Serious question: Since Facebook is a private company, does the "if you don't like it, you can build your own platform" argument apply here? Or does that only apply selectively when it benefits partisan politics?
The RobinHood $GME situation is the natural next step in societal evolution once extreme censorship is given a pass. If you support the "go build it yourself" argument, you no longer have the right to complain about anything that's theoretically reproducible.
Absolutely! I'm not sure why you replied to my comment with this but I totally believe that Facebook doesn't have any legal or moral requirement to host anything they don't want to. They could literally just punt me tomorrow because they don't like my name and that's their right. Especially because there is no commercial or contractual relationship between us. I am not a customer of Facebook.
If you pay for hosting then you have a contract and then you and the company you're buying from are beholden to those terms.
Paying for hosting and signing contracts won't behold any company either, because any hosting company will have terms in their service contract that give them the right to discontinue the service at their discretion. A lot of people on HN also argue that companies has a right to decide which customers they want to have an association with, and thus there is no legal or moral requirement to continue hosting customer, regardless if payment is involved.
As a paying customer, you can negotiate whatever terms you want. They will want the ability to discontinue your service and you will conversely want that ability as well. However you can negotiate the exact terms as well as any notice periods, etc.
You have no consideration relationship with Facebook. You haven't entered into a contract. You are just filling out forms on a website.
> As a paying customer, you can negotiate whatever terms you want. They will want the ability to discontinue your service and you will conversely want that ability as well. However you can negotiate the exact terms as well as any notice periods, etc.
Theoretically, yes.
In reality, I’m too small an account to warrant anything besides boilerplate. The big boys may be able to negotiate. I cannot.
I've negotiated contracts for a single server at a data center. You don't have to be huge to have some negotiating power.
Now it's possible you are so extremely deplorable that nobody is willing to take your money but I think that is society functioning as it should. People are still willing to put up with a lot when money is involved.
If I was so extremely deplorable, more people would give me their money enabling me to increase my bargaining position. Alas, I’m just a regular boring schmuck.
For many people, rightly or wrongly, Facebook has become a de facto way to communicate socially and for their business. It has become to big to make the sole decisions on who can and cannot be on the platform. It should be treated as a utility, just like phone and internet companies should be.
This is a poor argument. Facebook provides an HTML form and database for free and lots of people use it so it's a utility? That argument doesn't hold a lot of water.
Phone and Internet requires literal physical infrastructure that crosses public and private property, you pay for it, and they are natural monopolies because of that. Facebook is nothing by comparison.
No, Facebook provides a social network with billions of users and businesses relying on it for communication. Facebook requires literal physical infrastructure that is distributed around the US and the world, with interconnections in between. The two massive data centers they just built near me make that pretty damn clear.
Perhaps you may not like the suggestion that I offered, but you’re minimizing what Facebook has become and what it takes to run at that scale.
You are mischaracterized the situation to make your point. Facebook's infrastructure is all private and not at all unique. The interconnections are the Internet. Anyone can compete with Facebook. You can't create your own telephone poles or run your own railways but you can certainly do everything that Facebook is doing.
As for the businesses that rely on it -- they choose to use that platform, for free, knowing exactly what they're getting into. There are thousands of times more businesses that do not rely on Facebook than those that do. Facebook is not some key infrastructure; if it all went away tomorrow it's a minor inconvenience at worst.
Phone lines are privately owned, not publicly. Yes the locality may own the poles, but it may not either. They are leased or granted access to the right of way.
Facebook also owns at least some of its own interconnects.
It is fine with me if you disagree on principle, but to act like anybody can just create the network effect of Facebook and compete is frankly ridiculous.
You're splitting hairs about phone lines -- you know what I'm talking about.
You talk like Facebook was the first ever social network and didn't start out of dorm room. You talk like there aren't any other social networks right now. Or that there aren't other media companies.
What's the end game here? What exactly do you want? The inability to moderate? Nationalized? Broken up? I guarantee you can't come up with a single remedy that isn't ridiculous.
The end game for Facebook definitely should include breaking them up. Nationalized, probably not, but they need to be small enough that the federal government can regulate them like every other industry.
Facebook’s scale and power are bad for capitalism and democracy. You may find it ridiculous to break them up, but plenty of serious people in this world don’t.
I'd argue Fox News is worse for capitalism and democracy -- why single out Facebook? Also why do they have to be broken up to be regulated by the government? Laws shouldn't apply to extremely specific situations or single entities. If you are really worried about scale and power, you actually have a long list of companies to go through before you even get to Facebook.
So break it up, how? In what way? And if you've broken Facebook up, how have you ensured that you've actually solved the problem you intend to solve.
Curious, as your solution to the problem seems to be to do nothing. Does that mean you don't think it's a problem?
Here's the problem as i see it.
Facebook's and other companies with data exchange driven revenue models have monopolization on some of our generations most intelligent minds and are using cutting edge psychology and algorithms to get the general populace to click that, scroll for longer and be deeper entrenched in the depths of political extremism.
Do you believe Facebook has no legal or moral requirement to host content from people regardless of their race? I don't quite know the law in America, but I'm more interested in the moral question. Is racial discrimination by a company like Facebook morally acceptable to you regardless of whether it's legal or not?
Facebook is no different than any other business in this case. If you walk into a restaurant and you are rude to the waiters or you cause a commotion that restaurant can refuse your service and kick you out. Or heck, maybe they just want to close early. Legal and moral. If you are Black and walk into a restaurant and you are refused service that is both illegal (in the US) and immoral.
What if you walk in and are somebody named wvenable so they kick you out? As you've said, you believe they have that right.
What if you walk in and are ginger so they kick you out?
Have poor eyesight?
Are dressed in the costume of a religion they don't like?
Are dressed in the costume of a political ideology they don't like?
I'm trying to work out a set of fundamental principals are would distinguish good discrimination from bad. I often see people, such as yourself, adamantly insisting that some kinds are good or some are bad but the distinction seems arbitrary.
US law has defined a few protected classes (race, color, religion, sex, age, and disability). Is that a perfect list? Probably not. Is it a reasonable legal and moral framework, I think so. Based on that protected class list, you can probably work out my answers to your questions easily. So it's not that arbitrary.
I could reverse this and ask your the same type of questions. As a business owner, am I not allowed to have any control over who and what business that I do? If I allow posts on my website, I must allow Nazi hate posts? If I allow images, I must allow all images except those that are illegal? If you're being rude to my workers, I can't turn you away, I just have to take it? If you say yes, I'd like how that is fair to me. If you say no, then that is also arbitrary, right?
I guess your answers are:
1. Have the right
2. Have the right
3. Don't have the right
4. Don't have the right
5. Have the right
But what's so different between 2 and 3 or between 4 and 5? I could understand it if you see them as grey areas but it sounds like you're adamant they have no moral requirement to serve ginger people but that it's immoral to refuse short-sighted people. And why are religious and political ideologies distinct?
I don't have much of an answer myself, but I don't think religion should be protected. People are free to change their religion or lie about it to avoid discrimination if they want. Do you agree that excluding Muslims is wrong but excluding (nonviolent) Islamists is a right? How can you even tell the difference?
I wondered if you opinion was based on some philosophy. It seems it's just a copy of what you've absorbed from your culture and suffers from all the same problems.
> it sounds like you're adamant they have no moral requirement to serve ginger people
I'm not sure how you get adamant from my comment. I went out of my way to claim that this description was not perfect. One could argue that ginger falls under "race". I personally don't believe you should deny someone service because of there genetic appearance. I'd go all in on appearance but then you might might have to serve naked people! Everything is grey.
Religion is a grey area too; in some cases it's more equivalent to political believes and in other cases it's more like race. People also mistake appearance and religion all the time.
> Do you agree that excluding Muslims is wrong but excluding (nonviolent) Islamists is a right?
No I don't. People like to claim their persecuted because of who they are rather than what they do and how that impacts others.
Lets be clear, we are talking about Facebook blocking content (actively posted material) that they deem unacceptable. You made this about the who rather than the what and I don't think that applies in this case at all. So we've really gone down this rabbit hole for nothing.
This is the quote that makes it look like you have a strong opinion on at least an aspect of this topic, including discriminating against people for who they are not what they post. So I thought you might have some unique set of beliefs. Turns out you don't, and see it as a rabbit hole, which is OK and we can stop here.
> I totally believe that Facebook doesn't have any legal or moral requirement to host anything they don't want to. They could literally just punt me tomorrow because they don't like my name and that's their right.
You make a good point, I did say that! I do believe that you shouldn't be forced to do business with someone. And it doesn't matter if they're black, white, disabled, Nazi, Muslim, etc. But it does matter if the reason you don't want to do business with them is because of racism, sexism, agism, etc. If I all the sudden only want to do business with 100 people and I'm currently doing business with 200. I can randomly select 100 people and punt them. I don't need a reason. I can punt the least profitable. I can punt them because of alphabetical order. But it would be unfair and immoral of me to punt them because they are black or disabled.
In the case of Facebook, they're just offering people a free space to post stuff. They're not obligated to continue to that forever. They don't need a good reason to punt you. But their are situations where they could have a bad reason.
The question is, is this topic a bad reason to punt people? Given the low obligation that Facebook has to host anything -- I don't think so.
We might be getting a bit bogged down here, but I may as well carry on...
Your idea of Facebook's obligation seems to be pretty much just based on what the law prohibits. That's not really an interesting thing to talk about because everyone agrees on such a simple fact.
I weakly think Facebook is so powerful that when it bans people or breaks up groups, it's capable of doing more harm than most other internet services and therefore it could be more morally wrong. If your Facebook group is turned off, what other platform can you move every member to? How can you even contact them to organize the migration? If you're personally kicked off, how can you persuade all other members of your groups to migrate to another platform just so you can join them again? I attend a real-life class and it comes with a Facebook group for students to keep in touch and share materials. If I was banned from Facebook, I'd miss out on part of this unrelated class. Since everyone assumes you can use Facebook, if you can't, then you're disadvantaged. In contrast, nobody assumes you can post to HN, so being banned from here is qualitatively different, in my opinion.
This site is not good for discussions this far down the tree!
My idea of Facebook's obligation is not based on what the law prohibits but the law, hopefully, follows basic human moral tenets. If they overlap, it's not by accident.
If your Facebook group turns off, there are hundreds of other platforms you can move to. If you failed to backup your contacts, how is that the fault of Facebook? If you can't convince people to migrate, why is that their problem? If your school relies on Facebook, they shouldn't do that -- complain to them, not Facebook. And not everyone assumes you can (or want) to use Facebook.
It sounds like you want Facebook to take responsibility for things that are your own personal responsibility simply because, today, they're popular. It's not because they're the only choice but because, in some circles, they're the favored choice. Pretty significant difference.
What if your group meets at McDonald's and you got banned? You forgot to get their contact info. They don't want to meet at Starbucks instead. And your school hosts a study session at McDonalds. What is McDonald's responsibility for your misfortune?
Facebook is not the whole Internet. I have a Facebook account but generally I go months without even logging in. It's not essential. You're not forced to use it. If something you want to do requires it, it's your choice to do that or not. I've literally put my money where my mouth and decided not to upgrade to an Oculus Quest 2 because of the Facebook integration.
I understand what you're saying from an ideological point of view - personal responsibility, freedom for companies to ban who they want. That all makes sense for unusual things and small companies, but real life humans don't take personal responsibility and do need protection from the law. Look at some other examples which you surely agree with:
Personal safety requirements, such as compulsory seat belt wearing in cars.
Scammers are breaking the law by tricking people to give up their money even though the victims could just refuse to give money to whoever asks for it if they didn't want to get scammed.
Tenancy and employment law, at least in my country, doesn't allow people to contract out of certain rights. That's because some poor sucker would end up shooting himself in the foot by accepting a raw deal out of desperation.
Some companies like utilities are required to not arbitrarily ban customers, even though they're not the only choice - you can still install solar panels if you don't like the power company but it's nowhere near as convenient.
Consumer protection laws.
Restrictions on gambling.
Anti-spam laws. Email is not the only option but it has market dominance and network effects meaning normal life is harder without it.
McDonald's isn't like this because it has nowhere near the market dominance or network effects that Facebook does. It would still be a problem but a smaller one which I think doesn't outweigh the rights of the owner to ban whoever he wants or responsibility of customers to organize their groups better.
This thread has so far been busting my balls about what I think.
My question for you, is what do you believe should the be the rules here? I'm not against consumer protections -- if you want to compose a user bill of rights that applies to all companies online and off I might be for that depending on what you really want.
It's about what you think because you made claims about how you think things should be.
I'm not sure what regulation would be, but something that protects people against surprise and troublesome problems. Ideally, I feel it should be done by enabling greater competition, perhaps with a requirement for portable user identities, friends lists and reputations or interoperability between networks. Then they would have competitive pressure to treat their users well and the government wouldn't need to micro-regulate little details.
Not for all companies online. Just those that are in a powerful enough position to cause bigger problems, otherwise it would be disproportionately burdensome on small players or even hobbyists. That's similar to how existing regulations don't apply to everyone. Eg. Home owner-occupiers can do DIY work on their own house that normal requires a licensed tradesman, kids can sell lemonade without such strict hygiene rules as a cafe, individuals can sell 2nd hand goods without providing the same consumer protections as a 2nd hand dealer, etc.
The fact that you want equal treatment for all companies, as well as other things you've said, suggests you're more of an idealist than a pragmatist. I used to be like that but then realized the real world is too complicated for simple one-size-fits-all solutions to be the best. It turns out the free market doesn't actually lead to good outcomes for people unless its natural bad tendencies (eg. monopolies, predatory sales, negative externalities, etc.) are kept under control but at the same time, too much control stifles small business and innovation so it requires ongoing active management to function well.
> It's about what you think because you made claims about how you think things should be.
That's not necessary fair because everyone else is calling for change here.
> Ideally, I feel it should be done by enabling greater competition, perhaps with a requirement for portable user identities, friends lists and reputations or interoperability between networks.
Except that you're just spreading your private information even further. At least if I post my private information to Facebook, it's on Facebook. I'm not worried that, as a feature, my friends are porting my information to other platforms.
> Then they would have competitive pressure to treat their users well and the government wouldn't need to micro-regulate little details.
I agree that competition would be better. In fact, I'd say that Facebook should have been prevented from buying Instragam, Whatapp, etc. But competitive pressure alone does not necessary require companies to treat users better. Facebook would still be the same with competition from these other companies.
> Just those that are in a powerful enough position to cause bigger problems, otherwise it would be disproportionately burdensome on small players or even hobbyists.
That's hard to judge. Just look at Whatapps -- they grew to millions of users with a team of less than dozen people. Are they a small player or a big player? You might end up with a lot of social networks right on the line of being big to avoid additional regulation.
Facebook, for it's part, has been very pro-regulation as they're big enough and profitable enough. This will further make it harder for smaller players to compete even if you limit the restrictions to large players.
> The fact that you want equal treatment for all companies, as well as other things you've said, suggests you're more of an idealist than a pragmatist.
No. But I think you can't have rules for "Facebook" because in 10 years the problem is going to be some other company in some other situation. And you have to be very careful of regulatory capture.
I believe when you sign up to Facebook you need to accept some terms and condition clause - this is the contract which is signed between you and Facebook (Facebook is referring that document when users are banned, so apparently they consider this as contract).
Facebook earns money thanks to its users, providing them some service so definitely there should be a contract here.
Now, when you look on those T&C, they are very vague, especially possible reasons for account suspension are very, very vague. They refer user to some "community standards" and it is not clear, if those "standards" are part of the contract or not.
In my opinion, the first thing that should be changed is to force Facebook and other services to provide a clear, formal contract that would state what are duties of both contract parts, what rights they have, etc. Stuff that each normal contract has. No mumbling about "community", etc.
Contract should be something that is enforceable and has clear appeal path and so on. If I don't agree with Facebook I should be able to court and refer to something that is specific and well defined, not some Mark Zuckerberg views on what is good or bad.
They got "terms & conditions". This is the contract. Formalising another contract would require legal fees. Is every user willing to pay a lawyer $200 to use FB? (and another $200 for Pinterest, $200 for Twitter, etc.) Is every user willing to pay AGAIN another $200 on the next "T&C Update"? If you think $200 is too much, come up with anothe number, and then multiply it by every free service you/someone uses (Twitter, free-Dropbox, free-Gmail, free-GoogleDocs, free-HN, free-Reddit, free-Viber, free-....).
FB, Twitter, Pinterest usage comes "as-is". We/you are the products. Since when does a super market have a contract with a potato? (I don't mean to insult, but really..).
Unless they (FB, or any service provider - paid or free) clearly discriminates against someone (e.g. "you are man/woman/black/asian/etc. and we don't like people like you here") and then they kick out FB every man/woman/black/asian/etc. person, feel free to sue them (more legal fees.. I see a pattern here) :)
But if it's not a discrimination issue, then please tell me ONE person that hasn't dropped an f-bomb "f... you/this/him/her/them/.." or some other profanity on a FB post, a FB comment, on FB-messenger message. In that spirit everyone is eligible to receive a red card, and it's down to FB to kick someone out anytime they want or anytime they get provoked. E.g. HenryBemis is trashing us on HN.. HenryBemis wrote "f... this <name_of_politician>", thus HenryBemis violated the policy about swearing, threatening violence, sexual content, yada-yada-yada.
A couple of days ago we saw a post on someone sending a "accidentally, partial nude photo" over messenger to a friend of his, and this got him expelled from FB. I clearly understand the capabilities of FB vs mine. I think more people should see these facts coldly.
Why would you even bring in partisan politics? Sounds like lack of principles, and total ignorance how moderation, admin rights, privatization and rights of association works.
Where is the hypocricy though? The same principles apply to private property in this case too. No special laws required for special people. I grant it's formed as a bit of hyperbole.
It should give people pause what full privatization and deregulation may mean.
I disagree, its consistent to think that people who violate facebooks policies should go build it themselves once blocked, but that this does not violate them meaningfully (saying something sarcastically is not the same as actually saying it), and that facebook should consistently follow its own rules.
There's a definite middle ground between facebook should be able to do whatever it wants with impunity and facebook should never be able to moderate anything ever.
Do you have specific individuals in mind? Because HN is a collective of a lot of people. I, for one, as posted had the same reaction both times.
Not every opinion is informed only by partisan position. I just believe in private ownership and personal rights. I believe in free speech but not in compelled speech.
Of course it applies here. The problem with Facebook doing this is that it diminishes their brand, product and trust users have in the platform.
Re: Robinhood, it is a completely different story. What Robinhood did in this case is market manipulation. They only allowed people to sell the stock and not to buy it. That is (I think) illegal.
If so, it requires someone to take action against them. Since the CEO of the Nasdaq suggested a trading halt to let hedge funds "recalibrate"[0] it's going to take State AGs or similar to take action.
The CEO of Nasdaq is owned by those hedge funds. Just like Janet Yellen is owned by them[1]. Halting trading would cause the price to plummet, and the Hedge funds would save billions. THIS is why they're calling for a trading halt.
It still applies. It applied when we were talking about conservatives, it applied when people were wondering about the "slippery slope" which we are clearly at the bottom of for a while now, it applies now.
I don't care how people get there. New platform. Use the correct technologies to be more impervious to top down arbitrary decisions, build a real appeals process, build representatives.
Of course, they have the right to do whatever. What is interesting is the timing. Why is Facebook comfortable demonstrating to what extent they are somehow linked to wall street? That's just an odd choice, I wouldn't have made a connection between them if they hadn't actively moved to harm their own brand in order to protect markets. That should ring alarm bells regardless of legality.
The RobinHood $GME situation is the natural next step in societal evolution once extreme censorship is given a pass. If you support the "go build it yourself" argument, you no longer have the right to complain about anything that's theoretically reproducible.