FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization • Hacker News Board

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#731

Post by rhizome » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #514

bigbubba wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small nitpick, whether or not something is propaganda has nothing to do with whether or not it's correct. These are completely orthogonal. "Loose lips sink ships" is basically true, and is also a textbook example of propaganda. Propaganda is media that intents to influence an audience to further an agenda.

By definition that is almost every communication that a human makes, whether through art, technical books, education, news, opinion pieces etc. They are all attempts to influence an audience and there’s always some kind of agenda behind it.

This is about as rigorous as the questions by those wondering how Facebook could possibly be a monopoly when other websites exist (exaggerating only slightly). Do you know what "discourse" is? It's "how people talk about something," which is what propaganda is designed and intended to manipulate. "Pie tastes good" is not that.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#732

Post by rhizome » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

intended wrote: post #575

kyriee wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a simpler principle: harm reduction. Letting people be mislead about vaccines harms people, letting people get brainwashed into mistrusting the legitimacy of their institutions harms people, letting people use their platform to incite genocide harms people. They actually have metric to measure those things, it’s just that they prefer to dial down the heat, not kill it. It’s just too good for engagement. Don…

But This IS a philosophy debate. Fundamentally what is at stake here is how western society decides free speech is to be handled, and if it can be handled at all with social media. I urge anyone here to define metrics for harm reduction that are operationable. If you get any far with that, then tell me how you feel if the tools that will achieve these operational metrics were inverted in their purpose.

You're confusing Constitutional rights with business models and editorial policies.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#733

Post by vladmk » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

zepto wrote: post #422

vladmk wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about you but whenever I take a picture and share it with friends I trust that the company who’s picture I just gave two he’s going to make the best use of it on their platform. They have to monetize and I approve. Hell I’m willing to bet if Facebook puts into their agreement that every photo you upload to their platform is partially owned by them then people will still upload photos. It’s not the data t…

By ‘used for’, I don’t mean that people might display the photo somewhere you didn’t want. I mean Facebook might perform facial recognition on your photos and infer connections to other people you didn’t explicitly tell them about. I mean that facebook might track your location and app launches and identify where you go on vacation and when you shop. These are the kinds of thing nobody gave consent for.

I mean this has and is already happening. Example a foster kid was suggested to be friends with his father, in some cases it’s great, two long lost siblings or parents/children’s reunited. In other cases people complain.

The consent thing can both be good and bad, just like the invention of the internet and electricity before that. I’m trying to make that point that giving away your data is gonna be a commodity once everyone realizes they’re not a special snowflake

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#734

Post by strbean » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 6:00 AM UTC

thraway12 wrote: post #583

dllthomas wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your point is interesting if not conclusive, and I think your down-voters missed your final paragraph, but I think you're missing something here: > The counter-measures necessary - hermetically sealed living space, faraday cage enclosure - are so burdensome that only people who currently live in bunkers will implement them for their living spaces. There are a lot of situations we forbid activity that is diffi…

or it's not original...

Oh no, did someone post an unoriginal thought on the internet?

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#735

Post by slut » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 12:13 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #729

slut wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only the same entity that is now suing them for antitrust didn't approve these acquisitions, and fairly recently as well.

They didn't "approve" it, they closed their investigation, which they specifically called out as not saying there's no violation(s): https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/closing-le...

That's right, they approved Whatsapp, everyone laughed at the instagram acquisition because they paid 1b and the company had 13 employees and 10m DAU. The company would be nowhere without FB.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#736

Post by slut » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 12:16 AM UTC

adamcstephens wrote: post #359

slut wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only the same entity that is now suing them for antitrust didn't approve these acquisitions, and fairly recently as well.

Change has to start somewhere. Why not with the entity that is now admitting it was wrong?

Because it wasn't wrong at the time of the acquisition, IG as a company had 13 employees and 10m DAU, everyone was clowning on FB for wasting their money. The company would have went nowhere without FBs network effect, after all it's entire feed was based on pictures posted on FB. FB is just a political scapegoat just like Goog, if we were interested in antitrust we'd be knocking on AT&T's door and not giving them more grant funding every year.