> Regulating tech is a great idea (assuming the regulations are thoughtful and productive, of course), I’m not nearly as enthusiastic for these calls to bring heavy regulation on to the tech industry. Articles like this have a hypothetical ideal mental image of regulations that will punish only the bad guys while protecting themselves and the content they like. There’s also an implicit assumption that regulation will…
Lately, it seems like our only remaining choice as a civilization is to decide if we want to be exploited or controlled.
>If Facebook’s actions really are a problem to most people, then most people would stop using it what do you call this argument, best of all worlds-ism? So a priori any institution that persists is beneficial to its constituents merely because it continues to exist? Do concepts like power and dependence exist in the kind of worldview that produces these arguments?
There's an actual name for it -- Panglossianism -- named for Dr. Pangloss, the tutor in Voltaire's Candide who keeps insisting, despite catastrophically mounting evidence, that "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds." (This was a deliberate parody of moral philosphy written by some of Voltaire's 18th-century contemporaries, most notably Leibniz.)
Totally agreed on the utopian fallacy angle, it's really hard to come up with effective regulation ideas that won't create unintended distortions at best, and new innovation-killing moats at worst. But we have to try. As imperfect as government is, it is the only power that we have over giant corporations. Existing regulation and agency structure is completely unsuitable for the world we live in today. So far tech ha…
Why do we have to regulate? It seems an alternate yet much more difficult path would be that we could grow a societal backbone and make certain destructive practices illegal instead of trying to figure out a central list of allowed practices and licenses and policies and permits and bureaucracy etc. For example, it’s pretty clear that internet scale data markets and user attention platforms harm the individual. Why i…
Outlaw what specifically though? You're falling into the same trap OP is calling out, that your extremely vague hand wavey proposed laws would only ban "the bad guys".
> Regulating tech is a great idea (assuming the regulations are thoughtful and productive, of course), I’m not nearly as enthusiastic for these calls to bring heavy regulation on to the tech industry. Articles like this have a hypothetical ideal mental image of regulations that will punish only the bad guys while protecting themselves and the content they like. There’s also an implicit assumption that regulation will…
Just imagine the politician of your nightmares being in control of the regulations. I think the real issue is that people live in black holes of misinformation on the internet because that is where they want to be. When I look at the many Herman Cain Award threads on reddit, it seems the predominate original source of most posts is groups that the user signed up for. This isn't new, before Facebook, there were usenet…
> Just imagine the politician of your nightmares being in control of the regulations.
Even the worst politician is (ostensibly) accountable to the people. Corporations are not.
Why do we have to regulate? It seems an alternate yet much more difficult path would be that we could grow a societal backbone and make certain destructive practices illegal instead of trying to figure out a central list of allowed practices and licenses and policies and permits and bureaucracy etc. For example, it’s pretty clear that internet scale data markets and user attention platforms harm the individual. Why i…
Outlaw what specifically though? You're falling into the same trap OP is calling out, that your extremely vague hand wavey proposed laws would only ban "the bad guys".
I list two examples (as does Doctorow) of things that are pretty clearly bad for users: 1. attention marketplaces, 2: DRM. I am falling for no such trap I really don’t understand your angle there. My suggested solution to 1 is rather than try to regulate Facebook, which I agree is hand wavey, just ban the business model altogether because it demonstrably breeds machines and software that harm users. The “good guy” user attention businesses are collateral, yes, but this is a move to protect us not our ad marketplaces and the hypothesis is that the incentives just aren't aligned for there to exist a “good guy” ad platform. (If one exists please show me so I can understand the extent of any collateral harm I might be advocating.) I like this solution because it’s principled and specifically not hand wavey. The collateral seems worth it IMO. Same with DRM.
Totally agreed on the utopian fallacy angle, it's really hard to come up with effective regulation ideas that won't create unintended distortions at best, and new innovation-killing moats at worst. But we have to try. As imperfect as government is, it is the only power that we have over giant corporations. Existing regulation and agency structure is completely unsuitable for the world we live in today. So far tech ha…
Why do we have to regulate? It seems an alternate yet much more difficult path would be that we could grow a societal backbone and make certain destructive practices illegal instead of trying to figure out a central list of allowed practices and licenses and policies and permits and bureaucracy etc. For example, it’s pretty clear that internet scale data markets and user attention platforms harm the individual. Why i…
I'm not following your argument, what do you see as the difference between regulation and outlawing something?
The author seems to be filled with a sense of “knight-in-shining-armor-ism.” If Facebook’s actions really are a problem to most people, then most people would stop using it. He calls Zuckerberg a "pope-emperor" of Facebook's users, but that's because the users choose to give him power. If the users stop choosing to give him power, he loses it.
Arguably facebook provides useful, valuable services and also causes some harm. Lets suppose the good it does outweighs the harm. That's not a good argument to simply accept the harm it does. The benefits and harm are not an inextricably linked package, it should be possible to mitigate the harm without eliminating the benefits Facebook provides to people.
Outlaw what specifically though? You're falling into the same trap OP is calling out, that your extremely vague hand wavey proposed laws would only ban "the bad guys".
I list two examples (as does Doctorow) of things that are pretty clearly bad for users: 1. attention marketplaces, 2: DRM. I am falling for no such trap I really don’t understand your angle there. My suggested solution to 1 is rather than try to regulate Facebook, which I agree is hand wavey, just ban the business model altogether because it demonstrably breeds machines and software that harm users. The “good guy” us…
what's an attention marketplace? facebook, twitter, reddit, ok, all gone. But then advertising is attention and a marketplace, so does that mean banning all online or app based advertising? Amazon has attention and it's a marketplace, so does Etsy.
The author seems to be filled with a sense of “knight-in-shining-armor-ism.” If Facebook’s actions really are a problem to most people, then most people would stop using it. He calls Zuckerberg a "pope-emperor" of Facebook's users, but that's because the users choose to give him power. If the users stop choosing to give him power, he loses it.
>If Facebook’s actions really are a problem to most people, then most people would stop using it what do you call this argument, best of all worlds-ism? So a priori any institution that persists is beneficial to its constituents merely because it continues to exist? Do concepts like power and dependence exist in the kind of worldview that produces these arguments?
Why do we have to regulate? It seems an alternate yet much more difficult path would be that we could grow a societal backbone and make certain destructive practices illegal instead of trying to figure out a central list of allowed practices and licenses and policies and permits and bureaucracy etc. For example, it’s pretty clear that internet scale data markets and user attention platforms harm the individual. Why i…
I'm not following your argument, what do you see as the difference between regulation and outlawing something?
The argument against regulation people often reach for is that it actually benefits incumbents and stifles innovation because it involves permits and checks and licenses etc generally just roadblocks to doing something in a domain. And that if you open the door to it in one spot then you can definitely expect it to crop up everywhere. I generally agree with this take and understand why people are not excited about working in, using products in, living with, heavily regulated industries.
What I’m saying is that form of regulating FB seems silly to me too and I think we could avoid the “fear of central government control raining on our disruptive tech utopia” problem and the “any regulation here would be a hand wavey slippery slope” problem by simply taking a more aggressive principled stance as a society and declaring bad things illegal instead of trying to compromise and regulate “tech” into submission. Punish the bad behavior seems like such a simple solution.