Zuckerberg Urges the West To Counter China's 'Dangerous' Approach To Internet Regulation (cnbc.com) 73
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Mark Zuckerberg has again sounded the alarm on China, calling out the country's approach to regulating internet services. The Facebook CEO on Monday said that he was worried about other countries that are looking to replicate the Chinese model, which he labeled "really dangerous." "What I worry about is, right now I think there are emerging two very different frameworks underpinned by very different sets of values," Zuckerberg said in a livestreamed discussion with EU official Thierry Breton.
"Just to be blunt about it, I think there is a model coming out of countries like China that tend to have very different values than Western countries that are more democratic," Zuckerberg said. He said Western countries should counter China's approach with a democratic alternative. He praised Brussels' 2018 overhaul of privacy laws, claiming the reforms have prompted Facebook to change its approach to data privacy around the world. The "best antidote" to China's approach "is having a clear framework that comes out of Western democratic countries and that can become a standard around the world," Zuckerberg said.
"Just to be blunt about it, I think there is a model coming out of countries like China that tend to have very different values than Western countries that are more democratic," Zuckerberg said. He said Western countries should counter China's approach with a democratic alternative. He praised Brussels' 2018 overhaul of privacy laws, claiming the reforms have prompted Facebook to change its approach to data privacy around the world. The "best antidote" to China's approach "is having a clear framework that comes out of Western democratic countries and that can become a standard around the world," Zuckerberg said.
How many comments are deleted on FB? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Sometimes the Slashdot fortune cookie really hits the nail on the head: "The greatest productive force is human selfishness. -- Robert Heinlein"
Too bad it's another one of those simple explanations that turns out to be wrong. You can replace "productive" with "destructive" and it's just as true. One of Heinlein's other themes was about appealing to enlightened self-interest, which also sounds lovely until you replace "enlightened" with "deluded". Even worse when you add in the eagerness of most people to be deluded. At least until they are suddenly enlightened and realize that it's their own ox that is being gored.
So back to the story at hand. On the one hand Zuckerberg has admitted Facebook should be regulated. He's even asked the government to step in and "help". But on the other hand, he doesn't like the way China is doing it. Make up your mind, Mark!
Me? I hate the way the Chinese are doing it AND I agree that the Internet has become a terrible threat to reality and something needs to be done from the outside, wherever that is. In spite of such hilarious headlines as "Medical journal says Trump is 'factually incorrect'", I remain fond of reality and even believe that it exists. However one of my "special" delusions is that I think I might understand what's wrong here. Xi and Trump both want to reduce reality to a single dimension of "Is it good for me?" Doesn't much matter if Xi's conception of "good" is more sophisticated than Trump's because the approach leads to the same reductio ad absurdum. They want to reduce complicated human beings to one convenient number. Xi's "social credit" number is a bit more sophisticated than Trump's binary "vote for me" test, but they're both wrong. My twisted perception of reality is that reality is complicated and multidimensional, and even trying to prioritize the dimensions is fraught with confusion. Some characteristic that seemed important at one moment for one purpose may be quite irrelevant when the time and place change--and change happens. Deal with it.
Quoted for the "education" of the censorious trolls.
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Rein in. It's about horses, not kings.
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Rein in. It's about horses, not kings.
Ah, good point, thanks.
ObRelatedHumour [youtube.com].
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Which is worse government censorship or private company censorship?
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Government censorship.
There's no such thing as "private company censorship." If you don't like the rules of a particular platform, or who profits from it, don't use it.
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Caring about this issue is shilling for Facebook.
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There's no such thing as "private company censorship." If you don't like the rules of a particular platform, or who profits from it, don't use it.
An unusually uninformed statement...
In an unrestrained capitalist system, successful companies tend to drive alternatives out of business. If that doesn't work, they can be like Microsoft and buy them up or they can be like Apple and sue them out of existence. Yes, there is still Linux and I use it but most people are under the impression that what you pay for is better than what is free and what you pay even more for is best of all.
Why don't people use an alternative to FB? There have been alternatives
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Use email. Use IRC. Use USENET. Use Slashdot.
just shut the fuck up about bullshit on the www.
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Government.
You can always choose to walk away from a computing platform.
Walking away from a government is very difficult, sometimes impossible. Try to leave the United States if you have substantial income and assets and you will see this.
Facebook is a pretty good way to keep in touch with friends and share my photographs with them. That's what I use it for. It's also pretty good for non-political special interest groups. As far as I know, there is no political component to Miami YouTube users or the Gr
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He loves abusing and censoring people on Facebook just the way Chinese Internet companies censor their own. The only difference is that he doesn't want the government telling him how to do it, like China does. The actual act of censoring people online is A-OK with him.
Wrong approach (Score:2, Interesting)
This is not a technological problem nor a problem with laws. It's a difference between philosophies. It's going to be extremely hard if not impossible to impose your values on another culture, especially one as old as China.
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Yep, and the philosophies are not really all that different when the rubber meets the road.
Government has only 1 mode that it operates in and that is Grow and Survive Mode. This means take as much power as it can get and kill anything in the way if necessary to survive. Please do not confuse your version of necessary with theirs. You will find out what they consider to be necessary when they start killing folks. Like everything else, government makes mistakes and often goes too far becoming counter prod
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It's sad some bend right over to justify tyranny instead of standing up to it.
Sorry, but no. "Cultural differences" don't cut it, when they are abused as a claim of why a dictator gets to do his thing.
And worse, your right to swing your arm ends at my nose. Culture cannot authorize you to punch me at your whim, against my wishes. By calling it culture, you are deliberately mislabling dictatorship, to the advantage of dictatorship.
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Who put in charge of facebook (Score:2, Insightful)
This coming from the company that put the WHO in charge of messages about the corona virus pandemic can't see that they've already invited China to censor their platform?
Zuckerberg lecturing me on "values" (Score:5, Insightful)
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That also sounds like a pretty "dangerous" approach to me. I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy, so I remember an internet that didn't involve either Zuckerberg or China, that seemed to work just fine.
Ok, old guy. You realize all this disruptive freedom is ending, as the Internet is being put in chains and dragged under the eyes and control of the very people it was wonderful to be free from? Because it challenges their power?
facebook censors because government is threatening to hurt it via 230 removal or breakup, or both. So they censor like a number of politicians and candidates demand they do, threatening these things, or in the case of Kamala Harris, direct unconstitutional legislation to punish t
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Don't like FB? Don't use it, and shut the fuck up.
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If only it were that simple. I don't use Facebook, but that doesn't keep them from trying to spy on me. They have deals that let them put trackers on a large majority of websites. They made software platforms used by a huge number of app makers that include sending information back to Facebook. It is very difficult for an ordinary person to even figure out all the ways Facebook may be gathering their information, much less to stop them. Even if you somehow manage to avoid them snooping on you directly,
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Don't use the web, then. It's all garbage now. Stick to the real internet.
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China out-Facebooks Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to be blunt about it, I think there is a model coming out of countries like China that tend to have very different values than Western countries that are more democratic
China is upfront about using government power to control information.
We allow corporations to control information.
We had an radical alternative--First Amendment protections and an open Internet. Now if you support either of those things you're a radical wackadoo.
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China is upfront about using government power to control information.
Far from being upfront, they massively abuse government power in the most non-transparent, secretive, sinister way.
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We had an radical alternative--First Amendment protections and an open Internet. Now if you support either of those things you're a radical wackadoo.
That's bullshit. You still have those, but freedom as they say is not free. No one is obligated to spend money giving you a platform. If you want a "first amendment" web hosting service where you can say what you want within the bounds of the law, then you'll have to pay for it. Try dreamhost for example (I'm a customer, partly for that reason even though I'm n
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I already said "we allow corporations to control information," you don't have to say it again in a different way.
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You know what? I disagree with all of that, but I think you should be allowed to say it.
Likewise, on an open platform, I have the same opportunity to rebut those types of assertions with facts and evidence.
Re: Facebook isn't a good Free Speech Citizen (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd rather have pure first amendment chaos than Zuckerberg pre-declare debate winners.
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I'll take those lies if the alternative is censorship, or censorship-by-proxy, by threatening facebook and friends with section 230 changes, or breakup because they are too big, or too powerful (read: censor in ways the politicians do not like.)
Your last paragraph indicates concern over what are basically freedom of speech issues. The correct response is more speech, not giving government the power of censorship, or facetiously believing cover stories to justify law changes to hurt these companies, to thre
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Okay then what steps can be done to overpower the lies and deceptions? Facts have to be checked, proven, in case of science duplicate experiments need to reach the same results, etc.
On the other hand, a simple algorithm can be made to generate as many lie and bullshit as you want in a matter of seconds and spread everywhere on social media.
It's basically an impossible uphill battle.
Re: Facebook isn't a good Free Speech Citizen (Score:2)
There has always been bullshit. There will always be bullshit.
Again. I would rather pure free speech chaos where everyone understands what they're reading may be complete crap than censored (by anyone) pre-filtered crap that provides only the information someone has decided for me is ok for my poor little eyes to see.
I don't need mommy n daddy to tell me what's true or
Re: Facebook isn't a good Free Speech Citizen (Score:1)
The responsible thing then is to push dangerous misinformation onto the gullible public and let the problem sort itself out. Perhaps promoting ingesting small quantities of arsenic each day as a way to combat coronavirus.
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There is of course the reality, if you take Facebook seriously and all it's posts as gospel, well, then you are a fucking idiot. Facebook is worse than tabloids, most people make up most of the stuff they post about themselves, to pose. Why would anyone be stupid enough to take Facebook seriously, all you are doing is buying into their marketing bullshit, trying to make their website look like reality, instead of the wall to wall bullshit it is.
It is not yelling fire in a theatre, it is yelling fire, drunk
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So yes, people will believe anything they read on Facebook because they don't have the ability to quest
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Do not let governmrnt become the arbiter of truth, especially about politics. You won't like the result.
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Cute (Score:5, Insightful)
Cute how he 's suddenly "concerned" about how the Internet runs.
Profits must be in jeopardy.
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Cute how he 's suddenly "concerned" about how the Internet runs.
Or Dr. Soong finished his conscience chip and Zuck just had it installed.
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Pot meet kettle... (Score:1)
Re: Pot meet kettle... (Score:3)
Re: Pot meet kettle... (Score:3)
There's a big difference between spying for defense (spying on foreigners) and spying for population control (spying on natives). They are not even in the same ballpark.
Fuck Zuckerberg. (Score:4, Insightful)
Follow the Money (Score:5, Insightful)
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At some point the Democrats decided they could get more mileage punching on facebook, even as it donates and tries to censor as they desire. And Republicans jump on board, too, for the opposite but exact same reason: threatening 230 because facebook is doing what the left wants (to appease the left.)
Please look to the real problem: government wielding power it should not.
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You know... I like your general take on this, Impy.
My personal belief is that the natural order is for media to be politically biased because people are politically biased. The idea of neutral content providers or neutral platforms is a fantasy. Look back to the newspapers of colonial America and the early United States and they were all politically focused and nobody seemed to have a problem with this. This 20th century fantasy of unbiased media companies is hilarious... as if such a thing ever existed
Pot, meet kettle ... (Score:3)
Zuckerberg Urges the West To Counter China's 'Dangerous' Approach To Internet Regulation
Sure Mr. Zuckerberg, just as soon as we have dealt with the frightening amount of surveillance of the general public carried out by companies like Google, Twitter, Facebook, .... from what I have seen their mass surveillance tech is, if anything, far more professional and certainly more pervasive than any threat posed by the Chinese Communist regime.
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I agree the surveillance conducted by major US tech players is disgusting. But that's nothing compared to oppressive regimes like China's government.
Both need to be avoided.
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China has exactly the same values (Score:1)
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A stopped clock... (Score:1)
Zuckerberg is pretty much the last person on earth who should talk about this stuff. His respect for freedom of speech, privacy, and individual rights in general is renowned - for its absence.
Still, a stopped clock is right twice a day.
If ya can't have em, destroy them. (Score:1)
And the US dangerous approach to mass surveillance (Score:2)
A couple things: (Score:2)
2. Same goes for other authoritarian/dictatorship/oppressive countries.
3. Likewise fuck Zuckerberg, because if you left the 'regulation' of the Internet up to him and Facebook, it'd make China look free and open comparatively speaking; hell, I'd lay odds that the Chinese Government takes lessons from Zuckerberg so far as surveiling people and collecting data go
don't buy it (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong. Facebook isn't evil. It's just a regular company. Zuckerberg isn't any different than any other businessman. He's the CEO of a company that makes money selling ads and user-data. He's an ad-man. Take a quick look at Mad Men to get an idea of what's going under the hood. Yes, the platform may be different. Yes, women and minoriti
FFS it's a Communist Country! (Score:2)
Are you fucking kidding me? China is a communist country, where the hell have you been for the past 71 years!
Jesus people, China censoring what people can see and do is nothing knew. Just because China has Permanent Normal Trade Relations with the United States and U.S. corporations manufacturer goods in China does not elimin
Credit where due (Score:2)