U.S. Congress drafts bill to stop Zuckerberg's Libra
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Who's "Ryan Todd", anyway?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/congressional-leaders-drafted...
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/tiny/congressional-leaders-ha...
I've thought of building an app where voters could enter their opinions and be notified whenever their representatives vote for or against their views, but I can't figure out monetization.
Just give proper notice.
I don't know about that. It's true that ads are meant to sway thoughts, but aren't debates basically supposed to do the same thing? The problem would be misinformation.
The information shod definitely be use carefully and thoughtfully, I agree. Or possibly even not collected at all, if at all possible. I was just pointing out one avenue of monetization.
You could use the data for good. It could help politicians and candidates find out what constituents want to a high accuracy. This would clearly be a good thing.
The issue is how that data is handled. If that data becomes public (you always have to assume there's this chance even if it is controlled) then it could easily be used for nefarious purposes. We've seen that it doesn't take much money to spread a lot of misinformation. Because of this I don't think it would be a good idea to just sell that data to whoever wants it. There could also be problems of resale.
but I can't figure out monetization.
Oh boy.
Not happy about the world, wanting to change in some idealistic way, but how to run ads and make money on it?
Alternatively, you could always go ads, or maybe preferably, add a paid feature for certain niceties(one touch calling, assistance in writing, etc).
Central banking is a huge part of international economic policy and stability. There's a reason private money was outlawed in the 1900s.
And the reason is probably a bit more nuanced than this sentence projects. Furthermore, reasoning in the 1900s should not be used to justify government monopoly on money in 2019.
Sometimes, being in the cryptocurrency industry, it feels like a shouting match between people who have never studied economics or distributed systems or cryptography.
> Central banking is a huge part of international economic policy and stability. There's a reason private money was outlawed in the 1900s.
Private currencies seem to be legal so long as they aren't viewed by the government to be a method of avoiding taxes. Can you point me to some more information about this? Everything I've read seems to point to private currencies being legal in the United States at least (aside, I am aware of the liberty dollar case in the US. The government's angle was that it too closely resembled US currency iirc).
The spirit of my comment shouldn't change though, if I instead refer to the establishment of a U.S. dollar.
That being said, the fact that you have to pay rent with legal tender in states like CA goes a long way in regulating private currencies.
For what it's worth, the two primary issues I've seen raised with Libre is monopoly and finance regulation. I wouldn't be very excited to hear Bank of America is getting into social networking; I'm not sure why I should be excited that Facebook is getting into banking. As for regulation, my (limited) understanding is that if Facebook wants to act like a bank, it needs to be regulated like one.
If it's related to people's individual political preferences, and delivers easy to consume information to those who want to learn about their political environment yet feel lost in the process of figuring it out, then it's likely that people wouldn't mind donating a dollar or so a month to get that information. Also, people would really value the fact that it wouldn't be a matter of taking a politician by their words but by there actions. It'll cut through the bullshit for a lot of voters/users.
The potential positive consequences of building such an app are significant
Seriously? This is the thing stopping you? It doesn't sound so much like you care about democracy so much as making money. Clearly you can use ads but that isn't very profitable. You have to ask yourself, which is more important: democracy or the time you put in to make the app. You can even make that decision AFTER you have made the app (you don't have to figure out monetization first)
Also consider the fact that this tool would likely see a lot of traffic, and some legal challenges as well (launched by the politicians this will be exposing). All of that costs $$$$.
Have you read a bill? It’s filled with “replace subsection (a) with subsection (b)” and other legalese because they’re literally making law. You either have to be knowledgeable enough to understand the bill, or take the politician’s word on what the bill says, or rely on a news article summarizing what the bill says, or rely on the activist group who projects the unintended and intended effects of the bill.
Sounds like you want to create a news organization that has your editorial judgment, accessible with a fancy custom app that uses “machine learning” or whatever buzzword’s being used.
For the HN'ers who want to jump in and evangelize cryptocurrencies:
Libra is not a cryptocurrency. It is a Facebook-controlled private currency intended to circumvent the international banking system. Facebook, here, is in every way a financial institution.
Please don't let them fool you. The "decentralized" "byzantine-fault tolerant" "cryptocurrency" aspect is just tacked on as a marketing ploy.
Libra could be. It's also managed at somewhat arms length from Facebook in that it's run by the Libra foundation. I say somewhat because Facebook intends to integrate it into WhatsApp and Messenger.
I don't see a technical or organizational reason Libra can't be a crytocurrency - and the very first successful one.
Cryptocurrency is distinct from "digital currency" in that it's decentralized, and not managed by a large actor. Sure, they may be doomed to fail.
Libra is NOT a decentralized currency, and thus does not deserve any support from Bitcoin/cryptocurrency people.
I 100% agree with you, just want to make the distinction between "cryptocurrency" and "digital money". Libra is Snapchat Cash + Facebook's own currency and we shouldn't try to defend it, when it is obviously trying to circumvent government regulation.
Now, it sounds like you don't think digital, private currencies/securities should be regulated. That's a more interesting conversation. Recall how the 1907 financial panics (and the Great Gatsby era) led the U.S. to government-regulated central banking in the first place.
I think we should also make a distinction between crytocurrency and digital money, since the latter has utility.
Bitcoin is not decentralized either. It is in theory, but it requires mining which centralized naturally due to efficiencies of scale. It also requires exchanges to convert to and from fiat, and those are completely centralized private companies. Libra in practice seems to be less centralized than bitcoin in practice.
People make arguments from theory, but those are not relevant to the systems in practice in the real world.
[1]: https://developers.libra.org/docs/assets/papers/the-libra-bl...
Can you clarify? Isn't the currency going to be owned by a consortium of various global businesses [1]? Are you unaware of that?
Even if the private currency is controlled equally by these companies, I am still fear-struck. Do I want these companies to be setting global economic policy?
That implies financial regulation that is even less democratic than it is now!
1) Does this language even cover Facebook’s Libra? They’ve been careful to legally insulate themselves somewhat from Calibra / constrain their governance over Libra for this very reason.
2) Wouldn’t this bill simply open a space for independent projects like Theil and Altman’s Reserve currency to do the same thing (establish a self-stabilizing cryptocurrency in developing national markets) with complete impunity? In what sense does this bill meaningfully restrict “big tech” if Facebook stakeholder Theil wins big either way?
3) Assuming 1 and 2 are real problems, what would an appropriate response to projects like Libra be? Short of banning domestic cryptocurrency trade more broadly, I’m not sure what a sufficiently restrictive law would look like.
1) U.S. economic policy should be set by democratically elected people, and that
2) Facebook (or the Libra consortium) is not democratically elected, and that
3) Government monetary policy (aka the USD) stabilizes the economy,
Then, consider supporting bills like this. (I'm sure it has problems and will be rewritten many times)
Why would this be unconstitutional?? There's no constitution-granted right to create your own financial system.
Unfortunately, we’ve been sociologically engineered to desire a false sense of safety delivered by “benevolent” overlords, instead of actual community interdependence.
Removal of any sense or ability for individual volition in matters of personal commerce is one of the final steps toward complete servitude.
Fortunately, help is at hand. A new generation of decentralized algorithms supporting cryptocurrency commerce resistant to (state-initiated) Network Partitions will support unstoppable commerce between independent agents, and will work at small (local network) scale, as securely and easily as at global scale (> millions of aggregate transact per second).
And not a moment too soon.
I think your claims are flawed.
You missed the whole "Big Tech" part of this bill. In fact, I'd argue Facebook has probably encroached more on our liberties than any other American institution.
If you read the bill, it's about preventing Facebook from becoming a finance company, to prevent it from circumventing finance regulations.
The international monetary system is built on government-managed central banking. This is why modern economics are so stable (and a huge player in post-WW2 growth). Governments did away with private currencies a long time ago, and for better or for worse it is a pillar of 21st century economics.
So, it basically reduces USD to a weighted component of a currency basket. That’s the only thing this bill is trying to prevent - reducing the supremacy of the USD. Look past the propaganda. Facebook won’t be allowed to bypass existing regulations. They’re... regulations, after all.
Modern economics is only “so stable” for big players; small businesses and flyover country slobs like me and you are sheep to the slaughter.
And, no, Libra isn’t going to do a thing for us, other than insulate is from a bit of currency instability and lubricate retail transactions and perhaps remissions back home. It’s a proof-of-oligarchy permissioned global-consensus blockchain; nothing interesting. No improvement to the risky one-mistake-and-you’re-dead PKI security model, so most normals will eventually lose their money, to either incompetency or theft.
If you work on what you believe are decentralized crypto currencies, please describe, precisely, what occurs when your global system experiences a total N-segment Network Partition — as will occur in the first 15 minutes of the next hot war; specific focus on A) system livenness, and B) account “values” after 1+ week of total partition, followed by global network restoration...
So yes, the algorithms are a big part of why normals don’t use crypto — and rightly so.