Why is Facebook a media outlet as opposed to, say, a private gathering place like a mall or movie theatre?
So, even if I would want to "get off" FB and decide to ignore it completely then I would just have an "inferior" experience as a citizen of my country, i.e. I would not have first-hand account on what's shaping the things around me. It's not that I like what Facebook has become, but there's nothing that I can do to change it at this point.
Whether you're a private or public platform here is not as relevant as the fact that is is a public forum, it is practicing certain forms of censorship, and it a medium of information. Other platforms get regulations applied to them in many respects too.
As only one of literally millions of examples: http://ij.org/case/gilliland-et-al-v-city-of-dallas/
Rent-seeking is bad, it's facilitated by ownership of too large a share of the market. In return for allowing Facebook to leverage its size and influence for rent-seeking behavior, we as a society, a.k.a. the government representing us, have the right and responsibility to set the ground rules for what we get in return.
That's not about fault or entitlement, it's about how we can continue to uphold the values that are important to us. Free speech and the ability to publicly disagree are a crucial part of that. If your platform gets popular enough that strengthening or suppressing your voice has a material impact, profit and shareholder interests can't be the only thing that decides how things are supposed to work. There's a lot more at stake here.
Any organization, when it becomes sufficiently large, essentially becomes a government.
Remind me when Facebook used violence to enforce laws or take taxes?
Government is far larger than Facebook, and far more insulated from the people than is Facebook. I can't imagine why we extend trust to the government to fix a situation where we don't trust facebook.
It's all run by people, with their own competing goals.
And lets not forget that facebook could collapse overnight if enough people decided to stop using it. I don't think a population could exert that level of influence over a government.
Is it? Facebook doesn't hold elections. It seems entirely unaccountable to me, with no system of checks and balances to reign it in.
>facebook could collapse overnight if enough people decided to stop using it. I don't think a population could exert that level of influence over a government
They could and do, all the time. See: any successful rebellion ever. See also: the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Did those parties enter into a contract with Facebook that said that Facebook owed recourse if they changed or censored something? Evidently not.
Power and rights are far more about the ability to effectively press a claim than specifically detailed binding pacts.
The matter was whether or not Facebook could effect a taking. Not the rights of recourse of others. You're dragging goalposts.
We have no good mechanism to prevent the government from abusing its power.
Those here defending FB are not arguing that FB can do no wrong, they are arguing that fixing a problem _with another broken system_ is not an improvement, and is, in fact, a step backwards.
I can opt out of FB, and I have. Facebook exerts no influence over me, compared to the influence the government exerts over me.
Government, for better or worse, is a vehicle for channeling and aggregating power, in a way that at best benefits society as a whole, expresses the preferences of the majority, and respects the rights of the minority. It's far from perfect. But it's better than most alternatives.
Facebook is granted rights by governments, ultimately also to benefit the public at large. Facebook is not itself a government, though it transacts the online communications of a population larger than all but the very largest countries.
I'd say there is considerable public interest, yes. Facebook without the users is nothing, but the users without Facebook are the same society, just using another software.
When the software shapes your interactions to the degree that Facebook does, I'm not so sure. You don't think Facebook has changed society?
If I don't like the Times, I can read the Guardian instead. If I don't like what's on at one cinema, I can go to another (granted this may be harder in a small town with only one).
Of course I can close my facebook account and move to diaspora, but then I'd lose everything from keeping in touch with my friends' latest accomplishments to the schedule of my local hiking club.
I already find if I'm away hiking for a weekend without internet access and couldn't be bothered to catch up on facebook on Monday morning because there's already a pile of e-mails to deal with, at coffee break it's like I've missed some important social information that everyone else knows, because team member A has done something and posted about it on facebook and everyone else has been liking and commenting on it, and everyone expects you to be up to date with this. Without a facebook account you may as well wear a badge that says "antisocial".
I personally think governments should regulate media outlets in proportion to their influence on people's lives. FB is the new IE.
It's perfectly possible to be happy and healthy without a Facebook account. You might lose out on one particular kind of "social" connection, but that doesn't mean you lose actual social connections. You just catch up with people in person, via telephone, via email, via chat, or a million other ways.
Personally, I don't really find the "social" information Facebook has to offer all that valuable. It's just a stream of trivia from extended not-really-friends.
FWIW, I deleted my FB account months ago, and my quality of life has gone up. If someone expects me to be available via FB, I give them my email address.
IE went into a decades-long decline, because superior products came to market. No regulation required.
Who regulates the governments in proportion to their influence on people's lives?
I wish my government didn't bomb other countries. Can I stop paying taxes, so I can stop supporting the murder of people around the world?
You're asking an organization that backs its wishes with the threat of violence and jail to regulate an organization that lets you keep up with your friends hiking accomplishments.
Facebook could be irrelevant in five years. The laws you're asking to be implemented would be in place for another 100. Are you sure this is a good idea?
The decline followed behavioral changes in response to regulatory action and ongoing litigation (even it began before the resolution of the litigation), so I'm not sure you can concluded from it that regulation was unnecessary to the outcome.
As Stalin said "quantity has a quality all its own".
Start criminally charging Facebook for every criminal act they fail to remove. If they're playing the censor, then they need to be punished when they fail in that role.
The other choice, is not to censor anything, other than by the requirements of the law. Like the telephone system does.