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Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

Terrifying, really. The world is hurdling back towards a feudalist society, with corporations instead of kings.

What is even more terrifying is that this is being done by Facebook which has a person like Mark Zuckerberg, who has again and again shown that he has no moral compass and has complete disregard for people privacy rights and by extension other rights, as its dictator, with no real board oversight due to how stocks are structured.

> this is being done by Facebook which has a person like Mark Zuckerberg, who has again and again shown that he has no moral compass and has complete disregard for people privacy rights

Sure. But think about all the money they can make from selling ads if they know everything that people buy. Doesn't he have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value?

You forgot the `/s`.

No he doesn't, that is not what fiduciary responsibility means. See https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...

This seemed like fairly clear sarcasm to me.

The problem with using sarcasm as a vehicle for genuine discussion is that not everybody gets the joke.

>The problem with using sarcasm as a vehicle for genuine discussion is that not everybody gets the joke.

That's fine, assuming "everybody" is not the target audience.

Sarcasm or not, I found the follow-up response with the Harvard Law School article quite interesting!

Implied sarcasm and irony is a troll's game. Not to imply that the poster is a troll, I have no reason to think that, but that's why I never assume sarcasm if it's not explicitly stated.

>Implied sarcasm and irony is a troll's game. Not to imply that the poster is a troll, I have no reason to think that, but that's why I never assume sarcasm if it's not explicitly stated.

Sarcasm and irony have been used in an enormous amount of major English-language texts since, well, there WERE English-language texts. Most of these texts don't take the time to spell things out to their less observant readers. Not assuming sarcasm will lead you to miss the point entirely. (This sounds terribly rude and elitist but it's true. And of course, little heed was given to those learning English as a second, or third, language, when these texts were written.)

Take the King James bible, for example. In Exodus, Moses is asked "Were there a lack of graves in Egypt, that you took us away to die in the wilderness?"

Hopefully this doesn't need to be explicitly flagged as sarcasm for you to understand its meaning.

* From the Hacker News Operators Manual - Hacker News Principle 3.7 states no amount of sarcasm, no matter how extreme, will be clear to the majority of hacker news readers. Thus sarcasm in commenting should be avoided as much as possible, and if deemed absolutely necessary, clearly signaled with the "/s" mark at the end of the comment.

Edit - It's actually Principle 4.1

That's a reasonable critique against an implementation of short term shareholder value maximization. That said, it doesn't show a different definition for fiduciary responsibility. It does, however, illustrate my original point that fiduciary responsibility is a silly justification for lots of things it's used to justify.

I assume you are joking, but your statement highlights the problem with a "moral" system rooted in maximizing shareholder value. I think free enterprise markets have many advantages, but there has to be a better grounding for ethical decisions.

One part of a better grounding could be a free market as opposed to a system where the tax payer bails out the banks.

Every mortal may be ousted from their offices; the wisest will provide a peaceful means for doing so.

As Zuckerberg has obviated any lawful means of removing him, by structuring the stock classes such that he holds the majority of votes, he should probably hire more personal security. If he's going to be someone that's completely unaccountable for his actions as head of the company from within the accepted structures, he should anticipate that someone will try to go outside those structures to get to him.

Ordinary people protect themselves from such attacks by not being untouchable jerkwads. He has already left that particular stratagem far behind.

With comments like this, I can understand why he would need personal security. I feel like this rhetoric is dangerous. It sounds to me as if you might be suggesting this sort of "solution" has some legitimacy. I apologize if that's not how you meant it.

Perhaps The French Revolution was illegitimate and the royal family should be ruling France right now.....

Well, the French Revolution certainly was illegitimate in that it was “not authorized by the law; not in accordance with accepted standards or rules“.

And it’s one of the best things that ever happened in human history.

He’s providing an economics type analysis.

It is not "legitimate". That word shares a root with "legal". But we should not pretend that some people do not do illegal things when the stakes are high enough.

Rich people get kidnapped and held for ransom to fund rebellions or criminal cartels. It's a thing that happens. Even heads of state get assassinated from time to time. It's a thing that happens. At the level of super-rich that Zuckerberg inhabits, I'd guess he already gets at least 2 attempts at theft, robbery, blackmail, or extortion per year, and some of them might even be successful. It's a thing that happens. People don't like to talk about it, because the successes encourage further attempts.

There were even GTA 5 missions entirely about manipulating public stock prices by criminally compromising or killing a company's CEO. That's how the player can make all three of their player-characters multi-billionaires.

I'm simply saying that if the only way someone can get to you is via criminality, then that is the way someone will get to you. Most people would always try the "legitimate", peaceful option first, if there is one. That's the primary reason why people choose to leave themselves open to the law. Surrendering to the marshals or getting arrested by state professionals is a more favorable alternative than getting caught by an angry mob. Just ask Qaddafi.

It's just engineering. If your structure is designed to fail at one weak point, then you can monitor that possibility more carefully, and predict the behavior following that particular failure. You can purposefully put in a weak element, so that if the structure collapses at all, it will do so more slowly and in a safer direction. In a corporate structure, you allow yourself to be removed by majority vote, and the failure mode is that you get paid off and live on in semi-retirement. Remove that option, and you don't know how you'll leave your office. It might be a memento-mori-scale heart attack, or complete failure of the company, or a sudden black screen as "Don't Stop Believing" plays on the jukebox.

In the wake of the vote to remove him, Zuckerberg could either step down voluntarily, or increase his security. He won't do the former, so he should do the latter.

I don't think he's suggesting anyone should do anything violent. I think he's suggesting that if Zuckerberg continues down this road, he's going to face problems by whatever routes remain available. The only thing GP said anyone should do is Zuckerberg should "probably hire more personal security".

Would it have come across as less of a threat if he had quoted JFK ("Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable")? Was JFK threatening Latin America when he said that to their diplomats?

This is a very common rhetorical tactic for people who wish to advocate violence. Parent comment is not advocating violence by asking someone to commit a violent act, they are advocating violence by arguing that violence is reasonable / inevitable.

True, though I'd argue he doesn't need to use the rhetorical tactic. Tyrants invite violence implicitly when they exercise their power over the weak.

Crime exists. I advocate that everyone apply whatever measures that fit within their means to ameliorate it, or avoid it altogether.

It applies on the small scale as easily as the grand. If you insult someone's mother, watch for and avoid the retaliatory punch. If you violate the privacy of a billion people, call them morons for trusting you, profit greatly from their personal information, and continue to demonstrate eroding ethics, then install a safe room in your house(s) and hire some bodyguards.

That said, individual violence is reasonable, after the non-violent and collectively-violent possibilities have been exhausted. There always has to be some way to effectively retaliate against anti-social behavior.

I think they're being reasonable. Have a sense of history and of scale. Wars have been fought and millions died for issues much smaller and amounts of money much more meager. When you get to a certain size, when your actions literally affect over a billion human beings, and when there is more capital tied up in your venture than in many small nations... why on earth would you expect people to suddenly not treat you the exact same way nations are treated, up to and including armed insurrection? I don't support such a notion in Facebooks case, but I do think it would be wise for anyone dealing with numbers that big to consider history. Has a war ever been fought over the amount you are dealing with? Are you doing something a war was fought in the past to stop?

Oh for crying out loud. If it bothers you that much, delete Facebook and all apps related to the FB ecosystem from your phone and install a tracking blocker. If enough people do this, then Facebook ceases to be relevant just as much as Myspace did.

If that won't work because everyone else is on Facebook, then obviously most people don't share your opinion that Zuck is that big of a threat that needs to be ousted right? So you either have to accept that the majority of people are ok with it or convince them to ditch Facebook also.

The majority is not always right. In fact, it is often wrong. Corrupt politicians invariably argue that they should not be held accountable and that we should instead "let the people decide" (by voting). But that's not how society has worked up to that point (at least, it's not how it was supposed to work, even if practice differs from theory).

Nowadays we seem to argue that since Mark Zuckerberg has not actually killed people with his bare hands, everything's fine. Everything is not fine. Facebook is a threat to humanity.

The majority is not always right, but the majority almost always gets its way.

Let’s say you’re right. Even if you overthrow the majority they won’t like it. What are you advocating? That there’s a shortcut via authoritarianism because the majority can’t be trusted?

Democracy has no shortcuts. Convince the majority you are right or live with the majority opinion.

I am advocating regulations, and their impassioned enforcement.

Suppose a hundred people have my contact information. If any one of those hundred people decide that Facebook gets access to their phone, then Facebook gets my information. The "vote" of pro-facebook counts 100x that of a vote against facebook.

This is not to say that I condone corporate assassination, just to say that your appeal to the majority is woefully inaccurate.

All that proves is that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy wrt your phone number. Any piece of information that has to be disseminated to untrusted parties to be of any use (like a phone number or email address) is by definition not private.

Or anything else that goes in an address book entry associated with your phone number.

Like your full name, job title, employer, email address, physical address, date of birth, social media profiles, family relations... the list goes on.

All of that associated information is often stored alongside your phone number. If one person you know does that, and also uses a facebook property and shares their address book through that (e.g. whatsapp), facebook has all that information about you.

If you're curious, check the list of additional fields you can add to a contact in your address book for how much Facebook could get about you

None of those are private info. And if they are, why does your contact know it?

My contact knows my name, job title and employer because they’re a colleague. There is no public record of my employment. It is private information.

How do I keep it from Facebook if my colleague uses WhatsApp, by simply opting out from using Facebook myself?

Again, you have a misguided mental model of what it means for something to be private information. If several of your colleagues know your job title and employer then you have already surrendered control over the dissemination of those pieces of information to them and they are no longer private.

I feel like there's a line between private and public information that's getting lost here. Maybe 'non-public'? Just because I've shared something with someone (by necessity, in some cases - they work for the same employer as me, so they know I work here) doesn't mean it's public information.

Or to follow that on, if several people see what medication you've purchased in a shop, is that information now public information? Has the expectation of privacy gone out of the window because it was witnessed by another person? Does that then justify that information being shared with 1+ corporations to add to their profile of you?

I'd definitely agree with that, and think that is what esoterica is missing. I don't think it is reasonable to have a strict binary line between public and private, because there exist many gradations. If I am in my home, I can reasonably expect that nobody is going to be watching through my windows with a telescope from a hundred yards away. If I am at the White House, I can reasonably expect that my every movement is going to be tracked. If I am at the grocery store, it is somewhere in-between. People can see me, what I am buying, and what I look at, but that is transient information.

This transient information is the category that modern surveillance is destroying. I think this is a useful category, as it allows for less stress of interaction, as each interaction is only relevant for a few days. Previously, it decayed over time as people forgot, or as tapes were overwritten. Soon, we are going to need mandatory data expiration policies to maintain this category of things that are public for a short time, and private afterward.

Yes, because facebook users tend to be marvelously well informed and certainly don't exist in a narrative bubble.

I would not say Zuckerberg has no moral compass. He definitely has one. Hell, he started only eating meat that he personally killed. What I would say is that his moral compass points in a VERY different direction than the vast majority of society is familiar with. He's a kook, basically. His views on privacy are not that he 'doesn't care'. He made it clear early on what his viewpoint was. He sees privacy as an antiquated, outdated notion that everyone will benefit from the death of. He believes that once everything is out in the open, people will grow up and stop being judgemental about things that are statistically normal despite being in contravention of social norms. He is, of course, completely wrong on that point and gives the majority of society far too much credit. But it's wrong to say he has no opinion on the matter.

Interesting... I wonder whether he holds the same views about his own privacy?

Of course not : http://money.com/money/4346766/mark-zuckerberg-houses/

From where I am standing I wonder if this is not reflection of the ineffectiveness of governments. In my part of the world there is a lot more talk about devolution, basically self governance of the different regions. Everyone is sick and tired of decisions being made from the capital city by people who do not have your interests at all.

Then what about decisions from corporations who do not even consider you as a person, or a citizen, but as a consumer?

It seems more and more that the government treats us like a consumer. Both parties trying to deliver more and more "value" for the currency that matters to them: votes.

It's not votes. They buy the votes with money and that's what matters.

I think you mistook my post as supporting Facebook. I am not supporting Facebook nor do I trust central governments. I ultimately think the Swiss model of governance where a lot of power is held in the region.

Brexit shows, citizens are not in the best position to take decisions on complex matters.

Educated citizens may be. The problem is when politicians are allowed to lie through their teeth, as they did for brexit, and the educational system didn't prepare everyone to question the obviously absurd claims made by leavers.

Brexit was a structural failure of British democracy, not an indictment on British voters.

How so?

Multiple reasons, two I can think of right now that frustrate me at that the vote was held when students were on holiday (they needed to vote where they lived, so many students didn't vote who were 6-1 remainers). Secondly, lots of undemocratic goings-ons such as https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/14/judges....

Pro-Brexiters lying on the motives and outcomes? (Farage & Johnson not the least)

Like every party on every election at every level. Even though I share the outrage about it, we can't deny that lying is not uncommon.

That's not an acceptable standard for any public figure.

And yet we accept it all the time.

This is funny. A big reason people voted brexit is because they want more local governance instead of letting some bureaucrats in Brussels decide their fate.

In the grand scheme of things brexit might be a bad idea, but you're effectively saying people shouldn't govern themselves because they would vote for more self-governance...

I would also not be in disfavor of a Federal Council as opposed to a singular executive. The Swiss have a good thing going.

Interesting comment, given that the Libra group behind this currency is based out of Switzerland.

Person > family > neighborhood > community > region > state > nation > > world

That's how decision making power should reign.

It's not hard to make the case that today's governments are tired and slipping and in need of reform. But there's no such thing as the libertarian fantasy of "lack" of governance. Human nature dictates that if there's a power vacuum, it will be filled. If it isn't filled carefully with a system designed to serve the people, it'll be filled by whoever can take it for themselves. And whether that's a feudal lord or Mark Zuckerberg, it will be worse than the alternative.

It's nothing short of a miracle that for the past 150-200 years, we've managed to fill much of the world's power space with a system that roughly serves the people (with lots of flaws, but nevertheless). Let's hope it isn't just an anomaly.

> But there's no such thing as the libertarian fantasy of "lack" of governance. Human nature dictates that if there's a power vacuum, it will be filled. If it isn't filled carefully with a system designed to serve the people, it'll be filled by whoever can take it for themselves.

Then let that power vacuum be filled on the state and local level.

West Virginia and California should be free to run their societies into the ground (or not) in their own ways without the other telling them how to do it or being on the hook for the cost.

Except people are not perfectly mobile and can't simply relocate across a continent. Should California be free to say, deny all brown eyed people access to public schooling? Or to run its economy into the ground and dissolve as a state? What about selling itself to a foreign power?

People are free to relocate where they want. They are not free from the consequences, particularly economic ones. As someone who is living in an fairly terrible state because there happens to be some high paying jobs in my industry I am unfortunately very aware of these kinds of trade-offs.

Don't straw-man me, I'm not saying we should dissolve the federal government. I'm saying states need to be less under its thumb and with that comes some responsibility for the consequences of mismanagement. Some of those consequences compound (screw up your state enough and all the people who can move will, taking their tax revenue with them) but that risk seems like a pretty low price to pay for more government happening on a level that is easier for the average Joe to influence.

If they can somehow reconcile your eye color restrictions with existing state law, the US constitution, etc then sure, why not.

Democracies need to be ineffective and slow to some degree in order to be stable and to allow all people to participate. Otherwise, a coup d'état would be far too easy because efficiency means that only little time would pass between a decision (whether legal or illegal) being made and it getting implemented.

There's a difference between slow and slowly doing things that are bad for you and everyone around you because some "powers that be" who live in some far off city and have close to nothing in common with you want it done.

If it were up to me I'd make the US into ~100 states and reverse a lot of the power transfer from the states to the feds that's happened over the past 100yr.

There is a reason why it's much harder to change federal law than a local ordinance. The broader the effect, the more difficult it should be. Effective government should not be about kneejerk reactions.

The problem is not government, but highly centralized government at near continental and global scales. Power needs to remain as local as possible. This Facebook move is not a solution because it just puts some global-scope power in another entity, that just happens to be an Internet company.

No. Your ideas of what 'feudalism' implies are totally wack and ahistorical.

Feudalism was a time of laissez-faire, political liberty and anarchism.

"The vassal of my vassal is not my vassal" was the motto of feudalism. It was a reaction against the centralization and coercion of the old Roman Empire.

How is this anything like Facebook et al?

What I meant is a civilization where only the powerful have a say, and regular people become serfs to powerful, warring organizations. Which, yeah, I guess isn't very well articulated by the word "feudal".

He’s sketching out a main point that a few are subjugating the rest using some sort of apportioned rights (in this case, runaway technological inertia and money leading to a positive feedback loop of even more inertia)

I think you’re missing the forest for the trees by concentrating on the historical robustness of his feudalism reference

My immediate thought was that he meant something more like corporate city states ala cyberpunk themes presciented by blade runner and shadowrun

Weird that someone who is trying to be such a pedant incorrectly suggests this was a period of anarchism (a political system centered the absolution of government and unjust hierarchies). Maybe you meant anarchy, which is also a stretch historically speaking.

Peasants were bound to their lord's land, owed feudal dues like corvée, and could be judged and punished by their lord. It could only be called an era of "political liberty" for perhaps a relatively small class of nobility. The vast majority of the population was trapped in cemented, unalterable relations of fealty and economic exploitation.

> It was a reaction against the centralization and coercion of the old Roman Empire.

It wasn't so much a reaction against anything in the Roman Empire as the thing that sprang up as the more politically and economically advanced Roman system collapsed. Roman citizens had political rights, such as protection from arbitrary punishment, which were lost in the feudal era. The Roman state collected taxes and used them to provide substantial public goods, such as roads, aqueducts, sewage systems, public baths and theaters, the grain dole, courts and of course, defense of the frontiers against barbarian incursion. With the collapse of that system, the Latin-speaking population of Western Europe came under the rule of rather uncooth German tribesmen. The only honorable professions open to the Roman aristocracy, which previously would have gone into the civil service, were in the Church and the meagre administrations of the new German kingdoms. Taxation systems broke down, the previous public goods were no longer provided, and the common population came under the personal rule of their lords.

I wouldn't call a system in which the common population is subjected to the personal rule of a lord more "free" than a system of laws.

The prophecies of William Gibson continue to unfold. I'm waiting for the Rastafarian colony in high orbit.

Gibson, Sterling, and their friends, had the right hunch.

What happens to the data (and metadata), will all users be transparent to these corporations?

Isn’t there a risk of this turning into a social credit system?

Whats non-feudal about states in this conception?

Voting, equal rights, courts, published laws and regulations, just to name a few.

I can't vote in the US. I am not constitutionally or legally protected for having dollars in my possession.

Shouldn't Facebook be focusing on their previous project that promised to "connect the unconnected" (Internet.org / FreeBasics), rather than start another ambitious one "to bank the unbanked" ?

Methinks they can do more than one thing at a time, get everyone on the internets and facebanked using separate teams within the organization.

There are lot of people connecting to the unbanked via facebook/whatsapp/insta and transacting with them financially off the network.

When you have 1 network connecting 2 billion people why get off the network onto some other network to do a transaction. If I want to send cash to a family member in the developing world it's more convenient if the pay button is right there in the messaging app.

As to privacy and Zuckerberg controlling everything, well the banks and telcos already have all my data and keep spamming me day and night based on that data.

Whether the data gets centralized and the number of networks reduce to 1 is less interesting to me, than whether they use the data collected to take advantage of me. We do have road networks where you can drive from one end of the world to another without worrying about who the road owner is and how they might take advantage of you.

Zuck just wants to spend more time with your money.

This is a bunch of nonsense. Actual banks are corporations like Facebook and they're far scarier.

Banks are heavily regulated [1]. Facebook is not.

EDIT: If Facebook wants to come to the finance party, I welcome them accepting the regulatory burden imposed by federal regulators and the finance industry itself.

Disclaimer: I work in financial services, specifically interfacing with regulatory bodies.

[1] https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/ (Example FDIC Laws, Regulations, and Acts, none of which currently apply to silicon valley corporations, but all of which apply to banking institutions)

Among many other great crimes, U.S. banks have stolen hundreds of billions of dollars from the poorest people through overdraft and bounced check fees. The banks own the regulators.

If regular people can just have a safe place to keep their money, without being actively exploited, that would be a huge improvement.

You will need to construct a more targeted argument than, "All banks bad, all banks hurt people". The majority of Americans store their money in banks safely (and while the unbanked and underbanked is a huge problem, it is out of scope for this comment), protected either by FDIC insurance (banks) or NCUSIF (credit unions). The majority of banks behave responsibly (I don't work at BoA, Wells, JPMC, or someone else who has committed fraud). You don't even have to use a bank! That is what your local credit union is for [1].

Some banks have behaved badly. All cryptocurrency is a scam (see: SEC ICO determinations, outright ICO/token fraud, etc).

With fiat, you have recourse with regulators and the legal system. With crypto, you have none ("oops! someone cloned your SIM and you've lost your entire nest egg. better luck next time!"). Your arguments don't make the case for cryptocurrencies; you make the case for more regulation and oversight of the banking and financial services industry (which I agree with entirely, not because it's my job, but to keep the hard earned assets of banking customers of all income and asset brackets safe).

[1] https://www.mycreditunion.gov/about-credit-unions/credit-uni...

You will need to construct a more targeted argument than, “All cryptocurrency is a scam” if you want others to construct more targeted arguments than “all banks bad” (the difference being you had to paraphrase GP, while I got to directly quote you).

Cryptocurrency is infrastructure, while you are arguing against it as a replacement for all players in the current financial system. I would argue that's a shortsighted and under-informed perspective.

https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-b... (Bruce Schneier: There Is No Good Reason To Trust Blockchain Technology)

https://www.dailycal.org/2018/03/09/father-internet-vint-cer... (Vint Cerf: "In addition to discussing the history and advancement of internet technology, Cerf talked about cryptocurrency. When asked about bitcoin, Cerf said his first response was to “run the other way.” On the topic of blockchain, he struck a more moderate tone but cautioned about its applications.")

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/25/bank-of-america-skeptical-on... (Bank of America tech chief is skeptical on blockchain even though BofA has the most patents for it)

https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/breaking-the-blockchain-ma... (Breaking the blockchain: Major projects shelved as hype fades)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-29/blockchai... (Bundesbank: Blockchain Settlement Was Slow, Costly in Trial, Weidmann Says: “The blockchain solutions did not fare better in every way: the process took a bit longer and resulted in relatively high computational costs,” Weidmann said in Frankfurt on Wednesday. “Similar experiences have been made elsewhere in the financial sector. Despite numerous tests of blockchain-based prototypes, a real breakthrough in application is missing so far.”)

Distributed ledgers, blockchain, and cryptocurrency are solutions looking for a problem, overly complicated and underperformant infrastructure. They attempt to solve for trust with technology solutions in a world governed by human regulation and legal frameworks (which always take precedence). A database will work just fine. Everything else is snake oil.

So a bank who wants to patent blockchain for themselves and a bunch of people who don't get it. Not very convincing.

If you're not convinced based on evidence there is no practical, production use distributed ledger or cryptocurrency besides bitcoin (which works very, very poorly), that's not on me to address. Prove it works and is needed.

I mean… I could also post articles on Fidelity and Ernst & Young investing in the technology, Stripe, Square, obviously Facebook and a whole host of other companies in this announcement, etc, but it feels very much like you've decided your conclusion and are simply feeding it with whatever journalism confirms it.

Regardless, you asked for a more targeted argument, I asked you for the same, and your response was 5 different articles on 5 different things. That's not targeted, it's the literal opposite. The problem with not being targeted is you have to pick a thing that you're disagreeing with. Here you seem to be disagreeing with “people think blockchain is useful”. But… There's plenty of evidence that isn't true in the general case, even if specific groups certainly don't think it's useful. Alternatively, we'll take your opening statement of “All cryptocurrency is a scam”---which is both not targeted (‘all’ is the operative word there) and not really supported by your articles since they're all about specific people or specific attempts.

It's fine to be a skeptic, by the way! I take no issue with you not particularly believing in the hype; my own take on the hype is considerably more skeptical than the louder folks. Just… Maybe don't put down other people's arguments unless you're willing to put in the time to make a better one?

To your other points: (a) you can have a mostly-technological solution in a world whose final resolution mechanism is human and legal; (b) there are plenty of companies in the cryptocurrency space still operating with SEC approval, including teams that did ICOs; (c) cryptocurrency, even the completely public/trustless type, isn't mutually incompatible with banks as a concept, though it could eliminate certain aspects of banks that require direct human intervention in the long term.

None of these things are here yet. Technology takes time, and the difficulty with technology that's built in the open is that it's in the public eye long before it's fully ready for prime time, so the debates about it happen in the public eye. A classic example is the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate[1], except cryptocurrencies are being developed in a world that is 1000 times more connected than the Linux kernel was, and they are ostensibly applicable to considerably more people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum–Torvalds_debate

>Among many other great crimes, U.S. banks have stolen hundreds of billions of dollars from the poorest people through overdraft and bounced check fees.

I can agree with the fact that some of the bank fees for such services are ridiculous, but how is a customer using their overdraft or bouncing a check the bank's fault? How is it "stealing"?

In the case of overdraft fees, over 30 banks were ordering transactions in a punitive way, charging up to six overdraft fees per day, and not providing a way to decline charges when an overdraft (and related fee) would result. It also resulted in the Federal Reserve instituting overdraft protection regulations in 2010. It was predatory, plain and simple, and hundreds of millions of dollars in collective fines were paid.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/chase-reaches-settleme...

Ordering transactions from large to small so you are hit with the maximum number of penalties. It can easily end up costing you many multiples more than ordering chronologically.

Do a Google search for Wells Fargo and overdrafts.

Facebook is not even a safe place for your cat pictures. Why would they do a better job when it comes to your money ?

At best regulations act as a moat keeping competition away the entrenched banks. As soon as the government comes up with rules the smart people at the banks find a way to get around it and make money. Startups don’t have the legal expertise and can’t compete.

If that's the case, why do banks consistently push to loosen regulations? Can you point to an instance of banks lobbying for increased oversight and restrictions?

Making a bank should be hard. I don't want some unknown startup to come in to "move fast and break things", because "things" in this case means "people's savings".

Well there’s the CEO of Bank of America saying “Dodd-Frank is fine, None of us are trying to touch it”. The big banks could push a lot harder against regulation than they do.

https://www.economicclub.org/sites/default/files/MoynihanExc...

Regulations can raise barriers to entry. But "at best", banks haven't just gambled away all the deposits leaving customers with no recourse lately.

Wells Fargo has been defrauding a lot of people, but at least they're paying billions in fines for it. It's not enough to keep them from doing it I guess, but I'd argue that fewer regulations would probably make that situation worse and not better.

How do you know that regulations are why the banks haven’t gambled away all the money? There’s no law against me gambling away my savings but that doesn’t mean I’ll do it. There’s other incentives in the system, for example the desire to avoid an angry mob of depositors burning your bank to the ground.

Some regulations are good but the ones we have are overburdensome. Even huge startups like Robinhood can’t get it right and the laws around what constitutes a security for ICO offerings are so vague that no one actually knows if they’re breaking the law or not.

This has been my experience as someone who started a fintech company and has friends in compliance departments at banks. Highly bureaucratic on both the bank and regulator side. Compliance reviews are mostly an expensive song and dance by the banks. People jump from bank to regulator and vice versa all the time so there is rampant cronyism. Combine the cost of this song and dance with the cronyism and it becomes nearly impossible for a startup without a ton of funding.

Facebook also isn't becoming a bank. If anything, Facebook is becoming a payment processor (not really, but close enough).

Why trust your money with Paypal, but not Facebook?

When given the choice between a monolithic corporation and some kind of cryto-based federation, why choose the former?

How is any of this worse than what we already have?

Our banking system certainly leaves a lot to be desired but I’d take Bank of America over Facebook pretending to be a bank 100% of the time. And I have never said a nice thing about BoA in my life.

What’s scarier to me is that Facebook is deliberately and admittedly targeting the unbanked - the people most in need of a bank but also the people most at risk of being taken advantage of. I’m afraid this will be the silicon valley version of a prepaid debit card/check cashing business run by Facebook instead of Wal-Mart.

It's a whole new avenue for predatory lending practices such as payday loans, too.

I was just thinking exactly that: this is a check-cashing "bank" that preys on the poor and disenfranchised especially.

Yeah, we should totally leave that business to the payday loan shacks, right?

Right, and let Facebook do it _at scale._ What could possibly go wrong?

I would stake Bank of America through the heart, bind it with chains until sunrise, vitrify the dust, and then dump the evil slag into an ocean trench, and I'd still bank there long before trusting Zuckerberg's Facebook with my money.

> Our banking system certainly leaves a lot to be desired but I’d take Bank of America over Facebook pretending to be a bank 100% of the time

Facebook isn't pretending to be bank. Facebook is pretending to be a payment processor. What's the big deal?

Nobody is telling you to put all your savings into a centralized cryptocurrency, especially considering you're a US citizen with access to relatively good banking system.

Name one payment processor that (1) doesn’t require users link a bank account, (2) takes deposits, and (3) issues a token in their own denomination based on those deposits that’s pegged to a mystery “diversified global currency reserve” to be invented at a later date/altered to suit Facebook’s needs.

It kind of sounds like it’s a money market account to me. Minus all the pesky regulation, of course. Like the required banking license to offer those in the US.

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