

VCs Privately Seethe Over Facebook’s New Direction - cwan
http://www.pehub.com/71029/vcs-privately-seethe-over-facebook-plans-“no-one-wants-to-moon-the-giant”/

======
jacquesm
This would have a lot more teeth in it if it were VCs backing facebook but
they are not, so what's there for them to seethe over, it's not exactly their
money.

They're anonymous as well, so it really doesn't carry much weight at all.

~~~
hga
If Facebook's ... posture poisons the Web 2.0 well, at worst case by prompting
heavy handed government intervention, then they have plenty to seethe over.

~~~
jacquesm
You mean like enacting privacy legislation? I'd see that as a positive move.

~~~
hga
You're assuming that any product of the US Congress (under either party) would
be an improvement over what we have now. I find your faith touching but
unrealistic.

E.g. has the law segregating the web into under and over 13 years of age
portions really improved anything
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act))?
Very possibly something needed to be done here, but from my perspective it's
shut out formal access to a lot of adolescents who need access to various
sites. Implicitly encouraging them to lie about their age is also not a good
thing.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm not American, but Dutch, and we already have such laws here and they
function pretty good.

~~~
hga
Well, that's my point (e.g. I knew you are European).

Something that works in your society and system of government might not work
in one that's significantly different. We have good evidence in many
directions, e.g. laws that don't really protect privacy, laws who's cure is
much worse than the disease and laws that only make privacy worse (e.g. Dodd's
bill as far as I've read accounts of it WRT to privacy), to make us leery of
anything but the most important and desperate privacy concerns. And I don't
think what Facebook is doing needs a government solution, I think we, the
society and the market, will work it out.

One question: do you have a law that requires government registration of
private databases about people? I know the U.K. did that.

~~~
jacquesm
I don't think so, I've been looking for a while now and I can't find a clear
statement that that is a requirement.

