Hacker News Reader

Comment by frikskit | Hacker News Reader

Agree with you. I’m not sure why people believe that only the physical world and not the virtual one should have some amount of regulation. I think a good portion of HN has drunk the kool aid of their employers/industry and is almost religiously unwilling to consider an alternative viewpoint without resorting to shouting ‘fascist’ and ‘1984’. Maybe someone needs to write a book called 2024 about the hellscape we currently live in and folks could circle jerk around this new shibboleth.

View on HN

Why would it be the "kool aid of their employers"? My employers would surely love to track every single click I make on the work and even personal PC. If the government tracks it that's also fine. Still less risk for them if I'm a nutter and the checks get outsourced to the government. Once the data leaks they can check what I was doing anyway.

Social media companies don’t want any kind of regulation because it adds cost to them. Their PR bangs the drum of free speech and people economically tied to the industry gobble it up while trying to ignore the self serving nature of their new beliefs.

>Social media companies don’t want any kind of regulation because it adds cost to them. Their PR bangs the drum of free speech and people economically tied to the industry gobble it up while trying to ignore the self serving nature of their new beliefs.

Disagree here. If it is legally onerous for me to start a forum, I am more inclined to use a large social media site like Facebook, since they will handle the legal part for me. They are fine with that, they already have legal teams.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51518773 "Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook boss urges tighter regulation"

Are you suggesting I and all governments should take him at his word?

I bet Zuckerberg also wants to pay more taxes too?

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51497961.amp “ Facebook boss 'happy to pay more tax in Europe'” 2020

But I guess the tax avoidance lawyers that he keeps hiring keep on tricking him. Gotta feel bad for the guy, but take everything he says, like “there should be more regulation” seriously and ignore the blatantly self serving nature of his statements.

https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2024/dec/08/facebook-cu...

Facebook reduces tax bill 2024

Sure, I don't take him at his word as to WHY he would support this legislation. And I think there's likely a reason why he might suggest legislation at all: something more "broadly accepted" like paying more taxes suggests "we are a good company," while supporting legislation normalizes the idea of legislation that doesn't yet broadly exist.

Regardless, I think that it's likely that any legislation will be influenced by big players who act as "experts" so that the resulting laws are more easily followed by them than their (presumably smaller) competitors. And the evidence is in the results. If I were starting an online community in the UK, I'd feel much safer legally using Facebook (or Reddit or Discord) than I would starting my own forum.

Looks like people who already run online communities agree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433044

The online communities don't exist within the borders of a nation state. They have their own social norms and rules. You can see this on forums, message boards, online games etc. Therefore a nation state trying to enforce its will on those communities is completely asinine.

I don't like that it that American companies enforces it language policing on UK residents, I also don't like that fact that the UK wants to force it language policing world wide (the UK state acts as if it has an empire).

The reason people are unwilling to consider an alternative viewpoint, is that in the past they have been more moderate and what has happened has been a complete erosion of civil liberties under the guise of "stopping the terrorists". I was arguing the same thing I am arguing essentially over 20 years ago.

Ironically many of those groups that we went to war to stop (Al-queda/ISIS) are now being presented as moderate because foreign policy has shifted again.

No one thinks Al-Qaeda/ISIS are moderate. Furthermore, a large part of ISIS' recruitment success was as a result of its slick social media operation.

The UK government is changing it tune on this and are pivoting slowly.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7qenxy8r2

I have to check older news articles but I suspect these are the ones that were presented as moderate rebels by the media when it was convienient.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com