Facebook Calls for Government Regulation | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Calls for Government Regulation

bbc.co.uk

50 pointsdavisoneee34 comments

Discussed earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19531457

I like how Zuckerberg insists on blaming all his problems on Russia, white nationalists and all these memes and not addressing the real issues of his company because he knows he can exploit the MSM due to its liberal/left tendencies for a long time. Facebook is a spamming website pretending to be a social network. Everybody can tell the difference of Facebook now and pre-2014 before he deliberately changed the feed algorithm to become the biggest spam website of all time in order to make money. Is the low interaction rate on Facebook now compared to 5 years ago due to Russia? Is hiding posts from pages people like and subscribe is due to Russia? Is extorting pages to pay to promote posts to get 1/10 of the organic reach (mind you this is the organic reach of people who like and subscribe to your page, they can't even see your posts on their feed anymore) of what they got for free 5 years ago is due to Russia?

How about reverting all these changes and going back to simple feed as in 2000s and early 2010s Mr. Zuckerberg? oh yes you won't because the entire business plan of your company is to sell users data to advertisers and make users stay in your services as long as possible to view and click on these ads.

"...Facebook is a spamming website pretending to be a social network..."

This.

The claim to offer you tools for controlling what you see and your privacy. I spent quite a bit of time trying to limit idiotic, banal, and click-baity crap out of my feed. What did I learn? That more and more of it keeps coming.

At some point, I realized what it reminded me of: the early days of email, when nobody had invented spam filters yet. You could easily spend 5, 10, 15 minutes a day clicking and deleting junk ... only to see just as much in your inbox the next day.

Facebook uses your friends against you. That lonely lady that lives down the street? Turns out she loves horses -- and wants to share things from a 100 different horse sites with everybody all day long. The teenage kid that your uncle is raising? He loves funny memes, and there are a 100 of them too. Repeat and rinse for anybody, anywhere that you might consider some version of "friend" who wants attention.

And they keep finding more sources. As quickly as you block one, 15 more show up.

I tried finding the people who don't value my time and preventing them from sharing anything except things they wrote themselves. Nope. Not an option. Wonder why, Facebook?

It's a captive-audience, self-generating spam machine. Anybody that knows anything about regulatory capture saw this politicized pitch for more regulation coming a mile away. We were always headed here.

But aren't these... the people you accept into your network? Facebook injects ads and applies their own capricious weighing to the visibility of posts, but doesn't the content ultimately originate from the people you accept?

Sure. So here's the question: do you want everybody you want to keep in touch with to have control over your attention span throughout the day? The site is engineered so that it's a steady stream of almost-interesting, emotionally-manipulative things somebody you once knew finds interesting.

For many things, at least at first, I was more curious as to why these people found these things interesting, so I clicked. I slowly realized that "things I rind interesting to share" and "things a lonely person who has a lot of emotional drama in their life" would find interesting to share are worlds apart.

Doesn't mean I don't like these people. Doesn't mean I want to shut them off. Many of these people are part of my past, they feature highly in important memories. And Facebook is the only way to stay in touch. (No, my 85-year-old former English teacher isn't going to join Slack anytime soon)

So we're left with this binary yes-no choice. Either you accept them in your life and spend the rest of your years each day going through and muting all the various ways they find to spend their time -- or you either unfriend or unfollow them and have no idea what they're doing.

Unfollow is best of those two options, but then you end up missing things you really wanted to hear about, like them getting sick and dying. Facebook presents a Faustian choice: accept your "friends" and let them spam you or mute them completely -- and perhaps never hear from them again. Who wants to do that to Aunt Lisa?

The situation I see is that most people have multiple points of contact (phone, Line, FaceTime, Whatsapp, even Facebook Messenger) and different overlapping social networks which relay information. There's a difference between chatting with someone on Facebook Messenger vs. having the Facebook feed for major signals in life like death.

I think there may be "too much" when you're keeping track of people who die (or get married) and you're legitimately nervous about how you would've missed the news had it not been for Facebook.

There's a huge difference between confirming that one is related to someone (not doing so can be considered really rude or even immoral depending on culture) and sitting patiently and listening to that person.

This quote might be relevant

> It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

- Upton Sinclair

On several occasions over the last decade or so, I've witnessed famous SV CEOs make statements and write essays that say the most wonderful-sounding things. "I'm giving money to orphans", "I want to do X (Where X is a thing people love)", or in this case the match-and-lead "Yes, this is awful, isn't it? Here are some things you already agree to that will fix it"

In each of these cases, two things happened. 1) The crowd and the media ate it up. What an amazing, insightful, kind, and effective thing for them to suggest! There was no in-depth coverage beyond that. People who criticized these statements got political push-back on the issues involved, not the quality or meaningfulness of the position 2) Digging into it, it was clear that these ideas were most likely extremely self-serving. Things were not what they appeared. The orphan guy was setting up a trust fund to dodge taxes, the X guy was dodging an important responsibility by finding a scapegoat -- and here we are with Zuck. The kindest thing I can say is that perhaps theses ideas and actions are both self-serving and in the public interest. But I kinda doubt it.

People at Facebook are not morons. If we're seeing this problem now, they saw it many, many years ago. They've just been playing the long game, stalling until the stars align for the next phase which logically looks like regulatory capture. Growing the user base. Mining the machine for more money. I'm ok with people acting in their best interests and thinking so far ahead in a clever manner. These guys rock at it. What I'm not okay with is the example they're setting for our kids. A lot of kids and wannabe startup founders idolize these people. Is this the kind of generation we really want to raise?

I think you're spot on on your evaluation

I would advise not to block sources, but unfollow people. They will still be friends, but none of their crap will show up in your timeline

Well said!

I've just opened Facebook's homepage after about 10 days. 15 new notifications, and 14 of them were absolute junk.

8 friend suggestions that can't be turned off.

4 updates from my friends for some reason (FFS, that's what the home feed is supposed to show).

2 new events I might be interested in, and one event I'm going to has posted an update.

Nobody in their right mind is going to use a product where there's 1 useful notification out of 15. If I have to ask myself why? multiple times while using a product that claims that I have control over what I see, that product may as well be dead.

If I wished them any good, I'd suggest that they seriously consider rebranding as soon as possible. The word "Facebook" makes me immediately think of frustration, and there's no going back from there.

Facebook announces its strategy to prevent future competition, by pressing governments to introduce regulations so opaque, open to interpretation, and difficult to implement, that no company other than a mature large established player with ample resources could hope to meet them.

That's probably only half of the story. Facebook is already a monopoly and with their endless resources they don't need government's help to marginalise their competition. I suspect the real reason is preemptive strike, Zuckerberg calls for something that was already coming whether he likes it or not, this way he controls the narrative and puts Facebook in a positive light.

No question. They captured two billion users, they're starting to see usage signs of developed market erosion (where all of their money comes from), now they want to use government powers to permanently enshrine their place (ensure that those two billion users have nowhere else to go). At this point Facebook has everything to lose from competition and nothing to gain from it. The regulatory capture approach pivot is a key indication they feel like they've fully fleshed out their social monopoly using traditional means. They can no longer purchase major competitors, due to anti-trust issues. They will never be allowed to buy/own the next Instagram or YouTube type companies, so from their perspective they only have to gain from using the government to pre-emptively destroy those companies from being birthed in the first place (or at a minimum severely hamper them).

Regulate the hell out of me please, just guarantee me that you'll restrict competition in the process with tall enough barriers. It's a deal that governments go for every time and without exception. The power to control speech, news, expression on the world's largest media platform will prove irresistible and Facebook knows it. It aligns the always persistent desire by governments for censorship and control with Facebook's desire to never compete again.

Exactly, it's called regulatory capture.

It's a huge problem in America.

In Arizona, a man was jailed for giving haircuts to the homeless.

A license to provide a service needs to be the exception, not the rule.

I'm kind of tired to read what he (and other way-too-powerful-tech guys, such as Jack "thoughtful" Dorsey) "believe" about how things should work on this planet.

It's horrible that single individuals can gain that much influence while possibly being entirely unfit for the kind of responsibly that comes with that.

I have a lot of respect for how Zuckerberg has built the business that is Facebook. But I have zero trust left in that he's able to do anything else than just to make things worse (for everybody except Facebook's bottom line).

Someone’s being studying strategy.

This is a great move for FB. This is the correct strategic move - punting the ball.

Fundamentally most people, and that includes most people even on tech websites like HN, don’t understand that social media governance is a black hole which leads to hell.

By pushing the ball into the regulator’s courts, he’s hoping to divorce himself of the baggage of lawsuits and moderation costs.

Moderation work is fractal in nature - the more nuanced your rules, the more training surface area for abusers.

Leading to more nuanced ways to define the same issue, but the overall structure not changing.

That means it’s a cost/spending black hole as well.

This day was coming anyway, no matter what the free speech advocates who’ve never had to moderate difficult forums have to say.

I’m an active mod elsewhere and its obvious to me that the internet and social media firms will dump the costs of actually moderating the web at first chance.

It would eat their income almost entirely.

There’s no automated way to fix this so scaling is man power driven.

The manpower issues are simple anyway - deciding whether something is newsworthy or whether it will be pg-13/A/or PEGI-x is a whole different problem.

This means a national editorial desk in each country.

So all the benefits SM firms have been enjoying by sucking up the benefit of attention which used to be filtered by editor and journalists teams now has to be spent.

(I recognize that news was dying before the internet.)

Facebook has the answer.

It’s good PR.

It’s good law.

And it’s good for profits.

Absolutely agree - despite all of the advances in "AI" (quotes used deliberately), I simply don't see fully automated moderation happening any time in the near future.

But it doesn't need to be fully automated. Automate 999 out of 1000 (probably quite easily) and flag the rest for human review. Surely we've got enough GPUs now to train a neural network smart enough to do that.

Automation of moderation IS very dangerous.

If there is one thing people need to realize, is that automated moderation is inherently dangerous.

People think of news and informaiton online. but its all just Content.

CONTENT can be anything, fake news, lies, or fighting against an unjust leader, rebellion, fighting for the environment and more.

Tools that effectively get better at moderating content do so for ALL content.

Any tool that you use to cut bad will is always useable to harm good.

--------

So far I have good reason to assume that intent is not paresable from content online, so human beings should be relatively safe online.

Figuring out INTENT, is the holy grail of moderation. If you know why someone said something, you know whether its meant as Nazi apologia or whether its no malicious historical context.

As long as we don't figure out a way to automate that, private thoughts are safe.

Cold me old fashioned but I miss the days of the declaration of independence of cyberspace.

That gum you like is going to come back in style.

Mods, any reason the original title “Mark Zuckerberg asks governments to help control internet content” shouldn’t be used?

The alternative used here seems clickbaity.

Only surprised it took this long. One of the below-the-surface purposes of regulation is to provide a mechanism for private players to shed liability (and public accountability) for things that go wrong in their businesses. A builder can make 1000 choices that might increase or decrease the risk of a fire in a new project, but as long he is within the regulated parameters of "fire code" he is unlikely to face liability if there happens to be a fire, since compliance will be used as a defense against a charge of negligence.

Now imagine you build nearly every building in the state of California, have a personal relationship with the governor, and have the means to subtly influence the development of fire codes in such a way that makes it easy for you to comply, minimizes the effect on your business, but may make it harder for other competitors to gain compliance. This is regulatory capture, and it is endemic in almost every industry in America, with the glaring exception of software.

Facebook has finally realized that they have enough influence and market power to be confident that a regulatory regime for data and content will benefit them over the long-run. They will not get 100% of what they want, but they will get 80%, and in the long run, they will reap the benefit of knowing: - that they can continue to shape the evolution of these rules over time - that they no longer have to worry as much about black swan liability arising from UGC on their network - that the next generation of UGC startups will have a hard time achieving compliance, either hurting their growth or motivating them to sell to larger players like Facebook

Regulation benefits incumbents.

If something is not allowed, it should go through courts if government is involved.

Free speech is not freedom from consequences, but pre-censorship is against liberal values.

So he's calling for a regulatory barrier-to-entry of the social networking space, along with asking governments to shoulder the responsibility for policing the industry.

But presumably not the responsibility to collect profits

Its very strange to me that no one mentions any concerns about government censorship in this thread.

You ask the government to control what is allowed online, eventually they will start doing it.

The problem is that many people on Hacker News have this rose-tinted glasses worldview where their governments could never do anything too bad. Most people here have no knowledge of the history of propaganda or that it actually is part of western government operation.

What will happen is that governments will start saying that certain content about certain election candidates is "fake" and then remove it. That will be applied to some actual spam. But then some candidate will come along that is just plain completely against the direction of the current government or there is a grudge with a high-level official. They put something slightly emotional in their content. The government then flags that content as spam. This is called suppression of political dissent. And that is what you people are asking for, and will get, in your new unified global system.

I mean I'm all for global integration but you've got to be extremely mindful of the direction it goes in.

"Facebook calls for regulatory capture" is a more apt name for it

Facebook Lobby reaches quorum on desired regulation.

Not surprising, Facebook can ask for regulations because it becomes a way to lock the market for themselves - it will be difficult for new entrants to respect all regulations from the get go, it's a well known appeal from companies that control the market. It's not innocent.

The only thing I want regulated is the Like count next to every human thought being expressed.

This number influences human behavior and thinking.

Talking about privacy, free speech, harm, manipulation, polarization/echo chambers etc etc cannot be done, without talking about the FEEDBACK architecture that Facebook has slipped under society.

People have blindly taken this architecture based on likes/view/click/upvote/follower counts as an unchangable base layer on top of which everything gets built.

Whatever position anyone takes on any subject cannot be reduced to a game of maximizing these arbit numbers.

These numbers cannot be blindly accepted as the fundamental building blocks of society. It's just too arbitrary and thoughtless.

"I don't know how to sort this out. Come get me off the hook. You can censor whatever you want! Globally!"

If only legislators read HN and could see through the motives behind Mr. Zuckerbergs announcement.

Blaming is kind of defence mechanism to admit a truth about yourself.

I have to say I'm happy for this, I don't see much bad that can come of this, and I also agree that a lot of his suggestions are correct.

But I also agree that because of how powerful Facebook is, they can just do many of those things without fear of losing business to competition (like adopting the GDPR worldwide, or just not fighting certain governments when they do press them for privacy issues).

I think for him to blame the governments is a bit (or a lot) an escape from responsibility.

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