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)
“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.
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'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.
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 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)
Whistleblower my @ss. She was selected by Zuckerberg to present his strategy.
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
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.
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.
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.
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”?
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.
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 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.