
Zuckerberg’s Rules Would Hurt Everyone but Facebook - howard941
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-02/zuckerberg-op-ed-new-rules-would-hurt-everyone-but-facebook
======
gopher2
> Facebook exacerbates poisonous politics by creating filter bubbles of like-
> minded partisans, spreading hoaxes and inaccuracies, inducing anxiety and
> paranoia, rewarding clickbait and outrage, and so on

The irony is that the media is doing this now, with respect to anything
related to Facebook. Facebook is a website with 99.9% benign user generated
content. The news media has been spreading outrage and paranoia and trying to
get 'engagement' since before Facebook was born.

~~~
bshipp
That's a little disingenous. No doubt you are correct that 99.9% of the user-
generated content is benign, but that 99.9% of user-generated content would
likely not represent 99.9% of viewer traffic.

If only 0.01% of toxic content by terms of volume is receiving
disproportionate attention and focus, not only permissible but actively
encouraged by complex opaque algorithms, then it is certainly a much bigger
problem then it's meagre character count would otherwise suggest.

~~~
stickfigure
I'm puzzled why Facebook is getting the blame here. If you are seeing toxic
content in your feed, it's because your friends put it there. It's not
Facebook's fault that _your friends suck_.

~~~
smt88
No. The most toxic content is often comments, which are shown to me even when
I don't want to see them.

If it weren't for comments from non-friends, Facebook would have no toxic
content for me at all.

~~~
gscott
If you go to the persons profile and click unfollow then you won't see their
comments on posts that are now yours.

~~~
smt88
I can't do that with billions of users. I'm saying that I'm shown comments by
complete strangers on every post that shows up in my news feed. There's no way
to turn that off.

Facebook was great until it started inserting posts from people I didn't
explicit whitelist as friends, and I'm including news articles in that
category.

~~~
gscott
You must have your privacy settings to "World" change it to friends or maybe
Friends and Friends of Friends and you will be better off. Sometimes when I
want to say something on a subject I will go to Facebook and do a search on
that subject and post on World readable posts with the opposite opinion of my
own.

------
pliny
>Inviting the government to arbitrate what qualifies as “harmful” speech is a
legal and ethical minefield, while establishing a third-party system to do the
same would amount to offloading corporate responsibility. There’s no reason to
expect every platform to adhere to the same content policies, but every reason
to want them to exercise judgment and accept accountability.

Is there a term for when journalists forgo making an argument about why
something is bad in favor of just making a bunch of assertions + some negative
sentiment words? Why is deciding what speech / UGC should be allowed in social
media a 'corporate responsibility' such that letting the government or some
'impartial' NGO arbitrate this a bad thing? Why would you want every platform
to have it's own content policy? Why do you want corporations to 'exercise
judgement' and to be accountable (to the state? to journalists?) if you also
don't want there to be some formal guidelines about what is or isn't allowed
on social media?

~~~
tejaswiy
Yeah I don't buy that part either. The problem is inherently hard and pushing
the responsibility for policing content to a corporation is not okay. As a
specific example, I was listening to a podcast I was listening to earlier that
was dealing with how Facebook filters content (I think radiolab). I'm para-
phrasing heavily since it's been a while since I heard the show, but I think I
got the gist of it right.

\- There was a violet attack in Mexico against a journalist by some drug
cartel and a random body part (leg or an arm or a head or whatever) was
chopped off and posted on social media by the cartel. The people protesting
cartel violence picked this image up and were using this image as a part of
their protest. Facebook's censors allowed it until the image popped up on some
school kid's feed in America / England and all sorts of outcry later, it was
removed from the site as a violet image.

\- The boston marathon bombing happened and gruesome images of people lying on
the floor with limbs strewn about started getting shared on the site.
Facebook's policy at this point specifically said no violent images on the
site so they got blocked by the censors. Media picked this up and raised an
outcry on how facebook was censoring these images and basically someone high
up said 'leave it up or else' and the images were allowed on the site.

This is clearly hipocrisy and there's no right answer here. Traumatizing
school children with violent imagery they didn't even want to see is not great
while the Boston marathon bombing was a significant political event in America
and those images didn't deserve to get silenced.

This ends up being a question of free-speech and what sorts of content
Americans were okay with. There are no right answers and I believe the govt.
definitely should step in and provide guidelines here.

The disingenuous thing is using this as an example of how Facebook is okay
with govt regulation while resisting any regulation around things that can
hurt them like any number of their privacy mishaps, shady 3p data markets and
ad tech in general.

~~~
daphreak
This was a good episode and really showcased how the standards were forced to
evolve by various stakeholders (protestors, execs, govt, etc).

I think I recall one them pointing out that a lot of challenges came from
Facebook trying to be everything for everybody.

Moderating content so people don't get pictures of Boston Marathon gore next
to their grandkids' photos is problem they made for themselves.

------
aylmao
I don't doubt regulation would help Facebook in some respects, but (in usual
Bloomberg fashion) this article is also stretching some things a bit. For
example:

> Start with harmful content, which Zuckerberg defines as “terrorist
> propaganda, hate speech and more.” Facebook would prefer that someone else
> decide what constitutes such content and should thus be taken down.

I agree with this. Having a private corporation that's invested in engagement,
which is also headquartered in the US (very far geographically and culturally
from some of the places it moderates) be in charge of defining what's right
and what's wrong, is and has been a recipe for disaster— let alone the
implications it could have around the sovereignty of nations.

> But it’s hard to see how this would benefit anyone but Facebook.

Excuse me, what?

> Inviting the government to arbitrate what qualifies as “harmful” speech is a
> legal and ethical minefield, while establishing a third-party system to do
> the same would amount to offloading corporate responsibility.

Isn't this the government's job though? To define what is a crime/wrong and
what isn't, and to deal with the moral aspect of legal codes? Isn't this why
we have laws? I don't think anyone is vouching for "big brother" type
government control here, but governments always have a principal role in civil
rights, inclusion and the moral development of a nation. It's part of their
job, and the reason people care to have leaders with strong moral compasses as
public servants. Has this view of government been lost in the US?

> There’s no reason to expect every platform to adhere to the same content
> policies, but every reason to want them to exercise judgment and accept
> accountability.

I'm there's things that should clearly be blocked or allowed. But the gray
areas are what's being discussed here, and honestly I don't think that should
be Facebook's job (or any private, American, for-profit corporation for that
matter).

~~~
drngdds
It has never been the US government's job to decide which speech is 'harmful'
and should be silenced. The First Amendment prevents that. (Of course, some
things like slander are illegal, but that's nothing like the 'harmful speech'
Facebook is talking about.)

~~~
reissbaker
It is entirely the US government's job to decide which speech is harmful: it
just takes the view that most speech isn't harmful, and should be allowed. The
First Amendment _is part of the US government 's decision on speech:_ its view
is that most speech is more good than bad, and thus is protected. When it does
decide that certain speech, like libel, is harmful, it bans it. It even can
ban speech in specific contexts! For example, in Brandenburg v. Ohio the court
upheld that speech "which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent
lawless action" could be banned. So, saying an inflammatory thing privately to
your friend, for example, could be fine, but boosting that post to millions of
people could be viewed as "likely to incite imminent lawless action" such as a
riot.

~~~
erichocean
> _The First Amendment is part of the US government 's decision on speech_

This is just flat out incorrect.

The _Bill of Rights_ was the people saying "You want a US government ruling
over the several States? Here are the rules for what you're allowed to do."
The US gov't never made a decision on speech, _they agreed to the terms of
"We, The People"_, full stop. You're acting like it's the opposite.

This is also why the gov't can't just rewrite the 1st amendment willy nilly—
_all_ of the US government's legitimacy with the American people comes from
respecting the _Bill of Rights_. Stop respecting those rights and a rebellion
is right around the corner.

Historically, the States had to _approve_ the _Bill of Rights_ (and the rest
of the new Constitution) in order for it to come into effect. It's definitely
NOT the US gov't "deciding", and it never was. All of the power resided in the
States.

Interestingly, the "Federalists" that (re-)wrote the Constitution were mostly
opposed to the _Bill of Rights_ —that's the contribution made by the _anti-_
Federalists to the US Gov't as it exists today.

Isn't it funny how most citizens treasure the _Bill of Rights_ more than
anything else in the Constitution? That makes it pretty clear which "side" had
the well-being of the people in mind.

------
artemisyna
All of this moderation stuff feels like a "damned if you do, damned if you
don't" situation for Facebook.

People have been crapping on Facebook for making judgement calls on what's
allowed on its platform. When Facebook does so without government backing,
people get up-in-arms saying that it should be the government's role to decide
free speech. But when the company goes and requests that government start
doing that, people get up-in-arms about how it'll be "regulatory capture".

I can't predict what the outcome of all of this will be. I can however,
predict that there will be an angsty article (Bloomberg? New York Times? Wall
Street Journal?) decrying how Facebook is awful, evil, and incompetent.

~~~
ma2rten
I feel like this entire opinion piece is just a knee-jack reaction against
anything what Mark Zuckerberg has to say.

I was giving it the benefit of the doubt until it started talking about how
bad GDPR is. GDPR has some short-comings, but it's a bit less black-and-white
than what this article makes it out to be.

Maybe what Mark Zuckerberg saying really is self-serving but this article
doesn't make any good arguments for it. It's just making assertions which it
doesn't back up. I don't know if it's just me getting old, but I started
noticing this kind of intellectual dishonesty more and more recently in the
media and even here on HN.

~~~
chillacy
I think a lot of psychological research confirms that people start with the
opinion or position and find evidence (any will do) to back it up, not the
other way around. So it's not surprising it shows up in lots of debates
between people.

------
NickBusey
".. forcing competitors to make their own data exportable to Facebook would in
all likelihood benefit Facebook"

What competitors is the author even talking about here? There are, as far as
I'm aware, essentially no competitors left to Facebook anymore.

That being the case, I'm not sure that statement is correct at all. On the
contrary, it seems like if FB were required to offer an easily exportable data
format, that other services would pop up overnight to try and lure people away
from FB onto their (hopefully) more privacy conscious platforms. It would also
lower the bar for people to make the switch to something else, as they know
their friends can switch just as easily without losing their data.

I agree with the rest of the points of the article, but I don't see how data
portability can be anything but a net positive for the consumer.

~~~
nradov
There are several active competitors depending on how you define the market.
WeChat, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_service#Larg...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_service#Largest_social_networking_services)

~~~
NickBusey
The 3 key features that most people I know who still use Facebook are Photo
Sharing, Event Organizing, and Messaging. The things you listed do one or two,
but I don't think any of them do all 3.

~~~
intopieces
WeChat does all three of those, plus payments and food ordering. Basically
everything Facebook wishes they could do, WeChat does it for about 1B people.

~~~
dymk
WeChat doesn't have a significant presence in Western markets, and Facebook
doesn't have a significant presence in China. They don't _really_ compete with
each other, even though they provide a lot of the same features.

------
dannykwells
It's almost comic villainy - like, everything they say, do, propose, etc. is
always evil in some way.

Can anyone on the inside give some insight into current morale? Is the
constant deluge of negative press cutting through the indoctrination or nah?

~~~
morley
I really dislike comments like these, and I find it dismaying that they've
gained currency on HN recently. Almost every article about Facebook or Google
has some variation of this comment.

> It's almost comic villainy - like, everything they say, do, propose, etc. is
> always evil in some way.

The problem I have with it is that you can replace the meaning of "they", and
have this comment "work" for any number of biased echo chambers. Go ahead and
replace "they" with Facebook, Google, Obama, Trump, Exxon-Mobil, scientists,
billionaires, politicians, Internet trolls, the media, ad nauseam.

If this sentence can work for any of these scenarios, verbatim, then what's
the point of uttering it?

To bring this back to the issue at hand: is there anything Zuckerberg could
say that would make you not respond this way? And if you can't come up with
anything, are you sure you aren't completely biased against Facebook such that
nothing they can do will ameliorate you?

~~~
ben509
I agree with your premise, not just from the ethical sense of wanting to treat
others as human beings, but I think when I manage that I make a more
compelling argument.

That said, let me try to answer why you're seeing this pattern.

Facebook has a business model that works for certain strategic choices, and
doesn't work for others. A big one is they don't charge a subscription fee to
users. That puts hard constraints on how they generate revenue.

> is there anything Zuckerberg could say that would make you not respond this
> way?

That's why it's nigh impossible that Zuckerberg will come along and announce,
"we've ended our policy of treating users as the product."

Personally, this was one of the reasons I've been happy to work at firms that
sell specific products and services. It doesn't guarantee they'll behave well,
but the fact that customers can take their money elsewhere does tend to keep
them grounded in the long run.

I think most social media, for that reason and others, has a bad business
model. I'd like those businesses to fail to clear out space for alternatives
to be built. (And they're not villains working there, so I'd also hope they
all land on their feet and find new jobs.)

~~~
notacoward
> I'd like those businesses to fail to clear out space

There's practically zero chance that will happen - either that the existing
companies will "clear out" or that the same role would be filled by anything
with a different business model. In the real world where Facebook will
continue to exist, is there anything that the company or its employees could
do that would meet with your approval?

~~~
ben509
> There's practically zero chance that will happen - either that the existing
> companies will "clear out" or that the same role would be filled by anything
> with a different business model.

Are you going to justify that claim? It's been made repeatedly about prior
companies that were too big to fail, especially tech giants, and they all fall
or become obsolete.

> In the real world where Facebook will continue to exist, is there anything
> that the company or its employees could do that would meet with your
> approval?

I gave an example: "we've ended our policy of treating users as the product."
You're repeating this rhetorical question without addressing any of the points
I made or adding anything new.

~~~
notacoward
> they all fall or become obsolete.

I was in this industry through all of that. It takes a _long_ time for a
company to fall that far. Yes, given enough time anything can happen, but I'm
not interested in tautologies. In any time span relevant to this conversation,
it's not going to happen. If you want to claim otherwise, that's your burden
not mine.

> "we've ended our policy of treating users as the product."

OK, so I guess there is that one unrealistic possibility. Even if Facebook
moved to a subscription model, "treating users as the product" is not a phrase
they'd use for what came before. So you still haven't indicated that you'd be
satisfied by anything that could actually happen.

> You're repeating this rhetorical question

It's not a rhetorical question if there are multiple valid answers, and
repeating a question is still better than repeating statements based on
counterfactual assumptions. If you want to play "high school debate champion"
you'll have to try harder.

~~~
ben509
> In any time span relevant to this conversation, it's not going to happen.

If they made that promise to investors, they could go to prison.

> OK, so I guess there is that one unrealistic possibility.

You're demanding that everyone else has to show that they're ready to abandon
their principles, lest you judge them instransigent and unreasonable. What
changes have _you_ made to _your_ worldview, without seeing something
significant change?

Probably never: your views are shaped by observations of concrete realities
and reflections on the consequences of those. And unless those realities
change or you get new information, you couldn't come up with a coherent set of
new views if you wanted to.

> It's not a rhetorical question if there are multiple valid answers

It's still a question intended for rhetorical effect. I wasn't saying that
makes it invalid, it's just annoying if you're repeating it while dismissing
the answer given.

------
fumar
I have zero faith in Facebook as an organization doing the "right" thing.
Their machine is fueled by highly targeted advertising. If you erode their
targeting capabilities, then marketers will be quick to invest elsewhere.
Funny enough, with ITP 2.1 and potentially a less cookie friendly Chrome, they
are increasing FB's value prop to marketers.

I am going to butcher this, I can't articulate it how I think it... Why do we
need regulation for social network that is only as strong as its network. Is
the network effect so strong users can't or will not leave on their own
accord? I left FB and instagram a few years ago. It is just so funny to me
that this entity (a people aggregator) is powerful but all we need to do is
leave it. How many people in your network have to leave before it loses its
value? Networks expand exponentially. Is the opposite true?

------
HeWhoLurksLate
Why am I not surprised? At this point I have _no trust_ in that company. It
would be _very unwise_ to listen to them, and very unfortunate for someone
like Senator Warren and those who want to break them up to adopt their
policies.

------
jedberg
Most government regulation benefits large companies at the expense of small
companies, because large companies have more resources to make sure they are
in compliance and have the lobbyists who help write the rules. So it's no
surprise that new regs here would be helpful to big companies and harmful to
small ones.

------
max76
I'm not even upset that Facebook is lobbying for their own self interest. I
just wish such a blatant attempt would have a lower chance of success.

~~~
freejak
You just quashed your own fears. Fortunately this is going nowhere because
it's so blatant.

~~~
maratd
How are you so sure about this?

~~~
freejak
I'm not but Zuck isn't winning any popularity contests in congress or among
the general public these days. Odd time for him to publish this piece IMO.

------
manfredo
To be fair, Facebook has said since the beginning that regulation had a strong
possibility of making competition harder and entrenching established players.

~~~
harry8
To be fair, Zuckerberg has said anyone who trusts him in any way is an idiot.

~~~
trpc
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#Quotes](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#Quotes)

------
ancorevard
Look, most government regulations ultimately favors the incumbent while making
it much harder for new entrants to challenge the large organizations. Thus
creating less competition which ultimately solidifies the status quo.

------
40acres
Facebook knows regulation in coming and is transitioning from being anti-
regulation to regulation on their terms (ie. regulatory capture).
Unfortunately, I don't have much faith in our government to properly regulate
technology, for one Congress seems totally unaware of how Facebook works
("Senator... we sell ads") and judging by the diasaters that were the great
recession and the Boeing crashes, even a well known "strong" regulator isn't
enough to curtail the biggest companies

------
slim
There's no need to "regulate the internet", we only need to regulate social
network operators. Regulation should look like this :

* no ban of any user whatsoever * obligation to provide a public unlimited read only acess to standardized api for all the data * no private messaging

and let a million better Facebooks emerge. The content policing problem will
solve itself

------
johnny313
This seems like an attempt at classic regulatory capture.

"Regulatory capture is a form of government failure which occurs when a
regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the
commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the
industry or sector it is charged with regulating." [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture)

~~~
beering
Alternative take: this is an attempt by Zuck to push regulation preemptively
in order to counter the recent bad press. Better that the gov't create rules
affecting all players (all companies affected, including FB) than to continue
having just your own company in Washington's crosshairs.

Even if he doesn't get to dictate the regulation (thus not achieving
regulatory capture), it would still accomplish the mission of keeping the
business alive. They will continue selling their ads and making money,
regulation or no regulation.

~~~
nostrademons
It's possible for both of these to be true. Supporting regulation -
particularly known regulation that it pretty similar to what you have to do
anyway to compete internationally - both takes the PR crosshairs off your
company and creates a barrier to entry for any potential competitors.

------
mic47
So data portability is now bad, because Facebook is suggesting it.

------
CharlesColeman
Here's a regulation that I'd like considered: a default licensing scheme for
personal data, that stipulates a 50% revenue share with the user of any money
made from the use or sale of their data. The regulation would stipulate the
scheme can only be renegotiated in a way that would be impractical to
implement at scale (to avoid easy circumventions through TOS and click-
throughs).

This would hit the privacy-invading companies where it hurts, in their
pocketbooks.

~~~
no1youknowz
Profits based on the sale of data has been discussed a few times on HN.
However, the price for it is so low on a per user basis.

That said, there should be a law on the books that disallow the sale of data
between companies. I'd wager this is the bulk of where Facebook makes it's
money. That's where we should be targeting with legislation.

The use of data should be fine. As the end-user or end-company never actually
get their hands on the data. They just use a UI with categories and filters
and put up ads based on the options available.

~~~
gaogao
Facebook makes its money from selling ads. You can see this in its revenue
report, [https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-
details/...](https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-
details/2018/Facebook-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-
Year-2017-Results/default.aspx)

Of course, these ads are highly targeted using all sorts of personal data, but
they aren't actually selling the data, as that's also just less profitable.

~~~
no1youknowz
I know that.

But is there a distinction in advertising between:

1) Allowing users to use the data for making ads.

2) Selling the data to companies such as Apple for other means.

There isn't any visibility. This is what I'm trying to get at.

~~~
gaogao
From another report,

>> Mobile advertising revenue – Mobile advertising revenue represented
approximately 91% of advertising revenue for the first quarter of 2018, up
from approximately 85% of advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2017.

In particular, Facebook makes its money from mobile ads

------
duchenne
> Facebook exacerbates poisonous politics by creating filter bubbles of like-
> minded partisans, spreading hoaxes and inaccuracies, inducing anxiety and
> paranoia, rewarding clickbait and outrage, and so on.

An interesting example is the yellow vest protest in France. The mass media
heavily emphasized the violence of the protesters.

But, on social networks, people mainly shared videos of violence from the
police. (ex:
[https://twitter.com/Albirew/status/1104799813076508673](https://twitter.com/Albirew/status/1104799813076508673)
)

Another interesting news that was discovered thanks to social networks was
that the public TV photoshoped a picture of the protest, changing a text from
"Macron get out" to just "Macron" [1]

The contrast between those two sources of information is striking.

Both top-down mass media, and bottom-up social networks bring interesting
news, but both are biased and inaccurate.

[1] [https://www.lesinrocks.com/2018/12/16/actualite/quand-
france...](https://www.lesinrocks.com/2018/12/16/actualite/quand-
france-3-censure-une-pancarte-anti-macron-111152498/)

~~~
baby
> But, on social networks, people mainly shared videos of violence from the
> police

It was actually both.

------
sagebird
If Facebook wants to get ahead of and control privacy regulation, Zuckerberg
needs to create an arrangement with a third party to push his agenda. IE - a
charismatic CEO from another company that has a good public image. If it was
done correctly, he could be pushing the exact same agenda and be getting kudos
instead of (completely justifiable) skepticism. Politicians will be especially
susceptible to this kind of proxy-ism.

------
emiliobumachar
"Facebook would prefer that someone else decide what constitutes such content
and should thus be taken down. But it’s hard to see how this would benefit
anyone but Facebook."

I can actually get behind this. As I said before, I'm wary of Fb and Google
becoming judge and jury of what is or isn't acceptable speech.

It's against their will now, but they may well grow to like it.

------
alexandercoward
Maybe Facebook should convert into a Benefit Corporation. There's a petition
for this here: [https://www.change.org/p/mark-zuckerberg-convert-facebook-
in...](https://www.change.org/p/mark-zuckerberg-convert-facebook-into-a-
public-benefit-corporation)

------
legitster
All of the constant time in front of Congress is likely affecting their bottom
line. The constant threat of regulation or breakup is getting to the point
where it is harming the company more than any regulation would. It makes sense
for Facebook to get in front of it.

That said, obviously they shouldn't get to craft their own regulation. And any
regulation setting the boundaries of an industry risks locking in the way it
works (think how how awful dealerships are in the US). If we craft a set of
rules for Facebook, we will almost guarantee that it continues to exist.

My (very weak) opinion as someone who hates FB is that we keep the status quo
- the constant pressure and hoop jumping and negative media cycles seem to do
quite well at driving users away.

------
am33
I hate zuck as much as the next guy, but this writer is being dishonest.

Data portability is the first step in allowing other companies to compete with
FB and takes away a huge advantage they have (switching costs). Call a spade a
spade.

------
adrian_mrd
> On privacy, Zuckerberg has become an exponent of Europe’s behemoth rulebook,
> known as the General Data Protection Regulation. That approach is badly
> flawed in its own right: It undermines innovation, burdens companies, annoys
> users, and offers few benefits.

Outside of the authors' views on Zuck.co, this is a myopic view of GDPR. In
reality, GDPR empowers, rather than annoys users, and the regulations actually
gives EU citizens _some_ degree of control over their data - which is of
increasingly huge benefit, especially their interactions with Orwellian
companies like Facebook.

~~~
arendtio
Well, I am sure there are some aspects which annoy users (e.g. having to
search for the opt-out button on every page you visit), but AFAIK those are
actually bad implementations. Sure, some things could have been done better,
but ultimately the GDPR is a huge step in the right direction.

It is good this article is posted as 'opinion' as it is quite opinionated
(doesn't reflect my opinion though).

------
lostlogin
According to the article ‘Zuckerberg deserves a hearing’. He didn’t show when
called before the UK parliament, and if he doesn’t appear when it suits him,
does he deserve a hearing?

[https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/life-
st...](https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/life-
style/gadgets-and-tech/news/mark-zuckerberg-parliament-uk-canada-westminster-
dcms-select-committee-a8609996.html%3famp)

~~~
throwaway284721
I think you should show up at my home to justify yourself for this comment in
person, otherwise I don't think you deserve a hearing either.

~~~
lostlogin
That’s not even remotely similar. His company interfered with an election and
was asked to explain. He didn’t show. Why was your comment made with a throw
away?

------
madrox
On the surface this isn’t shocking at all. And yet, when was the last time
anyone really tried to compete with Facebook? Sure, they’re in the ad business
like everyone else, but no one really competes with them on product.

Yet whenever we hear about Facebook culture, it’s about move fast and break
things. Is that really a culture equipped for coping with regulatory
compliance? In my experience, the answer is no.

So I’m really left scratching my head on this one.

~~~
ben_jones
You can't compete with Facebook unless you commit the same invasive acts that
allowed them to collect their data in the first place. Nobody is going to
willing enter their phone-number, address, all their friends, all their
contacts, all their meta data, at world-scale, anytime soon to some new start-
up.

~~~
madrox
That's kind of my point. If no one else is willing to compete, why bother
advocating regulation that makes your incumbent advantage harder to maintain?

------
shmerl
I don't think anyone who built a network that exploits people's profiles for
profit, should be setting privacy rules proposals.

------
phillpot
The article starts by saying that inviting the government to arbitrate is a
legal and ethical nightmare, and establishing a third party is offloading
corporate responsibility. It finishes saying that it's rarely a good idea to
outsource regulation to the enterprise that needs it. So which is it? Gov
regulation is no good, _and_ self regulation is no good!

------
3xblah
"Zuckerberg deserves a hearing, but it's rarely a good idea to outsource
regulation to the enterprise that most needs to be regulated."

This sentence implies there are instances (albeit "rare") when it is a good
idea to outsource regulation to the enterprise that most needs to be
regulated.

Can anyone cite a few examples?

------
zimablue
I'm not a Facebook fan but nor do I agree with this article, the analysis
seems pretty shallow. Zuck's rules seems like broadly positive things, and
like they'd benefit the competition more than this article lets on.

Harmful content => Any government regulation of harmful content will probably
hurt small players more, since it's a big fixed cost of moderation. But
everyone will realistically pay that cost anyway unless they're something
decentralized like Mastodon.

Elections => Nothing to do with size of platform I think, they're just saying
that it's disingenuous since filter bubbles are more important. I disagree,
election financing is super important and as another poster said filter
bubbles are as old as print.

Privacy => It says that GDPR is terrible for small companies, but without any
evidence (or spec of "small") I think for anyone the size enough to be looking
to challenge Facebook it's not a big deal, and broadly I like GDPR. "Don't
store people's data unless you need to, and ask permission". Not a bad first
effort to trying to fix surveillance capitalism.

Making data portable => This definitely, definitely would hurt Facebook more
than help it. Noone is sitting on Instagram thinking "I'd swap to Facebook if
only it was easier". They're the monopolist with the inferior product +
network effects, that narrative makes no sense at all.

~~~
kreetx
I had the same sentiment. Not to be harsh against Bloomberg, but it for a few
of these the journalist doesn't know what he is talking about.

The "sophisticated tools" to make data portable for example: building it in to
any new social network wouldn't be all that difficult, and perhaps adds even a
little mental structure over the data since now there are two types of output:
the website/app itself, and the portable data export. Sounds good to me.

~~~
chillacy
The crowd here is so cynical that I'd start to be suspicious that Zuckerberg
is pulling a reverse psychology move on us.

------
bitxbit
I am quite surprised Sheryl Sandberg all but disappeared in the past few
months from these discussions.

------
scotty79
He just asks government to make some laws so he can just obey them and forget
about the whole thing. He can't figure how to be good so he asks for explicit
rules to be legal. Because business only needs to be legal to continue.

------
daenz
The CEO has fiduciary duties related to not making any decision that would
hurt the corporation. That's really all you should need to know about Zuck and
the regulations he proposed.

------
ddingus
Is there any surprise?

None.

It is good to see this being discussed. I am not making light of that.

The more I see the market shape our Internet, the more I feel some baseline
law, to set reasonable, ethical norms, makes great sense.

------
Animats
Yes, that was pretty obvious.

The elephant in the room is advertising. This is all about ad targeting.
Zuckerberg's "rules" totally ignore that. Of course.

------
return0
This is exactly why regulation is needed: Articles like this, spreading
misinformation and clickbait should not be allowed to be published.

------
notTyler
On the one hand it's nice to see FB admitting to not being able to come up
with a solution for their hate speech problem. On the other hand, putting it
on the government when the government is struggling financially and FB is
rolling in money, well, I don't know about that. They ought to reap the
whirlwind they created and implode as things like the NZ attack become more
common.

------
skrebbel
This article tries to make the case that, among other things, the GDPR "hurts
everyone except Facebook". Wait, what?

The GDPR is a net positive for citizen privacy. This article's attempt to spin
it as an anticompetitive bigco-driven monstrosity is factually wrong and
ignorant of the GDPR's history.

I have similar (but less strong) doubts about this article's case that
automated censorship is obviously better for "everyone except Facebook" if the
rules about what to censor were set by tech molochs and not governments. I'm
wary of any kind of censorship, but if we have to have it, I prefer the rules
to be set in a public parliament and not some boardroom somewhere. "Corporate
responsibility" my ass. At this scale, Facebook are public infrastructure and
should be regulated as such.

I'll gladly believe the author that Zuckerberg will always and only do things
that benefit Facebook. Zuckerberg has shown time and time again that every
single public initiative he takes turns out to be in Facebook's direct benefit
and often in everybody else's disadvantage. Of course there's a hidden agenda
here, there always is.

But the author hasn't found it.

------
ryanmarsh
I just want to know if anyone is surprised by this.

------
product50
This is absolutely true. We all need to realize that regulations such as
European GDPR, Article 13 etc. hurt newcomers a lot more vs. incumbents big
players such as Facebook. Facebook will one way or the other
nudge/influence/incentivize users to click on that "Agree" button to opt into
sharing data with them. However, new players who don't have a surface where
users come frequently enough, will be at a loss. And there will be no way they
would be able to use growth tactics such as Facebook does to drive opt in.

Please wake up and smell the coffee. Regulations are needed but GDPR is
absolutely not the answer.

------
cxromos
This article is wrong when it comes to GDPR. It could be a good thing. I
friend invited me to MeWe via Twitter post and I accepted. I would like not to
be able to export and if I wish delete my data. That would be my all of my
data, including my contacts. I would import this data to MeWe, or what's
possible. At the moment Contacts would do. Good for me and MeWe. This is what
GDPR would allow. There is no open format for this exchange, but being on the
market, someone will quickly come up with a service to convert the data, or
MeWe guys could some up with import data from FB function.

------
effnorwood
Right!

------
revscat
Anyone want my Facebook password? I haven't used it in a while, but don't
trust them to actually delete anything. Might as well poison the well.

edit:

u: james.childers@gmail.com , p: zaZLc&ncedu%X8apb$j9

Have at it.

~~~
awakeasleep
I just reset your password, and logged out all active sessions.

I appreciate the gesture you made, but you're exposing your friends and
families to the random dregs of the Internet by giving away your account like
that.

~~~
revscat
Thanks, I guess?

> I appreciate the gesture you made, but you're exposing your friends and
> families to the random dregs of the Internet by giving away your account
> like that.

That's kind of the point. FB isn't going to change until it starts to suffer,
and the a good way to cause it to suffer is to reduce its usefulness.

The best way to do that is to make the feed useless.

 _shrug_ Whatever. The account's locked now and I don't really care enough to
unlock it.

Interesting experiment.

~~~
Loughla
Real question.

How does making your family deal with extra bullshit from the awful parts of
the internet make facebook suffer? I don't understand your logic with this.

~~~
revscat
a) It's debatable how much people "suffer" from fucking with Facebook.
Facebook is evil. Fucking with them is good.

b) Facebook will only suffer if the feed becomes (more) useless.

I don't understand how you _don 't_ see the logic. Bad feed -> worse FB
experience -> decreased usage.

~~~
aylmao
I don't think you addressed what the previous comment asked:

> How does making your family deal with extra bullshit from the awful parts of
> the internet make facebook suffer?

Assuming this is your real account with your real friends/family (which seems
to be what you're saying, since you're convinced this would give real people a
bad feed) then you're just exposing people who trust you to trolls.

I could text your friends/family with spam, and since it's coming from someone
they know, they might click it. I could ask them for personal details. I could
just straight out insult them out of the blue and hurt their feelings, or send
awful things their way.

I really hope nobody did and in general would like to think people here
wouldn't— but this is a public site and the internet is a big place.

I doubt for your friends this would register as "their feed becoming useless"—
it'd mostly just register as you being awful out of the blue, until you
explain you were hacked. In any case, creating no content and letting people
know you are only reachable through other services is probably a more
effective way of making the Facebook less useful for the people you know. You
could also just post noise yourself if you were committed to do so.

~~~
fumar
Facebook makes money by selling advertising space on its feed. It builds
advertising friendly profiles of users that marketers use to target for their
ads. You can setup a Facebook ad campaign today and see it for yourself. OP
made its profile open for anyone to log into and potentially make edits. For
example, changing his birthday, connecting to new people, new likes and
dislikes, are all signals back to FB. They would no longer have a realistic
advertising profile on OP. If everyone did what OP, then the overall
advertising value proposition to marketers greatly diminishes. They can no
longer say with a good degree of accuracy, "I am targeting 20 year olds who
work in tech."

~~~
aylmao
Don't worry, I understand that, and I know that's what OP was going for. My
point is that OP didn't seem aware that it opened a vector of abuse for
family/friends. A commenter mentioned:

> I appreciate the gesture you made, but you're exposing your friends and
> families to the random dregs of the Internet by giving away your account
> like that.

And OP responded with:

> That's kind of the point.

I don't think OP thinks the point is to expose friends to potential damage,
just noise and nonsense unrelated to him. I was explaining that if that's what
he wanted, he can "post noise" himself, as opposed to opening his account to
the public internet to ensure the safety of his acquaintances.

~~~
revscat
What damage? It’s fucking Facebook. It needs to die. I cannot imagine a
situation wherein some dickwad posts something that would cause more damage
than they already do, and the long term gain, should a movement start and
Facebook become infected by rampant noise, would be a net positive.

~~~
aylmao
Sigh. I see you still don't see what I mean. I invite you to analyze the
earlier replies not only by me but also by other people who thought what you
were doing wasn't the best approach, because no one disagrees with your
motivation, just your execution. Have a good one.

------
Matticus_Rex
As usual, big business doesn't support free markets -- it supports regulations
that it can deal with more easily than its competitors.

------
MagicPropmaker
Imagine not being able to start a little grass-roots, home-grown social
network without millions in capitalization for compliance. That's exactly what
Zuckerberg wants.

------
Chutzpah3
This is very similar to Amazon pushing for higher minimum wage. Big lawyers of
Facebook can deal with any regulation and no regulation would pass without
Facebook's approval. This essentially is rent seeking behaviour and that is
why I have stopped using Facebook. I only need to move away from Whatsapp now.

------
lgleason
I say repeal the law that exempts them from liability. It has had an un-
intended consequence of allowing large pseudo monopolies to emerge. It has
also given them an un-fair advantage over TV and newspapers who are liable for
their content.

~~~
Nasrudith
If you apply that standard be careful with any walls on your house because you
would be liable for death threats spray painted on it. Look at Gawker - they
are liable for /their/ content. Not user content.

------
trpc
Zuckerberg ruined the web, made sure that Facebook becomes synonymous with the
internet for billions of people to make profit for himself using all means and
created a generation of mentally unstable teenagers. This alone makes him
among the worst criminals of the 21st century.

------
thepangolino
As far as I'm concerned, the Internet has and always will have only one set of
rules:
[https://archive.org/stream/RulesOfTheInternet/RulesOfTheInte...](https://archive.org/stream/RulesOfTheInternet/RulesOfTheInternet..txt)

~~~
izzydata
And you already broke them just by linking them.

~~~
aepiepaey
Rules 1 and 2 only apply during raids (on another site), and no-one is raiding
this comment section, so no, they did not break the rules.

~~~
izzydata
That rule is not in the rules.

