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Comment by trendia | Hacker News Reader

Like a newspaper, magazine, or TV station?

That's a false equivalence. Facebook has an inordinate amount of power over person-to-person communication. TV and print media is not even in the same ballpark of influence.

Conglomerated media companies like Sinclair are in the ballpark, but true independent media outlets don’t, for sure.

And it’s not false equivalence in my mind, just worth noting the difference in magnitude and considering the difference that might make.

False equivalence definition: "A common way for this fallacy to be perpetuated is one shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show equivalence, especially in order of magnitude, when equivalence is not necessarily the logical result." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

It is hard to see the equivalence between a traditional media company such as Sinclair that produce content for distribution and a social platform for individuals to share their thoughts such as Facebook.

When we are talking about potential effects on personal communication it does not make sense to compare the magnitude between a traditional mass media platform product and a social media platform, because the latter focus is entirely on personal communication and the former is a mass media company.

Recently Australia lost our Prime Minister due in part to (alleged) agitations by Rupert Murdoch. - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/19/turnb...

Private interests and public have always interacted. Whether this fact matters is open to debate, but I find dealing with current reality more useful.

As someone unfamiliar with Australian politics, is The Guardian AU a reputable source for this story? I don't generally consider that domain, granted a .uk, very useful to provide information.

Here's another article from the ABC (generally considered reputable in Australia)

http://amp.abc.net.au/article/10262552

TV and print media went through a period of regulation when they had a similar market share. We may be able to learn from that time.

With these everybody can see what they are publishing. On the other hand Facebook can send individualized content and nobody knows what anybody else gets to see.

Something harder or nearly impossible on all of those other mediums, aside from on the web I suppose, but still wouldn't be too impossible to spot.

Well, like a multinational newspaper, magazine and TV station conglomerate, with few ethical boundaries when it comes to profit, a willful disregard for truth, that bugs and tracks their global audience on behalf of anyone with money to spend, and has executives with personal political ambitions.

Newspapers, magazines, and TV stations are single products with known editors and known biases, and no one assumes otherwise.

Facebook is an essential service and "the internet" for most people, who assume it's a common carrier of sorts - and Facebook has done very little to dissuade anyone of that perception.

So, no. Not even remotely the same thing.

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