
Silicon Valley's Regulatory Exceptionalism Comes to an End - raleighm
https://www.lawfareblog.com/silicon-valleys-regulatory-exceptionalism-comes-end
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
A few things happened that made this possible.

1)Silicon Valley surrendered the high ground in terms of free speech. In the
past, Silicon Valley at least used to preach a near absolute commitment to
free speech. Now, they don't anymore.

2) Consolidation of content. Before, the internet was very distributed. Number
of nights a 1000 poeple might regularly visit could be in the thousands. Now,
a significant number of people just visit Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or one
of a maybe a dozen top sites. This makes enforcing regulations much easier.

3) Silicon Valley managed to pull off the near impossible feat of angering
both sides of the political spectrum at the same time. The left was angered by
the perception that the tech companies', especially Facebook's lackluster
enforcement of policies allowed Donald Trump to be selected President. The
right was angered by the apparent enforcement of political correctness at the
expense of free speech. In addition, it became clear with this election that
many in silicon valley despised the Right. Thus, Silicon Valley was left with
few defenders.

4) Governments realize how disruptive tech can be to entrenched power
structures. Things like the Arab Spring, Brexit, Donald Trump's election would
have been much more difficult without the Internet and social media in partiy.
The powerful across the gloves in China, Russia, EU, and now the United States
have realized that an uncontrolled Internet can be a huge danger to their
ongoing status.

Put all these together and it is very likely that this is just the first wave
of further regulation of Silicon Valley.

~~~
Sangermaine
This comment is almost a parody of Hacker News comments:

"The evil statists are only bringing down the hammer because the glorious
technologists DARED to threaten their power!"

The reality is that what's driving this is the end of the honeymoon phase with
tech. There used to be a general sense of trust in the big tech companies.
People could take Google's "Don't Be Evil" stance seriously. This very comment
has this view as its unspoken premise, that the tech companies are good and
glorious and it's outside forces that are harmful and want to suppress them.
As a result, they were treated with a special hands-off approach in most
areas.

It was the tech companies themselves that eroded that trust over the last
decade + through their behavior and interaction with people. As a result,
there's no longer that store of goodwill and a willingness to extend them
special treatment, so now they get treated like every other company.

Because, of course, whatever they tried to sell the world, they WERE just like
any other company the whole time. They just had a shinier surface.

~~~
Erlangolem
You say parody, I say honest representation voted to the top of the page, on
article that was knocked off the front page by flagging or mods. Part of the
problem is that quite a few people here are representative of the broader
industry which is full of young people who think the last decade and half are
just how the world works. These are the people who look at all progress as
though it must conform to Moore’s Law, and think the unregulated free-for-all
of their industry so far is just how it is.

Reality is slow to catch up to new things, but it is utterly inevitable.

------
gfodor
Now that these centralized companies are in positions of power, regulation is
actually a favorable position for them in a lot of cases since they will have
the leverage to influence the regulations in their favor. This could lead to
regulations that cement them as condoned monopolies or institute regulatory
burdens that effectively cut off the ability for new entrants to even emerge
in the first place.

Thank goodness that we are close to having the tools we need to decentralize a
broad array of the applications we use the internet for today. If anything the
introduction of regulation will accelerate this -- it's certainly easy to
imagine a decentralized Facebook and Twitter that is immune to any form of
government control beyond shutting down access to the Internet itself.
Hopefully the idea of regulating online discussion and sharing on social media
will soon be as absurd a proposition as trying to regulate the web as a whole.

~~~
Analemma_
> Thank goodness that we are close to having the tools we need to decentralize
> a broad array of the applications we use the internet for today.

Having the tools has never been the problem, getting people to use them is.
You don't know the meaning of the words "total, utter disinterest" until
you've tried to convince a non-technical person to use a federated alternative
to Facebook.

~~~
gfodor
By "the tools" I mean in part "a way for there to be strong economic
incentives and funding mechanisms" which I think is a relatively new
phenomenon.

Good design costs money because most people won't do it for free (as they
would do other things as evidenced by OSS out there today.) The fact someone
can run an ICO to fund the development of a well designed decentralized
Facebook that once launched is effectively self-sustaining is encouraging.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
Or even a Patreon to maintain a Mastodon instance

------
Notorious_BLT
Including Apple's encryption in the list of reasons SV is going to be
regulated is a strange decision. I certainly hope people don't look forward to
regulation that leads to LESS encryption.

~~~
giobox
I think its a great one to include, and absolutely belongs in this article. Of
course very few well-informed readers here will agree with the stance, but
there's no escaping that politically this has been an enormous issue in the US
and other countries like the UK. This really rose to the fore in the heated
exchange between the FBI and Apple over access to the San Bernadino shooter's
iPhone.

If the FBI hadn't found an alternate route to the contents of that phone, it's
very possible Apple would have been forced into a high stakes legal battle
with the FBI, and subsequently could have triggered a draconian legislative
response. The seriousness with which Tim Cook took the issue and his highly
public responses at the time is testament to how badly (for encryption
advocates) that could have turned out. The FBI are still very publicly
criticizing Apple's stance recently too.

There are no shortage of politicians out there who see things like mandated
back doors for law enforcement as a great idea, and all it will take is the
next San Bernadino style stand-off to throw this thing back into the public
consciousness. I strongly believe proposals to regulate encryption on consumer
devices will absolutely rear their ugly head again in the future. Encryption
technology had a long history of legal regulation too, wasn't really until the
Clinton administration that much of this was rolled back.

>
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars)

------
adventured
We should be more broad about it. The tech industry regulatory exceptionalism
ended with Microsoft in 2000.

Or did it end with Intel? They spent the entire 1990s holding a regulatory &
anti-trust settlement party. [1]

Or did it end with the 12 years of anti-trust pursuit of IBM?

There's actually nothing new going on here. The new titans, the same as the
old titans, running up against cultural and political fears of unchecked
power.

[1] [https://www.networkworld.com/article/2239461/data-
center/int...](https://www.networkworld.com/article/2239461/data-center/intel-
and-antitrust--a-brief-history.html)

------
HillaryBriss
"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made clear that the company has finally accepted
responsibility for making sure that the platform isn’t used to undermine
political processes around the world"

I recall that during the "Arab Spring" Facebook was heralded as a force for
good precisely because it _did_ undermine political processes (if those
processes were considered to be authoritarian/tyrannical by the US
government).

~~~
mrtksn
Completely agree and this is one of my primary reasons to believe that the
social media will be regulated globally with each country following some
flavour of the China route.

At the status quo, any politician is at risk of being killed by an angry mob
just like Gaddafi if they fail to outbid their opponents. CA showed us that by
profiling users it's possible to skew the perception of the public on issues
in dramatic ways that are not necessarily in line with the truth at all.

Unlike mass media propaganda, the validity of these messages are not discussed
because everyone gets a different message. Even if you try to outbid your
opponent, it may not help without reverse engineering their propaganda
algorithm.

Even if the Arab spring was an organic outcome, there's no reason why you
can't achieve the same effect with bots, data and a creative team of
copywriters and graphic artist.

------
forapurpose
IMHO: What happened since John Perry Barlow's statement is that the Internet
shifted from a technological and social experiment[0] to an extremely high
value asset that attracts powerful actors.

In the former state, ethics and good faith suffice. John Postel could hand out
IP addresses, and people followed his lead to 'be conservative in what you
send, liberal in what you accept'. Forums like Usenet were a small group of
geeks - read the Etiquette FAQ, and just don't be an a __hole. 'Assume good
faith' is a guideline somewhere (I forget where). But when there is a high
value asset to be had, the economics of money and power take over. There are
bad people who will ignore all ethics and public good and take every advantage
they can, driving their competition to do the same in order to survive.

When Facebook was a bunch of college friends sharing stories and pictures,
those people didn't care. When it's a way to exert unprecedented influence on
the public, that gets intense attention from government propaganda operations
and their corporate counterparts. It was predictable that it would happen.

In the latter environment, 'don't be an a __hole ' doesn't work any more; I
don't think Putin read the Usenet Etiquette FAQ (and his people read the HN
guidelines only to find a way to use them to their advantage). Regulations
become necessary to protect the weak and all of society from bad actors.

[0] There's probably a better way to conceptualize it, but I can't think of it
right this moment.

------
Erlangolem
Silicon Valley, and software engineering in general needs regulation, but it
also needs to regulate itself. The whole Libertarian wet dream is fine when
you’re in college, less so when you’re building self-driving cars or
surveillance networks. The lack of enforced ethical standards has always been
problematic, but now it’s getting dangerous.

Once you’re involved in everything from healthcare, and automobiles, to drone
strikes, you’re sll grown up and the training wheels need to die. The
alternative is that this pressure continues to build and the public demands
extreme regulation without understanding what they’re regulsting.

Tl;dr grow up, or they’ll come for the good (encryption) along with the bad
(carelessness with human lives a la Uber).

