61–70 of 313 posts
Could the problem with the damaged brand be a reason why Apple is so keen on becoming a "privacy-as-a-service"-company?
But on the other hand, I can’t help but think that a gay CEO who grew up in Alabama really cares about privacy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a bit early to tell but... do you lose access to FB, whatsapp or whatever when your computer/smartphone gets infected? Or are you talking about malware designed to transfer money from your account to someone else's? Is this a problem for Paypal?
Paypal can reverse transactions, can Libra? Or is it like bitcoin, where I must protect my private key by any and all means, and then if it's lost, sucks to be me? And yeah, I mean "lose all your money due to a 0 day in your browser".
Calibra would require full identity verification e.g. submitting SSN and a copy of your picture ID. Getting that info is way beyond what FB has about you now.
I can't help but think that Facebook doomed this "distributed ledger" possibility by trying to be first to market with a tarnished brand. The developing world would hugely benefit from a scalable technology that can efficiently service digital transactions. The piece demonstrates this with how quickly WeChat Pay and Alipay penetrated China. I can't imagine the possibility for prosperity when 3 billion consumers enter…
> The developing world would hugely benefit from a scalable technology that can efficiently service digital transactions. The piece demonstrates this with how quickly WeChat Pay and Alipay penetrated China. I hear this a lot in cryptocurrency threads, and I vehemently disagree. There's no doubt that using "some other currency" (currency or cryptocurrency) is better than using a corrupt, authoritarian regime's currenc…
I'd also like to add something that I consider the elephant in the room. Haven't tech companies already proven themselves that they're willing to bend to governments' will in order to do business?
No authoritarian government will welcome Libra with open arms. If the currency won't bend to their will, then they will simply ban it and then it becomes (at best) a black market good.
There's also another issue: how do you value it so that it becomes useful to everyone? If I'm in Venezuela getting paid in bolivars then my money already has no power to begin with.
It will also be hard to manage for a lot of people. I doubt some average Joe in a poor country will want to complicate himself by buying something at 0.0000000231 Libra. It will require a lot of cognitive power to not get scammed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the counterargument to this?
The incentives don't seem to align in that direction. What would be the point for Facebook to create a promote such a currency if they can't control it at some level? I fully expect that even if the core of the cryptocurrency might actually be decentralized and not directly controlled by Facebook (and I don't believe that either, for the record) the practical implementation of this will give Facebook more than enough…
I think we all agree that Facebook is incentivized to behave in certain ways, but if self-limitation is baked into the system, how does that matter?
This is a genuine question for which I would love an answer.
I'm crossing my fingers that this pseudo crypto money never takes off. Having Facebook control this would be so terrible and the proof that we didn't learn anything over the last couple months. Don't fool yourself even though they released a white paper and some pseudo decentralized schemes this is no different than a casino chip. Unfortunately I feel like it might pick up and become a thing.
Out of all of the good-will projects they could spearhead if they want to turn the tides of FB's reputation, they decide to try and supplant money. To me it just screams that it's one more domain they want to assert some control in.
I find it depressing.
I too dismissed Libra out of hand, but the coalition that Facebook is building is interesting. People say that "Fintech threatens the banks" but almost all Fintech companies partner with the banks in one way or another. Look at the companies involved with Libra and see that none of them are banks. Libra will still have a lot of money on deposit with the banks, but it might be the first Fintech that will really bypass…
That's not going to happen. As soon as it does, we'll be seeing a crackdown on a wider swathe than just banks. What scares the bejesus out of me is what happens when tooling to link up personal data from data aggregators plus sufficient tooling around blockchain analysis is built such that a realtime tracking system of financial to other activity becomes possible. A full public record of all financial transactions is…
> The largest leap will come last: Libra as a genuine currency, not simply a medium for transaction. This will be function of volume in the previous two use cases, and is understandably concerning to governments all over the world. Well that's certainly an understatement. This is literally the only mention of government through-out the entire article. The only mention of banks is in the previous paragraph stating the…
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/opinion/facebook-content-...