
Regulate Facebook and Twitter? The Case Is Getting Stronger - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-14/regulating-facebook-twitter-and-instagram
======
throwawaysea
I would definitely not want the government to be able to control what
ideas/speech is allowed on these platforms and what isn't. Nor do I want a
single entity (as Facebook/Twitter exist today) to have that control. What we
need is more effective anti-trust legislation and enforcement, so that a
number of platforms can coexist and compete even though there is a strong
network effect to having a single platform.

I would also support laws requiring that these social media platforms a)
protect consumers' data b) don't censor beyond what the law requires
minimally. But it might be easier to go the competition route.

~~~
kodablah
> I would definitely not want the government to be able to control what
> ideas/speech is allowed on these platforms and what isn't. Nor do I want a
> single entity (as Facebook/Twitter exist today) to have that control.

I have come to the admittedly sad conclusion that you can't reside in the
middle here. I mean, you can idealistically, but slope will slide to one side
or the other in practice. At least at this time I think you can ask for
government interference or not. I would like to think that you could trust
each side to know its boundaries, as we see in other regulated industries, but
time has shown either side cannot. Which side would you want to give an inch
to, because a mile will be taken (or according to some doomsayers it already
has)?

~~~
kokokokoko
The US government has censored the broadcast media(tv, radio) since their
formation. So we do have some fairly solid evidence that the US government has
not wildly abused that power.

I'm not sure this has to be an all or nothing thing. We have some reasonable
protections built into the Constitution and case law that back that up.

I understand your hesitation about having the government involved as there are
plenty of examples of government influence on the media around the world. I
share the same fears.

With that said, do we really have any real world proof that the US government
in recent years has over stepped its boundaries in regards to media
restrictions?

~~~
kodablah
We don't all publish TV content. We can see from retransmission fees for over-
the-air content to the decimation of business models like Aereo what happens
when content is governed. I see the Aereo business model as very similar to
what's happening w/ article 13 in the EU right now.

But in general I don't think you can compare broadcast mediums to
bidirectional ones (e.g. words on the telephone or text on the internet).

~~~
pjc50
That's not really driven by the government so much as the media companies.

~~~
cobbzilla
Big media companies have weaponized the government to serve their interests,
it makes sense that social media companies will do the same.

They’ll write the rules together, make the barriers to entry even higher, and
pat each other on the back.

Then it’s on to the next moral panic, this one’s been fixed!

------
kauffj
As I posted previously when this topic came up
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19079526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19079526)),
it makes little sense to regulate these companies while there are still
federal laws on the books actively encouraging the centralization of big tech.
Quoting from that post:

Why not start with relaxing the federal laws which forbid the development of
third-party applications?

The limits on third-party apps are legal, not technical. It is not technically
challenging to build an application that collects Facebook credentials and
then presents alternative views and features. It could, for example, finally
be possible to see a time-ordered view of your friends' posts (Facebook
doesn't allow this since it reduces engagement).

The development of such applications would serve as a threat and check on the
market dominance of Facebook. A popular third-party application could consider
adding its own features that Facebook does not have. It would also reduce
Facebook's revenue.

What stops this? In the US, it is primarily the CFAA
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act)).
Once Facebook formally tells a company to stop accessing their servers, they
are in violation of federal law if they continue to do so.

It seems premature to pursue legal action while we still have federal laws
that encourage and cement the dominance of a single provider.

~~~
whatislovecraft
> It could, for example, finally be possible to see a time-ordered view of
> your friends' posts (Facebook doesn't allow this since it reduces
> engagement).

Am I missing something? This has always been a feature on Facebook right? I
might be crazy but I thought that this was the only way I've been using FB for
years. They call it "Most Recent" News Feed, isn't that the same as "time-
ordered"? I'm quite sure they more than "allow it", they spend significant
money on supporting it.

> It seems premature to pursue legal action while we still have federal laws
> that encourage and cement the dominance of a single provider.

Why? The laws are generally meant for different things (protecting
trademark/quality of service/etc issues, vs. destabilization of society by
having too much direct influence.

We can - and must - do more than 1 thing at at time, it's not premature to
take action on Thing A while Thing B is still in-progress.

------
danShumway
I honestly feel the opposite is true -- that the case was reasonably strong in
the past and it's gotten steadily weaker.

Go back 5-8 years ago, and I might have felt like Facebook and Twitter were
unstoppable monopolies. Nowadays I feel reasonably confident that post-
millennial generations are going to widely abandon Facebook. And I feel
reasonably confident that as Mastadon matures, it will take an increasingly
large amount of market share from Twitter.

Mastadon in particular is surprising to me, because I did not think it was
going to work. And sure, it's still minuscule right now, but I'm willing to
bet that usage is going to steadily trend upwards. Right now, you kind of need
to care a lot to switch to Mastadon, but there exists a tipping point where
the user base becomes big enough that for certain communities it makes sense
to just switch en-mass.

I think people underestimate how hard it is to get a small-to-medium number of
users to switch off of a network, and overestimate how hard it is to get
_everyone_ to switch off of a network.

I guess I'm willing to bet that the fake news/foreign bots panic will last
longer than those platforms, but I also can't think of how regulation is ever
going to fix that. Maybe in Europe, but in America 1st Amendment protections
are going to get in the way. Facebook has _more_ power to ban hate speech and
bots right now than it would if it were a public utility.

~~~
soziawa
> Nowadays I feel reasonably confident that post-millennial generations are
> going to widely abandon Facebook.

You are probably forgetting Instagram and WhatsApp which completely dominate
the respective market. There is literally no competition for Facebook at all.

~~~
danShumway
That is a very good point.

I'm not sure I agree that those apps are untouchable, but I would agree that
Facebook as a company is in a much stronger position than Facebook as an
individual product, and the company is probably a long ways from going away.

------
max76
I'm disappointed that Bloomberg published an article that points out all of
the problems with unregulated social media but doesn't purpose specific
regulations that could be helpful for most of the problems they point out.

What can the goverment do to help prevent foreign interference with domestic
elections via social media? If Facebook is a natural monopoly what regulations
would make it's use more fair? They suggest a user's bill of rights, but only
one item that would fit in it. A bill of rights naturally would include
multiple items. To make matters worse the ToS lets users know how their data
might be used which is the only item suggested for the user's bill of rights.

All companies in the United States are subject to a barrage of regulations. In
my opinion some are good and some aren't. Purposing more regulations without
the details of what those regulations are is like a blank check.

~~~
joe_the_user
The thing is that deciding how to regulate social media is extremely
difficult. So someone arguing for such regulation can't begin by saying what
they want. They have to take a broad "it should be regulated" "look how
terrible, can't we DO SOMETHING??" sort of approach. Then argue regulation
isn't bad by looking at different examples.

Only once there's a huge ground swell can specific proposals be laid down.

But all this is makes it sound like a giant power grab. And yes, that's what
I'd call it. Not because all regulation is bad but because this particular
thing is far outside the purview of the Federal Government.

~~~
philpem
I think I'd start with forcing advertising transparency on any social network
(and probably search engines too -- actually, make that any site with
advertising).

And then force any company paying for political advertising to list every
single one of their donors publicly. Chuck an unlimited personal liability
clause in there for the company directors, so they can't just wind the company
up to avoid any fines.

------
avar
The president of the US uses Twitter to make statements to the public, and so
do a lot of other officials.

So the argument that it's a purely private platform is getting harder to make
than just the Facebook use-case where "all my friends use it", which you could
also say about iPhones, or Coca-Cola. Should a private company be allowed to
ban you from what's becoming a de-facto platform for interacting with
officials?

But the article lazily likes to pretend that this problem could be solved
within the borders of the US with proposed FCC regulation. That still leaves
the most interesting problem, which is how are we going to square the free and
open Internet with the interests of nation states and their individual
citizens.

There's complaints about Russian election interference. But right now US-
sponsored election interference is happening in Venezuela via Twitter. What's
to be done about cases like those? Is Venezuela's only recourse going to be to
ban Twitter?

~~~
datenhorst
> But right now US-sponsored election interference is happening in Venezuela
> via Twitter.

Do you have a source for that?

~~~
docbrown
Not sure on his source or argument but my guess would be accounts advocating
for Maduro to be displaced by Guaido. If you look at it from that POV, you
will clearly see how Twitter is playing a vital part in an US-backed coup
against the Venezuelan people because currently, Maduro still has support from
some of his allies and from his own military. [1] These are mucky waters to
wonder through.

1: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-aid-
id...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-aid-
idUSKCN1Q325K)

------
athenot
The downside with this is the "regulatory moat". If this hypothetical
regulation becomes hard to meet, then only a few companies are able to comply
with it and it inadvertently reinforces their position.

What I would like to see is a requirement for platforms to be open, so they
can't take data and networks of people hostage by locking things down. An
analog is portability of healthcare data: one hospital or EMR vendor can't
lock up data for themselves, they must make it open to others (though they
still drag their feet and don't always make it convenient).

~~~
chillacy
This tends to be the bargain for natural monopolies. You’re limited by
regulation but you basically cease to have competition (like.. Comcast).

------
sovietmudkipz
I get uncomfortable with this line of thought. I would much rather let the
market produce alternatives products when companies do things customers object
to.

The best thing about the internet is that it is so easy for another product to
spring up to serve a new need or compete with ensconced businesses.

Regulations increase cost of business and dissuades other companies from
competing.

~~~
scarface74
It's surprising to see how much many posters on HN want more government
regulation over a tech company.

It's about how so many are in favor of "taxing the rich", not realizing that
to Middle America with an average household income of $70K, if you make over
six figures, you are "the rich".

And from the political skew of HN, I wonder how many actually trust _this_
government with more power?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
The problem is, right now _Facebook and Twitter_ have significant power. And
the question is whether or not you trust the government, but which you trust
_more_ : A company with a slogan of "move fast and break things", or a
bureaucracy purpose-built to move very slowly and purposefully.

~~~
Frondo
It's not just a bureaucracy built to move slowly and purposefully, it's one
that we all, by design, have a say in operating.

Don't like how Facebook runs its data collection on you whether you have an
account or not? Tough. There's no, and will never be, a town hall for
Facebook.

Don't like how the county runs its health services departments? Well, you can
show up at county council meetings, you can get involved politically, you can
vote, etc.

Fundamental difference.

~~~
scarface74
Theoretically, yes.

But if you live in a larger state like California, you have much less say in
the federal government on a per capita basis than someone who lives in Rhode
Island between the Senste (2 senators per state regardless of population) and
the electoral college, not to mention gerrymandering.

------
jimkleiber
I would prefer that tech companies come up with solutions to these problems
and therefore not require law to try to solve them. And yet, I think
regulations are often a sign that an industry had conflicts and just kept
avoiding the issues, so people got tired of waiting.

I personally am tired of watching Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others give
the impression that they didn't know fake accounts were being used to
manipulate the actions of individuals--either to hate someone, vote against
someone, send money, download a virus--as this seems to be the storied history
of spam. I'm tired of interacting with someone who appears real but may be
fabricated to trick me into doing something. This problem is not slowing down,
as the This Person Does Not Exist site showed us the other day here.

I yearn for the tech company that creates a platform where I interact with
people who are verified to be who they say they are. Please, tech companies,
let people verify their accounts. Let the overall verified users on your
platform increase. Please do something before regulators step in so that they
don't believe they have to.

~~~
pixl97
How do you verify a user in the age of identity theft, across all nations on
the platform?

And how do you stop retaliation against non-popular options, like
homosexuality in particular countries?

------
imh
As someone who doesn't use Facebook, Twitter, or their subsidiaries, the
debate is kinda laughable. Sure break them up for antitrust. Write privacy
regulation. But regulating the content shared there? If you don't like it,
it's so easy to opt out, and it feels great. People write like these are
utilities necessary for a good life, which sounds crazy from the outside.

------
desc
Trusting any government to regulate massively-powerful information clearing
houses is a mistake, because they will inevitably, eventually, and maybe even
(best case) unintentionally abuse it for their own ends, as history has
demonstrated.

Trusting those clearing houses to regulate themselves is a mistake, because
they have already abused their power for their own ends (profit).

We should never _trust_ any organisation to work against its own interests or
those of its members. They must all be required to be utterly transparent in
relevant actions and reasoning behind those actions.

------
tracker1
I think it might become necessary to create an antitrust class for effective
media monopolies like twitter and facebook, as well as financial institutions
(paypal, mastercard, etc) that includes provisions for aknowledging and
preserving first amendment rights.

While nobody likes speech that they don't agree with, or feel is vitriolic
against one's own ideology, it's exactly that speech which needs to be
protected. PC outrage is maximizing online censorship in ways that should send
chills down anyone's spine.

~~~
tracker1
Perhaps something along the lines of, "Any company with more than 5 (or 10?)
million monthly users in the system," as a baseline for provisions regarding
protected speech. I don't like censorship in general, but can respect those
that would want to build smaller communities with proactive moderation vs the
likes of twitter/facebook etc with very little effective moderation in
practice.

Also, similar provisions ensuring that policies against classes of speech are
used regardless of backing ideology.

------
imgabe
> Everyone now knows that foreign governments, most notably Russia, have been
> using social media aggressively to promote their interests.

And if _anyone_ is going to be using social media to manipulate public opinion
in the US, it should be the _US_ government, goddamnit!

~~~
ForHackernews
Maybe, yeah. I'm not a cultural relativist: Democracies are better than
dictatorships; freedom of expression is better than repression; pluralism is
better than chauvinism.

Every major technology platform in the West exists as result of small-l
liberal enlightenment values. Maybe I wouldn't name the current United States
as my ideal champion for those values, but I don't have any problem with the
general suggestion that Western tech companies should be promoting liberal
values around the world.

~~~
zaarn
If a single corporation can control the primary means of communication and
only allows "corporate-sanctioned" messages, then we will no longer be a
democracy in any meaningful sense.

Yes, maybe that is alarmist, after all they are only concerned about corporate
influence, but this isn't the first time in Facebook history where you could
just accuse someone of being a bot to shut them up if you don't like what they
say.

------
rdiddly
_" If federal officials are going to regulate social media, they should be
independent of the president."_

You're in luck, the legislature (where regulations are supposed to come from)
is a whole separate branch from the President. Any time you've got the
executive branch handling it, the President is in charge of it.

~~~
dantheman
Except that the legislature writes general polices and defers to the executive
to work out the specifics.

------
Illniyar
That sounds like a minefield. How do you regulate a service where two people
from different countries can interact? Which countriy's law should be followed
when a person from country Y posts on a feed from country X? What if the laws
contradict eachother?

Multinationals had to deal with multiple regulations before, but most time
that was solved by using the visitor's residency, but that might not be so
clear cut when we are talking about social networks.

~~~
ilovetux
A good example to watch is with the ramifications of the GDPR playing out in
the EU. I'm still not sure how I feel about the actual wording and effects of
the GDPR, but it does provide a test-bed of sorts.

------
SketchySeaBeast
> If federal officials are going to regulate social media, they should be
> independent of the president. The simplest course would be to give new
> authority to the FCC rather than to a whole new agency, though the latter
> option also deserves consideration.

I was just thinking I hadn't seen a picture of Ajit Pai's ridiculous coffee
mug for like 15 minutes now.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
His coffee mug (or something equally ridiculous), would not be out of place in
a Silicon Valley office of any kind. Is his coffee mug your objection, or do
you dislike the man (and his political views), and hence, ridicule everything
about him as an ad hominem sort of attack?

I find this very irritating, and we see it also with Donald Trump, where it
suddenly becomes okay to body shame someone, make suggestive comments about
their relationship with their wife or children, or attack them in other ways
unrelated to their politics, because of their politics. I wouldn't say I'm a
fan of either individual by any means, but I think we should aim to do much
better, especially here on HN. Can we talk about a corporate-owned bureaucrat
and an incompetent president as a corporate-owned bureaucrat and an
incompetent president?

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I apologize for Reese shaming. I think there's a difference between body
shaming and making light of someone's obviously deliberately chosen self
image.

~~~
PavlovsCat
In context of the criticisms of these people (and more importantly, the
interests they represent) that actually matter, they are functionally the
same, silly distractions. Ocdtrekkie didn't equate bringing up that cup with
body shaming, they simply mentioned that as another result of what I would
call the same inability to be serious, even about fires that are still raging,
causing suffering, and for which we have no answer and no plan. It's like some
kind of pressure release valve I guess, and IMO that pressure needs to find a
better route.

------
prepend
I think regulating Google is more important. Sure social media has a lot of
noise, but Search is actual reality. Google’s potential to shape worldview and
commerce based on search result would have much greater impact from
regulation.

Imagine a single company selling 90% of all tv ads in the country? Or a single
company selling 90% of all the ads in newspapers.

------
kethinov
I would go much further. Break up Twitter into a bunch of Mastodon instances.
Break up Facebook into a bunch of Diaspora instances. The internet should be
open. Imagine if email or HTTP was proprietary like Facebook and Twitter are.
This is a nightmare and we should end it.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> Imagine if email or HTTP was proprietary like Facebook and Twitter are. This
> is a nightmare and we should end it.

Email is a means of communication, twitter is a platform. Anyone is free to
implement a 140 character messaging service, the only problem is that these
particular social media platforms have gotten monstrous. I don't like them,
but the comparison between HTTP and Facebook doesn't seem right.

~~~
kethinov
What is classified as a "means of communication" or a "public utility" and
what is "a platform" is itself language that is a consequence of political
conditions. If HTTP or email were proprietary and owned by a single entity,
they would refer to their ownership of it as "a platform" just as Facebook and
Twitter do now. There is no technical reason these services cannot be reduced
to mere "means of communication" or a "public utility" by means of breaking
them up into separate services that are forced to federate with each other
over a common protocol, e.g. Mastodon/Diaspora.

------
exodust
I hope the future is one where you can pack up your social profile and move it
to another service provider, or host it yourself. All without any of your
contacts, friends and associates knowing or caring which service provider or
host your profile is on.

Just like telcos are now. Keep your phone number and move to another provider.

In other words, running with the grain of how the open web works best, rather
than against it. Until that happens, I will never join FB or any other walled
junkyard.

------
mattbeckman
Decentralized social networks are a thing, and will become a much bigger
thing, fueled by the catalyst of the aforementioned monarchs of social media
taking things way too far.

------
pcstl
Allowing the government to regulate Facebook and Twitter is opening a door for
the government to claim it has the legal right to regulate anything on the
Internet. While Facebook and Twitter indeed might be used for nefarious
things, dissidents and social activists depend on the unruly nature of the
Internet for a lot of their operation. You can have both or none.

------
Animats
Regulate content, no. Break up de-facto monopolies, yes. Facebook should be
forced to sell off Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp, for starters.

~~~
civicsquid
Not agreeing or disagreeing, but I don't think Snapchat is owned by Facebook.

~~~
Animats
Right; Facebook tried, but failed.

------
dontbenebby
I thought this was going to be an article about corporate taxes (or lack
thereof).

So now we're going to introduce the perilous hand of federal invention, and
it's not to make gigantic companies pay their fair share, but to stifle
speech?

------
ArtDev
There are serious consumer protection issues that need to be addressed. Laws
establish individuals rights and individual freedoms. We need some good well-
written laws by people who know what they are talking about.

------
pochamago
I don't understand how Twitter and Facebook can simultaneously be accused of
Monopoly. They're competitors in the same market

------
bargl
I struggle with this concept. One of my problems with these platforms is that
de-platforming someone can be argued to be a violation of free speech (there
are valid counter arguments as well). I don't know how to solve that because I
think that no one forces news papers to accept articles from people they think
are crazy.

Can we separate the "data storage" at this scale from the message delivery.
Where de-platforming someone doesn't mean losing your hosting of the videos
but instead pushes you to a fringe "subscription and recommendation" tool?

This is a massive hand waiving over simplification so please correct gross
assumptions I'm making here.

Youtube has services that could be broken into separate "categories" if you
would. Platform to post videos. Platform to subscribe to videos. Platform for
recommendations of videos. Platform with "top" videos as watched by everyone.

Then you've got Google Search which doesn't control the data but caches it and
it has a database of the inter-relationships between sites and you and can
recommend sites to you. Up until they started customizing data to a user I'd
say there was only one issue here. But now that they customize, you actually
have two sets of data in search. Your data. The Internet's interconnected
relationships.

I don't know how you break this data apart in a reasonable way. I mean Google
did create all of it or buy a platform and expand it in the case of YouTube.
They deserve to be rewarded for their innovation (obviously my opinion) but we
need an equal ability to compete.

I am obviously concerned when you can be "de-platformed" for a TOS violation
and silenced. Especially when some of these platforms are so ubiquitous that
being de-platformed from them all could completely silence an individual. But
at the same time a company should have the right to choose who their customers
are if there aren't fair regulations that address this.

So it's complicated and I think this sort of thing deserves a lot of
conversation. I still think action isn't appropriate because if we did have
twitter owned by the government we'd also need to keep free speech on there.
It'd have to get a court order for data to come down as libel or something
similar.

~~~
dalbasal
_I don 't know how to solve that because I think that no one forces newspapers
to accept articles from people they think are crazy._

I don't think this is tangential... I don't think this necessarily resolves to
a perfectly fundamental principle, in a philosophically loophole-free way.
Maybe a newspaper isn't a good analogy.

Here's one example. A large portion of elected officials around the world
communicates with (and mostly to) their electorate mostly on social media. It
is how they get elected, argue positions, etc. The argument (I'm not sure I
agree, but I think there's an argument) is that twitter, fb, etc have crossed
some sort of the threshold where there is a lot at stake.

~~~
bargl
This is a good point. I think some people treat facebook and twitter as their
main news source which is why I drew that correlation.

The twitter blast out by politicians is a new thing, that hasn't really
existed before from what I can see. It's common to try to draw a parallel to
something that arleady exists (like I did). I think you're right that my
example was a miss.

~~~
dalbasal
Cheers bargl.

I don't think it is a clear miss. The way we think of law, and right-and-wrong
generally, tends to be principled. Rules and laws as embodiments of abstract
principles that are consistently true.

That's what the analogy does is check for inconsistencies. That's what lawyers
do, argue by analogy. High judges can invalidate laws if they create
inconsistencies.

But... the laws aren't really abstract truths. They tend to be point solutions
to specific problems.

Social media has created new realities that just didn't exist in as meaningful
a firm before.

Personally, I'm happy that proprietary social media platforms just get
replaced by open platforms a la WWW or email. There's no real reason to have a
multi billion dollar company behind twitter, text messaging and such.

That'd make the choice between bureaucratic or monopolistic control moot.

------
eachro
Suppose Facebook or Twitter were incorporated as a non-US company. Would the
US gov still be able to regulate them?

~~~
rgarrett88
Can Europe regulate google?

------
airocker
How about Google? Force them to give us a search engine for 50$ a month and
Android for 100$ a piece?

~~~
ucaetano
How do you force someone to sell you a product they don't sell?

~~~
airocker
What they sell should not be saleable?

~~~
ucaetano
What do you mean? Are you suggesting we force Google to offer a paid version?

"Law number XXXX: Google must offer a paid version of its search engine to end
users".

~~~
pixl97
Why not law YYYY, you cannot own the search engine, video distribution
platform _and_ ad platform at the same time. The ad platform must be spun off
as a separate non-colluding entity.

~~~
ucaetano
"non-colluding entity"

Colluding? What the heck are you talking about?

------
ucaetano
It's an opinion piece, not a news article, keep that in mind.

------
rblion
How exactly could they be regulated?

~~~
justinmchase
With a law.

Perhaps one saying that they cannot ban or block anybody or their content,
except for content already deemed illegal by a governing body or upon receipt
of a court order.

------
bad_user
The case is getting stronger for a balkanization of the Internet.

I don’t want the US or the UK to censorship my Internet, any more than I want
China.

It’s bad enough that nudes are being censored due to US companies pushing the
US conservative Christian values on the rest of the world, while violence gets
a free pass.

Also do you really think that the fake news promoting Trump or Brexit would
get censored? That would be so extremely naive.

------
carrja99
Yes.

