Comment by DyslexicAtheist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DyslexicAtheist | Hacker News Reader

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DyslexicAtheist

just because we are all tired of this fight is no reason that the fight and outrage should stop. if anything it means that FB has won and US propagandists have achieved their goal: exhaustion of the enemy. anyone in this thread arguing in defense of FB has never supported the #DeleteFacebook movement in the first place (perhaps because they're eyeing a job in that firm or are already working there). It doesn't change the fact that facebook (and other BigTech) needs to be fought like cancer: Either we survive BigTech by fighting it perpetually to the teeth or it's going to kill us (in some cases quite literally - see Rohinga or similar).

the problem is larger than FB. it's rampant in all areas of BigTech and chances are high many here are guilty for working on the destruction of society. See for example Stripe (an "innocent" payment processor) which processes payments for the Proud Boys:

https://www.ourfreedomfunding.com/campaign/19/freespazzo-dom...

https://www.ourfreedomfunding.com/campaign/23/financial-aid-...

See also Cloudflare which is happy to protect such sites as the one above (and has a history of doing so): https://www.fastcompany.com/90312063/how-cloudflare-straddle...

The real problem comes from having a small highly paid and entitled circle of Tech people in the US be the arbiter of truth and social values worldwide.

"guilty for working on the destruction of society." is a big stretch. Stripe processing payments for the Proud Boys is a failure of regulation of the Proud Boys, not of Stripe.

Canada has declared the Proud Boys a terrorist organization. If they had bank accounts in Canada, the banks would not be allowed to keep them open or to deal with them. Neither would Stripe.

I don't know what the situation is where someone uses a Canadian-bank issued credit card to buy something or transfer funds to the Proud Boys in the US. That would be similar to using it to transfer funds to Al Queda or ISIS if they had a bank account.

Cloudfare are not "happy" to protect those sites, but they are also committed to not censoring unless absolutely necessary and in accordance with the law.

So the tech examples you quote are about enforcing laws, not requiring big tech to somehow police itself by "fighting it like cancer".

Your suggestion is fighting fascism with fascism, and it reads like maybe you don’t realise that?

“BigTech needs to be fought like cancer”. When did we all agree to this?

One cannot change human nature, but instead, must engineer a society which uses our nature as a plus, not minus.

FB is a detriment to society, but this is primarily due to capitalism's flaws, which entices profit above all, and even punishes those who stray from this dogma.

(A board must remove a CEO not on mandate, shareholders will sue if they do not, etc...).

Everything has flaws, needs to be tweaked, no engine runs without maintenance. We handle this aspect of capitalism with regulation, patching an inherent flaw where required.

Banning a social network would only see it pop up elsewhere, perhaps in a place like China or Russia, with all of the censorship and state controlled manipulation this implies. Think Facebook is bad? Imagine all of Facebook's issues, with no spam control, no privacy legislation, plus members of the state on the board, and state sensors filtering posts, and injecting state approved data.

Destroying Facebook is ... nuts.

Instead, create a level playing field for all via regulation, tweaking and fixing the for-profit motivation which leads to bad societal outcomes. (And, keep positive for-profit motivations, edited to clarify I am not anti-profit.)

Fix, repair, improve, do not destroy.

AFAIK there's already a Facebook "clone" in Russia : Vkontakte (AFAIK it basically has been nationalized, which is indeed even worse.) I'm sure China has its own version ?

There's no "level playing field" while Facebook exists.

You might be under the sunk cost fallacy ..?

There are many, many Facebook clones. None of these platforms are king of the world.

Yet imagine Facebook is "destroyed" tomorrow, literally shut down. Now, where do all those people go to get their fix?

You suggest two alternatives that could grow quickly, and in regions I am concerned about. I don't think it's a sunk cost fallacy, when my premise is "This will exist no matter what" and "Let's make sure any such platform can't work detrimentally".

The most detrimental aspect of Facebook is the scale.

Maybe. Not saying you're wrong entirely. But the Pii is, to me, a massive problem. If you have 10 social networks, all identical in feature and scope, and each has 1/10th of the users? And all have facebook style Pii, newsfeeds, silos, and everything else that is causing issue?

Then manipulation is still rather easy? Best to legislate, mandate, ensure that market forces make this type of preying on society, economic model a loss, not a win.

The scale issue also involves Facebook owning most (?) of the social networks (by the number of members).

Everytime I see the words "engineer a society" is just freaks me out. They are supposed to be grown from the bottom up, not engineered top-down.

Any government is 'engineering society'. Every time you craft a law, pass legislation, create a body to mandate and control things (FDA/FCC/FBI/EPA/whatever), you're engineering a change to society.

I think what is in your mind is some ruling body telling you what to think.

This isn't that. This is using an elected body, to effectively patch society to fix issues that exist therein. The Government is you. If it isn't, get a new Governmental system, or fix it, because something is very wrong.

I kind of see your point here with regards to network effects.

The alternative to Facebook isn’t a set of smaller competing alternatives, it’s the next biggest competitor hoovering up almost all of the displaced users.

Better the monster you can regulate than the monster you can’t.

calling me a fascist is a cheap shot and I'm not going to respond to it - not because it offends me but because it's a boring argument that doesn't engage with my point.

Sigh. No-one called you a fascist. It's worth understanding what fascism is though.

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