned by co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, which Zuckerberg usually gets to vote. Note that there have been share sales sinc…

[deleted]

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

#122

Post by daveguy »

numair wrote: post #110
Strs2FillMyDrms wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thiel's money is not red btw.

They’ve got both sides covered. The fact that you only know about one side should tell you that the other side, and where it places its money, might be worth looking into. You think Thiel and the Trump election was interesting? Go look at the largest donor to Biden’s “Future Forward PAC.”

Dustin A Moskovitz of Asana. How is this some sort of gotcha? Just noting they're both in tech?

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

#123

Post by dylan604 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77
CosmicShadow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but what other social media exists beyond Twitter?

> what other social media exists beyond Twitter? Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit and Pinterest each have more MAUs than Twitter [1]. [1] https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/biggest-soc...

25% of your list is owned by FB.

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

#124

Post by phone8675309 »

anyonecancode wrote: post #117
mawise wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 instituti…

>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.

This sounds like an even-more Disney-fied hellscape than the current Internet is.

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

#125

Post by phone8675309 »

judge2020 wrote: post #88
pixelgeek wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ignored calls for their CEO to appear before parliament in the UK and Canada. Ignored. They're playing hardball. They know the only way these other countries can do anything, even with legislation that FB would ignore, is by either blocking the website (which would encourage the silent majority to suddenly speak up and would hurt the decision maker's chances of re-election) or sanctioning the US, which nobody…

They could "extraordinarily rendition" the everloving shit out of Zuck - that might change Facebook's tune.

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

#126

Post by katbyte »

spectramax wrote: post #40
katbyte wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know Twitter had not been responsible for ethnic cleansing mole times in multiple countries not helping dictators stay in power: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...

Here is Twitter CEO promoting a dictatorship as a place to go for meditation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/09/latest-...

I guess I stand corrected (thou can’t read the article) - next up is genocide on the evil company bingo card

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

#127

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

numair wrote: post #109
thesausageking wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg controls 58% of the voting shares. No one else on the board matters.

He controls them. He doesn’t own them. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS275871279920151202 > At Facebook, Zuckerberg’s stake, worth some $45 billion, comes with more than 53 percent of the votes in any shareholder poll, according to company filings. That rises to nearly 60 percent including stock owned by co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, which Zuckerberg usually gets to vote. Note that there have been share sales sinc…

"He controls them. He doesn't own them."

He controls at least 75% of the class B shares.

About half of that percetange are shares he owns; the other half are controlled by proxy voting agreements with the owners.

As long as at least 9.1% of all shares issued and outstanding are class B stock, the persons controlling those class B shares will have the majority of shareholder voting power.^1

The percentage of all stock issued and outstanding that is class A stock is unlikely to ever rise above 90.9%. Even if if owners of class B shares sell, there is an automatic conversion to class A shares on any transfer and Zuckerberg's voting power only increases as a result.

1. As of 31 Dec 2020, Facebook has 2,406 million shares of class A stock and 443 million shares of class B stock issued and outstanding. Class A stock has one vote per share, class B has 10.

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

#128

Post by missedthecue »

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.

What about Facebook is made better if they spin off Instagram and WhatsApp? What changes about them? They still have 2B monthly active users. Instagram and WhatsApp will be run by the same people with the same goals, the W2s will just say Instagram Inc. instead of Facebook Inc.

I don't think your problem with Facebook is that they bought a few companies.

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

#129

Post by pixelgeek »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #75
pixelgeek wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> too large to be legislated You haven't cited any legislation. The FTC is not powerful enough to regulate Facebook; the U.K. and Canada were snubbed by them--agreed. But none of that is legislation. (To be clear, Facebook is more powerful than some legislatures. But not the Congress. Not by a long shot.)

> You haven't cited any legislation.

Because I didn't reference any. I mentioned 'legislators' and not legislation.

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