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Comment by cooper_ganglia | Hacker News Reader

Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat are not functionally owned & operated by an unfriendly foreign government that would have incentive to destabilize the USA via civil unrest by influencing our algorithms.

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They are owned and operated by unfriendly actors with no allegiance to the government - they just need to be profitable. If there was a publicly owned and operated alternative I would feel better about that, but for example Facebook has been shown to experiment with their algorithm and increase depression rates in the past. If the argument is that the US should own/operate it then I'm not opposed to that because we could remove the profit incentive, but then meta/snapchat would have to become parts of the government instead of independent companies, and with them already being global I don't see how that would actually be implemented. Right now the proposal is to continue letting them do all the harm and data collection, so the reasoning for the change doesn't match up with the actions being taken.

The US government protects Facebook, and is what enabled them to become they company they are today. There are plenty of examples of their loyalty to the US government. They make back doors available and allow the US government to moderate content. Seems like they are very aligned!

Theoretically that can happen. But functionally, that hasn't happened - and in fact, the primary incentive is for that not to happen (bad business, etc).

I think there would need to be some basis in fact for these claims, right?

Well actually, you can argue facebook/twitter etc are causing harm to the US. Just look at its impact oneverything from politics to misinformation.

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