
Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas - howard941
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mark-zuckerberg-the-internet-needs-new-rules-lets-start-in-these-four-areas/2019/03/29/9e6f0504-521a-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html
======
marcrosoft
The four points being:

* harmful content * election integrity * privacy * data portability

I think Zuckerberg's intent is to dilute the real issue (privacy) with these
other three points. FB has a bad record when it comes to privacy and they are
actively taking measures against it. For example, they lobby against privacy
laws [1]. They create shadow profiles and they make it difficult or impossible
to delete your account.

Harmful content is a tough one because you either have free speech or you
don't. Judging content is a slippery slope that every generation before us has
warned us about.

Election integrity is a media hysteria. Nobody is forcing anyone to vote in a
particular way.

Data portability is always good for the consumers I don't think anyone would
argue against that.

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/02/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/02/facebook-
global-lobbying-campaign-against-data-privacy-laws-investment)

[2] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook-
shadow-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook-shadow-
profiles-zuckerberg-congress-data-privacy)

~~~
morley
I think HN in particular is too focused on "loss of privacy" as an issue. It
seems to me that loss of privacy, while concerning, hasn't caused a fraction
of the tangible, measurable problems in the west that misinformation and echo
chambers have caused. Loss of privacy hasn't caused anti-immigrant fear-
mongering, or conspiracy theorists harassing school shooting victims, or
people not vaccinating their children. In areas of the world where loss of
privacy _has_ caused citizen harm, it's usually as a result of a despotic
regime (thinking specifically of Venezuela).

~~~
fromMars
I agree. I am not sure that any substantial "loss of privacy" has even
occurred.

Just to posit an example, Banks and Credit Bureaus have long tracked extensive
information about us including where we have lived, worked, and what we have
purchased.

Should we be able to have our credit history erased from Credit Bureau and
Banks in the name of privacy?

~~~
asciident
Seriously. If people actually cared about privacy, let's do something about
credit bureaus and insurance companies. Because I can do something about it if
I don't want Facebook to know I'm friends with someone or bought something on
Amazon. But I can barely do anything about credit or insurance. They literally
ruin lives, cost people thousands of dollars, target the poor, have terrible
security, literally sell your data, and yet everyone is all up in arms about
the permissions on their photos that they voluntarily posted on Facebook.

------
ams6110
Classic regulatory capture play. Create regulations so onerous that only a
company with the resources of Facebook can operate under their restrictions.
Lock in your dominant position. No small competitor can get a foot in the
door.

~~~
hnthrow0693
I don’t think it is. First, lawmakers in several countries around the world
were the first to propose these types of regulations, not Facebook. Second,
Mark already acknowledged in the senate hearing that such regulations can hurt
small businesses, so lawmakers need to be careful.

Hard problems require complex solutions. It’s not easy for small companies to
get “a foot in the door” in the space or auto industries either. Content
moderation is a hard and unsolved problem — so yes, companies with more
resources will have a better chance of succeeding.

~~~
wbl
Do we solve it for books? No. Very little if the content lawmakers are worried
about is content we would censor books for.

------
aestetix
"Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity." \--
Mark Zuckerberg[1], defending Facebook's "Real" Name policy.

Based on his total disregard for privacy and his clear thirst for power, I
want nothing coming from him or his company to ever influence actual policies.

[1] [http://www.siliconbeat.com/2014/01/30/quoted-mark-
zuckerberg...](http://www.siliconbeat.com/2014/01/30/quoted-mark-zuckerberg-
softens-stance-on-real-
identity/?doing_wp_cron=1553980868.3785629272460937500000)

~~~
Barrin92
I agree with Mark as far as social networks are concerned. The 'social' part
of the name is important, and social relationships cannot function without
some sort of stake.

Having a unified identity guarantees that people are held accountable for what
they say, it reduces fraud, trolling, and it means people have 'skin in the
game' when participating in a social environment, it's the basis for trust.

~~~
int_19h
But in social networks IRL, it doesn't really work that way - because real
life bubbles mostly don't intersect, it's as if the person had a separate
identity in each. Online social media effectively pushes all the bubbles
together, which transforms accountability into witch hunts, where a singular
misstep is quickly propagated and results in outrage mobs across all the
bubbles. Thus, the scope of social ostracism is rarely proportionate to the
transgression.

~~~
mindslight
Very well put! I don't think I had quite connected the two that far. It's not
even because the person actually used their real name while "transgressing",
but because there's usually enough other real name metadata laying around to
create an expectation that anyone can be doxxed.

This is a great concrete example of a rule that Zuckerberg himself worked to
promulgate, and is presently causing real ongoing harm.

------
mindgam3
The guy who broke every single rule in his ruthless conquest of the internet
is now asking for new rules. You have to admire the sheer audacity of this
play.

It does make sense though. He can finally see the tide of public opinion
turning against him. Facebook's business metrics will be fine for a while but
the pace at which they are losing people's trust is increasing. He needed to
make a grand statement now while there are still large swaths of the
population that view him as somewhat credible.

[Edit]

Also note the timing. This op-ed comes literally one day after Facebook made
headlines for "mistakenly deleting" a bunch of Zuckerberg's early posts,
including all his posts from 2007-2008. Which is completely absurd on the face
of it. (Yesterday's HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19527200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19527200))

Luckily, one way to ensure people don't ask too many questions about this
story is to make some new headlines. Sure enough, google news is linking
yesterday's story and today's post under the same "Full Coverage" page. As I
write this, the "mistaken deletion" story is indeed getting buried under the
avalanche of new coverage:

[https://news.google.com/stories/CAAqOQgKIjNDQklTSURvSmMzUnZj...](https://news.google.com/stories/CAAqOQgKIjNDQklTSURvSmMzUnZjbmt0TXpZd1NoTUtFUWpZMnRiaWpZQU1FVEd0bzlGbWVvSFZLQUFQAQ?hl=en-
US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen)

~~~
doctorcroc
Another point to consider is that the more the internet is regulated, the more
difficult it is for new entrants to compete , as they have to comply first
with existing laws. This is an easy way for incumbents to protect themselves
from potentially swift-footed competitors.

~~~
ardy42
> Another point to consider is that the more the internet is regulated, the
> more difficult it is for new entrants to compete , as they have to comply
> first with existing laws. This is an easy way for incumbents to protect
> themselves from potentially swift-footed competitors.

Perhaps the regulations could be written to be more onerous for the incumbents
to implement?

E.g. a new entrant below a certain size is allowed to get away with a good-
faith effort and only subject to small fines, while an incumbent is required
to have a massive and _empowered_ internal compliance bureaucracy and is
subject to massive fines when non-compliant.

~~~
syshum
That is generally how they are written it is false way to claim you are pro
small business by exempting small business from the regulation

All that does however is ensure the competition will ALWAYS be small.

where I am There are alot of employment regulations that kick in when you hire
your 51st employee, under 50 and you are exempt, so guess what there are CRAP
ton of businesses that can not expand beyond the 50 employee mark, they would
love to higher more people but the burdens placed on them once they did would
likely cause huge amounts of harm to the business, increase costs and revenue
where they would no longer be able to afford that new employee.... Generally
it makes is hard for a business to go from 50 to about 75 or 100 employees
where the extra burdens no longer matter. So unless a business can double in
size it is hard for those business to grow, they end up stagnate and often
fail as a result

------
sriku
Part of this is a clear stab at plain adulthood - trying to define "harmful
content" is just being patronizing. An adult in the eyes of law is someone
responsible for their own mind. Would trying to convince people of the
existence of a god in the absence of whatever form of evidence deemed
necessary to do that count as "harmful content"?

In a democracy, you want the thinking at the top to reflect the thinking at
the bottom - I.e. the adults of a country must be the ones making the rules.
What that thinking must be must not be up to those in power to decide ..
unless people want that. This has so many tangled loops that no single
programmer or one trained in logic is equipped with the skills to provide good
"solutions" with full understanding of long term consequences. A good book to
read about the possible cognitive failures of highly "educated" people is "The
logic of failure" by Dietrich Dorner.

In the case of FB, I think the illusory privacy of a personal network combined
with the ability to centrally target these personal networks from the outside
has been a mixing of gunpowder and fire.

Will FB stop all targeted ads during an election?

Also, can we have less ad hominem attacks on Mark here please? It is harmful
content for the mind, detracts from discussing the points he makes charitably,
and unfairly spreads bias against him. (Ha!)

~~~
Nasrudith
Harmful content itself is a notion so dangerously vague and exploitable that
you should treat anyone who proposes censoring it as a wannabe dictator.

There has been a lot of evil committed in the name of 'stopping harmful
content'. Civil War veterans, maimed from the war were made to not appear in
public from 'ugly laws' because of bullshit religious pseudoscience about
maternal impression would cause birth defects. Women wearing pants is 'harmful
content' because it 'corrupts the morals'. Dissent against corrupt powers is
'harmful content' to 'public order'.

Given the myriad abuses I would recommend inverting Hanlon's razor and assume
they know exactly what they are doing until proven that they really are that
stupid.

------
BluSyn
Finally. I've been predicting this is exactly what FB would do eventually: ASK
for regulation.

Facebook could do all these things in isolation, but generally speaking this
could be really bad for long-term revenue. Essentially Facebook is stuck
between a rock here; big moves will satisfy their user base, but annoy their
large investors. On the other hand, doing nothing will harm users in the long
run, but probably they could generate plenty of revenue in the process, so
share holders would encourage this. Additionally if Facebook did this on their
own, but other platforms are not subject to the same restrictions, they are at
a huge competitive disadvantage.

I think this is the key value in broad government rules. Regulation here is
both good for users and good for FB (and other platforms) in the long run.
They can protect their users without having to explain to investors why they
aren't just going straight for profits, because they will be bound by the
rules established by regulation.

So in the end, FB should WANT regulation, because it's better for them in the
long-run. I'm glad to see Mark appears to have finally realized this.

~~~
humanrebar
I think you need to account for the regulatory capture problem. I don't see
how more regulations could be bad for Facebook as long as it's not broken up
or banned outright.

------
smhenderson
F*ck MZ. He is the last person I want advice from on making the Internet
better. FB is part of the problem and I have little to no hope they will ever
be part of the solution.

~~~
beenBoutIT
Zuckerberg is a rational actor that's smart enough to know that he's not going
to want any knee-jerk solution put together by idiot politicians. I'm
confident that he doesn't want FB being permanently hobbled by laws or acts of
Congress.

~~~
quadrangle
He's a rational actor who also somehow doesn't actually _get it_ in a broad
sense. Consider Kara Swisher's interview with him on Recode Decode… or Doug
Rushkoff (Team Human book/podcast etc) wondered publicly if part of the
problem was how Zuck dropped out of college. Rushkoff speculated about all
these deeper philosophical, economic, political, humanism, etc. courses that
_might_ have got Zuck to actually get a more mature perspective instead of
basically going right from adolescent snarky asshole to just applying that
maturity level (albeit with a lot of intelligence) to his business.

He's rational in a sense, but he very well might not have ever stepped back
far enough to really consider broader perspectives with an open mind, even as
he reads and hears concerns. He probably reads them all with some
strategic/tactical mindset that blocks him from truly getting the point.

~~~
in_hindsight
Zuck may not be the role model when for tech theorists, but Rushkoff is just
empty - that’s coming from hearing him talk and answer questions live

~~~
quadrangle
or maybe you just didn't get what Rushkoff was saying, the way I'm describing
Zuck not really getting what Kara Swisher was saying.

------
serf
"Jam the door shut behind you." strategies employed by even the earliest
monopolists and lobbyists in the US.

Or, in other words : "Let's regulate the loopholes that we used for success so
as to diminish the opportunity for competition to arise in the same sector."

I don't think I expected anything different. Without choosing sides, I have to
say that it all sounds very corporate, and I didn't expect anything else from
him.

~~~
cjhopman
Yep! If a politician were proposing such regulations, we'd welcome her as a
guardian of the people. But fuckin A man, this is mark zuckerberg proposing
these things. He's a damn snake.

------
ourmandave
Apropos to nothing, here's a paper from 2005 about Big Tobacco wanting the
government to regulate it, titled:

 _Understanding Philip Morris’s pursuit of US government regulation of
tobacco_

[https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/14/3/193.short](https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/14/3/193.short)

Cause hey, if you're going to get regulated, you might as well write the rules
yourself.

------
ravenstine
The internet doesn't need more rules, it needs less centralization. Mark
Zuckerberg wants more rules because his product doesn't scale in the free
market. Such a centralized form of communication can only regulate its content
via draconian policy or overzealous algorithms, which ironically turn it into
a platform that is hardly worth using. People liked Facebook because it had
fun stuff on it. When you make your platform _not fun_ , and on top of that
you are exposed over and over again for being full of shit, people stop
showing up.

Mark Zuckerberg, _go away_. The problem isn't the internet, but people _like
you_. Not that you will take that to heart at this point, but maybe others
will figure you out the more we talk about you openly and _outside_ of your
crumbling castle.

~~~
cjhopman
> it needs less centralization

That's a nice sounding platitude. It'd be fucking terrible for privacy and
data protection, though.

~~~
ravenstine
I didn't say _complete_ decentralization, just less centralization than where
we are heading. I am not even talking decentralized servers here, just a
greater variety of choices with more anonymity. I don't see how that is any
less secure than trusting Zuckerberg or Google.

------
moogly
This man... This man is dangerous. I am uncertain if he's more powerful as the
head-of-the-snake of Facebook, or as a politician, the arena of which he seems
to be poised to enter.

------
runciblespoon
“I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By
updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what’s best about it —
the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build
new things — while also protecting society from broader harms.”

My irony just exploded. My solution is to say goodby to your Facebook
“friends”, switch off the computer and go outside and socialize with real
people. Yea, I know you can't unfriend people when they annoy you, but that's
a small price to engage in a real social life.

------
sodosopa
Honestly, Zuck or Facebook shouldn't be the ones defining rules for anyone.
They have a horrendous track record with existing laws.

------
eveningcoffee
Mark Zuckerberg is not somebody who should dictate our behavior.

------
anoncake
Freely accessible source:

[https://www.greenwichtime.com/opinion/article/The-
internet-n...](https://www.greenwichtime.com/opinion/article/The-internet-
needs-new-rules-Let-s-start-in-13729026.php)

~~~
ezequiel-garzon
451 :(

Come to think of it... was the HTTP code chosen after Fahrenheit 451?

~~~
kps
Yes.
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7725](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7725)

~~~
ezequiel-garzon
Thank you! I like the subtle way it's acknowledged in the final sentence:
"Thanks also to Ray Bradbury."

------
FailMore
I don't know how to think about FB and these issues. To grow platforms to the
scale that FB has requires long term thinking which I think FB showed
throughout (curtailing annoying notifications - e.g. Zynga games spam - which
might have looked like 'improved engagement'). Social media is brand new to
humanity and companies of all types have traditionally done pretty shitty
things to make a buck (for example, in the mining industry). FB is a company
where people express themselves - that's quite a new thing! And FB is learning
that we need to trust it. I don't think what they are doing is disingenuous,
they are too clever for that. Though they are getting beat up a lot right now,
in the long run it's probably for the good of the company - learning the hard
way. (I own FB shares.)

------
frotak
> a common global framework ....will ensure that the Internet does not get
> fractured, entrepreneurs can build products that serve everyone, and
> everyone gets the same protections.

Homogeneity favors business but does not foster independent or challenging
thought.

Converging on a "baseline" common set of standards for "harmful" speech and
what constitutes "privacy" is only going to reach the lowest common
denominator.

Let people opt in to the level of control and sanitization that they want, but
do not apply global restrictions without opt-out.

------
smsm42
So, when I was worried about Facebook censoring speech, I was told "well, this
is a private company, you don't like these policies, you can make your speech
somewhere else". Now what Zuckerberg is proposing is: "Internet companies
should be accountable for enforcing standards on harmful content.". This means
no company can host anything government decided is "hate speech". And if you
think he just aims for voluntary compliance - no, "Regulation could set
baselines for what’s prohibited and require companies to build systems for
keeping harmful content to a bare minimum." Regulation means government
setting what "harmful content" is, and forcing platforms to remove it. And
yes, "hate speech" is very much included. Moreover, the providers should be
mandated to report to the government how efficient they are in suppressing
speech: "Facebook already publishes transparency reports on how effectively
we’re removing harmful content. I believe every major Internet service should
do this quarterly, because it’s just as important as financial reporting."

Anybody wants to tell me I am still too paranoid when I think Zuckerberg and
likes want to destroy free speech on the internet and turn it into a platform
controlled and policed by major providers, where speech not approved by them
and the government would be suppressed? That article certainly confirms every
suspicion I had.

It's no longer "you don't like FB censorship, find yourself another platform".
It's "now that we built censorship in FB, look how nice it is - why not have
the government use it as a model to impose it on the rest of the internet?"

------
return0
Smart. "The ball is on your court, governments. Never again will you be able
to blame facebook with impunity." FB doesnt stand to lose anything from
regulation.

~~~
dbuser99
Exactly. Facebook strategy is always let's generalize the problem so that our
competitors are also affected, this way we can dilute the discussion, change
the narrative (and also end up doing nothing concrete).

------
nonsince
When owners of monopolies call for greater regulation, you know that they have
the maintenance of that monopoly in mind and not the good of the people

------
kumarvvr
Why would any one even listen to MZ now? I would listen to him and his company
when it comes to computational tech stuff. But that's it.

Privacy policy, protocols, rules, process, identity and what not are strictly
off limits.

Also, if MZ says something ought to be done in this way, I would give a
serious look at the advantages of not doing it that way.

------
wdr1
"Finally, regulation should guarantee the principle of data portability. If
you share data with one service, you should be able to move it to another.
This gives people choice and enables developers to innovate and compete."

Facebook blocks you exporting your contacts, to prevent you from taking your
social network elsewhere.

------
ohum
If Mark Zuckerberg had the best interest of other people, like, all of
humanity and the world writ large, in mind, I think it would probably be
apparent.

Rather, it actually appears as though he is being intentionally deceitful.

Perhaps his rationale is based on some measured or calculated outcome, maybe
he actually thinks he's doing some good in the world. Hopefully his intention
is positive!

Or, maybe he is beholden to investors.

He seems to be a fool with power, not someone with anything meaningful to say.

Is he a classic case of the old adage: "absolute power corrupts absolutely"?

Platform! Graph! Stream!, and, abuse people for profit!!

Are Facebook/Insta/Wechat/etc. good for the long term prosperity of humanity?
I would argue that the answer is a hard "no", and I think there's ample
evidence.

If he were a noble person, he'd shut his harmful systems down.

Shame on Mark Zuckerberg. History will not remember him kindly.

~~~
cjhopman
Oh please, what could he possibly say or do that would satisfy you.

------
Bud
Let's listen carefully to what Zuck says he wants, and then do the exact
opposite.

------
gcthomas
Zuckerberg says that there should be a "comprehensive privacy regulation in
line with the EU's GDPR", yet the first thing Facebook did was to move 1.5
billion accounts out of their data centre in Ireland to avoid having to meet
the GDPRs requirements. They are also appealing the belgian decision to
restrict Facebook's collection of users' and non-users' personal data across
the internet.

Zuckerberg is forever apologising and promising to do better, and this article
is only the latest attempt to try to manage the repetitive poor news cycle
that Facebook has generated over the last year.

------
mateodelnorte
Zuckerberg and facebook are just lobbying for government to take
responsibility for the things that they, as civilians, and Facebook as a
public corporation are responsible for – not screwing up so many people's
lives that the aggregate turns into a societal problem. The intention here is
to create legal precedent as a shield against future prosecution. If the
government mandates that only it is powerful enough to stop these problems,
then how could we have stopped them?!

This is when you sue, hard.

------
malvosenior
_" I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators."_

Translation: I want regulatory capture so no startup can ever compete with
Facebook, ever.

------
WheelsAtLarge
A classic big business strategy. If a company feels threaten with regulations
then they work towards making the regulations benefitial to them. Also
regulations make it harder for small comptitors to start so if you have
favorable regulations then you forestall competition. Sounds to me that he'll
be sounding like an advocate for the public from now on. We need to dought him
more than ever.

------
3xblah
"The rules governing the Internet allowed a generation of entrepreneurs to
build services that changed the world and created a lot of value in people's
lives."

Shouldn't "generation" be plural? It seems like he is being myopic, ignoring
other generations of "entrepreneurs" that built the infrastructure upon which
these "services" can run.

------
kbos87
Mark Zuckerberg, you apparently don’t realize how far you’ve fallen. The best
thing you could possibly do right now is to stay quiet and out of the way, not
try to interject your opinions into politics or the future of tech. At the
very least, it would be in your best interests if you pretended not to have a
voice or a stake in where some of these decisions go.

------
otakucode
There is no such thing as harmful content. There are only harmful consumers of
content. Removal of any amount or type of content can not rehabilitate these
harmful consumers. For as long as they lack the motive and personal integrity
to practice critical thinking on a constant and ongoing basis, no content can
ever be safe from them. They will be harmed by even the most direct, fact-
based, and honest content. Their interpretation of it will be wrong, driven by
their motives and desire for a particular thing to be true or false, and even
that honest and direct content will be called for removal. This isn't a trite
or insignificant observation, I think it is the whole heart of the issue. In
one audience of people, there is a madman ranting on a corner about anti-
Semitism and being ignored. In another, he is raised on their shoulders and
made a leader. The difference is not the availability of the 'bad content.'
The difference is the willingness (some might argue ability, but I think
critical thinking is such a basic and simple skill that almost all, including
children, are capable of it) of the audience to practice critical thinking.
And without that willingness, nothing can be done.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
This is a very _narrow_ view of human psychology.

How do you reconcile this opinion with the knowledge that copycat crime¹
occurs.

One would imagine that an adult with _critical thinking skills_ ought be able
to observe that _some_ people are _easily influenced_ at least _some of the
time_. Elsewise we wouldn't be here having this conversation.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_crime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_crime)

~~~
Nasrudith
The problem with that is that if you set the standards to 'can cause someone
to commit bad things' that can apply to literally everything.

Plenty of reactionary assholes have been triggered to violence by disparaged
groups having the gall to think of themselves as equals or transgress their
taboos against things like interracial marriages. Heck, under that standard we
should ban irrational numbers because they caused Pythagorean to drown their
discoverer!

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I didn’t intend to suggest we should _ban_ certain content.

It does seem reasonable that there might be scope for regulation at least in
the form of _viewing guidelines_.

I don’t know what that would look like in practice.

------
danmg
>So we’re creating an independent body so people can appeal our decisions.
We’re also working with governments, including French officials, on ensuring
the effectiveness of content review systems.

So content posted online should be moderated by the government. Fuck Zuck.
He's advocating for the Chinese model for the entire world.

------
techsin101
When company is young it breaks rules, hate rules. When it becomes big it
wants more and more regulations. It builds a regulatory fence around it, entry
barrier becomes harder and we get capitalism borne leech that swallows all
potential progress. Not just that this proposal sounds like it will do two
things. First hurt anonymity. Second, give governments first seats to
censorship. Not they can't do that already but none every video, post will be
under scrutiny from get go not when it's viral. Very much like YouTube dmca
system implemented by Google.

------
raymondgh
Zuck still wants platforms to control the judgement and censorship of content.
I agree this content should be the responsibility and liability of every so-
called “platform” that wants to profit off our communication as people — but
an ideal platform should NOT be censored at the network level. I want to live
in a world where Facebook the company can’t be blamed for people voting one
way or another, and I think this is most possible in a world where our most
popular communication platform is not a for-profit corporation. Content
consumers should have full control over self-censorship and there should be no
other interference (parents would control what children access). Maybe
Mastodon is taking us in the right direction. We need the tools and literacy
discover, judge, and trust content ourselves. Taking that responsibility away
from individuals also takes that power away from us. Zuck is right that we
need new rules — rules that prevent orgs like Facebook from taking over the
internet, not rules that entrench Facebook as our manager of internet content.

------
lgleason
People in the know here, who are saying not to trust was Zuck is saying should
make it a point to make sure that their elected reps understand why listening
to him is a bad idea. A lot of politicians are clueless when it comes to
technology and could easily buy this hook line and sinker.

------
aogaili
Well, that's beautiful strategy..

Start dictating rules to government so they stop harassing you, make it even
harder for other competitors and as a bonus be the hero in the eye of the
public.

All hail our digital emperor!

------
vixen99
On the net, not to have other identities available for use under certain
circumstances, is really dumb but their use is definitely other than useful
for certain business models.

------
hesk
Let's address these one by one.

Data portability is kinda useless if all your contacts are on a single
network. What we really need are federated social networks.

If Facebook loves the GDPR so much why did they move all non-EU users out of
its scope when it came into force?

A simple fix to get rid of targeted political ads would be to scrap the ad
network altogether. Of course, this is anathema to Facebook because they would
stop making money.

Finally, the problem with harmful speech is not that there are multiple
services but that the definition of harmful speech differs around the world.
What good are independent bodies in the US that regulate Facebook when other
countries want different standards?

~~~
cjhopman
> What we really need are federated social networks.

If you care about privacy and how your data is used and who has access to it,
federated networks are probably the worst. You do get some benefits for the
loss of those things, though.

------
in_hindsight
How could one measure the negative impact of Facebook on the scoiety? However
narrowed down the definition of society was

------
blunderkid
Harmful content as in all that vanity driven public posts by otherwise normal
humans. Wait who specializes in that?

------
duado
Good to see Zuck admit loss in a couple of these issues. Now it’s up to the
regulators to take the ball to the net.

------
gopher2
Seem like as good a starting point for a discussion as anything, although you
have to wonder what set of policies the Facebook-is-literally-cancer crowd
would actually be happy with.

As summarized by the BBC, calling for the following things:

* Common rules that all social media sites need to adhere to, enforced by third-party bodies, to control the spread of harmful content

* All major tech companies to release a transparency report every three months, to put it on a par with financial reporting

* Stronger laws around the world to protect the integrity of elections, with common standards for all websites to identify political actors

* Laws that not only apply to candidates and elections, but also other "divisive political issues", and for laws to apply outside of official campaign periods

* New industry-wide standards to control how political campaigns use data to target voters online

* More countries to adopt privacy laws like the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force last year

* A "common global framework" that means these laws are all standardised globally, rather than being substantially different from country to country

* Clear rules about who's responsible for protecting people's data when they move it from one service to another

------
drivingmenuts
Color me surprised that he only figured it out after a few billion dollars.

------
InTheArena
It's a brilliant cynical play by Mark Zuckerberg. First of all, he knows that
there is no universe in which the United States government could legally
enforce the same global standards of speech as China (Taiwan, Tibet, Muslims,
Churches are all verboten) or even Germany (where Mein Kampf has been illegal
until the last two years) Second, this proposal It also would put speech
enforcement into the hands of FAANG, and we can ask James Damore how tolerant
google is of speech that differs from their founders personal beliefs or that
detracts from their profits.

He's open to GDPR, but only if the same standards work everywhere, and only if
it shuts down everyone who doesn't have Facebook's capabilities to adhere and
lobby against laws. Of course, the focus isn't on minimizing data, but rather
making sure that data can flow cleanly between the monopolists.

------
shdh
I bet the deleted profile posts countered some of these points

------
kerng
Zuckerberg seems to like GDPR and wants more of it, but at the same time
Facebook moved accounts (some 1.5 billion) out of their Ireland datacenter to
ensure they aren't held to EU privacy standards.

I haven't seen a leader (of a company) or CEO being so obviously ingenuine,
its worrisome. I am not sure if he really believes his own words at this point
or if he realized the ship hit the iceberg and he is now frantically trying to
safe it but the long, painful submersion is inevitable... and he knows it too.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/19/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/19/facebook-
moves-15bn-users-out-of-reach-of-new-european-privacy-law)

------
jayess
Am I the only one that is just annoyed at the tone and language of everything
he writes? The guy doesn't seem to have a soul.

------
effnorwood
Wrong

------
ehosca
rule #1. Thou shall not buy/sell user information.

~~~
return0
the internet is entierly about transferring information, which ultimately
comes from humans

------
SrslyJosh
Great idea, Mark!

1\. Nobody listens to anything Zuckerberg says.

2\. Regulate social media platforms with >1M users. Require that they support
federation through open standards with published, open-source reference
implementations of all required software.

3\. Enact EU-style privacy protections, with the explicit goal of destroying
the tracking/surveillance industry, both on the net and off.

4\. Require that service providers, regardless of size(1), keep hate speech
off their platforms. This includes calls for the establishment of ethnostates
and other speech that stops short of literal calls for genocide but that has
an obvious, well-established trajectory in that direction.

(1) This may not be entirely practical, but it's a place to start. Also, the
definition of "service provider" may be tricky to establish.

~~~
sadris
> Require that service providers, regardless of size(1), keep hate speech off
> their platforms. This includes calls for the establishment of ethnostates

Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

Now how can your proposed policy reconcile this?

------
mindslight
Hahaha. I want to just blissfully assume this story was accidentally made live
two days early. April Fools!

 _The Internet_ is doing just fine. It's these paperclip/engagement maximizing
websites and crack-apps that are a problem. And the founder of one of the
largest ones of these, after having built surveillance profiles on everybody,
right as he's tightening the noose of censorship, is telling us that ambient
"new rules" are needed _now_? Give me a break - Zuckerberg chose profitability
over credibility a long time ago.

How about this - any rules that Zuckerberg thinks are "needed" can be _simply
tried by Faceboot itself_. Then we can see if they actually fix the mess he's
had a large part in creating, whether a different approach may be necessary,
or whether the resulting environment ends up too draconian. This approach is
blatantly obvious, but he's taken to lobbying rather than doing. So the actual
question is _what exactly is he trying to sell us on_?

~~~
return0
yeah i found the equalization of the internet with social media weird too

------
flafla2
One of the most interesting parts of this column is that it is published in
the Washington Post. You can't ignore the fact that this was likely run past
Jeff Bezos, and Zuckerberg knows that. In almost all other circumstances,
opinion columns from Mark were published on his public Facebook profile
(example: "Building Global Community" [1]). The context of releasing this on
WaPo is important as it represents an explicit call-to-action to the broader
"community" of big tech (not just facebook.com). On the other hand, it
represents an implicit approval of that call-to-action for Jeff Bezos (and
thus Amazon).

I'd love to hear about the behind-the-scenes politicking that led to this mode
of public outreach.

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-
glob...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-
community/10154544292806634)

~~~
ihuman
This post was also posted on his Facebook profile
[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10107013839885441](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10107013839885441)

------
qnsi
Facebook gets a lot of slack here on HN, and I share some critisism, but find
this article by Zuckerberg is a step in right direction.

One only hopes there is some free room for small companies from regulation, so
this helpful regulation doesnt end as a moat for FB and others.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Did you mean to write 'Facebook gets a lot of _flack_ '? That would seem to
make more sense given the rest of the sentence.

~~~
umvi
Also, it's "flak" (shortened form of German word for anti aircraft cannon) not
"flack".

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Some dictionaries seem to have me believe either is correct.

You’re right as far as the origin goes though.

~~~
asark
The _most correct_ is the one least likely to cause confusion... or kick off a
thread like this :-)

Probably "flak", then.

------
tus87
Translation: the deep state is very concerned the internet allows people to
bypass the establishment media and create influence that affects the outcomes
of democratic elections in ways that upset the elite.

~~~
inciampati
It always seemed to me that this story you're repeating is one spread by the
criminal elite (think Murdoch and friends) to the people they rule to convince
them that their enemy is exactly the group working for fairness and human
rights (namely people who have devoted their life to public service).

~~~
JasonFruit
"Public service" is a heck of a euphemism. And when has the government ever
cared a tinker's dam about anyone's rights? Unless the people force their
governments to respect their rights, the government will publicly serve them
into subjection.

------
system2
This crappy website doesn't let me use my adblocker.

