Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 821 posts

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

#511

Post by FillardMillmore »

dantheman wrote: post #455
burlesona wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's legally tricky to be anti-Facebook for the sake of being anti-Facebook, but I don't think it's morally tricky. The entire idea of anti-trust (and frankly, the premise of most western democracies) is to prevent the over-concentration of power. Facebook is the most powerful private entity on the earth right now, far more powerful than most nation states. I'm not sure that we as a society have ever dealt with a non…

Yet, western democracies have been centralizing more and more power every year. It's more that a premise is that western democracies want to increase the power of the government and no one else.

Is it only western democracies that you think have been centralizing power? What about countries like China, Iran and Russia?

Western democracies historically have been party to increasing the power of private companies through government protection from competition (corporate welfare). The first example that popped in my head was the provision of prison labor for U.S. Steel through convict leasing.

There are numerous examples though, link below from Mises (admittedly a source with a conservative bias, but theres still good info there).

https://mises.org/wire/government-created-monopolies-are-eve...

It would seem to me that governments provide preferential treatment to private companies when it is beneficial for the government and they provide roadblocks and difficulties to companies who would be detrimental to the government. This is of course a generalization and not a hard-and-fast rule that explains every instance of government behavior when viewed in respect to a private company.

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

#512

Post by infominer »

dantheman wrote: post #457
TuringNYC wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unrealistically limiting to think modern wars are fought only with armies. Most wars are quiet and fought with capital, thought, rhetoric, and policy. Armies only come into the picture if all else fails.

Can you point me to a 'modern war' without armies? I'm interested in what you actually think a war is?

[edit/ downvote this all you like, pretending like warfare requires guns and armies when 2 different government elections have been attacked using social media, namely Facebook.]

https://www.thegreathack.com/

> Data has surpassed oil as the world’s most valuable asset. It’s being weaponized to wage cultural and political warfare. People everywhere are in a battle for control of our most intimate personal details. From award-winning filmmakers Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, THE GREAT HACK uncovers the dark world of data exploitation with astounding access to the personal journeys of key players on different sides of the explosive Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scandal.

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

#513

Post by wavefunction »

grawprog wrote: post #488
burlesona wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's legally tricky to be anti-Facebook for the sake of being anti-Facebook, but I don't think it's morally tricky. The entire idea of anti-trust (and frankly, the premise of most western democracies) is to prevent the over-concentration of power. Facebook is the most powerful private entity on the earth right now, far more powerful than most nation states. I'm not sure that we as a society have ever dealt with a non…

>I'm not sure that we as a society have ever dealt with a non-state actor this powerful before. The east India trading company and the hudson's bay company as well as I'm sure some others were as large as or larger than some state actors of their time.

A fine point and two significant examples that illustrate the dangers of unfettered corporations.

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

#514

Post by downandout »

StreamBright wrote: post #499
downandout wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is the most powerful private entity on the earth right now, far more powerful than most nation states. This is hyperbole at best. Facebook does not have an army, weapons, or literally anyone that would be willing to die or even be physically put out to defend it. I’m no Facebook fan, but let’s not let Facebook hysteria overrun these comments.

Yeah they only know everything about 1B people and can swing elections but other than these they are just a regular company selling stuff.

There is zero evidence that any activity conducted on Facebook has ever actually swung a single election. As far as I can tell, that is hyperbole as well.

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

#515

Post by wavefunction »

civicsquid wrote: post #421
bko wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the way Facebook did this was the right way. It set up Libra as an independent non-profit and they have a non controlling share. The founding members include Stripe, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal. All the media coverage on Libra is incredibly dishonest and ill-informed.

That's fair, I think I forget that not everyone knows that this is a project managed by a consortium, not by a single company alone.

The consortium is like a rogue's gallery of companies I distrust though, so I'm not sure decentralizing my deep distrust is going to help the Libra project.

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

#516

Post by FillardMillmore »

kevingadd wrote: post #485
dantheman wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, western democracies have been centralizing more and more power every year. It's more that a premise is that western democracies want to increase the power of the government and no one else.

Well, on the bright side most democracies are not explicitly about profit-making and/or cost-cutting as their first priority, even if it's the first priority of individual politicians.

I would agree with your statement that most western governments are not explicitly motivated by cost cutting and profit seeking. It would seem evident when we look at the trajectory of the US national debt in the past 40 or so years. However, I do not know if this is a good or bad thing. Will the national debt ever be paid off? And if not, what will the consequences be?

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

#517

Post by nprateem »

Youden wrote: post #509
kypro wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has developed a fairly anti-US-big-tech attitude recently. As a Brit I kind of understand it. We probably don't benefit from importing all of our 21st century products and services from the US, especially when these companies don't pay any taxes in our countries. Europe as a market has higher taxes, more regulation, and has more cultural barriers giving us a huge disadvantage when trying to compete in the glob…

> Europe has developed a fairly anti-US-big-tech attitude recently I don't think it's an "anti-US-big-tech attitude" so much as an aversion to companies that have repeatedly been found to break the law (be it tax, competition, privacy or otherwise). You don't (at least I don't) really see much hostility towards Apple, Netflix or Microsoft, despite them being large US tech companies. The only examples I can come up wi…

And it's not just tech. See Starbucks paying sweet fanny adams in tax, etc.

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

#518

Post by greenyoda »

celticninja wrote: post #482
lacker wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strange part to me is just that there are already hundreds of crypto currencies available in Germany. When the government says that yes, these hundreds of currencies are fine, but Facebook can’t create one, then it just seems like the policy is anti-Facebook for the sake of being anti-Facebook.

Well the decentralised nature of most crypto currencies prevent this sort of ban, but a centralised offering from a known entity is a lot easier to block. I would also say it is better to block it, especially with Zuck at the helm, he has proven he cares nothing for regulation or laws in the nation's in which FB operates. At least bitcoin is consensus driven,libra will be driven by Zuck and the tech giants. No thanks…

> Well the decentralised nature of most crypto currencies prevent this sort of ban...

Just because Bitcoin is decentralized doesn't mean that a country can't ban it within its own borders. To do that, all a country would need to do is pass a law making it a crime to own or use Bitcoin, while also prosecuting people who didn't report profits from illicit Bitcoin transactions with tax evasion. At that point, no legitimate business in the country would be able to accept Bitcoin or convert it to cash, and the vast majority of citizens wouldn't risk fines or imprisonment to use it.

Since, at this time, a very small fraction of the population uses crytocurrencies (or even knows what they are), enacting such a law probably wouldn't face a lot of resistance, especially if it were presented as a measure to fight crime or terrorism.

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

#519

Post by nprateem »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #444
kypro wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has developed a fairly anti-US-big-tech attitude recently. As a Brit I kind of understand it. We probably don't benefit from importing all of our 21st century products and services from the US, especially when these companies don't pay any taxes in our countries. Europe as a market has higher taxes, more regulation, and has more cultural barriers giving us a huge disadvantage when trying to compete in the glob…

> We probably don't benefit from importing all of our 21st century products and services from the US This amounts to "our country is bad at [thing], so let's restrict trade for [thing] to protect our industries." Of course it sounds great until other countries counter by restricting the thing you are good at, and then everyone loses.

It amounts to "these multinational companies employ armies of accountants to use every trick in the book to avoid paying taxes on all the sales they've made in our country, and it's not fair"

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

#520

Post by h0h0h0h0111 »

Smithalicious wrote: post #480
burlesona wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's legally tricky to be anti-Facebook for the sake of being anti-Facebook, but I don't think it's morally tricky. The entire idea of anti-trust (and frankly, the premise of most western democracies) is to prevent the over-concentration of power. Facebook is the most powerful private entity on the earth right now, far more powerful than most nation states. I'm not sure that we as a society have ever dealt with a non…

>Facebook is the most powerful private entity on the earth right now No it isn't, not even close. At most it's the third most powerful tech company, after Alphabet and Amazon.

Amazon is surely big and rich, but do they really exert the same psychological/social power on you? You don't read your news on Amazon, you don't send messages to your closest friends on amazon, you don't go down reading rabbit holes from following links on Amazon (not really, anyway).

Certainly purchase data is very powerful (ask supermarkets!), but I think it pales in comparison to the breadth of data Facebook and Google collect.

Post reply on HN