Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

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> If you have an issue with this, disable javascript and cookies on your browser - take some personal responsibility

This is a problematic attitude. It's the car dealer telling the lemon [1] buyer to "take personal responsibility" for being sold junk.

The point of government is we don't stand alone. Facebook is a menace, and I block them. But I shouldn't have to. And neither should my mother.

> it’s hypocritical to only have a problem with Facebook when Google is doing it on a scale that Facebook can only imagine

Whatabout whatabout [2]? "You can't arrest me because there is another arsonist in town" isn't a valid excuse.

(In any case, third parties calling out some, but not all, bad actors in a category isn't hypocrisy. It's prioritization. Hypocrisy would be Google calling out Facebook's advertising model, or an Enron executive criticising Facebook employees' complicity.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_%28automobile%29

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

>This is a problematic attitude. It's the car dealer telling the lemon [1] buyer to "take personal responsibility" for being sold junk.

That's a flawed analogy. Paying for a car and being defrauded is in no way related to being tracked by websites. A better analogy is walking around naked and then being upset when people look at your bare ass. If you don't want people to see you naked, wear clothes. If you don't want people to track you on the internet, don't expose yourself.

>The point of government is we don't stand alone. Facebook is a menace, and I block them. But I shouldn't have to. And neither should my mother.

That's not the point of the government. Many of us don't want the government to be an all-encompassing nanny state deciding what's okay for private parties to do with public information. Its incredibly disturbing how many people not only tolerate, but openly welcome government regulation of private, interpersonal behavior. You say they should block Facebook. They have already blocked Backpage. What else do you want to give them the power to block? Where do you draw the line? Personally I think Facebook is extremely scummy. I'm not on Facebook, and I block them in every way - but I certainly don't want the government blocking them - or anyone else - on my behalf.

There's an old saying "when you owe the bank a million dollars it's your problem, when you owe the bank billion dollars it's their problem" (like I said it's an old saying ;-)

I think there's an analogy here-if enough people are being successfully abused by private companies it's no longer a matter that you can just pawn off on some sort of concept of personal responsibility. If your beloved private companies are threatening to exploit people hard enough to threaten the very existence of democracy, then it certainly starts to look like something where exploring a government role is worthwhile.

> Paying for a car and being defrauded is in no way related to being tracked by websites.

This is incorrect: they're both examples of informational asymmetry being used to disadvantage a consumer. In both cases, that consumer needs to possess technical knowledge in order to understand the ways that the counterparty entity is exploiting them. In the case of the car dealership, at least the consumer is aware of the stakes when they step onto the lot, i.e. they are planning to buy a car. The problem with Facebook is exactly that people aren't aware of how they are being monetized, and that there is an explicit financial incentive to obscure that from them. They are stepping onto a car lot, or more accurately a surveillance operation, that has been made to look like an amusement park. "Personal responsibility" is a convenient fig leaf for people who want to pretend that the amusement park wasn't the sales pitch. If you don't like the original analogy to a used car salesman, consider the need for similar regulation around financial services, clean water, pharmaceuticals, etc. etc. etc.

Yeah, the situation here is more akin to you go outside wearing clothes, but they've developed x-ray glasses and you're now like, "What? Just wear a lead apron everywhere you go".

I was apparently in the process of editing out the “hypocritical” statement when you replied - I actually didn’t even mean for that to get posted but accidentally hit post before the final post was ready. Anyway I was mainly advising that you block Facebook since you so vehemently dislike them.

> I was mainly advising that you block Facebook since you so vehemently dislike them

Yours is a technical solution to a human problem. If we care about democracy and the future of the Internet, we will dismantle Facebook. (I expect we will, though in typical democratic fashion, after years of quibbling.)

> a human problem.

That's the very crux of the whole "debate" over everything from Facebook to "Russiagate". The bottom line is, you can't fix stupid. We have a very serious problem with stupidity and ignorance in this country. Far too many people lack basic critical thinking skills. You can't childproof society because far too many people are easy to fool. This "problem" won't be fixed until we have a critical mass of people who can think for themselves, be skeptical and aware.

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