We can't simply undertake anti-trust litigation against these companies. We must go further and outlaw this business model.
We can't simply undertake anti-trust litigation against these companies. We must go further and outlaw this business model.
Laws work best when they outlaw the harm, not the method. Strengthening privacy rights and pursuing antitrust action around that [1] will deter similar business models in the future. If Zuckerberg willfully violated the FTC consent decree, there are ways to make him pay that discincentivise similar behavior in future.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust...
We need to make social-discovery and network services a function of the OS and not a 3rd-party service over which the user has no agency.
In my opinion we are in this dilemma because OS vendors fell asleep at the wheel, and such things as a well-working, inbuilt common system service are instead a behind-the-walled-garden/-data-center service that has been usurped from the user.
So, same as it ever was: the corporate control over social networking (and lets just call it that, because that's what these systems are) is only 'a thing' because our systems - our computers - and the OS they run, out of the box - have been usurped for the purpose.
So, lets just continue with seeing iron-grip over single points of the network (i.e. Facebook, et al.) as the damage it is, indeed, and route around it.
i.e. we don't need legal harassment - just better system services which allow discovery and sharing with our peers without discarding near-full agency to a sinister, shady, corporate third-party.
I wonder whether there's a way to make spying so unprofitable that the business model simply isn't attractive anymore?
Legislation that would force businesses to pay for collecting user data (maybe a tax on user data) might be a start, but I don't see how something like that could be implemented successfully.
It’s quite difficult to stop using Facebook, but it’s effectively impossible to get an electoral outcome changed over a niche technical issue, or even a general one like the trains not working.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-...
And repressive governments already use Facebook to disappear their people:
>The Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. Instead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for ethnic cleansing, according to former military officials, researchers and civilian officials in the country.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
So, the notion that it's somehow "safer" for Facebook to engage in omnipresent surveillance doesn't prove true.
oh for sure bud
"The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli...
Yes, no true Scotsman would do such a thing.
Facebook is just some website.
There's not even a comparison.
Facebook is controlled by a single person who even the board cannot force out.
There's not even a comparison.
There have been other candidates to make bids: Google+, WeChat, etc.