Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor
"Whistleblower" Frances Haugen is a vital media and political asset because she advances their quest for greater control over online political discourse.
Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor - by Glenn Greenwald - Glenn Greenwald (substack.com)
Thank you -- but not at all sure about your assertion... The "whistleblower" is now "guided" -- by a long-time Obama operative !!! They like and NEED the continuing presence of the incompetent and insane clown Trump --- to stay in power.
"...now guided by long-time Obama operative Bill Burton..." -- an interesting and key detail in GG's article !!
Continuing unmasking of the scam of the century concocted by Obama, Hillary, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, etc. from the start -- the Russia-gate hoax -- continues to be of the highest priority to the lying team. A major censorship / silencing wave – utilizing Facebook, Google, Tweeter, Apple monopolies which are fully integrated with domestic surveillance apparatus.
Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Kamala (Hillary’s protégé), Schiff, Jamie Ruskin, etc. have to continue and intensify the now 5-year long Russia-gate scam. They invented the deliberate, stupid and dangerous Russia-gate fabrication on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party.
The highest need of "Biden's" government and its DNC cabal is that Russia-gate immense hoax and impeachment “entertainments” will NOT / will NEVER be fully exposed. Hence desperate efforts by its primary propagandists in CIA (Brennan) and military, and by primary propagandists, including Kamala, Neera Tanden, Tony Blinken, Pete Buttigieg, Jake Sullivan…
Note Pelosi’s brazen statement on DNC and Biden-family corruption (Hunter’s laptops) – “All roads lead to Russia” and Hillary’s suggestion to check if Trump called Putin during Capitol riots – with which Pelosi agreed.
The Russia-gate lying team is back in FULL power – Russia-gate hoax will be only amplified. Note that on Biden’s very first day US army convoy was dispatched into Syria to “protect” Syria’s oil fields. The War party didn’t lose a minute – servicing donations from arms industry can’t be delayed any longer.
Once again: The entire anti-Russian narrative is a deliberate fabrication and the scam will continue. Always remember: Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among top former Obama 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including the immense “White helmets” hoax) and staged all (ALL) chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
Democrat Party (like GOP "elite") is a deeply corrupt fascist dictatorship serving its billionaire donors and arm and intelligence industry interests; there is only one party – with two (DNC and GOP) wings. The only solution is likely a viable third (and fourth, etc.) party -- possibly with sole and unifying focus on all-encompassing CORRUPTION
I hope you'll keep politely bugging Matt on this. On face value, his assertion that "there are factions on both sides in both parties" is plausible. At least we need to be open minded about it.
BUT, then where ARE the Democrats against censorship? I have yet to find someone in leadership who will strongly, and openly oppose the agenda of the pro-censors. If they -- these people whose job it is to represent us -- are unwilling to take a public position, it's not very accurate to say they are "against."
Thank you. It is a fake "whistleblower" -- “guided” by long-time Obama operative Bill Burton !!
"Whistleblower" Frances Haugen is a vital media and political asset because she advances their quest for greater control over online political discourse.
She is now “guided” by long-time Obama operative Bill Burton !!
Unlike Julian Assange, Daniel Hale or Ed Snowden, corporate media is suddenly in love with “whistleblowers”….
Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor - by Glenn Greenwald - Glenn Greenwald (substack.com)
A shady Facebook 'whistleblower' wants more censorship -- Grayzone
Yes, I read Greenwald's piece carefully when it first came out. I will look at the Grayzone link soon.
What I'm suggesting though is that in this situation, the best way to pin Matt down is to ask him to name names, and insist they go on the record. Sharing pieces of analysis -- no matter how good they may be -- is less effective. This is not criticism, trust me -- I make the same kind of mistake all the time.
OK, thank you. But you can ask Matt the same..., let's do it both of us. We both highly value his work -- he is also in a difficult position -- the lying "elite" can instantly ostracize him if "the machine" decides to do it.
Frankly, I am rather frustrated by the continuing (on "both sides") of judging the worth or value of an idea based on who is proposing it instead of on its own merits - I see it all over. I think the latter is what Matt did here, which is why I decided to kick in some bucks - It is a very refreshing concept - "both sides" have concepts and ideas worth considering, being judged on their merits, and, perhaps as, if not more, importantly, on their downsides ... That is what Matt did here ...
I realize that folks who "fund" the publication or dissemination of ideas and the folks who advance them, may well have, most probably do, have their own "agenda" - but that. ipso facto, does not, IMO, discredit the ideas themselves. Matt has dissected the ideas presented, pointed out the pros, and the cons, of Haugen's proposals, which, IMO is what should be considered, not Haugens "backers". The critique you have is reminiscent of what happened to Jill Stein when she attempted to sue for a recount in several states in the '16 election - due to what appeared to be quite unexpected results - Because most of the money behind her attempt came from Ds, she was accused of being a D puppet (which is pretty funny considering that she was also called a Putin puppet by the Ds), and her efforts denounced by elements of her own party (Greens) because they were seen as aimed at "helping" the Ds - I think it was a worthwhile effort (actually we should probably do recounts regularly), and the Ds were the only folks who had the money to do it - the Greens hardly have 2 nickles to rub together ....
My point being - never mind who is "funding" an idea - is the idea any good! Granted, depending on your opinion of the funders, some ideas may raise more eyebrows, perhaps invite more scrutiny, but, and I strongly emphasize this, should be accepted or rejected on their merits alone ....
In short -- your "both sides" is only one -- ONE War party.
"53K US contractors in the Middle East versus -- for 35K troops" !!! What a lucrative business and worth unlimited donations to both DNC and GOP politicians. Highlighting just that "detail" -- tells it all....
A 1%-er War party with two right (DNC and GOP) wings -- gay marriage, abortion, "woke", and other imposed topics are just distractions to divide 99% of population into "red" and "blue" camps.
But brainwashed US citizen agitate "freeing" China and increasing hate of Moslems, Russians, Chinese, Martians - just to avoid thinking about our own beloved country. 1%-er overlords are playing us like a violin...
You obviously didn't get the gist of my post - you seem to have decided that I am in the "one war party" cheering section, without any justification for that judgment, and in spite of my comment below about how I have voted 3rd party for the last 7 elections. What about you, where was your vote?
The analogies have I used, for some time now, as opposed to your "53K v 35K", for D/Rs is a choice between someone driving us over a cliff at 60MPH v 90MPH, or, facing a 90ft gap between where we are and where we need to be, we should only choose between a 30ft or a 50ft bridge - at the end of either we still fall into the abyss ...standard LOTE voting which has gotten us into the abysmal situation we are in ...
You do know there are other ideas out there ... Just because Matt has focused on the ideas of the celebrity-du-jour, I don't think means that he excludes other possibilities - I think his focus on "monopoly power" "regulated" or not, is spot on ..
As to Assange being prosecuted, IMO, it is not for revealing our war crimes, which everybody knows about, and will continue because they know no one will get prosecuted for the simple reason the "ONE War party" wants to be free to continue them - but for releasing the DNC e-mails - this prosecution is an act of revenge for a political cabal that blames him (and Russia) for Hillary's loss in '16 (what happened to Seth Rich - the rumored DNC leaker?) - so, I am not optimistic about his release - they want him dead, notice the plot to assassinate him, and I think they are hoping he will die in Belmarsh, less complicated .. I wondered why Trump didn't pardon him, but then I heard he did offer him a pardon if Assange would reveal his sources, which is something Assange refused to do, good on him ...
Sorry if you think you are being played - i march to a different drummer ...
Well, what are you doing to support a 3rd party? No party is "viable" without support - I have voted 3rd party since '96 - if all the folks who say we need a 3rd party actually voted voted for one - we'd have more than a "viable" one by now - we'd could have a winning one ....
It seems that several of us are puzzled by your statement. Superficially, your assertion that "there are factions on both sides in both parties" is plausible. No one insists that what you say is false. BUT, then where *are* the Democrats against censorship? I know of no one in leadership who will strongly, and openly oppose the agenda of the pro-censors. Can you point us to statements we have missed? If they -- these people whose job it is to represent us -- are unwilling to take a strong public position, it's not very accurate to say they are "against." Private back-room mutterings are worthless.
There were several instances over the last year where big media suppressed (censored) what later turned out to be the most accurate reporting: Russiagate, Biden family corruption, and COVID-19 origins just to name a few. This should be more than enough evidence that there is no such thing as absolute expertise in these matters.
Further, while people debate some of the particulars around the 1/6 Capitol events, even the NY Times has reported that the FBI probably had a role in entrapping (i.e. "inciting violence"), and to the best of my knowledge, no one has established that Trump crossed clear legal boundaries. In such a mess of a situation, Louis Brandeis himself would have flatly characterized the de-platforming of a sitting President as an Information Age coup. I'll quote him again:
"Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears."
So where exactly are the Brandeis style Democrats?
And -- even more detailed and frightening analysis by Grayzone of Facebook's fake "whistleblower"... We are being played like a violin by DNC and Deep State.
A shady Facebook 'whistleblower' wants more censorship -- Grayzone
And -- even more detailed and frightening analysis by Grayzone of Facebook's fake "whistleblower"... We are being played like a violin by DNC and Deep State.
A shady Facebook 'whistleblower' wants more censorship -- Grayzone
You give Zuck too much credit here. He's smart and powerful to a degree, but he's not THAT crafty and smart. If he were, the general public impression of him wouldn't be stuck so negative for so many years.
“Third, we need to ban surveillance advertising” this will be a slippery ground full of obstacles because there is a comple ecosystem of economic interests behind that must change. It would be an epichal change, almost like what we see for climate change.
Please, stop calling her a whistleblower. She is the expeditor of Democrats' dreams. Real whistleblowers are rotting in jails, while she is parading in front of the crooks in Congress.
With the advent of search engines, I found that ads were now useless. Of course advertisers piggybacked on search engines. But it would be a good thing if ads were classified as spam, which they are.
Yes, I realize this would kneecap Google and Facebook. But should we have such large corporations, especially considering they probably won't exist in 100 years?
An ad free search engine that maintains a DB of malware sites would be a good thing for consumers and other netizens.
Worth noting though that it was published in 2014 -- many people get the problem, no one has figured out how to move the needle. Also, maybe I misunderstand your comment, but adds directly on search engines are just the tip of the iceberg. Ads drive most of the Internet now.
It seems like a chicken-and-egg problem. Corporations have too much money, so there is an inflated ad spend. That's part of it. But it also takes consumers who just keep devouring the ads. It's roughly what the Romans called "Bread and Circuses." It didn't end well for them.
Yes, a not-for-profit search engine that doesn't serve spam is what we need. It's obscene that Google/Facebook business model can exist and be this profitable.
They already exist, but they only get a small fraction of the traffic Google and, to a lesser extent, Bing get for multiple reasons:
1) most people just don't care;
2) the vast majority of people use the default search engine, which is why being default is worth so much to these companies (e.g. Google paying Apple ludicrous amounts of money to be default on iphones);
3) some of them are complex to set up and use;
4) even the better ones are far from being as good as Google, and some aren't very good at all.
To touch on the fourth point, a big part of this is *because* they're making very little money, and so they can't invest in making the search engines as good, whereas Google has spent tons of money (I wouldn't doubt more than all the others combined) over years to make theirs as good as it is. I personally generally use DDG as my primary search engine, but for many, if not most, searches, the results it gives (which are essentially the same as Bing, as it uses that in the background) aren't very good. It depends on what I'm looking for, and for basic things it's good enough, but if I'm looking for something specific, or trying to research a problem and need to look at forum posts, or simply want to get an overview of a movie/show/business/etc, I always use Google (or, usually, DDG with a !google bang), since the results are far, far superior. The only way DDG/Bing are better in terms of quality of results is that they don't censor the (political) results, whereas Google does, bigtime. Google also censors the actual search by not showing certain autocomplete suggestions.
It's the same problem as with email. There are multiple providers where you can pay ~$30-50/yr for email that's not scanned in order to deliver ads, where your privacy is respected and you're not the product, the actual email service is. But most people use "free" email because, well, it's free, and they just don't care. I've been trying to convince people for years, before it was popular to dislike these companies, that it's a real problem and that they should care, but 99.99% of the time, they just...don't...care.
Dostoevsky's parable of the Grand Inquisitor is set in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition. On the day after a bonfire, in which more than 100 heretics were burned alive, Jesus can take no more, and descends from Heaven. He is immediately recognized. And so, of course, He is quickly arrested and thrown in the dungeon. That night, the Grand Inquisitor himself arrives. For minutes, there is silence. Then the Inquisitor delivers a searing indictment of Christ for having betrayed mankind. The gist of it is this:
"Thy freedom. Oh, we shall persuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to us. And shall we be right or shall we be lying? They will be convinced that we are right. Freedom, free thought, and science will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves. Others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another. While the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: 'Yes, you were right, you alone possess His mystery.' In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'"
Agree with all your remarks; just want to elaborate on one point:
Google could (and can) afford to spend "a lot of money" because they have a lot of money. -> They have a lot of money because Wall Street gave them so much money out the gate that they were able to "blitz scale" -- monopolizing the "market" before anyone else got off the ground. -> So all over the place, we see the same root concentration problem creating dysfunction in our markets. It's galling because the benefit of capitalism is supposed to be that it is an evolutionary process where the best gradually rise to the top. What we have now seems anything but:
Yeah, I didn't mention that because I'm not familiar with their early financing, but a big cash injection can definitely help. When they started, Yahoo was the main search engine that most people used and that was the typical default, with AltaVista (Yahoo under a different name), Ask Jeeves, and a couple others getting the scraps. And as is typical of a monopoly situation, Yahoo failed to innovate or improve and was taken by surprise by Google, who made a much better search engine and took the vast majority of the market share. And just like Facebook, they started off "good" ("Don't be evil") only to, as Matt says, degrade in quality or increase in cost by becoming more and more invasive. My point is that despite all their problems, they are still the best search engine for most things, so even someone like myself who hates them and tries to avoid them as much as possible still relies heavily on them. Even if things were changed so they wouldn't be the default search engine everywhere and so it would be easier to switch, most people would still use Google because it's what they know and it provides the best results.
Until other engines do a lot of improvement, there's just really no good alternative, which will cause people to keep using Google and keep the money going to them instead of the competition, and so the situation won't change. People say there should be free or nonprofit search engines, but my point is there are, but the problem is that without money, they can't get good enough to be a worthy replacement, because developing a good search engine, and indexing the whole web, and handling the traffic of searches, costs money. So it's a chicken and egg situation.
So to your point that "the benefit of capitalism is...the best gradually rise to the top," I would add that in reality, what happens is whoever gets more funding and can buy out more competition and other companies to integrate into themselves (assimilation vs innovation) are the ones that actually rise to the top (which is basically what your point was) but also, to reiterate, that Google's search engine *is* IME and IMO, the "best" (in functionality, obviously not for privacy or searches on censored topics). And it really is quite good. It could use improvement (what couldn't?), but functionally, it serves its purpose really well. The problem with it, and what could be considered its degraded quality or higher cost, is the spying and censorship and, to a lesser extent, ads. But while it's at the top largely due to other reasons, many at least borderline anticompetitive, it's also because it is indeed the "best." Of course, again, that's only because of the money poured into it.
If I didn't know any better---and I don't!---I just might call this a very, very clever preemptive (proactive to and by Zuck) act to initiate a sequence of events ultimately fortuitous to Hisself and his Empire. I'm quite certain there are predictive FB executive strategy sessions as to just how and where potential upcoming regulations might occur; they have to be seen as inevitable in such a heretofore 'Wild West' with the railroad and the miles of barbed wire on the horizon.
Outside the box? Yeah, but not as far as it might seem considering the über-savvy and world-wise original FB investors like Peter Thiel and other venture capitalists already overly-entwined in $billions of government contracting who also have so much at stake in this monster/juggernaut.
I dunno, I find I'm compelled to look at every innocent and innocuous 'do-gooder' event (and this one is a doozy) with a jaundiced and flinty eye. Just in order to avoid the ever-present minefields sowed on the road to Hell, this one too ostensibly one paved with 'good' intentions.
"But, but, she looks like an angel...!" (I hope someone keeps track of where she lands jobwise after her selfless act of 'altruism.') Forgive me my cynicism; it's the times, it's the times...
Jaron Lanier: How the Internet Failed and How to Recreate It
The fishiest thing for me in all this is how Sheryl Sandberg's name is nowhere to be seen. It'd be very interesting to see the internal market data facebook collected over the years on the status of its advertising ecosystem.
How can any kind of regulatory agency be effective when the organization being regulated controls the data which informs regulatory decisions?
I didn't see anything heroic in Frances Haugen's testifying before Congress. Nor did her testimony reveal anything surprising or unknown. It was a media event starring a telegenic witness who worked at a low level at Facebook for two years and had nothing to blow on her whistle.
There's plenty to justifiably criticize about Facebook, but Frances Haugen didn't get into that. Sadly. She harmed, rather than helped, the cause of improving the conduct of Big Tech.
I really enjoy how virtually no one in this debate has ever considered the actual laws that govern the internet. Anybody here know of the CFAA? What about DMCA? It's a joke. This discussion goes nowhere because so many people take the route Matt has and refuse to engage in anything other than superficial culture war nonsense.
I fail to see how either of those acts applies here. The CFAA relates to unauthorized access of computer systems and the DMCA to copyright infringement. Facebook is not accused of either of those. Are you just throwing out random legal acronyms you know or could you elaborate on how those would be used to reign in Facebook et al?
As far as the CFAA is concerned The Facebook v Powers case is the most obvious and egregious in which a company working as a supplemental/competitive socail media website was essentially threatened with felonies and forced off line because of CFAA charges https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160712/15491134950/appeals-court-it-violates-cfaa-service-to-access-facebook-behalf-users-because-facebook-sent-cease-desist.shtml (also DMCA charges were brought up too). Or you could look at the non aggression pacts that movie/recording studios make with the big platforms to protect them from lawsuits while they go after there competitors for comparable DMCA compliance issues. And countless other ways these laws are used similarly to control who can and can't host content and what systems they can use to host it.
The fact that someone reading this article and spending time in the comment section of it is unaware that a fundamental law governing the internet has anything to do with internet governance just proves my point of how poorly journalist have covered this topic because it doesn't fit there angels.
As far as I am aware virtually every country distinguishes between publishing and hosting content and the fact that how we define that incredibly specific issue(section 230) is now the crux of every debate about internet governance illustrates how clearly the internet is secondary to the weird culture crap.
Thanks for the elaboration, but I still don't follow. That case you linked was regarding *Facebook* using the CFAA/DMCA *against* a competitor. I don't see how either of these acts would be used to punish/control Facebook.
As for the agreements between studios and the big platforms, while I'm sure those would fall under antitrust, DMCA can't be used against the platforms *because* of those agreements, i.e. they have permission, so are not in violation.
Please, if I am missing some element of this, let me know, but I still see no way these two acts have anything to do with the current situation, aside from, again, being components in an antitrust case against Facebook, but that's getting right back to the heart of the newsletter.
The specific issue that I am expressing frustration with is media coverage. Antitrust cases will be irrelevant if the foundations of internet law are not reformed and unfortunately the coverage I see most often is hyper focused on antitrust and section 230. I personally believe it stems from a disinterest in how we empowered these companies. I know I can't speak to the motivations of people like Matt but the sense I get is that his concern like many others reporting on tech companies is tangential to fixing these issues and is much more focused on the social dynamics of elites and how they don't like particular ideas about society. I find this is corrosive to dialogue and it contributes to a general ignorance among the public which makes it much harder to improve the internet ecosystem. (BTW, No ill will towards Matt, I do like his work and am incredibly grateful he let's people who don't pay him contribute to these discussions).
The businesses/people/governments(?) who pay to place ads on Facebook. Fundamentally, that is what Facebook is selling: extremely effective ad placement. Everything else that Facebook does (or pretends to) is oriented around that – algorithmization, buying up competitors, privacy infrastructure, etc. The goal should be that advertisers have other companies (other business models in particular) to go to.
You left out one salient point: their ad platform WORKS. At least for people such as I, a decent writer selling his work. Since 2018 it's enabled me to have a very comfortable life instead of driving a freaking cab or working at Wal-Mart in my 60's for a subsistence living.
I'd like to make two points about FB and software, things I see working in software development environments.
One, I believe all software with a social impact should be open sourced. For example, social media but also software for voting, criminal justice, ride sharing, and anything that might discriminate or has an impact on society. This would allow academics and outside groups to monitor the software and raise issues around efficacy, privacy, and security. Companies would then make money using the software, not hoarding their software.
Second, to me, FB feels like Ma Bell (sorry, I'm older). I'd like to see FB software open sourced with an API added that allows anyone to create online communities to display content across multiple communities. People would subscribe to their friends who might be in different communities but their kid pics and news would show up in whatever community you chose to use. These communities could use a freemium business model with paid subscriptions for extra features. And it would provide real competition. This approach also could provide privacy by perhaps storing user content on personal computers after some time, deleting the content on the community servers, with the ability for friends to request access if they wanted to see old content.
My concern is that I see what you see: the only policy solution is to add a regulator and go away without addressing the real issues of concentrated power, lack of transparency, and social impacts. I wouldn't say these two ideas above are perfect solutions, only that there must be similar and other ideas that achieve the same goals.
No. Sorry to be unclear. A regulation could be made that all software that has a social impact must publish some or all of their software as open source. It would then be available for review and use/reuse by others.
This is quite common. In Australia several years ago, there was an effort to make their voting software open source to ensure security. Haven't looked in awhile to see if that's still true. I was surprised to see on Github that Uber open sources some or all of their software.
Nationalization is not remotely needed. Open source is about sharing and people working together to create great tools. And companies making money on delivery and support using the code.
Making social media software open source is an interesting idea, and makes sense in theory. But it makes less sense in practice. There's no law to base a regulation on, so Congress would have to pass a law. I don't think that's going to happen. And frankly, even if it did, I don't think it would help.
I graduated in computer science, worked for a couple of years in the industry, and then went to law school. My career was spent mostly in Silicon Valley working with computer companies, including 4 years as general counsel at a software company with some open source products. I can see what you are getting at, replacing some of the competition with cooperation.
It's a tough issue. There's an old fable called The Mice in Council. In it, a group of mice gather to discuss a marauding cat. The mice shiver as they share horrible stories about how the cat will sneak up on one of them and pounce.
Then a mouse suggests a solution: put a bell around the cat's neck. All the mice laud the idea except one who asks, "who will bell the cat?"
It's easy to identify problems. But in our complex world, solutions are hard to find. Frances Haugen's testimony was not particularly compelling even as to the problems at Facebook. She had spent little time there and relied mainly on purloined documents.
I'd also point out that government mandates seat belts in cars because cars kill people in certain situations. Damage to society caused by software created by social media, voting, criminal justice, and a few other companies would be reasonable grounds for regulation, for example, to open source critical code or all code, adding an API to make competition possible, and so on. I'm not a lawyer, however. How that would happen, I don't exactly know. And there'd have to be public backing, as well as legislators with sufficient experience in software development. Not just the business side.
Good points. I look at this problem by asking the question, what if the internet had shown up in the 1920s and 30s when radio then TV happened? Both technologies were regulated for the common good because that was considered possible and necessary. You had the Fairness Doctrine, for example, and limits on station ownership. However, the internet showed up during the Reagan era with its biases. I'd argue we could easily return to the 1920s and 30s models of regulation. It only takes imagination and will. And I guess a larger plan and framework about how to balance the interests of software creators and the people and the society they exist in.
Looks of excellent points about a new regulator. I'm rethinking past support for that... but the belief that companies would compete on privacy and security seems.... well, optimistic. You note seat belts - but only one small boutique auto company has ever competed on safety (Volvo), and doing so limited its market drastically.
You also imply that the big issue is whether ads can find a competing home (which they are of course already doing at Amazon). TBH I dont really care about competition in the ad space. Maybe it costs me an extra couple bucks, but still.
I do think algorithmic amplification is the central problem, and I'm not at all confident that either existing regulators of the kind of weird formalism of US antitrust can handle it. I think the Europeans might be on the right track, even though GDPR has been pretty much useless.
Matt, I've learned a ton from you, and continue to do so. But I think in this case you are missing something critical because you haven't spent your life in software. With a few exceptions (e.g. video games maybe?), the analogy for competition in tech is NOT auto companies, but entire Interstate Highway Systems. One of the ways I've stumped libertarian Silicon Valley types is to ask, "How successful do you really think our country would have been if Dwight Eisenhower hadn't said, in the 1950s, 'We need a planned, high quality, standardized, interstate road network. And, yeah, we are going to build it with tax dollars.'?" Can you imagine the resource waste, the confusion, the rent-seeking, and the transit time sink that would have ensued if, instead, we'd let a bunch of financiers build separate road systems and "compete" to see who could capture the most traffic? (Actually, doesn't the history of railroad trusts answer that question?)
This is all so painful for me because the whole Internet was built by brilliant "government employees." If you take away improvements attributable to Moore's Law (which MIT Tech Review says is at an end), there has been very little real innovation since the end of the 1970s. The rest has just been profiteering off the original brilliance. Think I'm crazy? I'm not alone:
"A common theme amongst optimists is how much technological advance we have seen and how these advances seem to be accelerating. **I am of the opposite camp and believe, roughly, that the rate of progress has been STEADILY DECLINING since we landed on the moon in 1969.**"
In the words of Steve Eisman, "They confused leverage for genius."
In 2009, Simon Johnson (IMF Chief Economist) put it bluntly about the banks: "The challenges the United States faces are familiar territory to the people at the IMF. If you hid the name of the country and just showed them the numbers, there is no doubt what old IMF hands would say: NATIONALIZE THE BANKS and break them up as necessary." Johnson's no-nonsense regulatory attitude is the only good option for most of Tech. (Tech - Finance... are they even really much different anymore?)
Commenters like Robin Gaster and CarlosDanger (and maybe you as well) will probably opine that we are too far gone for that now. (The Mice in Council is awesome!) They may be right. But, as long as we're doing fables, here's an old joke that, in my mind, applies really well:
A cop walking his beat at night comes across a man on his hands and knees under a streetlamp:
Officer: "Sir, can I help you?"
Man: "I dropped my car keys, and I'm trying to find them."
<< The cop begins to help with the search, but after five minutes or so... >>
Officer: "Are you sure this is where you dropped them?"
Man: "No, I dropped them on the other side of the street. But the light is better over here."
More generally, we HAVE a good starting template for what needs to happen in Tech: Glass-Steagall. Can we at least look in the vicinity of where we dropped the keys?
agreed. but my point was that the field of competition in autos has almost nothing do with safety - and that's true in tech as well. GDPR is failing because no-one cares enough about privacy to read the small print of cookies declarations (including me).
The choice is to break up FB as you suggest or to accept that it is a natural monopoly and to regulate it as such - which imposes far more ongoing internal constraints than antitrust will ever do, including radical transparency about operations and money flows. The antitrust approach hopes that a) FB can be broken up within a reasonable timeframe b) that antitrust is the tool to use and c) that the broken up bits while still enormous will not be just as dangerous (if not more so). Several huge leaps of faith.
"TBH I dont really care about competition in the ad space. Maybe it costs me an extra couple bucks, but still."
"GDPR is failing because no-one cares enough about privacy to read the small print of cookies declarations (including me)."
As you've both stated and demonstrated, most people either don't care at all about privacy, or they don't care enough. Even with all the talk about Facebook, Google, et al these days, most people probably aren't even really aware of the depth of it all or they still just don't care. As I stated in another comment, I've been telling people for *years* about the privacy issues with these companies, and I honestly can't think of a single person that cared at all, at least not anyone that didn't already care. Even after Cambridge, nothing changed and nobody cared.
I go to fairly great lengths to protect my privacy and security, which the vast majority of people don't even know how to do, much less have the patience for. But even something as simple as using a decent ad blocker on default settings, or Brave instead of Chrome, which at least helps some, is just too much work for most people or, again, they just don't care. Heck, I can barely even convince anyone to use a password manager so they won't use weak, and often identical, passwords anymore. People are just apathetic and lazy when it comes to protecting themselves.
The apathy problem is more than meets the eye in this case too. It has characteristics similar to pollution. Is it OK to dump garbage in the ocean just because most people don't care?
"Saying you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden
Matt Stoller is the best at pointing out that concentrated power is dangerous and should not be allowed to exists. The Reagan Revolution and Milton Friedman's fraudulent cult of Neoliberalism purposely allowed concentrated power to grow even stronger when they ditched antitrust laws and let mergers and acquisitions rule the day. Friedman's mindless cult was so concerned with "government intervention in the Market Place" that it allowed concentrated power to ruin one of the most important components of capitalism, competition. Concentrated power has now taken over our government and rules our society.
I was wondering how long before commenting on the obvious of how ridiculous it is to suggest a new regulatory agency to regulate something that's only a problem because another regulatory agency didn't do its job. One point missed by Matt in this article is that not only would staffing such an agency with Silicon Valley people mean putting those that are involved in the creation of the issue in charge of regulating it, but it would just be creating yet another revolving door, which of course always work out so well.
Here's my conspiracy theory: based on the timing and her recommendations, perhaps Facebook/Zuckerberg realized the game is over and they're screwed, so in a Hail Mary they had Haugen "whistleblow" and release data that's just damaging enough to get a lot of attention to "her" proposals on how to deal with Facebook, without being so bad as to make things open and shut against them.
Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor
"Whistleblower" Frances Haugen is a vital media and political asset because she advances their quest for greater control over online political discourse.
Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor - by Glenn Greenwald - Glenn Greenwald (substack.com)
There's a faction of elites in both parties that want to do this, there are also factions that do not.
Thank you -- but not at all sure about your assertion... The "whistleblower" is now "guided" -- by a long-time Obama operative !!! They like and NEED the continuing presence of the incompetent and insane clown Trump --- to stay in power.
"...now guided by long-time Obama operative Bill Burton..." -- an interesting and key detail in GG's article !!
Continuing unmasking of the scam of the century concocted by Obama, Hillary, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, etc. from the start -- the Russia-gate hoax -- continues to be of the highest priority to the lying team. A major censorship / silencing wave – utilizing Facebook, Google, Tweeter, Apple monopolies which are fully integrated with domestic surveillance apparatus.
Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Kamala (Hillary’s protégé), Schiff, Jamie Ruskin, etc. have to continue and intensify the now 5-year long Russia-gate scam. They invented the deliberate, stupid and dangerous Russia-gate fabrication on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party.
The highest need of "Biden's" government and its DNC cabal is that Russia-gate immense hoax and impeachment “entertainments” will NOT / will NEVER be fully exposed. Hence desperate efforts by its primary propagandists in CIA (Brennan) and military, and by primary propagandists, including Kamala, Neera Tanden, Tony Blinken, Pete Buttigieg, Jake Sullivan…
Note Pelosi’s brazen statement on DNC and Biden-family corruption (Hunter’s laptops) – “All roads lead to Russia” and Hillary’s suggestion to check if Trump called Putin during Capitol riots – with which Pelosi agreed.
The Russia-gate lying team is back in FULL power – Russia-gate hoax will be only amplified. Note that on Biden’s very first day US army convoy was dispatched into Syria to “protect” Syria’s oil fields. The War party didn’t lose a minute – servicing donations from arms industry can’t be delayed any longer.
Once again: The entire anti-Russian narrative is a deliberate fabrication and the scam will continue. Always remember: Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among top former Obama 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including the immense “White helmets” hoax) and staged all (ALL) chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
Democrat Party (like GOP "elite") is a deeply corrupt fascist dictatorship serving its billionaire donors and arm and intelligence industry interests; there is only one party – with two (DNC and GOP) wings. The only solution is likely a viable third (and fourth, etc.) party -- possibly with sole and unifying focus on all-encompassing CORRUPTION
I hope you'll keep politely bugging Matt on this. On face value, his assertion that "there are factions on both sides in both parties" is plausible. At least we need to be open minded about it.
BUT, then where ARE the Democrats against censorship? I have yet to find someone in leadership who will strongly, and openly oppose the agenda of the pro-censors. If they -- these people whose job it is to represent us -- are unwilling to take a public position, it's not very accurate to say they are "against."
Thank you. It is a fake "whistleblower" -- “guided” by long-time Obama operative Bill Burton !!
"Whistleblower" Frances Haugen is a vital media and political asset because she advances their quest for greater control over online political discourse.
She is now “guided” by long-time Obama operative Bill Burton !!
Unlike Julian Assange, Daniel Hale or Ed Snowden, corporate media is suddenly in love with “whistleblowers”….
Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor - by Glenn Greenwald - Glenn Greenwald (substack.com)
A shady Facebook 'whistleblower' wants more censorship -- Grayzone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x9jvABotrg
DNC and Deep State are playing us like a violin.
They like and NEED the incompetent clown Trump to stay on political stage -- the only way they will remain in power.
Actually, I think their own incompetence is what brought Trump to power - and may well do it again ...
Yes, I read Greenwald's piece carefully when it first came out. I will look at the Grayzone link soon.
What I'm suggesting though is that in this situation, the best way to pin Matt down is to ask him to name names, and insist they go on the record. Sharing pieces of analysis -- no matter how good they may be -- is less effective. This is not criticism, trust me -- I make the same kind of mistake all the time.
OK, thank you. But you can ask Matt the same..., let's do it both of us. We both highly value his work -- he is also in a difficult position -- the lying "elite" can instantly ostracize him if "the machine" decides to do it.
Boris,
Frankly, I am rather frustrated by the continuing (on "both sides") of judging the worth or value of an idea based on who is proposing it instead of on its own merits - I see it all over. I think the latter is what Matt did here, which is why I decided to kick in some bucks - It is a very refreshing concept - "both sides" have concepts and ideas worth considering, being judged on their merits, and, perhaps as, if not more, importantly, on their downsides ... That is what Matt did here ...
I realize that folks who "fund" the publication or dissemination of ideas and the folks who advance them, may well have, most probably do, have their own "agenda" - but that. ipso facto, does not, IMO, discredit the ideas themselves. Matt has dissected the ideas presented, pointed out the pros, and the cons, of Haugen's proposals, which, IMO is what should be considered, not Haugens "backers". The critique you have is reminiscent of what happened to Jill Stein when she attempted to sue for a recount in several states in the '16 election - due to what appeared to be quite unexpected results - Because most of the money behind her attempt came from Ds, she was accused of being a D puppet (which is pretty funny considering that she was also called a Putin puppet by the Ds), and her efforts denounced by elements of her own party (Greens) because they were seen as aimed at "helping" the Ds - I think it was a worthwhile effort (actually we should probably do recounts regularly), and the Ds were the only folks who had the money to do it - the Greens hardly have 2 nickles to rub together ....
My point being - never mind who is "funding" an idea - is the idea any good! Granted, depending on your opinion of the funders, some ideas may raise more eyebrows, perhaps invite more scrutiny, but, and I strongly emphasize this, should be accepted or rejected on their merits alone ....
In short -- your "both sides" is only one -- ONE War party.
"53K US contractors in the Middle East versus -- for 35K troops" !!! What a lucrative business and worth unlimited donations to both DNC and GOP politicians. Highlighting just that "detail" -- tells it all....
A 1%-er War party with two right (DNC and GOP) wings -- gay marriage, abortion, "woke", and other imposed topics are just distractions to divide 99% of population into "red" and "blue" camps.
But brainwashed US citizen agitate "freeing" China and increasing hate of Moslems, Russians, Chinese, Martians - just to avoid thinking about our own beloved country. 1%-er overlords are playing us like a violin...
FREE Assange !!
You obviously didn't get the gist of my post - you seem to have decided that I am in the "one war party" cheering section, without any justification for that judgment, and in spite of my comment below about how I have voted 3rd party for the last 7 elections. What about you, where was your vote?
The analogies have I used, for some time now, as opposed to your "53K v 35K", for D/Rs is a choice between someone driving us over a cliff at 60MPH v 90MPH, or, facing a 90ft gap between where we are and where we need to be, we should only choose between a 30ft or a 50ft bridge - at the end of either we still fall into the abyss ...standard LOTE voting which has gotten us into the abysmal situation we are in ...
You do know there are other ideas out there ... Just because Matt has focused on the ideas of the celebrity-du-jour, I don't think means that he excludes other possibilities - I think his focus on "monopoly power" "regulated" or not, is spot on ..
As to Assange being prosecuted, IMO, it is not for revealing our war crimes, which everybody knows about, and will continue because they know no one will get prosecuted for the simple reason the "ONE War party" wants to be free to continue them - but for releasing the DNC e-mails - this prosecution is an act of revenge for a political cabal that blames him (and Russia) for Hillary's loss in '16 (what happened to Seth Rich - the rumored DNC leaker?) - so, I am not optimistic about his release - they want him dead, notice the plot to assassinate him, and I think they are hoping he will die in Belmarsh, less complicated .. I wondered why Trump didn't pardon him, but then I heard he did offer him a pardon if Assange would reveal his sources, which is something Assange refused to do, good on him ...
Sorry if you think you are being played - i march to a different drummer ...
Well, what are you doing to support a 3rd party? No party is "viable" without support - I have voted 3rd party since '96 - if all the folks who say we need a 3rd party actually voted voted for one - we'd have more than a "viable" one by now - we'd could have a winning one ....
Matt,
It seems that several of us are puzzled by your statement. Superficially, your assertion that "there are factions on both sides in both parties" is plausible. No one insists that what you say is false. BUT, then where *are* the Democrats against censorship? I know of no one in leadership who will strongly, and openly oppose the agenda of the pro-censors. Can you point us to statements we have missed? If they -- these people whose job it is to represent us -- are unwilling to take a strong public position, it's not very accurate to say they are "against." Private back-room mutterings are worthless.
There were several instances over the last year where big media suppressed (censored) what later turned out to be the most accurate reporting: Russiagate, Biden family corruption, and COVID-19 origins just to name a few. This should be more than enough evidence that there is no such thing as absolute expertise in these matters.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/01/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak-covid-virus-origins-china
Further, while people debate some of the particulars around the 1/6 Capitol events, even the NY Times has reported that the FBI probably had a role in entrapping (i.e. "inciting violence"), and to the best of my knowledge, no one has established that Trump crossed clear legal boundaries. In such a mess of a situation, Louis Brandeis himself would have flatly characterized the de-platforming of a sitting President as an Information Age coup. I'll quote him again:
"Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears."
So where exactly are the Brandeis style Democrats?
And -- even more detailed and frightening analysis by Grayzone of Facebook's fake "whistleblower"... We are being played like a violin by DNC and Deep State.
A shady Facebook 'whistleblower' wants more censorship -- Grayzone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x9jvABotrg
And -- even more detailed and frightening analysis by Grayzone of Facebook's fake "whistleblower"... We are being played like a violin by DNC and Deep State.
A shady Facebook 'whistleblower' wants more censorship -- Grayzone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x9jvABotrg
Be careful what you ask for .... a regulatory agency can be bought by "either" side ...
Whistleblower my @ss. She was selected by Zuckerberg to present his strategy.
You give Zuck too much credit here. He's smart and powerful to a degree, but he's not THAT crafty and smart. If he were, the general public impression of him wouldn't be stuck so negative for so many years.
People dislike him, but he’s an autocrat who does all the things autocrats do to increase money and power. His company needs to be split up.
His original investors are people like Peter Thiel. Chew on that.
Nothing heroic about what she's pushing.
“Third, we need to ban surveillance advertising” this will be a slippery ground full of obstacles because there is a comple ecosystem of economic interests behind that must change. It would be an epichal change, almost like what we see for climate change.
Execellent points Matt
the surveillance advertising machine has become an end in itself, making more money no matter what
https://www.profgalloway.com/carcinogens/
Please, stop calling her a whistleblower. She is the expeditor of Democrats' dreams. Real whistleblowers are rotting in jails, while she is parading in front of the crooks in Congress.
In fact, The Grayzone had a great Moderate Rebels episode the other day where they deconstruct this intelligence operative.
The root of this evil is advertising.
With the advent of search engines, I found that ads were now useless. Of course advertisers piggybacked on search engines. But it would be a good thing if ads were classified as spam, which they are.
Yes, I realize this would kneecap Google and Facebook. But should we have such large corporations, especially considering they probably won't exist in 100 years?
An ad free search engine that maintains a DB of malware sites would be a good thing for consumers and other netizens.
There is really good piece about this here (title nearly the same as your first sentence):
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/advertising-is-the-internets-original-sin/376041/
Worth noting though that it was published in 2014 -- many people get the problem, no one has figured out how to move the needle. Also, maybe I misunderstand your comment, but adds directly on search engines are just the tip of the iceberg. Ads drive most of the Internet now.
It seems like a chicken-and-egg problem. Corporations have too much money, so there is an inflated ad spend. That's part of it. But it also takes consumers who just keep devouring the ads. It's roughly what the Romans called "Bread and Circuses." It didn't end well for them.
Yes, a not-for-profit search engine that doesn't serve spam is what we need. It's obscene that Google/Facebook business model can exist and be this profitable.
They already exist, but they only get a small fraction of the traffic Google and, to a lesser extent, Bing get for multiple reasons:
1) most people just don't care;
2) the vast majority of people use the default search engine, which is why being default is worth so much to these companies (e.g. Google paying Apple ludicrous amounts of money to be default on iphones);
3) some of them are complex to set up and use;
4) even the better ones are far from being as good as Google, and some aren't very good at all.
To touch on the fourth point, a big part of this is *because* they're making very little money, and so they can't invest in making the search engines as good, whereas Google has spent tons of money (I wouldn't doubt more than all the others combined) over years to make theirs as good as it is. I personally generally use DDG as my primary search engine, but for many, if not most, searches, the results it gives (which are essentially the same as Bing, as it uses that in the background) aren't very good. It depends on what I'm looking for, and for basic things it's good enough, but if I'm looking for something specific, or trying to research a problem and need to look at forum posts, or simply want to get an overview of a movie/show/business/etc, I always use Google (or, usually, DDG with a !google bang), since the results are far, far superior. The only way DDG/Bing are better in terms of quality of results is that they don't censor the (political) results, whereas Google does, bigtime. Google also censors the actual search by not showing certain autocomplete suggestions.
It's the same problem as with email. There are multiple providers where you can pay ~$30-50/yr for email that's not scanned in order to deliver ads, where your privacy is respected and you're not the product, the actual email service is. But most people use "free" email because, well, it's free, and they just don't care. I've been trying to convince people for years, before it was popular to dislike these companies, that it's a real problem and that they should care, but 99.99% of the time, they just...don't...care.
Re. your last paragraph:
Dostoevsky's parable of the Grand Inquisitor is set in the midst of the Spanish Inquisition. On the day after a bonfire, in which more than 100 heretics were burned alive, Jesus can take no more, and descends from Heaven. He is immediately recognized. And so, of course, He is quickly arrested and thrown in the dungeon. That night, the Grand Inquisitor himself arrives. For minutes, there is silence. Then the Inquisitor delivers a searing indictment of Christ for having betrayed mankind. The gist of it is this:
"Thy freedom. Oh, we shall persuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to us. And shall we be right or shall we be lying? They will be convinced that we are right. Freedom, free thought, and science will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves. Others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another. While the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: 'Yes, you were right, you alone possess His mystery.' In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'"
Agree with all your remarks; just want to elaborate on one point:
Google could (and can) afford to spend "a lot of money" because they have a lot of money. -> They have a lot of money because Wall Street gave them so much money out the gate that they were able to "blitz scale" -- monopolizing the "market" before anyone else got off the ground. -> So all over the place, we see the same root concentration problem creating dysfunction in our markets. It's galling because the benefit of capitalism is supposed to be that it is an evolutionary process where the best gradually rise to the top. What we have now seems anything but:
https://evonomics.com/the-rise-of-finance-and-the-fall-of-american-business/
Yeah, I didn't mention that because I'm not familiar with their early financing, but a big cash injection can definitely help. When they started, Yahoo was the main search engine that most people used and that was the typical default, with AltaVista (Yahoo under a different name), Ask Jeeves, and a couple others getting the scraps. And as is typical of a monopoly situation, Yahoo failed to innovate or improve and was taken by surprise by Google, who made a much better search engine and took the vast majority of the market share. And just like Facebook, they started off "good" ("Don't be evil") only to, as Matt says, degrade in quality or increase in cost by becoming more and more invasive. My point is that despite all their problems, they are still the best search engine for most things, so even someone like myself who hates them and tries to avoid them as much as possible still relies heavily on them. Even if things were changed so they wouldn't be the default search engine everywhere and so it would be easier to switch, most people would still use Google because it's what they know and it provides the best results.
Until other engines do a lot of improvement, there's just really no good alternative, which will cause people to keep using Google and keep the money going to them instead of the competition, and so the situation won't change. People say there should be free or nonprofit search engines, but my point is there are, but the problem is that without money, they can't get good enough to be a worthy replacement, because developing a good search engine, and indexing the whole web, and handling the traffic of searches, costs money. So it's a chicken and egg situation.
So to your point that "the benefit of capitalism is...the best gradually rise to the top," I would add that in reality, what happens is whoever gets more funding and can buy out more competition and other companies to integrate into themselves (assimilation vs innovation) are the ones that actually rise to the top (which is basically what your point was) but also, to reiterate, that Google's search engine *is* IME and IMO, the "best" (in functionality, obviously not for privacy or searches on censored topics). And it really is quite good. It could use improvement (what couldn't?), but functionally, it serves its purpose really well. The problem with it, and what could be considered its degraded quality or higher cost, is the spying and censorship and, to a lesser extent, ads. But while it's at the top largely due to other reasons, many at least borderline anticompetitive, it's also because it is indeed the "best." Of course, again, that's only because of the money poured into it.
Hard to disagree :)
If I didn't know any better---and I don't!---I just might call this a very, very clever preemptive (proactive to and by Zuck) act to initiate a sequence of events ultimately fortuitous to Hisself and his Empire. I'm quite certain there are predictive FB executive strategy sessions as to just how and where potential upcoming regulations might occur; they have to be seen as inevitable in such a heretofore 'Wild West' with the railroad and the miles of barbed wire on the horizon.
Outside the box? Yeah, but not as far as it might seem considering the über-savvy and world-wise original FB investors like Peter Thiel and other venture capitalists already overly-entwined in $billions of government contracting who also have so much at stake in this monster/juggernaut.
I dunno, I find I'm compelled to look at every innocent and innocuous 'do-gooder' event (and this one is a doozy) with a jaundiced and flinty eye. Just in order to avoid the ever-present minefields sowed on the road to Hell, this one too ostensibly one paved with 'good' intentions.
"But, but, she looks like an angel...!" (I hope someone keeps track of where she lands jobwise after her selfless act of 'altruism.') Forgive me my cynicism; it's the times, it's the times...
Jaron Lanier: How the Internet Failed and How to Recreate It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNOlqzMd2Zw
10 Reasons to Get Off Social Media - Jaron Lanier (2018)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCTlcj5vImk
The fishiest thing for me in all this is how Sheryl Sandberg's name is nowhere to be seen. It'd be very interesting to see the internal market data facebook collected over the years on the status of its advertising ecosystem.
How can any kind of regulatory agency be effective when the organization being regulated controls the data which informs regulatory decisions?
I didn't see anything heroic in Frances Haugen's testifying before Congress. Nor did her testimony reveal anything surprising or unknown. It was a media event starring a telegenic witness who worked at a low level at Facebook for two years and had nothing to blow on her whistle.
There's plenty to justifiably criticize about Facebook, but Frances Haugen didn't get into that. Sadly. She harmed, rather than helped, the cause of improving the conduct of Big Tech.
I really enjoy how virtually no one in this debate has ever considered the actual laws that govern the internet. Anybody here know of the CFAA? What about DMCA? It's a joke. This discussion goes nowhere because so many people take the route Matt has and refuse to engage in anything other than superficial culture war nonsense.
I fail to see how either of those acts applies here. The CFAA relates to unauthorized access of computer systems and the DMCA to copyright infringement. Facebook is not accused of either of those. Are you just throwing out random legal acronyms you know or could you elaborate on how those would be used to reign in Facebook et al?
As far as the CFAA is concerned The Facebook v Powers case is the most obvious and egregious in which a company working as a supplemental/competitive socail media website was essentially threatened with felonies and forced off line because of CFAA charges https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160712/15491134950/appeals-court-it-violates-cfaa-service-to-access-facebook-behalf-users-because-facebook-sent-cease-desist.shtml (also DMCA charges were brought up too). Or you could look at the non aggression pacts that movie/recording studios make with the big platforms to protect them from lawsuits while they go after there competitors for comparable DMCA compliance issues. And countless other ways these laws are used similarly to control who can and can't host content and what systems they can use to host it.
The fact that someone reading this article and spending time in the comment section of it is unaware that a fundamental law governing the internet has anything to do with internet governance just proves my point of how poorly journalist have covered this topic because it doesn't fit there angels.
As far as I am aware virtually every country distinguishes between publishing and hosting content and the fact that how we define that incredibly specific issue(section 230) is now the crux of every debate about internet governance illustrates how clearly the internet is secondary to the weird culture crap.
Thanks for the elaboration, but I still don't follow. That case you linked was regarding *Facebook* using the CFAA/DMCA *against* a competitor. I don't see how either of these acts would be used to punish/control Facebook.
As for the agreements between studios and the big platforms, while I'm sure those would fall under antitrust, DMCA can't be used against the platforms *because* of those agreements, i.e. they have permission, so are not in violation.
Please, if I am missing some element of this, let me know, but I still see no way these two acts have anything to do with the current situation, aside from, again, being components in an antitrust case against Facebook, but that's getting right back to the heart of the newsletter.
The specific issue that I am expressing frustration with is media coverage. Antitrust cases will be irrelevant if the foundations of internet law are not reformed and unfortunately the coverage I see most often is hyper focused on antitrust and section 230. I personally believe it stems from a disinterest in how we empowered these companies. I know I can't speak to the motivations of people like Matt but the sense I get is that his concern like many others reporting on tech companies is tangential to fixing these issues and is much more focused on the social dynamics of elites and how they don't like particular ideas about society. I find this is corrosive to dialogue and it contributes to a general ignorance among the public which makes it much harder to improve the internet ecosystem. (BTW, No ill will towards Matt, I do like his work and am incredibly grateful he let's people who don't pay him contribute to these discussions).
If she thinks more government regulation is going to make anything better, she is seriously delusional.
In an anti-trust analysis of FB, who are the “customers”?
The businesses/people/governments(?) who pay to place ads on Facebook. Fundamentally, that is what Facebook is selling: extremely effective ad placement. Everything else that Facebook does (or pretends to) is oriented around that – algorithmization, buying up competitors, privacy infrastructure, etc. The goal should be that advertisers have other companies (other business models in particular) to go to.
You left out one salient point: their ad platform WORKS. At least for people such as I, a decent writer selling his work. Since 2018 it's enabled me to have a very comfortable life instead of driving a freaking cab or working at Wal-Mart in my 60's for a subsistence living.
I'd like to make two points about FB and software, things I see working in software development environments.
One, I believe all software with a social impact should be open sourced. For example, social media but also software for voting, criminal justice, ride sharing, and anything that might discriminate or has an impact on society. This would allow academics and outside groups to monitor the software and raise issues around efficacy, privacy, and security. Companies would then make money using the software, not hoarding their software.
Second, to me, FB feels like Ma Bell (sorry, I'm older). I'd like to see FB software open sourced with an API added that allows anyone to create online communities to display content across multiple communities. People would subscribe to their friends who might be in different communities but their kid pics and news would show up in whatever community you chose to use. These communities could use a freemium business model with paid subscriptions for extra features. And it would provide real competition. This approach also could provide privacy by perhaps storing user content on personal computers after some time, deleting the content on the community servers, with the ability for friends to request access if they wanted to see old content.
My concern is that I see what you see: the only policy solution is to add a regulator and go away without addressing the real issues of concentrated power, lack of transparency, and social impacts. I wouldn't say these two ideas above are perfect solutions, only that there must be similar and other ideas that achieve the same goals.
How would you make FaceBook and other social media open sourced? Nationalize the companies?
No. Sorry to be unclear. A regulation could be made that all software that has a social impact must publish some or all of their software as open source. It would then be available for review and use/reuse by others.
This is quite common. In Australia several years ago, there was an effort to make their voting software open source to ensure security. Haven't looked in awhile to see if that's still true. I was surprised to see on Github that Uber open sources some or all of their software.
Nationalization is not remotely needed. Open source is about sharing and people working together to create great tools. And companies making money on delivery and support using the code.
Making social media software open source is an interesting idea, and makes sense in theory. But it makes less sense in practice. There's no law to base a regulation on, so Congress would have to pass a law. I don't think that's going to happen. And frankly, even if it did, I don't think it would help.
I graduated in computer science, worked for a couple of years in the industry, and then went to law school. My career was spent mostly in Silicon Valley working with computer companies, including 4 years as general counsel at a software company with some open source products. I can see what you are getting at, replacing some of the competition with cooperation.
It's a tough issue. There's an old fable called The Mice in Council. In it, a group of mice gather to discuss a marauding cat. The mice shiver as they share horrible stories about how the cat will sneak up on one of them and pounce.
Then a mouse suggests a solution: put a bell around the cat's neck. All the mice laud the idea except one who asks, "who will bell the cat?"
It's easy to identify problems. But in our complex world, solutions are hard to find. Frances Haugen's testimony was not particularly compelling even as to the problems at Facebook. She had spent little time there and relied mainly on purloined documents.
Her testimony as to a solution was even worse.
I'd also point out that government mandates seat belts in cars because cars kill people in certain situations. Damage to society caused by software created by social media, voting, criminal justice, and a few other companies would be reasonable grounds for regulation, for example, to open source critical code or all code, adding an API to make competition possible, and so on. I'm not a lawyer, however. How that would happen, I don't exactly know. And there'd have to be public backing, as well as legislators with sufficient experience in software development. Not just the business side.
Good points. I look at this problem by asking the question, what if the internet had shown up in the 1920s and 30s when radio then TV happened? Both technologies were regulated for the common good because that was considered possible and necessary. You had the Fairness Doctrine, for example, and limits on station ownership. However, the internet showed up during the Reagan era with its biases. I'd argue we could easily return to the 1920s and 30s models of regulation. It only takes imagination and will. And I guess a larger plan and framework about how to balance the interests of software creators and the people and the society they exist in.
Looks of excellent points about a new regulator. I'm rethinking past support for that... but the belief that companies would compete on privacy and security seems.... well, optimistic. You note seat belts - but only one small boutique auto company has ever competed on safety (Volvo), and doing so limited its market drastically.
You also imply that the big issue is whether ads can find a competing home (which they are of course already doing at Amazon). TBH I dont really care about competition in the ad space. Maybe it costs me an extra couple bucks, but still.
I do think algorithmic amplification is the central problem, and I'm not at all confident that either existing regulators of the kind of weird formalism of US antitrust can handle it. I think the Europeans might be on the right track, even though GDPR has been pretty much useless.
Thanks for the comment. My point isn't that competition among auto companies is good, and so are rules mandating seat belts. You need both.
Matt, I've learned a ton from you, and continue to do so. But I think in this case you are missing something critical because you haven't spent your life in software. With a few exceptions (e.g. video games maybe?), the analogy for competition in tech is NOT auto companies, but entire Interstate Highway Systems. One of the ways I've stumped libertarian Silicon Valley types is to ask, "How successful do you really think our country would have been if Dwight Eisenhower hadn't said, in the 1950s, 'We need a planned, high quality, standardized, interstate road network. And, yeah, we are going to build it with tax dollars.'?" Can you imagine the resource waste, the confusion, the rent-seeking, and the transit time sink that would have ensued if, instead, we'd let a bunch of financiers build separate road systems and "compete" to see who could capture the most traffic? (Actually, doesn't the history of railroad trusts answer that question?)
This is all so painful for me because the whole Internet was built by brilliant "government employees." If you take away improvements attributable to Moore's Law (which MIT Tech Review says is at an end), there has been very little real innovation since the end of the 1970s. The rest has just been profiteering off the original brilliance. Think I'm crazy? I'm not alone:
https://www.socialcapital.com/annual-letters/2019
"A common theme amongst optimists is how much technological advance we have seen and how these advances seem to be accelerating. **I am of the opposite camp and believe, roughly, that the rate of progress has been STEADILY DECLINING since we landed on the moon in 1969.**"
In the words of Steve Eisman, "They confused leverage for genius."
In 2009, Simon Johnson (IMF Chief Economist) put it bluntly about the banks: "The challenges the United States faces are familiar territory to the people at the IMF. If you hid the name of the country and just showed them the numbers, there is no doubt what old IMF hands would say: NATIONALIZE THE BANKS and break them up as necessary." Johnson's no-nonsense regulatory attitude is the only good option for most of Tech. (Tech - Finance... are they even really much different anymore?)
Commenters like Robin Gaster and CarlosDanger (and maybe you as well) will probably opine that we are too far gone for that now. (The Mice in Council is awesome!) They may be right. But, as long as we're doing fables, here's an old joke that, in my mind, applies really well:
A cop walking his beat at night comes across a man on his hands and knees under a streetlamp:
Officer: "Sir, can I help you?"
Man: "I dropped my car keys, and I'm trying to find them."
<< The cop begins to help with the search, but after five minutes or so... >>
Officer: "Are you sure this is where you dropped them?"
Man: "No, I dropped them on the other side of the street. But the light is better over here."
More generally, we HAVE a good starting template for what needs to happen in Tech: Glass-Steagall. Can we at least look in the vicinity of where we dropped the keys?
agreed. but my point was that the field of competition in autos has almost nothing do with safety - and that's true in tech as well. GDPR is failing because no-one cares enough about privacy to read the small print of cookies declarations (including me).
The choice is to break up FB as you suggest or to accept that it is a natural monopoly and to regulate it as such - which imposes far more ongoing internal constraints than antitrust will ever do, including radical transparency about operations and money flows. The antitrust approach hopes that a) FB can be broken up within a reasonable timeframe b) that antitrust is the tool to use and c) that the broken up bits while still enormous will not be just as dangerous (if not more so). Several huge leaps of faith.
Here's part of the problem:
"TBH I dont really care about competition in the ad space. Maybe it costs me an extra couple bucks, but still."
"GDPR is failing because no-one cares enough about privacy to read the small print of cookies declarations (including me)."
As you've both stated and demonstrated, most people either don't care at all about privacy, or they don't care enough. Even with all the talk about Facebook, Google, et al these days, most people probably aren't even really aware of the depth of it all or they still just don't care. As I stated in another comment, I've been telling people for *years* about the privacy issues with these companies, and I honestly can't think of a single person that cared at all, at least not anyone that didn't already care. Even after Cambridge, nothing changed and nobody cared.
I go to fairly great lengths to protect my privacy and security, which the vast majority of people don't even know how to do, much less have the patience for. But even something as simple as using a decent ad blocker on default settings, or Brave instead of Chrome, which at least helps some, is just too much work for most people or, again, they just don't care. Heck, I can barely even convince anyone to use a password manager so they won't use weak, and often identical, passwords anymore. People are just apathetic and lazy when it comes to protecting themselves.
The apathy problem is more than meets the eye in this case too. It has characteristics similar to pollution. Is it OK to dump garbage in the ocean just because most people don't care?
"Saying you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden
Matt Stoller is the best at pointing out that concentrated power is dangerous and should not be allowed to exists. The Reagan Revolution and Milton Friedman's fraudulent cult of Neoliberalism purposely allowed concentrated power to grow even stronger when they ditched antitrust laws and let mergers and acquisitions rule the day. Friedman's mindless cult was so concerned with "government intervention in the Market Place" that it allowed concentrated power to ruin one of the most important components of capitalism, competition. Concentrated power has now taken over our government and rules our society.
I was wondering how long before commenting on the obvious of how ridiculous it is to suggest a new regulatory agency to regulate something that's only a problem because another regulatory agency didn't do its job. One point missed by Matt in this article is that not only would staffing such an agency with Silicon Valley people mean putting those that are involved in the creation of the issue in charge of regulating it, but it would just be creating yet another revolving door, which of course always work out so well.
Here's my conspiracy theory: based on the timing and her recommendations, perhaps Facebook/Zuckerberg realized the game is over and they're screwed, so in a Hail Mary they had Haugen "whistleblow" and release data that's just damaging enough to get a lot of attention to "her" proposals on how to deal with Facebook, without being so bad as to make things open and shut against them.