Facebook Should Be 'Regulated Like Cigarette Industry', Salesforce CEO Says (theguardian.com) 91
Facebook should be regulated like a cigarette company, because of the addictive and harmful properties of social media, according to Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff. From a report: Social networks would be regulated "exactly the same way that you regulated the cigarette industry," Benioff told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "Here's a product -- cigarettes -- they're addictive, they're not good for you, maybe there's all kinds of different forces trying to get you to do certain things. There's a lot of parallels. I think that, for sure, technology has addictive qualities that we have to address, and that product designers are working to make those products more addictive, and we need to rein that back as much as possible," he added. Benioff, who founded B2B cloud computing company Salesforce in 1999, and is now worth more than $4bn, suggested that regulation of some form was inevitable for the technology industry. "We're the same as any other industry," he said. "Financial services, consumer product goods, food -- in technology, the government's going to have to be involved. There is some regulation but there probably will have to be more."
Marc Benioff is a swine (Score:3)
All you really need to know about Marc Benioff is that it took him only 4 years to go from college graduate to vice president of Oracle Corporation.
Yes, that Oracle Corporation.
Making that big a leap in that environment requires a stratospheric level of ruthlessness and ambition, combined with an active willingness to kiss Larry Ellison's ass and swear it tastes like butterscotch. Daily.
Benioff is the guy who coined the phrase "software as a service" - you know, rent seeking? - that has taken the
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His cousin [wikipedia.org] David Benioff is also running the Game of Thrones TV adaptation into the ground.
Re: Marc Benioff is a swine (Score:2)
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Since they run out of book material the show has got cheesier and cheesier, particularly in the most recent season. But like everyone else I'll probably still watch it to the end.
And yeah, it makes a tonne of cash. But being lucrative and being good are not the same thing.
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Nice sig. Clever way of obfuscating it.
Same with porn.. (Score:2)
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There's a world of difference between physical addiction and compelling experiences. I'm all for some legal investigation into some of the shady practices (mostly) mobile and social game developers do to psychologically manipulate you into coming back to their product, much like I love :loot boxes" being regulated as gambling, but it's not the same category as cigarettes.
Same for FB itself. Even if FB is pulling the same sort of shady, psychologically manipulative, tricks to get people to keep coming back
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Lots of folks want to (Score:2)
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That's because porn is too fucked up to be regulated. And if you try to force pushing regulation through a backdoor, they'll moan a bit but they'll like it anyway.
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And if you try to force pushing regulation through a backdoor, they'll moan a bit but they'll like it anyway.
Tolerably witty.
Tobacco regulation, iffy constitutionally. (Score:2)
Pursuit of happiness is a founding principle of this nation, and you dont get to define when the pursuit should be abandoned.
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Does smoking *really* make most smoker's happy?
As an ex-smoker, I can say I wasn't happy at all. I tried constantly to convince myself I liked it, I told other people it made me happy, but it really didn't.
Haven't touched a cigarette since March 2015. That really makes me happy.
Re:Tobacco regulation, iffy constitutionally. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Tobacco regulation, iffy constitutionally. (Score:1)
Re:Tobacco regulation, iffy constitutionally. (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Second hand" argument only works because smokers are a minority.
Try regulating something enjoyed by the majority, like automobiles, because of the 'secondhand' damage they do to your health, and watch society balk.
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Automobiles are absolutely essential to society - without them, you starve to death in a few days.
Cigarettes are a luxury, like chocolate. If they disappeared tomorrow, no non-smoker would care.
Re: Tobacco regulation, iffy constitutionally. (Score:2)
Nah. Shipping and delivery trucks are essential. Passenger cars are a luxury.
A luxury I myself don't use. So let's ban cars! 'Cuz anything that doesn't personally turn me on is EVIL!
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Automobiles are absolutely essential to society - without them, you starve to death in a few days.
Cigarettes are a luxury, like chocolate. If they disappeared tomorrow, no non-smoker would care.
Thank you for proving my point.
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Try regulating something enjoyed by the majority, like...
...alcohol. Oh.
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Re: Tobacco regulation, iffy constitutionally. (Score:2)
Thing is, people enjoy smoking. Even worse, the WRONG people enjoy it. That's why it has to be banned.
No one enjoys breathing in a thick cloud of mephitic exhaust fumes. Therefore no need to ban those!
Neo-puritanism FTW.
Re: Tobacco regulation, iffy constitutionally. (Score:2)
The debate of net neutrality glosses over FANG (Score:1)
What's interesting about the debate over net neutrality is how much it focusing on the infrastructure of transmitting data instead of the platforms that now control all of our data. When it comes to Facebook/Apple/Google/Amazon/Twitter/Instagra/Youtube/Netflix, so much of our data and daily activity is centered around those platforms. We've seen it recently where people get thrown off Youtube or Twitter for incendiary comments or violating terms of service. I hate racists, but Cloudflare shutting down
I don't think it's been glossed over (Score:2)
Well I'll be... (Score:1)
I didn't know Facebook killed that many people. I blame the kittens.
Keep your hands off the internet. (Score:4, Funny)
No. Just no. Facebook is a form of free speech. The internet is an platform for free speech. Stop trying to regulate free speech!
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Facebook is a form of free speech for Russians to manipulate Americans.
But americans abusing everyone else on the same platform with same tools on larger scale is a complete non-issue?
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Eh... well... Speech is regulated to some extent. Aside from the whole "yelling 'fire' in a theater" thing, there are various rules and controls on newspapers, TV, radio, and movies. There are some rules about the actual content, but even more importantly, there are rules about the way those businesses can run.
In may cases, there are regulations that are less about preventing people from speaking, and more about making sure the motivations are clear. To give a simple/obvious example, you can't make fals
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I'm just making it up off of the top of my head
Oh for gods sake, Fuck. That. Noise! It's just more lawyers and more minders and more lawsuits and more levers for the Powers That Be to pull to stifle, shape and control all the things they don't like and shut out the people they don't like. Does it even occur to you that the crap you're dreaming up necessitates that basically everying is going to have to be recorded for evidentiary purposes? And all because you and your betters are upset with an election.
Freedom, bitch. That's the answer.
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FALSELY yelling fire in a crowded theater. The "falsely" is important.
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Even more important is recognizing that the whole "fire in a crowded theater" line was a hypothetical scenario invented for the sole purpose of justifying restrictions on political speech (specifically, people protesting the draft). Why people insist on bringing it up is beyond me, unless—like the judges who originally came up with the idea—they are just clinging to any excuse, no matter how threadbare, to justify the infringement of others' freedom of speech.
The concern was supposedly that peop
Re: Keep your hands off the internet. (Score:2)
Re: Keep your hands off the internet. (Score:2)
Hahahahahahahaha! Facebook is heavily censored - it is most definitely not a platform for free speech. FB is also well known for collaborating with the Stasi. So no freedom after speech, either.
Surgeon General warning on the side? (Score:3)
school zone (Score:4)
You mean I won't be able to post to facebook within 200 feet of a school. And I'll start seeing my tax dollars used to fund obnoxious adds on tv now?
Hard to take seriously. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's hard to take a CEO seriously when their own products promote vendor lock-in. It's literally a "leaving us feels difficult" versus a "leaving us is difficult" situation.
Actually (Score:4)
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Zuckerberg: fly my pretties! Fly! Fly!
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Ironically the left seems to be sterilizing itself by making single life, abortion, homosexuality and transgenderism fashionable and raising a family unfashionable.
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Interesting question. My point is that in the long run the left will disappear because their beliefs make them reproduce less efficiently, which means that as irritating as they are they are not going to survive.
Problem is of course they won't necessarily stop winning elections because they also believe in letting in unskilled third worlders who will end up dependent on benefits and voting left, even if they despise the left's social values as much as I do. Probably more so.
Then again I don't live in the US
slashdot too? (Score:2)
As awful as facebook really is... (Score:2)
...the very idea of regulating human behavior that this would seem to require seems far worse to me.
Do spammers-for-hire expect to be taken seriously? (Score:2)
When a bunch of fucktards like SpammerForce advocate just about anything, its a safe bet that the opposite position is the correct one to take.
SpammerForce can get fucked.
We live in surreal times (Score:1)
The CEO of a company that sells nothing to consumers is calling for the regulation of a company that also sells nothing to consumers. I have no idea what SalesForce actually does. It must do something, because businesses are throwing all this money at it. Still though, the economy ran pretty well before all of this crap existed. We were on top of the world. We put a man on the Moon without SalesForce, and none of the guys that did it were FaceBooking while red lights flashed on panels at Mission Contro
Won't Someone Please (Score:3)
think about the advertisers, the Russians trying to influence voting, people who post murders, guns, and abuse on BookFace? /s
But I plan on (Score:1)
But I plan on opening FB withdrawal clinics. With full rehab programs. Special classes for narc...narcissists. Foodie detox programs. I'll be printing money.
Rag Doll at Davos (Score:1)
That suit interfered in the politics of Indiana several years ago because he did not like how Hoosiers behaved and what they believed. Now he wants to interfere with the functioning of the walled gardens because he does not like how the human cattle within behave, even though it has been obvious for years how crap-strewn the gardens are. The behavior of the cattle has even been codified long ago [penny-arcade.com].
Nothing is going to come of this because this will be a fight between that rag doll stuffed with hundred-dolla
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You might want to reconsider that statement.
Tobacco use has been on a steady decline in the United States since the regulation of the tobacco industry was imposed.
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True, but I still think he's right. The decline in smoking, in my experience as a former smoker, is far more the result of public education about the dangers of smoking as opposed to any laws or regulations on tobacco/cigarettes, combined with the rise of actually-effective aids to quitting like vaping.
As far as "regulating FB like cigaret
As much as I.... (Score:1)
How many times.... (Score:1)