
An apology for the internet from the people who built it - dschuetz
https://nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/an-apology-for-the-internet-from-the-people-who-built-it.html
======
everdev
It has nothing to do with the internet and everything to do with free speech
and it's boundaries. Do I have the right to misinform? To I have the right to
insult or bully? Am I liable if I say something that causes distress? An I
liable if my speech encourages or inspires a third party to break a law?

These questions have been around since the birth of free speech and have been
answered by many societies in very different ways. It's just accelerated and
amplified on the Internet.

~~~
cfadvan
_An I liable if my speech encourages or inspires a third party to break a
law?_

If that was your intent, then absolutely, legally at least you’re civilly and
criminally on the hook. See: inciting riot. Even it wasn’t your intent, if a
court finds that a reasonable person should have predicted the outcome, yes.
Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences or responsibility.

I realize that this may be unpalatable for some who’s idea or free speech
differs from the legal reality, so please understand that I’m just laying out
the legal landscape. You are of course, free to believe in whatever you wish
should be, I’m just addressing what is.

@Jack9

The solution to abuses of the law isn’t to throw out the law, but throw out
the abuse. I despise idealistic arguments that ignore the reality of daily
enforcement. Most people brought up on charges of assault and battery are not
being framed or railroaded, they committed assault and battery. The times when
those laws are abused need to be aggressively addressed, but not by attacking
the law in general unless it’s badly written.

For example, traffic and public order laws can be used to good effect, or to
harass a group of people. The problem isn’t that it’s wrong to have those
laws, but the underlying issues thst lead to people on the lower end of the
socioeconomic spectrum being disproportionately targeted, and then poorly
represented. It’s good that everyone can’t just parade through downtown every
rush hour, but bad when those same regulations are used as flimsy excuses to
deny people their right to assembly.

The real problems are more subtle and difficult to address than most people
understand or care to admit. There is no Platonic ideal of law or ideology
that can withstand human intentions and abuses. We need to focus less on
perfecting an imperfect system, and more on the underlying abuses. Otherwise
you get things that look good on paper, but are trivially subverted. In theory
the US president can’t declare war, but 17 years ago the US congress put the
US effectively in a state of perpetual war so they’re out of the intended
loop. Even before that how long was Vietnam a “police action?” exactly?

The systems have to be enacted by poeple, which is why putting decent people
with good intentions in charge is so very fucking important!

~~~
cortic
Its strange to have such a protection for the worst atrocities, (though people
tend to agree with you);

Imagine if the government did something so horrible, that just talking about
it would reasonably cause a riot... it would be illegal to talk about it. I
wonder if this limit could be extended to media (blurred as that definition is
now), so it would be illegal to report anything the government or large
corporations have done that might reasonably cause people to riot?

~~~
cfadvan
Talking about something upsetting is not inciting a riot, because reasonable
people don’t just burn shit down when they’re unhappy. Standing on a podium
and saying, “The police shot my son in cold blood, and we need to work to
change society,” is different from, “The police shot my son, burn it all
down!”

Marching against the Vietnam war isn’t the same as teaching people to make AP
explosives to drop in recruitment centers. Remember that the law isn’t code,
it’s not executed as written, but interpreted. Going back to the GP, “do I
have a right to misinform?” Yes you do, mostly. If you try to convince people
to take up arms and start burning shit down with misinformation though, the
game changes. “I believe the government is poisoning our children with
fluoride,” is protected. “The government is poisoning our children with
fluoride, so let’s go to the water treatment plant and kill everyone there!”
is not protected.

------
yawaramin
The article introduces an interesting guy:

> Antonio García Martínez, ad-tech entrepreneur. Helped create Facebook’s ad
> machine.

He puts in some good points in the first couple of sections about how the
internet was built on hippie good intentions, and how Wall St came in and made
it about money, but the really interesting thing is how in the next section,
about online ads and how they turned into a mass surveillance regime, he's
totally silent.

Makes me think this is a bit of a puff piece for these people, who were all
totally complacent at the time, speaking up now about how they went wrong,
except they have nothing to say about what they personally did.

This doesn't look much like an apology.

Edit: wow, here's another beauty from Garcia:

> The algorithm, by default, placates you by shielding you from the things you
> don’t want to hear about. That, to me, is the scary part. The real problem
> isn’t Facebook — it’s humans.

~~~
malvosenior
The internet was actually built on cold war ideas about how to survive and
communicate after a nuclear attack. Maybe you could make the case that
consumer computing was based on hippie ideals (Whole Earth Catalog...), but
the internet didn't get big until well after those thoughts had turned very
commercial.

~~~
nixpulvis
I think there's a key dostinction to be made here between the internet and the
WWW.

~~~
malvosenior
There are tons of distinctions to be made. The internet is comprised of a
multitude of protocols, applications and use cases. Blogs/newspapers like this
are different than social media, old school forums, apps, co-op games, p2p
file sharing, chat...

This is an overly broad and reactionary article that's trying to equate recent
outrage around FB with the internet as a whole.

~~~
originalsimba
"The Internet" is a buzzword, a marketing term, and so it means whatever it's
user wants it to mean, however:

Those of us who live and work on the internet, and who understand how a
distributed decentralized network functions, are going to hear "Internet" and
think "A decentralized computer network utilizing intelligent failover
routing, TCP/IP, Ethernet and Fiber".

Applications, protocols, these things ARE NOT the Internet. Applications and
protocols can function and exist with or without the internet. So you see they
are separate things.

TCP/IP is not "The Internet". Ethernet is not "The Internet". The Internet is
only the physical network that spans planet earth. It is the cables, the
equipment, the public address space, and perhaps even the people who keep it
all operational. _Nothing else is "The Internet"._

Here's the problem: _I_ know this. Other network engineers know this. 99% of
the population of the planet earth doesn't know this. We need to stop
tolerating crap like clickbait journalism that declares "Facebook == The
Internet". Those kinds of statements need to be shot down and destroyed
immediately, all of the time, so that people will learn fact from fiction.

------
pluto9
This is quite an impressive display of hubris for most of these people to
claim to have "built the internet". And of the fraction of them who have built
anything at all, most built things that were intentionally _designed_ to do
the things they're apologizing for now that the public has become annoyed by
them, so this "apology" rings hollow. This isn't a "sorry we did this"
apology. It's a "sorry you're mad about it" apology.

------
luckydude
I've been arguing with a friend of mine at Facebook about this. He's
unrepentant, thinks it's just advertising and it is fine. I disagree, it's an
advertising machine that is constantly looking over your shoulder and it
reinforces whatever bubble you happen to be in.

Here's a snippet of an email I sent him in this morning:

    
    
        Can you see how your attitude, if shared by the leaders
        at Facebook, is exactly why Facebook should get regulated?
        It's a my way or the highway, take no prisoners approach,
        and yeah, that will bring regulation.
    
        If your attitude was more like "yeah, I get it, it's a
        little creepy, we're trying to figure out a way to have a
        business model that works and isn't creepy" then perhaps
        you'd get to regulate yourself.
    
        The problem is that the lawmakers are clueless, you may
        well get some stupid draconian regulation that you really
        don't want.  If that happens, you are going to look back at
        these emails and go "welp, we blew it, this is our fault".

~~~
TAForObvReasons
> No one from Silicon Valley was held accountable …

This is the crux of the problem. Until there's any sort of real
accountability, the problems described in the article will persist. We can't
expect anyone to act ethically or care about anything other than profits out
of their own volition. It unfortunately has to be through regulations and
punishment.

~~~
Phenomenit
It feels like lately no one that has some money and power is held accountable
for anything in the US.

~~~
_jal
Yep. I can't rationally explain why I feel this way, but I feel like that
might be changing a little. The #MeToo things seems like a fore-shock of
sorts. Some very large names, and possibly institutions, appear to be about to
tumble under their corruption.

------
mindcrime
_McNamee: They’re basically trying to trigger fear and anger to get the
outrage cycle going, because outrage is what makes you be more deeply engaged.
You spend more time on the site and you share more stuff. Therefore, you’re
going to be exposed to more ads, and that makes you more valuable._

Ironically, this seems to be exactly what this article is trying to do - evoke
outrage.

~~~
dschuetz
It depends on how you read it. Contemplative readers might get upset too for a
bit, but then focus on the actual problem - how to fix it?

------
rgbrenner
As someone who doesnt use facebook at all, or ever... I'm getting tired of
this. The internet is not facebook. Facebook doesn't control you, and the
internet doesnt owe you an apology.

The internet is a fantastic invention, that has opened up opportunities all
over the world; has lessened communications costs drastically, and enabled
capabilities we have never had before.

If you are so outraged with facebook, stop going to it.

~~~
dschuetz
...and the article is not about Facebook.

~~~
rgbrenner
yes it is. It's 100% about facebook. Ads on the internet have been around for
25 years. Google alone has been selling ads for 18 years. What do you imagine
caused them to write this story 2 days after Zuckerbergs apology testimony to
congress?

~~~
nickbauman
Ads have never been used quite the way they have in 2016 on Facebook. The
network effects happen to be extremely strong for Facebook in particular but
it could have been any incumbent that was the platform of greatest damage.
Just because you don't use it doesn't mean we don't have a real problem here.

------
petermcneeley
"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I
come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you
of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no
sovereignty where we gather." — John Perry Barlow

If this is the founding computer visionary do we really have to wonder what
went wrong?

------
zamalek
Every invention has a dark side.

* The wheel: war machines.

* Writing: propaganda.

* Jewelry: diamond cartels.

* Internal combustion engine: pollution.

* Nuclear energy: nuclear weaponry.

* Wind turbines: dead birds.

* Cell phones: the death of social skills.

Pick any technology and you could probably find a way that it has caused
severe problems. It almost seems like a fundamental law of the universe.

The most incredible thing about the internet is that it works across vendors
and across countries. The concept of the entire human race coming together and
agreeing on a way to do things is excessively rare and the internet is an
example of that - the only example that I can think of right now. Despite all
the war, despite all the hatred, we can agree on internet protocols.

The internet is an incredible accomplishment and the creators should be proud.
Those who have soured it are responsible for the state it is in today, nobody
else.

~~~
rgbrenner
It's unfortunate this is downvoted because you're exactly right. Those
analogies are spot on.

This article blames the internet (a bigger, broader, very useful thing) for
the negative actions of specific companies (mostly facebook).. this is exactly
the same as blaming the wheel for war machines; or writing for propaganda.

Put the blame where it belongs. The internet owes no one an apology. Facebook
on the other hand...

------
malvosenior
> To keep the internet free — while becoming richer, faster, than anyone in
> history — the technological elite needed something to attract billions of
> users to the ads they were selling. And that something, it turns out, was
> outrage.

The technological elite are responsible for outrage culture? That's rich. It's
_old_ media that is packed, cover to cover with sensationalistic outrage
pieces (such as this one from nymag). Now, those articles may get shared
rapidly on social media but it's the traditional media that is their source.

The underlying tone of a lot of the outrage pieces is simple: our business
model and ability to gatekeep opinions is threatened by technology, and we
will spin every article to subtly attack that.

------
badcede
These windbags did not build the internet.

------
teleclimber
Note: misleading title. This is not about the internet, or the World Wide Web,
it's about Facebook and other social media networks. The very first sentences
seems to conflate internet and Facebook:

"Something has gone wrong with the internet. Even Mark Zuckerberg knows it.
Testifying before Congress, the Facebook CEO ticked off a list of everything
his platform has screwed up"

~~~
dschuetz
It's an interview, actually. The important part is below, where "the people
who built it" talk about what went wrong. It's about the Internet since the
beginning.

Instead of taking the actual title, I decided to use the title in the URL
which is more accurate.

~~~
teleclimber
The people who built it did not build the internet, they built the social
platforms and ad systems that run on top of the internet. The internet existed
long before these people built what they built.

~~~
dschuetz
Yes, we all know that. But how many users did the early Internet have, and how
many now? And who helped it grow? People like those who contemplate in the
interview.

~~~
rgbrenner
Facebook wasn't that early to the internet. When it opened for public access
in 2006, there were 1 billion internet users.

------
yosito
The author of this article needs to stay after class and write "Mark
Zuckerberg did not create the internet" 100 times on the blackboard.

~~~
ams6110
That point of view is what a lot of "typical" users of the internet think. The
internet is Facebook and Google and maybe Twitter. They don't separate the
network from those platforms. Some don't even have a clear idea that links
they follow from Facebook or Twitter lead to websites that are distinct from
those platforms.

~~~
dschuetz
...and they want the users to keep thinking that. The online ad industry is
awfully quiet, you do not hear or read anywhere how lucrative it is.

The users shall keep thinking that the Internet is for Facebook. The boards of
the online companies shall keep focusing on growth at all cost. That's what
the article actually says. And the interview below confirms it.

------
originalsimba
Facebook is not the internet, and Mr. Zuckerberg had literally _nothing to do
with building any single piece of the entire internet_.

The story is about Facebook and Zuckerberg and the headline is misleading.
More importantly, why are garbage stories from "journalists" who don't know
the material they're writing about ending up on HN?

~~~
18pfsmt
>More importantly, why are garbage stories from "journalists" who don't know
the material they're writing about ending up on HN?

I think the idea is that people here can deconstruct the post and point out
its flaws (as you started to in your first paragraph). Then other folks on the
web can link to them.

------
Mononokay
That's absolutely stupid - the internet's been the best thing to happen to the
earth in millennia, if not ever. Apologizing for it would be like apologizing
for modern medicine.

> Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit. Filed major gender-discrimination lawsuit
> against VC firm Kleiner Perkins.

> Can Duruk, programmer and tech writer. Served as project lead at Uber.

Ah. These people. Not sure what they've built, really. Certainly not the
internet. Pao certainly didn't build reddit, and I'm fairly sure Duruk didn't
build the first prototype of Uber.

> Richard Stallman, MIT programmer. Created legendary software GNU and Emacs.

First of all, it's not "GNU Plus Internet;" secondly, Stallman barely even
_uses_ the internet and even _stopped programming_ way before it was relevant.
GNU isn't software. I'm also 80% sure those quotes of him are fake.

~~~
malvosenior
Pao also _lost_ her discrimination suit. That fact is conveniently left out of
her history. I can claim anything I want but if a jury finds my claims to be
false, I don't know how that makes me some sort of expert (let alone someone
who "created" the internet).

------
nickbauman
The rise of White Supremacy makes total sense here when you consider that
racism is an effective system of oppression because it subjugates whites as
well as non-whites by sowing fear of downward mobility among the lighter
population while vilifying the disenfranchised.

If one is white and has problems, the goal is to hate these darker people that
can't really fight back. Allow the real exploiters a free hand.

~~~
nixpulvis
If your a shitty person maybe. While I feel your frustration, it's important
to stay grounded in the real world, where people are still more often good.

~~~
nickbauman
Not shitty, just very susceptible to being scared. Scared people are rarely
"good."

~~~
nixpulvis
If you hate because your scared you're shitty.

