
Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web - ALee
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/technology/facebook-government-regulations.html
======
AlexandrB
I find that the headline and the article mischaracterizes what is happening.
The "Wild Web" was reigned in long ago by commercial interests. A distributed
web with many small nodes would still be hard to control and police
effectively. However as much the web has been centralized by the likes of
Google, Facebook, and large media conglomerates effective government
censorship is once again possible.

This is like a wild meadow turning to a manicured lawn. The near-monoculture
of the web will have a much harder time withstanding legal assault by state
actors than a distributed web would have.

~~~
skybrian
The wild Internet is definitely still there. The problem is that it got too
hostile for most users due to spam, viruses, malware, phishing, trolls,
doxing, and so on. It will get worse, as attackers adopt machine learning
techniques and automate social engineering at scale.

So users have a problem. Companies that solved it the right way became
enormous, because protection from all that crap is something people want, and
they want it to be easy to use. In the early days it was anti-spam (Gmail).
More recently, Snapchat helped teens avoid creating a permanent record of
things.

Sure, you can go outside the walls at any time, but how many people really
want to? The way to win users is to provide better protection than before,
including defenses against new privacy threats, not to somehow convince people
they don't need to care about it.

Sometimes providing better protection results in more freedom (of a sort). For
example, a well-maintained app store means users don't have to worry about
malware and viruses, so they can download whatever games they want without
worrying that they'll infect their machine. This wasn't true of Windows in the
old days.

Ironically, the web started out pretty safe (or so we thought) and degraded as
more adtech came along. These days you can hardly click on a link without
getting ads in your face. There's opportunity for someone.

~~~
ouid
>Snapchat helped teens avoid creating a permanent record of things.

Why isn't Snapchat more popular than Instagram? I assumed that it was the case
that more people have stage fright than don't. Is this a faulty assumption, or
are people just acting in defiance of this fear?

~~~
odammit
Not to be old, but I had many friends get into Snapchat for a hot minute. My
wife and I never did. Instagram let us share photos. Snapchat seemed like just
gimmicky cat ears and showboating. The platform very much feels like "look at
me" not "hey I had this cool experience and I want to share it."

Full disclosure: I bought a bunch of snapchat stock at the bottom because I
fully invest in the self-centeredness of humankind. Worked great w/ FB.

------
doktrin
Facebook is most likely a net negative in this world. I don't know if it's
always been true, but I think it is now. I personally didn't realize how
strong my feelings were until one of their recruiters contacted me. I'm far
from a 'values' driven employee, but this was by far the easiest refusal of my
career.

~~~
mirimir
In the Guardian article[0], recently posted on HN[1], Franklin Foer argues:

> By the time Zuckerberg began extolling the virtues of hacking, he had
> stripped the name of most of its original meaning and distilled it into a
> managerial philosophy that contains barely a hint of rebelliousness.

I rather disagree. Indeed, I believe that Facebook has taken hacking to an
extreme level. As the article argues, they're against free will. Not only are
they're compromising users' privacy, they're arguing against privacy as a
legitimate option. Because there's arguably no integrity in it:

> “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-
> workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end
> pretty quickly,” Zuckerberg has said. “Having two identities for yourself is
> an example of a lack of integrity.”

That's an extremely authoritarian, "we have the Truth, you are Wrong, and we
will Prevail", attitude. And it totally ignores power imbalances, where having
different images in different contexts is the only possibility for any
freedom.

Compartmentalization with multiple personas is essential for survival in a
pervasively authoritarian world.[2]

0)
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/19/facebooks...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/19/facebooks-
war-on-free-will)

1)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15284020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15284020)

2) [https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/online-privacy-
through-o...](https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/online-privacy-through-
opsec-and-compartmentalization-part-1)

~~~
mirimir
Listen to "Life During Wartime" while thinking on this :)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyzkB-9rxOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyzkB-9rxOY)

------
amrrs
>The diplomatic game that unfolded in Vietnam has become increasingly common
for Facebook.

Yes, At least this should ring a bell to all those who still think they can
write anything on FB about a Government and get away with it. Facebook while
being pushed and portrayed as your personal diary is actually your digital
repository only accessible for the most elite like Government.

While an average FB user can easily shame anyone around him (like how
frustrated boy friends shame their ex girl friends), fellow average FBians
can't do much. This reiterates the capitalist world that we live in where
Democracy is just a myth.

~~~
driverdan
> At least this should ring a bell to all those who still think they can write
> anything on FB about a Government and get away with it.

They _should_ be able to. Free speech is a human right. FB should not be
helping governments violate human rights.

> This reiterates the capitalist world that we live in where Democracy is just
> a myth.

Those are two different things.

~~~
rdtsc
> Free speech is a human right. FB should not be helping governments violate
> human rights.

I think it is usually framed in as a human right against government
intervention. That is the government can't shut you up if you want to
criticize it. However FB is not the government. FB can stop and censor people
because it is a private entity. Nobody has a right to use FB's resources
(server time, bandwidth) for free to say whatever they want. They can be
kicked out without any legal repercussion.

Now wonder what happens if the government gives incentives FB to act on its
behalf. Maybe a carrot and stick approach, it can tax it higher, raid its
offices or pay it off with contracts in response to FB silencing or blocking
certain users. This is where it gets interesting.

What about if a 3rd party wants to silence some opinions and it has nothing to
do with the government. Does free speech still apply. Let's say multi-
billionaire wants to shape public opinion so it pays billions of dollars to FB
or Google to silence and suppress competing opinions. No government in sight
here. But it does feel like free speech is being violated. Or is it? Kinda
interesting to think about.

And this is not just hypothetical after the election Facebook, Google and
Twitter all jumped on the "we will work hard to fight Fake News" bandwagon. It
was a nice impulse on the surface, but I think what they really meant was that
they are offering those who have money to spend the ability to manipulate and
control opinions and discussions since they are essentially monopolies of
online social interaction and news dissemination.

~~~
driverdan
While you raise some interesting discussion points about 3rd parties that's
not what I was referring to. FB can have whatever internal content guidelines
they want, independent of governments. What I'm talking about is creating
tools that allow oppressive governments to violate human rights.

------
IBM
>At a White House dinner in 2015, Mr. Zuckerberg had even asked the Chinese
president, Xi Jinping, whether Mr. Xi might offer a Chinese name for his soon-
to-be-born first child — usually a privilege reserved for older relatives, or
sometimes a fortune teller. Mr. Xi declined, according to a person briefed on
the matter.

Laughed out loud at this. I can understand wanting access to the market but
this is just embarrassingly desperate.

~~~
Steko
The secret to a good kowtow is a very slight audible confirmation that your
head has touched the floor. The person performing the kowtow needs to adjust
the force they use depending on both the flooring material and the hearing
ability of the audience (who are often elderly).

~~~
jacquesm
By that reckoning there should be a good sized dent in Zuckerberg's forehead
(and the floor).

------
l5870uoo9y
It is with the greatest obviousness that strategic important sectors — such as
defence — can't trade with foreign countries without specific permission from
the government. The tech sector is an sector of strategic importance and it
can't both serve the Chinese communist party and the US democracy. The Chinese
understands this.

------
danielrhodes
There is now a history of American tech companies operating in China. The
lesson is pretty clear: play politics if you want, but know that if you do
(i.e. Google), you are going to lose access to the market. Thus, it comes down
to a business decision and it becomes increasingly hard to argue on principles
if things look so binary.

------
ameister14
If we're going with the wild-west analogy, what's happening now is the
transition from a Territory to a State. It was wild and ungoverned, then
corporations moved in and created some order, and now governments see order
and are moving in to take over management.

~~~
__jal
It is a terrible analogy all around.

What is happening is that Facebook is shifting from being AOL 2.0 to being a
government contractor. They'll eventually be more entrenched and integrated
(in the US) with the IRS, police, intelligence, etc.

The first step is to get them over a barrel, with public opinion against them.
The rest is easy, and FB will embrace it.

~~~
Top19
lol the AOL 2.0 analogy. I will never forgive my parents for signing us up for
AOL Broadband. What is AOL Broadband you wonder? Well you sign in to AOL just
like you did with dial-up, the experience is almost the same so old people
didn’t freak out, and then it drops you into AOL’s shitty shitty browser. Oh
and it even blocked our other browser from ever working due to how the tunnels
were configured (Internet Explorer), and you couldn’t use a wireless router
with AOL Broadband in Texas until 2006 (ruining Xbox Live which was on the 2nd
floor).

------
danjoc
What a difference 20 years makes...

[https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence](https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-
independence)

------
divbit
I actually don't mind a little censorship of illegal-ish stuff (or at least
warning, that hey, this person is trying to metaphorically sell you something
illegal !), but what really bugs me is the subtle (and not so subtle),
targeted manipulation I sometimes feel I experience, where there might be like
many different usernames all targeting you but somehow all controlled by the
same person / interest, and you just think it's normal conversation...
(Apparently Reddit is mostly bots?) I think we saw some (heck, a lot of this)
in the 2016 election, and personally I try to keep myself to a human-usable
number of usernames (I think I have like 5 to hackernews as I forget
passwords, but tend to use at most one, or two obviously linked ones for an
extended period of time, and then switch if I say something too stupid and
want to get a clean start) I don't think something like necessitating a real
id is a good idea, since then everything you say is tied to you forever (hail
satan), but I'm sure some kind of manipulation detection would be possible...
would be an interesting project to work on actually.

------
beepboopbeep
I think its perfectly fair to scrutinize and regulate a company that has such
an immensely pervasive presence in the every day life of so many citizens.
Yes, that applies to google to. Why should I trust them to be responsible?

------
bukgoogle
Facebook and "new world" just sounds scary.

I really do not want facebook's new world.

------
pnathan
The Great Myth of cyberspace was that individuals in it or the servers that
ran the software were not subject to the laws of the nations they existed
within.

The cold reality is that this is _not true_. And, thus, in time, to exist
within a repressive regime requires importing the repression within the
software. This is the bargain Facebook wants to make.

------
TCM
I think its more of the opposite. Technology creates spheres of influence in
the countries that they operate. Traditional governments attempt to reign it
in (this is usually effective if they are a company with ad revenue or they
want to follow local laws. But when you cut down one sphere another grows to
replace it.

------
chasd00
the web is still as wild as you want, if you hate facebook then write a better
facebook. That use to be how it worked, not sure what changed. Maybe people
just aren't as creative as they use to be.

When i was single and had free time public IPs were golden because then you
could run a webserver and DNS and once you've registered a domain name you
could get whatever you wanted out on the web.

I can get a public IP, server, and DNS for basically free now with a few
clicks. If something sucks and you think it could be better than go do it and
let the world be the judge. The web is more accesible now than ever.

------
Havoc
Seems more like FB is reeling in official policy but ok...

------
faceboksukha
Please people, try to avoid facebook and they agenda much as possible.

------
Top19
> Facebook is racing to gain the advantage in Africa over rivals like Google
> and Chinese players including Tencent, in a 21st century version of the
> “Scramble for Africa.”

That is a really scary thing to have read. Perhaps the New York Times is out
of line in using it, but if that metaphor is even 10% accurate that would be
very bad.

To give some background, the “Scramble for Africa” is the only time I’ve ever
read the words, where the writer had a serious argument, “was worse than the
holocaust”. This was in reference to the mass deaths in the Congo under King
Leopold of Belgium, as documented in the book “King Leopold’s Ghost”.

I know a ton of people have died in history and there have been so many wars,
but the Scramble for Africa was really really really bad.

Yeah so I guess in conclusion, NY Times shouldn’t have used that phrase,
Facebook sucks, and if they (Facebook) mess up almost everywhere please please
just not let them mess up the African continent.

