Facebook Novi and Surveillance Finance
stephendiehl.com
stephendiehl.com
Let the tech/banking giants duke it out, and everyone else can come it an clean what's left of their carcasses eventually.
This is a thing? I don’t get the point of reporting cross border logins. Cross border transactions makes sense, but what’s so nefarious about me paying my water bill while in Mexico?
This might become the law, but how would it be enforced?
I thought the world leaning on Swiss banks for data was effectively an admission that anonymous accounts were unlinkable from the client side.
By a few token measure that wont scale, just like current existing income tax structure. The main enforcement mechanism now is heavily reliant upon employers withholding on the behalf of employees and banks reporting on their accounts (the same entities that consider fines for felonious dealings just a cost of doing business); without it, existing tax enforcement would be toothless to most.
In the EU local bankcards are used much more than CC and these are not mined.
In NL shops are prohibited to build customer profiles based on their purchase history.
In the US, 2-5% is the base level of cashback from credit cards.
So, a little bit of "we mine and monetize your transactions, but pay you for doing so."
That is technically not true. Novi is a wallet Facebook is making for Libra. The wallet used to be named Calibra and caused confusion. Libra has not been rebranded by Facebook.
> To contact me via email run one of the following scripts to generate my contact information. I find this is an effective filter against the deluge of emails from recruiters.
> Recruiters who do contact me will be named and shamed publicly.
And wow, tbf that haskell script is simple enough to read w/o compiling. Never knew it was that easy to read. If you know a ceaser cipher then you can literally do it in your head.
But it’s mixed in with some pretty interesting details and references. It’s worth a read.
I think it will be great for businesses that are struggling with revenue due to the internet. Newspapers that don't have paywalls are going to re-evaluate considering that paywalls could now feasibly have a "day pass" option. Even sites like Reddit could adopt this model.
Could get a bit more annoying for consumers, though; constantly making purchase decisions when trying to browse the web.
If you pay a merchant for something but they don't deliver on it, is your expectation that you would still get your money back in this fee-free system?
I'll be pleased to see effective micro-transactions from the perspective of running a business. I think it will open up some exciting new categories of businesses that may not have been feasible before.
I'm a little bit skeptical about whether consumers have realistic expectations on this, though. I think consumers have an expectation of being able to seek recourse for a transaction they were not happy about, but that is something that someone needs to fund.
It can also be that there would be no fees and no recourse, with merchants living and dying on their reputation, but in this case there would be certain transactions where consumers will still strongly prefer the existing systems, I think.
Could someone who is familiar with this event say what was actually "bizarre" about the way the code was delivered?
This did not have (and should not) have any impact on discussions around regulations. The development has also been ongoing in the open for a year since the announcement, so contributions and discussions are (and have been) welcome.
Basically do they have a dog in this fight?
The question is how Facebook will market and promote their wallet and efforts. My assumption is that for end users this will be promoted as a way to buy and sell things and services via Facebook platforms (pay my cab driver via WhatsApp while travelling etc.) and the fact it's a crypto currency underneath is an attempt to reassure other financial players that Facebook won't take over their business, but allows interacting (in the end users have to convert from/to local currency, which requires banks etc.)
And with that it's less a topic in that political divide.
Edit: Interestingly enough, the sensitivity surrounding block-chain (and AI, in the context of mass surveillance) is showing the effect of significantly slow down the mass adoption of the technology.
AI mass surveillance has already become an mass market in China. It however is still "a solution looking for problem" in US.
How this can play out in the longer term? For example, what would happen if the relinquish of privacy in the short term, allowed China to secure its strategic upper hand in economy size and technologies, through the value unlocked through Blockchain and AI?
From the perspective of US economy and technology development, it's a very challenging problem to figure out how to apply these technologies quickly. As there is literally zero resistance in China.
This issue is more urgent for AI. In addition to the fact that AI surveillance is already used everywhere in China, it's also super effective in the near term. For example, I can imagine AI can easily enhance the effectiveness of war machines to an entirely higher level.
Disclaimer: Intentionally putting moral judgement aside.