
Who Will Rein in Facebook? Challengers Are Lining Up - eplanit
https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-will-rein-in-facebook-challengers-are-lining-up-1509278405
======
fny
Note to those who don't/can't read the article: the title is slightly
misleading. The author does not mean business challengers to Facebook but
rather political challengers (i.e. legislators, regulators, activists.)

Basically, the glory days of free-range hacking without government regulation
appear limited, especially with the likes of Bruce Schneier[0], advocating for
the same.

Cherish these moments while they last.* If you want to help mitigate the
governments reach and make sure policy is implemented wisely, support our
lobbying power through the EFF ([https://www.eff.org/](https://www.eff.org/))
and FSF ([https://www.fsf.org/](https://www.fsf.org/)).

Edit: Updated language above to make it more clear that I am not anti-
regulation.

[0]:
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/11/regulation_of...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/11/regulation_of_t.html)

[*]: What I mean to say is that I can foresee a world where you are mandated
by the government to perform certain services through specific providers. For
example, the government could, in the interest of protecting user security,
mandate that all apps must provide user registration and auth through a
provider that has received XYZ certification (i.e. OAuth through Facebook,
Google, Auth0)

~~~
chatmasta
Total FUD. Not sure what you mean by “free range hacking,” but surely it has
little to do with the regulations targeting activities of multinational
conglomerates (Facebook), or any possible regulations for selling devices.

You’re free to do whatever you want on your own devices. I don’t see how
reasonable regulation meant to prevent tragedy of the commons (the only real
application of regulation) will infringe on your ability to continue “free
range hacking.”

~~~
fny
To clarify, I have no issue with the government requiring companies to
disclose who has paid for advertising, the issue that I have is that its
becoming increasingly prudent and attractive the government to regulate how we
compute and how we respect private data, and if our voices aren't part of that
conversation, we're screwed.

Also, I take it you've never worked in a heavily regulated industry. It blows.
While regulation is a good thing (PHI protection), it definitely has a
chilling effect on innovation, and at times results in ill-informed policy
(security via obscurity; pointless protective measures from know-nothing
management.)

~~~
confounded
Our voices should be part of the conversation.

I completely understand the fear about government regulation with respect to
_how we compute_. For example Section 1201 of the DMCA, the CFAA both scare
me, as do periodical “nerd harder” debates about backdoored encryption.

But what is it that you’d like to do with people’s private data that you’re
worried will be prevented?

There are loads of apps right now that exfiltrate your address book, for
example, to gather what you know about private individuals, without their
knowledge or consent, to be exploited in an unregulated marketplace of
personal data.

Is that good? Do you think he EFF think it is, or the FSF?

~~~
fny
I believe people should have the right to whatever they want to do with their
own data and no one elses. When I am about to engage with your service and you
tell me you're going to mine my data to sell me things or even improve my
healthcare, it should be _my_ decision not the governments. Much of the
internet today crosses this boundary: when I came to your website, I never
authorized you to allow Facebook to track me with that stupid like button. I
also disagree with your right to post pictures of me on Facebook or to share
my email address and phone number with that new-fangled contacts app you just
downloaded without my permission. However, I do believe you have the right to
hand your own data to Google in exchange for services like Gmail and Google
Maps.

Furthermore, I believe in a consumers right to sue if they are harmed by a
companies misuse of data (Equifax).

Note these policies are very consumer oriented (i.e. it's illegal to put
Google Analytics on your site without notifying your users.)

What I'm very worried about is when a policy ends inadvertently fostering
centralization. For example, the government might require you to store private
user information with one of a set of vetted companies to prevent another
Equifax situation.

A better policy might be to allow consumers to sue firms for damages resulting
from negligence and prevent firms from forcing consumers into binding
arbitration.

> But what is it that you’d like to do with people’s private data that you’re
> worried will be prevented?

In my experience, medical innovation has stagnated because of unreasonable
data protection on the part of firms in reaction to government policy. For
example, I've had execs get cold feet on a project that would clearly save
lives and improve the bottom-line because there's a _perceived_ security loss.

While there are good arguments for these protections, my only point is that
regulation never comes for free: efficiency is inevitably lost somewhere, and
you need to be comfortable with the trade-off.

~~~
akoncius
“When I am about to engage with your service and you tell me you're going to
mine my data to sell me things or even improve my healthcare, it should be my
decision not the governments”

this part also is a problem - almost none of service providers EXPLICITLY
informs user about data collection. there are some obscure/abstract phrases
(if there are any) about increased quality of service and that’s it. For
example linkedin is collecting my contact information harvested via native app
without clear information where it will be used, so how I can make informed
decision whether I want to use this service or not?

government regulation could at least enforce some rules for clear
communication of infor collecting process or something like that.

------
0xcde4c3db
What are the odds that this regulation effort gets compromised into something
that is spun by politicians as a pro-consumer/citizen victory while also
digging Facebook's and Google's moats a bit deeper? Basically, something where
compliance is a small cost center for them, but a big hurdle for any would-be
competitor trying to scale up. This is a pattern I've definitely heard
discussed in the past, though I'm failing to come up with any concrete
examples.

~~~
mdpopescu
You can find some examples at [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture)

~~~
wallace_f
Have their been any attempts to outlaw regulatory capture?

Rant:

I can think of many more examples that are not on that list, and it seems like
a comprehensive list would be extremely exhausting. For example, in Seattle I
once needed access to a court hearing record, which Seattle law requires the
public have "reasonable" accesse to.

Instead of providing the records in a reasonable format, the audio was
recorded in a proprietary, non-open source format called "On the Record."
Getting and paying for not just the CD in person, but the player to work
required me to boot into Windows, and even then I still encountered bugs that
made life unreasonably difficult.

A child could easily record hearings with free software in mp3 format, host
them securely on the web, creating a lot of benefit and efficiency to society.

And that is all a good example to bring attention to a second point: when
people talk about ideas like income redistribution, jobs, and basic income,
they worry about "where will the wealth come from, and who will produce useful
value?" But come on, if we comb through the economy like a small business
owner would through his company, we'd find already an enormous amount of
people who aren't involved in producing anythint useful. Or in this case,
something useful, but ridiculously inefficient; and in other cases, things
which are detrimental to society. It's not uncommon to see on HN stories of
corruption, or even science which missrepresents truth.

------
tim333
I'm not sure what the answer is but something should be done about Facebook's
part in the problems in Myanmar.
([https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/business/facebook-
misinfo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/business/facebook-
misinformation-abroad.html))

~~~
partiallypro
Facebook isn't actively seeking to do this, people are just using the platform
to spread information. Sure, Facebook should and likely will crack down on
it...but I'd rather the governments not be involved in what can and can not be
allowed on Facebook/Online. People have done this sort of thing for ages,
Facebook is just the latest platform.

How are governments supposed to deem what's appropriate when -this very-
article states that the fake posts were shared by government accounts.

~~~
nrjames
When governments are using Facebook as a platform for disinformation
campaigns, other governments are going to have to get involved to regulate
usage. Facebook needs to find its moral compass very quickly.

~~~
partiallypro
So which government gets to decide which government is telling the truth or
not? Who is the moral arbiter? China? Iran? Russia? Just western countries?
Good luck. What will happen is a limit on free speech of individuals with no
qualms, and we all know it.

Facebook is comprised of people, all with moral compasses, but when your user
base is increasingly growing to be the entire population of earth...it's hard
to moderate. People act like Facebook, Google etc could just flip a magic
switch and instantly stop disinformation through social media, which is
virtually an impossible task.

On top of that, even if it -were- possible, you create moral hazards of who
decides what is real or isn't real...and if you had it over to world
governments, that's when you get into much deeper shit.

------
adventured
The way it's going to work is simple: Facebook will bleed engagement from
young demographics up, because it's inherently uncool after reaching max
audience. There's nothing Facebook can ever do about that.

The way max engagement & max audience works, is that once you hit that sort of
level, you have to kill or own every single new and or growing thing that ever
exists in that particular market, forever forward, or you lose engagement.
That's why Facebook has to try to take share from YouTube (Netflix, Hulu, et
al) on video with Watch.

If it hadn't been for Instagram, they'd be in big trouble already. One app
saved the day, for now. The next Instagram-size service they attempt to buy,
will likely fall under anti-trust review, and that will get worse by the year
going forward.

Once you max out on engagement and audience size, such as in the US market,
there's nowhere else to go but down unless you start taking from other very
big services. Facebook will start dropping little quadrants of engagement,
that other services will pick up / steal. Most of those will never threaten
the hyper network. Some of them will grow into substantial businesses the size
of a Yelp-type business, or a Snapchat or Twitter. It's the gradual
subdivision of Facebook; they'll never be able to buy enough Instagrams to
prevent it. And to be clear, this process won't kill Facebook.

Unlike search, social has numerous difficult human attributes to it, such as
being cool. Those attributes make it nearly impossible to maintain a permanent
position. Young people today do not like Facebook at all, they're reluctant
hostages to the monopoly for now. Then throw on top the increasing populist
anti-Facebook sentiment coursing through the culture, and sooner rather than
later Facebook will be unable to buy its way out of being uncool. Their
business will get three or four times larger yet, as they figure out ways to
ad-abuse their existing user base, while bleeding engagement out of the
younger demographics. Peak social monopoly has already been hit by Facebook.

~~~
gowld
Facebook beats that by buying every potential competitor.

~~~
adventured
They're not going to be able to do that.

Facebook wouldn't be allowed to buy either Snapchat or Twitter right now, it's
already past that point in the monopoly curve. They could have still purchased
Snapchat four or five years ago. Facebook of course is well aware of this. The
only means they have left to cut off the next social competitors, is to get
them extremely early, before regulatory authorities recognize an entity as a
serious competitor. In the next few years, just the behavior they demonstrated
in trying to kill Snapchat, is very likely to trigger Microsoft.v.Netscape-
like attention. Already, as the monopoly hysteria against them builds and
builds, what they did in attacking Snapchat will be held up as a prime
demonstration of anti-competitive behavior.

In fiscal 2018 they're going to be a ~$21 billion profit giant with
extraordinary influence over everything in the US. Their life gets a lot
harder from here forward, their monopoly is not squishy or vague, it's blatant
and easy to spot. Amazon is an ideal example of vague dominance, they dominate
ecommerce for now in the US (but still only with a ~40% share of that), but
you still have large, very legitimate competitors in retail such as Walmart
(~4x the retail sales of Amazon), Target, Costco, BestBuy, etc.

On the way up Google had Microsoft lording over tech, providing convenient
cover. Amazon has Walmart. Netflix has tons of competitors in video. Apple has
never been in a monopoly position outside of music. Oracle has Salesforce,
Microsoft, SAP, AWS and a dozen other relevant enterprise software companies.

Cisco and Intel are among the few long-term stable tech monopolies. They've
both operated under government watch for a long time. They're stuck in
sandboxes. Cisco can't buy Juniper, and Intel can't buy AMD. Both are also
gradually seeing their monopolies unwind or otherwise weaken. Microsoft is in
a similar position.

Facebook has Twitter and Snapchat in the US (to a lesser extent services like
Reddit, which is a minnow to Facebook), neither of which are growing much
these days (while Facebook's global scale continues to expand, slower now but
still).

If Facebook is smart they'll attempt to rapidly expand in all directions as
cover for their social monopoly, so they can pretend to have competition all
over the place.

------
olivermarks
"...shove Facebook to acknowledge and act on its responsibility as the most
powerful distributor of news and information on Earth."

'News' is highly problematic here. News is packaged information. FB segments
people into lots of distinct groupings and reinforces their belief patterns. I
don't believe many people go to FB for information or 'News'...they go there
for social reasons.

I have no desire to consume information packaged by Facebook and presented to
me as 'Facts'.

~~~
karllager
> most powerful distributor of news and information on Earth

Sandberg (somewhere else recently): "We are explicitly not a news company, we
are a tech company."

~~~
cbcoutinho
Similar to how the Daily Show and SNL are not news, but have precariously
fallen into a position of authenticity.

~~~
olivermarks
precariously or intentionally depending upon your level of paranoia....

------
boltzmannbrain
The scene today is reminiscent of Apple and illegal music downloads circa
2007:

> iPods were transactional products that could be filled with legal music,
> pirated music, podcasts, music of one’s own creation — it didn’t matter to
> anyone but the iPod’s owner. Apple sold a product that benefited from
> openness into a relatively lawless market and reaped the rewards [1].

Social media is largely a lawless market, and FB (amongst others) is reaping
the rewards. In the case of the iPod, government regulation was the bandaid,
and the cure was a new incumbent: streaming music services. Importantly,
streaming music was only afforded by advances in mobile/wifi tech. So how is
this like fake news in social media -- what are the analogies here? Again
we’ll see government regulation with minimal effect, as noted in this WSJ
article. And should there be a solution to FB’s propaganda problems, my bet is
it’ll come from a service that alters the means by which we share (social)
experiences online, just as the ability to stream music replaced the need to
download it. What's more, the solution will likely come from outside the walls
of FB.

FB will tread on though, just like Apple, by embracing the novel tech; the
iPod was supplanted by the iPhone, leveraging external streaming music
services like Spotify and Pandora. So it's not exactly "who will rein in FB?"
but rather "what". What technology will give us new means by which we interact
with social media? There are dozens of ideas, but the billion dollar one will
be that which eradicates the spread of propaganda, just as streaming services
eradicated the dependence on pirated music a decade ago.

[1] [https://stratechery.com/2017/apple-and-the-oak-
tree/](https://stratechery.com/2017/apple-and-the-oak-tree/)

~~~
boltzmannbrain
A main difference though is Apple saw illegal music downloading as a (read:
the) lifeblood of the iPod and didn't discourage it -- the iPod would not have
been a success without free music. FB however is attempting to thwart people
from using its platform for political agenda (or at least they make it seem),
while it's not necessarily illegal to post propaganda content.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _it 's not necessarily illegal to post propaganda content_

It’s very illegal for a foreign government to purchase political ads aimed at
Americans.

~~~
kaybe
Is it? Under whose laws? And who is allowed to purchase those? No foreigners
at all? What is a political ad? There are a lot of problems here.

------
amelius
I'm speculating the following will happen:

Some group of people will write an open-source library that will make it
possible to interface with Facebook in an unofficial way, e.g. through a
headless browser. Facebook will oppose this, but the creators of the library
will constantly update the library, and add AI to circumvent captchas and
things like that.

Using this library, other people will create applications to manage one's
Facebook data. At that point, users will have more complete control over their
own data. The applications will allow data to be exported to other, more open
services (a competing service could ask: "would you like to import from
Facebook?") And this will be the beginning of the end of Facebook.

~~~
saagarjha
I’m pretty sure Facebook would do a lot more to prevent third-party access
than put up a couple captchas. I wouldn’t be surprised by a cease-and-desist.

~~~
amelius
There's a tool called "youtube-dl" that does something similar for YouTube,
and it still exists.

It's not uploading to competing services though, but somebody could build it
on top of it.

~~~
saagarjha
I am sure that youtube-dl is against YouTube's terms of service, and the only
reason why Google hasn't gone after it is because:

1\. It's decentralized (i.e. anyone can just fork it and have a new working
copy)

2\. It's not worth going after, yet. Lawyers cost time and money.

youtube-dl is an excellent project but I'm pretty sure once #2 becomes true
they will receive a letter from Google's lawyers.

~~~
amelius
Ok, but can Facebook forbid me to export my _own_ data into a competing
service?

~~~
rrix2
If you reside in the EU they legally won't be allowed to starting next May.

~~~
amelius
Interesting. Does that also mean I can't import my bookmarks from Chrome into
Firefox, for example?

~~~
kakaorka
I think they meant that they legally won’t be allowed to forbid you from
exporting your data.

------
empath75
Facebook is eventually going to hurt its own reputation enough that people are
going to stop using the platform.

A social network/messaging app isn’t that hard to build and Facebook has been
building a lot of extra shit on top of it that people don’t really need.

~~~
jkeat
Any ideas out there on what could lead to a migration away from Facebook to
say, Mastodon? [0]

Facebook probably has the strongest network effect that’s ever existed.

[0] [https://mastodon.social/about](https://mastodon.social/about)

~~~
NoGravitas
Better to link to [https://joinmastodon.org/](https://joinmastodon.org/),
instead of to that one instance. Better to spread traffic around.

------
tscs37
Considering the ePrivacy Law and the GDPR in the EU both being on track for
becoming enforcing, I think the EU would be a good contender on reigning in
facebook.

The US seems largely content with making almost pyrrhic victories on this
front.

------
losteverything
Give me a photo sharing site that my kids use and I'm gone from FB.

Has to be easy-peasy. Clip save pics. No cloud crap. Open and see the latest
post. See others' comments. End

~~~
nradov
I don't understand. How can you share photos online with "no cloud crap"? It's
already pretty easy to set up your own private web server with photo gallery
software, but very few users want the hassle.

~~~
losteverything
I'm the voyeur.. Wishing to see what kids post (of their kids). And coworkers.
I have access to their cloud, dropbox, google, etc... But it's too hard and
more importantly not their platform of choice to share.

So FBs other stuff like news is not why we have FB. It's like turning in the
Today show and hearing Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley at 7am to see my family's
news, only. A morning habit. But i dont have to hear the news. Five minutes
and I'm done.

~~~
jsemrau
>I'm the voyeur.. Wishing to see what kids post (of their kids).

That sounds really creepy if you phrase it this way.

------
technotarek
I will. You will. Just quit.

------
phyller
From the article: “None of those ads on Facebook would have been very
effective if they said ‘paid for by Russia.’ ”

They wouldn't say that. Just like all other political ads they would be funded
through an organization with an appealing name, "Paid for by Americans for
Freedom and Justice"

------
dmitrykan
Any article that starts with biasing against some country (Russia, Iran,
Finland, whatever) discourages from reading it. Because the authors
unequivocally assume that guilt of a particular country is already a known
truth and hence does not need a separate discussion -- so we can safely plunge
into Facebook's issues of not being able to withstand such attacks.

So, sorry, not going to read the article.

~~~
yladiz
It's because the guilt of a particular country is a known truth, in this case
Russia interfering with the 2016 US presidential election, according to all US
intelligence officials when speaking on record. If you need a separate
discussion (because there have been many) pick any news organization from the
states and look up information about this topic.

~~~
dmitrykan
Like one Russian friend of mine joked: "if you need your tax system hacked,
let us know."

That it is published, does not necessarily mean, it is truth.

It is a long standing play: the farthest is likely an enemy. Likely, Chinese
hackers could do it or anybody who wanted to interfere. But if it was hacked,
shows something for the ability of each individual government to protect
themselves. Same is published of other, not only U.S., governments, like
Britain.

It far easier to claim a hack, than to acknowledge, that Trump was _actually_
voted for.

~~~
yladiz
Notice that I didn't say "hack", and much of the news doesn't focus on them
"hacking" the election in the sense that they altered the vote to get Trump
enough votes to win (I'm sure some have argued it but most sources deny that
widespread voter fraud or vote altering happened). By now it's accepted that
Trump did not win the popular vote but did win enough states to win the
election, just like in 2000. The focus is on disinformation instead, like ads
bought on Facebook, Twitter, etc., which has been shown to have happened.

~~~
dmitrykan
Information engineering, that is. In his book "Parting with illusions" V.
Pozner claims from journalist's experience: no matter what external propaganda
will do it can be neglected really. Because internal propaganda will beat it
in a big way.

------
veb
For those who want to read the article, one way you can do it is by posting it
into the Facebook search bar, and then clicking one of the results - this
bypasses the paywall.

Or by clicking here:
[https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...](https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fwho-
will-rein-in-facebook-challengers-are-lining-up-1509278405)

~~~
dredmorbius
[http://archive.is/PRdIN](http://archive.is/PRdIN)

------
quantumofmalice
Gab will.

Not because the current site is that good, but because Torba understands that
a blockchain based distributed social network that is able to compensate
content creators is the future:

[https://gab.ai/a/posts/13902759](https://gab.ai/a/posts/13902759)

and he has the money to support building it, with gab subscriptions providing
an infinite runway, the StartEngine 1M+ campaign, his legal warchest for the
fight w/ Google, etc.

~~~
jonknee
Did you read the article? It's not about competing social networks, it's about
regulators.

> Pressure is mounting, at home and abroad, from legislators, regulators and
> activists, all looking for various ways to nudge and, in some cases, shove
> Facebook to acknowledge and act on its responsibility as the most powerful
> distributor of news and information on Earth.

~~~
quantumofmalice
Right. I guess I should be more explicit in my prediction that the market will
move faster than the governments will.

I know that people here don't like Gab, but looking at it rationally they look
like the most likely challenger in that the leadership understands the coming
tech stack that will route around whatever governments and private consortiums
come up with, and they have the cash on hand and ideological commitment to do
it.

~~~
tstactplsignore
Dear lord, they have an image problem... I quickly checked the site and all of
the content they show on the front page (is this like an automated sampling of
recent posts?) is atrociously sexist and frankly really low bar content
intelligence-wise. (I guess you can find equally dumb stuff throughout the
twitterverse, but I can't believe they're using it to market on their
homepage) I'm surprised, I thought early adopters would be more thoughtful
silicon valley types. Can't see anyone I know switching to it any time soon.

~~~
quantumofmalice
Yeah, I agree. They need to have an ideological filter for the popular page
or, better, do something like an ideological page-rank algorithm so it can be
personalized. Right now it is pretty shocking content, a result of Gab's
commitment to free speech and the purging of the (alt) right on other social
media platforms.

------
darepublic
Traditional media, Democrats and leftist social justice types find a common
desire for censorship of the internet

------
WillReplyfFood
Facebook is humanitys ilusions of grandeur. Which makes it valuable for
advertisers.

All a competitor needs to do is to facilitate the grandeur to become real.

"Johnny read about your dream to make a wooden lifesized viking-boat, that you
share with 5 others in your area. Johnny is a skilled carpenter and willing to
train you, if you show him how to paraglide. Post the common learning
experience on Realbook, to show who you really are, who you want to be, what
mistakes happend. Others who tryied to build wooden boats, got stuck in there
projects here, here and here. Others that succeeded and could help you on as
mentors."

Of course, that would be a real positive thing for the users. Who in there
right mind would do such a thing?

Im pretty sure, SV is unable to do so, without trying to fire-sale humanity
goodness flavoured waver cookies.

~~~
LyndsySimon
Everyone wants to dream; few people want to put in the work necessary to make
them reality.

~~~
WillReplyfFood
More would- if it was publicly visible how much effort they put behind there
dreams..

