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FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

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Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#141

Post by oarsinsync »

Firerouge wrote: post #109
jedberg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would propose that people are allowed x degrees of separation. That's an absolutely terrible idea. For example, I doubt you and I are two degrees away. I would have never seen this. I doubt I have two degrees of separation from most of the interesting content posted on this site.

Exactly, if you restrict access based on degrees of separation, you're essentially restricting access to information by geography, which is sure to reinforce regional differences and radicalize people further by hiding dissenting opinions

Pre social media, we lived in a world where information was generally separated by geography. Your comment suggests that by returning to such a state, it would result in increased radicalisation. The implication is therefore that social media has decreased radicalisation. I’m not sure I agree.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#142

Post by iamacyborg »

jyrkesh wrote: post #121
iamacyborg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such a request would be suited to an antitrust investigation. But as part of an inquiry ostensibly aimed at consumer privacy practices, it amounts to invasive government overreach. Rather ironic to consider this "invasive government overreach" but not to levy the same accusations towards the perpetrators of surveillance capitalism.

I'd love to see the law that allows the FTC to demand broad sets of documents like this without a warrant or even a purported crime. Unfortunately, I'd imagine it exists, but that it basically says "the FTC can do whatever it wants if it thinks a company is being 'abusive' or 'misleading consumers'" with some vague definition of what that means. Yet another example of Congress legislating away their ability to legisl…

> Unfortunately, I'd imagine it exists, but that it basically says "the FTC can do whatever it wants if it thinks a company is being 'abusive' or 'misleading consumers'" with some vague definition of what that means.

Again, this is rather ironic given the nature of what Facebook et al are doing. Vague clauses in unreadable Privacy Policies don't really constitue an adequate defence in the mass harvesting of personal data, yet here we are.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#143

Post by bradwood »

jacquesm wrote: post #90
trentnix wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will kill virility but should reign in stupidity being broadcast. Why do they have a responsibility to 'reign in stupidity' in the first place? Who gets to decide what's stupid and what's not? I understand removing illegal content. I understand providing guidelines around content that may not be acceptable for minors. I understand removing (or compartmentalizing) content that is "off topic" (such as a platform ded…

> It will kill virility I really wonder if it will do that. Probably not.

Perhaps the poster meant "vitality"

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#144

Post by chopin »

nathanyz wrote: post #75
g_p wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems interesting - clearly the friction in sharing everything with everyone is far lower online than before. Before, you had to consume finite resources (time, energy, postage stamps, etc.) to tell someone else about something. This gave a natural rate limit. As a thought experiment, what if the degrees of separation were less rigidly enforced, but people's "power of voice" decays the further it goes from those…

Friction is exactly what I believe the end answer is for social media, fake news, viral video, etc. Prior to the Internet, all communication included substantially larger amounts of friction. Broadcasting your opinion required acquiring TV, Radio, or Newspaper time/space. Sure there were low cost alternatives like standing in the public square and shouting your beliefs, but that is a far cry from tweeting out somethi…

> The friction was both a drag on productivity AND a safety mechanism to prevent mass spread of inaccurate or low quality content.

I don't think this is correct. I remember a bunch of outlets from the seventies and eighties which had all of: far reach, inaccurate and low quality content. It was just restricted to few influential people with enough money. I think this is the reason why social media are fought that hard: these people lose their influence (not that I am fond of social media). The past was not that rose as we like to paint it.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#145

Post by elliekelly »

jawzz wrote: post #67

From the dissenting opinion by Commissioner Noah Joshua Phillips: > These are different companies, some of which have strikingly different business models. And the orders omit other companies engaged in business practices similar to recipients, for example, Apple, Gab, GroupMe, LinkedIn, Parler, Rumble, and Tumblr, not to mention other firms the data practices of which have drawn significant government concern, like…

Commissioner Phillips makes a pretty disingenuous argument. The purpose of FTC Act Section 6(b), as I'm sure Phillips well knows, is to collect information in order to inform the FTC's ability to propose policy and legislation. In fact reports written from 6(b) requests are often called "studies" or "policy research" in the media.

> These are different companies, some of which have strikingly different business models.

That's usually the goal when you're sampling how an industry operates.

And so disingenuous are the other points he makes that I honestly don't believe Phillips believes most of what he's written. But when I got to the sentence where he called the FTC's privacy staff "the most impactful privacy enforcers in the world" and the FTC's regulation of consumer privacy "an effective enforcement program" it's hard to take anything else he says seriously.

I'll admit I did get a kick out of him citing Executive Order 13892[1] which basically says government agencies must be "fair and transparent" when collecting information from regulated entities. How deliciously ironic he's willing to put his foot down in the name of unfair, confusing, and overly broad information gathering.

[1]https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/10/15/2019-22...

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#146

Post by axaxs »

asciident wrote: post #35
kodah wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'd like to go back to an age before social media. It seems social media has had limited substantive success for anyone and has really created more problems than it's worth. Historically I've avoided expressing my views on abolishment but now people are trying to develop fear-mongering strategies around decentralization, so here I am back at abolition. I'd love to find a happy medium but I don't think it's…

So I like social media, and get a lot of benefit from it. I like that it's free and supported by targeted ads, rather than a paid service. Since we disagree, and I imagine there are many people with the same opinions as both you and me, why not make it opt-in, so you only encounter social media if you choose to make an account, and then still only see it if you go to it and/or install it intentionally? Wait, that's h…

Firstly, as others have pointed out, these companies collect information on people who have never opted in.

Secondly, they purposely set up a walled garden such that you can't see some things unless you make an account. Like say, the thousands of businesses with no website but only a Facebook presence. Or reading political discourse directly from politicians on Twitter. Or, as is very often noted, the easiest place to get support from companies seems to be on social media.

The latter isn't really easy to solve. One can say who cares, don't join then. But it can put you at certain disadvantages.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#147

Post by asciident »

kodah wrote: post #43
asciident wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I like social media, and get a lot of benefit from it. I like that it's free and supported by targeted ads, rather than a paid service. Since we disagree, and I imagine there are many people with the same opinions as both you and me, why not make it opt-in, so you only encounter social media if you choose to make an account, and then still only see it if you go to it and/or install it intentionally? Wait, that's h…

Social media isn't opt-in though. Facebook has routinely collected data on non-Facebook users, my name/likeness/content can appear on social media without my consent, and there are hardly controls for protecting such things in any meaningful sense. I deleted Instagram months ago and I have friends that have routinely told me that profile is still up, just in a limited capacity. How is this opt-in? An even better exam…

You're talking about 3 very different things here.

1) You're saying social media isn't opt in because they're tracking users off of their social media platform. This doesn't have anything to do with social media, but rather the pages you're going to have chosen to use a service provided by Facebook to track users. They could use another behavior targeting service, but chose Facebook's.

2) You're saying Instagram deletion didn't work. It sounds like you deactivated it instead of deleted it. I haven't heard this be an issue (it'd be widely reported if it were)

3) You're saying it's not opt-in because people refer to it in the news. In that case, nothing is opt-out because people have the right to refer to anything they want. Making this opt-out would mean censoring other people from saying things online or referring to things online, because of your views.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#148

Post by kodah »

bhelkey wrote: post #127
kodah wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media isn't opt-in though. Facebook has routinely collected data on non-Facebook users, my name/likeness/content can appear on social media without my consent, and there are hardly controls for protecting such things in any meaningful sense. I deleted Instagram months ago and I have friends that have routinely told me that profile is still up, just in a limited capacity. How is this opt-in? An even better exam…

> I deleted Instagram months ago and I have friends that have routinely told me that profile is still up, just in a limited capacity. How is this opt-in? Did you temporarily disable your account instead of deleting it? Deletion appears to only be available from web/mobile web, which is not great but deletion is only three steps. [1] [1] https://help.instagram.com/370452623149242

I actually deleted it. I used the web application to delete it. I ended up having to search for how to do it because the process was rather buried.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#149

Post by ummonk »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #118
ummonk wrote: post #71

Kind of weird to see WhatsApp on that list but not Netflix. I wonder how much Netflix has managed to stave off scrutiny simply by creating the Social Dilemma documentary.

This comment is baffling... Netflix isn't social media. It knows far less about its customers because your interactions are limited to chosing what to watch. I don't even know that documentary you mention, and I can assure you it has nothing to do with this decision whatsoever. (Because it's really a rerun of West Wing that got the FTC into high gear here. "Hell yeah, let's do some governing", someone shouted, and th…

WhatsApp is a messaging service, which would barely fall under "social media". Netflix is very clearly a "video streaming service" - it's its core business moreso than for Amazon.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#150

Post by ummonk »

htfu wrote: post #74
ummonk wrote: post #71

Kind of weird to see WhatsApp on that list but not Netflix. I wonder how much Netflix has managed to stave off scrutiny simply by creating the Social Dilemma documentary.

Uh why would it be on there? It doesn't have ads, and no user generated content. Boundlessly maximizing individual engagement is hardly in their interest, whereas with the ones on the list it's literally the entire business plan.

Oh yeah, they just created autoplay out of the goodness of their hearts.
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