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Comment by Leparamour | Hacker News Reader

So much scripted drama while everybody involved is on the same page and wants and regulation and more censorship of FB:

Facebook wants regulation for itself to kick the ladder down for future competitors, the current "whistleblowers" want it for FB because of personal idelogical leanings toward modern identity politics, the legacy media corporations want regulation applied to FB hoping that it will somehow save the former's outdated business model and the Biden administration wants it in order to manufacture consent in the face of falling popularity ratings and to keep those pesky allegations of election fraud down (except for their own allegations against the opponent).

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I have no idea why you are being downvoted... perhaps FB zealots fear the truth.

Regulation is exactly what large corporations want. Regulation prevents competition from ever getting started.

What's an extra £30 million a year for regulatory compliance to someone like FB, or Google, or any billion dollar corp? It's literally zero. Nothing at all. The (insignificant) cost of doing business.

For a startup? It's certain death right at the idea stage...

I would put money on FB actually helping government draft regulations _against_ FB themselves knowing that they won't be financially affected by them and that they will help kill any potential competition from ever getting started.

Yeah this pretty much sums up the the corporate playbook. Build a regulatory moat which makes it impossible for startups to compete... Use the government to reframe honest entrepreneurs as criminals (who are in breach of regulations) in order to protect corporate interests.

These days you can't take a crap without a license...

Is this a specifically american thing, that regulations are bad? Thats exactly what FB would say. Next you tell me, that "trickle up economics" are bad, and we should try "trickle down"

Regulation tends to protect incumbents everywhere.

Whether or not you consider that bad depends on how much you value progress over stability. Stability often seems fine for the first decade or too, until one day you pause to wonder why you’re still connecting to the internet using acoustic coupler modems, or paying hundreds of dollars per month for insulin.

It is very American, and seem to see people speaking out about it more there, but I don't think it is quite limited to the US.

It does go hand-in-hand with the failed thinking of trickle-down economics: In other words, conservatives use this talking point. I think it is louder in the US simply because the trust in government that you would find in, say, Norway simply doesn't exist and you get a few more "regulation in print only" there, it seems.

And of course some regulations limit who does some things, but in a lot of cases, we probably wouldn't want folks that refuse to follow regulations - particularly when they deal with health and safety.

Its basically in every country where people vote against their best interest because rich people told them to do so, but it isnt as celebrated as much. I agree that if the government misuses the population in every way possible, that you start to lose trust in it. But how can it be that people think the solution to this is less democracy, more power to companies? It looks like some weird form of masochism.

Every law creates and restricts freedom. Food safety laws restricts the freedom of restaurants: need to clean kitchen, remove all the cockroaches etc., but gives the people the freedom to eat food everywhere without getting sick.

More regulations on FB restricts its freedom to misuse the attention of the population to make more money, but also gives citizens the freedom to consume less fake news.

I'm a fan of regulation where it's necessary. For example, when it comes to things like building sites they are incredibly safe now, thanks to many regulations. I'd argue that they're an absolute necessity.

However, for some things, like website I visit on the internet, the regulation should be all but nonexistent (for the most part, there are likely some things like child porn and generally illegal stuff that should be covered).

And I'm in Scotland, not the US

Everyone wants to have regulations "where its necessary". This boils down to "rules for thee but not for me". If you work in construction, you want more building site safety. If you are the own who uses his money to construct one building after another, you want to have it cheaper, so less safety. Democracy is the process of finding a nice middle ground.

Nowadays, it seems that common people are mostly convinced by the rich to vote against their own interest.

> This boils down to "rules for thee but not for me"

I don't believe that. Taking the building site example, I'd rather work on one that's got a bunch of site posters up and does all the right safety stuff than one ran by a bunch of cowboys with no regard for my safety...

> Nowadays, it seems that common people are mostly convinced by the rich to vote against their own interest.

Perhaps, but the rich have control over the propaganda machines like social media and MSM so it's no wonder people are convinced that they're doing the right thing.

Idk, it seems to be that Facebook has become too good at targeting people and started to be used so effectively for political purposes, that parties obviously decided that it's too much risk to let them have that kind of influence without them being able to control it.

It's fishy indeed: https://thegrayzone.com/2021/10/21/facebook-whistleblower-fr...

Who is this news org, why should we trust them? A cursory look at their content suggests we shouldn't.

It's easy, all you need to do is spot the term "Russiagate", in this case the "gate" is being used to suggest that Russian influence in American politics is a fake news story (which it definitely isn't, see Muller report)

Please comment upon the actual contents of the article rather than the "brand" of the news.

I dunno; I think “consider the source” is pretty good advice.

About the Russiagate article which the previous commenter was turned off: https://thegrayzone.com/2021/09/20/with-clinton-lawyer-charg...

It basically talks about how Sussman's work on the Alfa Bank story (about how there was a relationship between Trump and a Russian Bank) was accused of fabrication and was lead by the Clinton campaign, as described by research from the FBI. (You can read the judicial document in its original form here: https://www.justice.gov/sco/press-release/file/1433511/downl...) Although the title is quite polemical and should have been toned down if it were to adhere to HN standards, I think it is a valuable news story and shouldn't be shrugged off as just "fake news".

I've posted that article yesterday in HN, and it was flagged immediately. Guess some people in here don't really recept well to any media that is outside of the mainstream (which in this case with FB, were all repeating the identically constructed narrative)

Do you have a citation for all these claims?

This isn't mathematics. Nobody is asking anybody to accept the statements as 100% truth.

Obviously when there are incentives for people to hide the truth, it's going to be difficult to find citations.

It is broadly believed within the corporate sphere that companies do this. There is even a term called 'regulatory capture'. Why else would they hire lobbyists?

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