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Facebook Government

Will America's Next President Break Up Facebook? (politico.com) 171

With 25 days until Joe Biden becomes America's next president, Politico writes that throughout the US government, "From lawmakers on Capitol Hill to antitrust enforcers at the Federal Trade Commission, Washington is training its sights on the world's largest social network like never before." Biden's antitrust enforcers will take ownership of a lawsuit the FTC filed this month threatening to dismantle the sprawling company. And his staff will negotiate legislative proposals with congressional leaders who have hammered Facebook for mishandling its users' personal data and spreading hate speech and dangerous falsehoods. It's a historic moment of legislative and regulatory upheaval with profound consequences for Facebook and its Silicon Valley brethren.

The Trump era opened the floodgates for Facebook detractors, who accused the world's largest social network of silencing conservatives on one side, and abetting disinformation about the U.S. election on the other. Now, under Biden, the company's critics see a prime opportunity to finally tame Facebook — for the sake of election integrity, privacy and fair play in the digital era... "It's just not a great business strategy to piss off the incoming president," said Sally Hubbard, the director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, which has advocated for antitrust enforcement against Facebook, Google and other big tech firms. She and other tech critics are putting pressure on Biden to take a different approach than past administrations, and they already have several allies advising the transition as it prepares to take over next month...

The now-president-elect has called for the internet industry's sacred legal liability protections to be revoked, specifically citing Facebook's handling of election-related misinformation. He turned heads in January when he said bluntly, "I've never been a fan of Facebook," a company whose digital reach helped propel the Obama-Biden ticket to the White House in past elections... "[I]t's certainly possible that skepticism about Facebook from the Biden team could result in a greater likelihood of antitrust scrutiny by the Justice Department and the FTC," said Matt Perault, a former Facebook public policy director who now leads Duke University's Center on Science and Technology Policy. "And it's possible that a Biden White House could use their bully pulpit to try to force changes that they can't achieve through executive action or legislation...."

Republicans, too, have gripes about Facebook's handling of political speech, with some saying its lack of meaningful competition gives it the leverage to censor users' political views. After the FTC and state attorneys general announced their Facebook lawsuits this month, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed support... But bipartisan frustration with tech has yet to mean lawmakers will set aside partisan differences. Both sides have been frustrated with how Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube police political content, for instance, but Democrats want more moderation and Republicans have called for less...

Even with such divisions, the general animosity toward Facebook could help the anti-Facebook advocates to gain traction with the new administration. And they're pushing their agenda hard ahead of the inauguration.

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Will America's Next President Break Up Facebook?

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  • by Finallyjoined!!! ( 1158431 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @07:15PM (#60868338)

    It's an unwieldy, control avoiding leviathan, happily avoiding laws in *every* country it operates in, step up to the bar Mr. Bidon, Trump was a catastrophic failure, you can put this right.

    Deffo.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @07:45PM (#60868406)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        What if Facebook is split up and you get to pick the piece that gets to keep the copy of your data? I would obviously pick the piece that convinces me it would do the best job of protecting my data. You might prefer a piece that sells your data but gives you the highest percentage of the sale price. To provide the current services the pieces just need to agree on the communication and query protocols, but that can handled with public standards.

    • by Qwertie ( 797303 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @09:08PM (#60868612) Homepage

      Biden in a NYT interview: "I've never been a big Zuckerberg fan. I think he's a real problem. [....] we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you're not exempt. You [The Times] can't write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he can. The idea that it's a tech company is that, you know, Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms."

      If you're unfamiliar with why this is dumb, please see "Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act | Techdirt [techdirt.com]" Or just read the relevant part of Section 230 [cornell.edu], section C. It's short and simple and doesn't allow Facebook to "write something [they] know to be false".

      If I owned a web site with any user-created content, I would want Section 230 or something very much like it to exist so that I don't get sued for allowing user-created content. People say "let's do something about section 230!" as a slogan, but have you seen anyone who uses this slogan correctly describe what section 230 contains? I haven't. Biden certainly didn't.

      • Biden in a NYT interview: "I've never been a big Zuckerberg fan. I think he's a real problem. [....] we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you're not exempt. You [The Times] can't write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he can. The idea that it's a tech company is that, you know, Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms."

        If you're unfamiliar with why this is dumb, please see "Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act | Techdirt [techdirt.com]" Or just read the relevant part of Section 230 [cornell.edu], section C. It's short and simple and doesn't allow Facebook to "write something [they] know to be false".

        If I owned a web site with any user-created content, I would want Section 230 or something very much like it to exist so that I don't get sued for allowing user-created content. People say "let's do something about section 230!" as a slogan, but have you seen anyone who uses this slogan correctly describe what section 230 contains? I haven't. Biden certainly didn't.

        What would you suggest?

        • by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Sunday December 27, 2020 @02:27AM (#60869038) Homepage

          Frankly, there is nothing wrong with 47 USC 230(c).

          Subsection (c)(1) effectively says that sites are not responsible for reviewing all third-party content before it goes live, and are not responsible for any third-party content that you think should have been removed, but which they did not remove. (They are still responsible for their own first-party content, however)

          Subsection (c)(2) effectively says that sites that remove third-party content because they considered it objectionable in good faith are not responsible for what they did remove. (Note that it is difficult to establish why they would be responsible for it to begin with; in the absence of this law, what would your grounds for legal action even be?)

          People who think that sites remove too little content are SOL as far as changes in the law go. The government is bound by the First Amendment to not prohibit most content, and certainly not based on, for example, the particular opinions therein. People can post all manner of hateful, lunatic crap online and it's not illegal for them to do so, and it's not illegal for sites to host it.

          People who think that sites remove too much content are only slightly less SOL. Sites are either run by individuals or by corporate 'persons' and in either event, they possess their own First Amendment rights which permit them to decide when to speak and when not to speak; they are not obligated to assist others, and can freely remove content because it's their site. Sites are not bound by the First Amendment like the government is because they aren't governments. In fact it is uncommonly rare to find an instance of a non-governmental entity being treated as if it is a government, and it's not something that's going to fly for Facebook; social media is not a governmental function causing a business to step into the shoes of government.

          However, were section 230 to be eliminated, sites would have to pursue one of three options in order to avoid being held liable for the third party content that they do not remove. (There would still be no clear source of liability for what they do remove). 1) A site could not remove anything, and be treated as a mere conduit, like a community bulletin board or xerox machine. It would then not be liable for what was posted on it... to some extent. In actuality, it would still be liable for some other content, so this is probably not really possible. Also, sites would rapidly be filled up with spam, hate speech, malicious posts (the kind that exploit bugs to hack your computer just by looking at stuff), etc. which could not be removed if following this option. 2) A site could remove some things and leave others as it saw fit, which is what we have now. But the downside is that it would face total liability for anything it left up but should have removed, even if it was unaware of the problem. So since no one can moderate everything perfectly on all possible criteria, no one will ever do this. 3) A site could remove everything, and only allow up material that it had carefully vetted and was willing to assume responsibility for, just as a magazine, newspaper, or book publisher does. This will mean the death of third-party content, and sites that rely on it, like Facebook, Reddit, and Slashdot.

          Most likely you're looking at the type 3 scenario -- the Internet turns into something like magazines and cable TV.

          If you look at some of the entities behind the recent push for abolishing section 230 -- i.e. abolishing the Internet -- you'll see why this is attractive to them. Disney hates the Internet, it's a hive of piracy, and it has been going after section 230 for a while. A relatively new contender is Marriott, the hotel chain. They hate Airbnb, and the user listings on Airbnb fall within the scope of section 230; without it, Airbnb faces additional liability for their users, and perhaps that could be used to destroy it. And there's the newspaper and magazine industries that have seen their fortunes decline steadily and who want

          • There needs to be an explicit line between what can be moderated as "objectionable" (far too vague a term anyhow) and what should count as a publisher's editorial control.

            A tricky point on its own, but compounded by the fact that different forums might need different rules. It might be perfectly reasonable for say a gardening forum to moderate political comments as off-topic, while a "public square" platform like Facebook or Twitter should never interfere with political speech. They're just too involved

            • And fuck you.

              An explicit line is functionally impossible; content-based speech restrictions are tremendously vague in terms of line-drawing, and it's deliberately so.

              Further, "involvement" in public discourse by private parties does not give the government the option of ignoring the First Amendment. If anything, it heightens the concerns about the government interfering in free speech. Facebook and Twitter are not public fora and never have been, and nothing about how they function makes them such.

              Additio

          • by Agripa ( 139780 )

            Subsection (c)(2) effectively says that sites that remove third-party content because they considered it objectionable in good faith are not responsible for what they did remove. (Note that it is difficult to establish why they would be responsible for it to begin with; in the absence of this law, what would your grounds for legal action even be?)

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].

            • Not a great cite.

              Stratton Oakmont sued Prodigy for having not removed posts accusing them of being shady (which is ironic, because they absolutely were; they're the firm that was depicted in Wolf of Wall Street).

              So the Prodigy case has to do with subsection (c)(1).

              If Prodigy had removed those posts, Stratton Oakmont would not have sued Prodigy, but perhaps the person accusing the firm could have. But my question is, on what grounds could the poster sue Prodigy? If it's simple contract terms (you agreed to

      • Biden in a NYT interview: "I've never been a big Zuckerberg fan. I think he's a real problem. [....] we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you're not exempt. You [The Times] can't write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he can. The idea that it's a tech company is that, you know, Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms."

        If you're unfamiliar with why this is dumb, please see "Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act | Techdirt [techdirt.com]" Or just read the relevant part of Section 230 [cornell.edu], section C. It's short and simple and doesn't allow Facebook to "write something [they] know to be false".

        If I owned a web site with any user-created content, I would want Section 230 or something very much like it to exist so that I don't get sued for allowing user-created content. People say "let's do something about section 230!" as a slogan, but have you seen anyone who uses this slogan correctly describe what section 230 contains? I haven't. Biden certainly didn't.

        For those not paying attention the past four years, when Trump took office, those who love free speech were afraid he would be able to fulfill a quieter promise: to make liability lawsuits easier. He was famous for wanting to be able to more easily sue detractors. (Without getting into details, there is a whole famous person escape clause that lets you be much nastier in speech.)

        And now, your cynical statement of the day re: Biden. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

      • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

        That techdirt article itself had some logical gaps, including the precise one you're alluding to.

        "Once a company like that starts moderating content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher" -- the techdirt article responds that "at no point in any court case regarding Section 230 is there a need to determine whether or not a particular website is a 'platform' or a 'publisher.'" DOH! That's the whole point of this argument. When someone says that the law as written isn't any good (in this case because it

      • Oh, it's definitely being discussed in all the wrong ways. Biden kinda stumbled over the right approach, but mostly missed it when he said "For Zuckerberg and other platforms". The "right approach" (in my opinion, thus also objectively true), being that we keep 230, but say Facebook and other platforms have exceeded the limits of reasonable moderation and crossed over to both editorial/publisher control and campaign activity.

        What I've been saying is that 230 is good, but Facebook and Twitter went beyond

      • by Agripa ( 139780 )

        If I owned a web site with any user-created content, I would want Section 230 or something very much like it to exist so that I don't get sued for allowing user-created content.

        That was not the situation before Section 230 passed and that is not what Section 230 does.

        Previously there were two court decisions which recognized immunity for distributors who did not moderate content and liability for distributors who did moderate content. Section 230 changed that by making the later immune so that online service providers could perform censorship without liability, which is exactly what Facebook and Twitter and others now do. Congress specifically legalized and encouraged the behavi

      • by Meski ( 774546 )
        Remove 230, and you'd probably kill Slashdot.
    • by Canberra1 ( 3475749 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @09:46PM (#60868692)
      You could break up Facebook, but then you would also need to break up their vast data holdings as well. That data, used to suck in advertisers is the golden goose that drive ad revenue. Or you could place a user enabled 'lock' on their data , and megafines for abuses - just like do not call registries. Facebook lawyers will argure you just cant confiscate data blah blah. Therefore European like data privacy laws must be passed, and besides FB, that will manke many hangers-on and donors, mighty unhappy. Education is the 2nd level, where a user can see we have sold your personal data to . And big fines for that list being out of date.
    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      Well, that's the comment I was looking for and it's already modded up. Still, it could have gone into the solution space...

      I'd favor revisions to the tax code to penalize too-big-to-fail. Call it the too-big-fails tax? We don't have to completely outlaw such corporate cancers, though it wouldn't break my heart, but I think it would be sufficient to jigger the tax rules so the path to higher retained earnings leads directly to dividing overly large corporations right up the middle into honest competitors.

      I t

    • Slashdot of all places wanting the government to break up a free social media site is hilarious.

  • by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @07:31PM (#60868372) Journal
    It wasn't so bad when it was something small and obscure, but even then you could see the massive flaws in the entire concept. Now it's all become some massive tumor on our entire civilization. Just burn all of it to the ground.
  • by presidenteloco ( 659168 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @07:41PM (#60868400)
    This is seriously the level of analysis used in thinking that 'breaking up" facebook will help anything.

    The whole premise of a social network, from the user's point of view, is you need all your friends/acquaintances/groups on it, mostly all easily inter-accessible.

    How will a group of companies operating inter-operable pieces of the social network be in any sense better than one company co-ordinating most of it.

    1) It will be more confusing and complex for users.
    2) Groups of contacts will likely become artificially siloed.
    3) All of the companies will still be trying to sell you targeted ads, just like now.

    I'm not sure what the solution is; hell, I'm not even sure what the problem is, other than people are gullible and tribal as f*ck and social media shines a high-beam on that uncomfortable fact. But I do know that "breaking up facebook" or whatever is just a gorilla-level reaction and won't help anything.
    • by dwywit ( 1109409 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @07:53PM (#60868432)

      Users coped with facebook, instagram, and whatsapp as separate entities. They'll cope again.

    • Will ceiling cat ever play with that hamster toy again?

      Will the Martians accept Elon Musk's giant metal rocket?

      Will CowboyNeal finally hulk-smash reddit?

      Nobody knows. Will President Biden appoint Joe Biden as a Federal Judge, and will he preside over the case attempting to separate advertising sales from social media networks? This one is a clear no.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday December 27, 2020 @07:40AM (#60869298)

      The whole premise of a social network, from the user's point of view, is you need all your friends/acquaintances/groups on it, mostly all easily inter-accessible.

      I don't think you understand what it is they are proposing to break up. The social network will be just fine, and the user won't be affected. What they are trying to break up is this idea that you need a social network account to use VR hardware, that a company that provides social media messaging also controls WhatsApp and Beluga, that a social media giant that has a photo sharing media system also owns Instagram, that the same company who owns all of the above use it as an advertising platform, that this trove of accounts is used to authenticate users for 3rd parties, that this company owns a market place, and is even attempting to create its own currency.

      Nothing of what matters to users is the target of breaking up facebook.

      • I'm pissed off about the whole "Occulus needs your facebook" thing. I find myself in a position where I could afford a VR rig, but the only one I'd be willing to pay for requires I do something I'm not willing to do - let facebook know about it.
    • For users to be able to sync contacts or content between platforms does not require that they all be controlled by the same entity. By that logic, why not have only one email provider? If gmail was all there was, spam, spoofing, and most phishing would be a thing of the past.
  • by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @08:01PM (#60868450) Journal

    Considering Facebook was fact-checking every single post a sitting president made, don't you think that president would have broken Facebook up already if they felt there was legal justification? Facebook was firmly on Biden's side, so he doesn't even have the motivation Trump has, and yet Facebook is still in one piece.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Facebook was firmly on Biden's side

      Either that, Trump is simply full of shit.

    • by SpinyNorman ( 33776 ) on Sunday December 27, 2020 @09:47AM (#60869424)

      FaceBook is largely what got Trump elected in the first place. This time around the motivating/rallying conspiracy theory for many Trump supporters was QAnon, and in 2016 it was PizzaGate. Batshit-crazy conspiracy theories like this don't just spread themselves - they need a complicit social media platform willing to let anything go under the guise of "free speech" as long as it makes them a buck.

      You only have to look at Trump's use of Twitter, even in the face of belatedly marginally better fact checking there, to realize that Trump would never in a million years have done anything to stop these social media companies from being as useful to his spreading of lies as they have been. Same goes for FaceBook - Trump's campaign spent 10s of millions of dollars advertizing there in 2016 as well as 2020, so clearly regarded it as an important way to reach his target audience.

  • Don't like Facebook? Then don't create an account, don't open Facebook.com in your browser, don't buy ads on Facebook... Is this that difficult?

    There are plenty of opportunities to communicate with others. There's Twitter, Instagram, FreeRepublic.com, DailyKos.com, Reddit, Slashdot, etc. Or, just create your own website and convince your friends and acquaintances your postings have sufficient value for them to go look at it regularly and/or accept email/texts when there's new and exciting content. Or, you c

    • Or, just create your own website

      With Blackjack! And hookers!

      In fact, forget the website!

    • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @09:22PM (#60868650) Homepage

      I do not use facebook. But there are several reasons why not joining Facebook does not solve the problem.

      1) Facebook tracks you even if you are not a member. Very hard to stop them from tracking you. From cookies on your computers, friend's addressbook that includes your email, phone number, name, and address, photos of you that have been labelled, Facebook has a ton of info on people.

      2) Facebook has become the user identification method for non-facebook companies. How many times do you sign in to something and are 'offered' the chance to use your facebook sign in to log in. Some of them can ONLY login via facebook to 'prove' your identity. You want X service but you have to set up a Y account to do it.

      3) MONOPOLY. Maybe you do in fact want the Facebook services, but you do not like them, for whatever reason. I have a choice between Coke and Pepsi, Shake Shack and InandOut. I want a choice among my privacy invading advertisement agencies. Monopolies are bad for the country, bad for consumers (advertisers), and bad for their farmed resources (people).

      4) Political Influence. They have a huge amount of political power because they are so big. They USE this power to influence politics. Yes, it is subtle - they do not obviously abuse their own facebook likes and messages. But even if they never intentionally use subtle powers, they can still lobby politicians legally. For more power.

      • I do not use facebook. But there are several reasons why not joining Facebook does not solve the problem.

        1) Facebook tracks you even if you are not a member. Very hard to stop them from tracking you. From cookies on your computers, friend's addressbook that includes your email, phone number, name, and address, photos of you that have been labelled, Facebook has a ton of info on people.

        And they aren't the only ones.

        2) Facebook has become the user identification method for non-facebook companies. How many times do you sign in to something and are 'offered' the chance to use your facebook sign in to log in. Some of them can ONLY login via facebook to 'prove' your identity. You want X service but you have to set up a Y account to do it.

        And they aren't the only ones.

        3) MONOPOLY. Maybe you do in fact want the Facebook services, but you do not like them, for whatever reason. I have a choice between Coke and Pepsi, Shake Shack and InandOut. I want a choice among my privacy invading advertisement agencies. Monopolies are bad for the country, bad for consumers (advertisers), and bad for their farmed resources (people).

        They still aren't the only ones.

        4) Political Influence. They have a huge amount of political power because they are so big. They USE this power to influence politics. Yes, it is subtle - they do not obviously abuse their own facebook likes and messages. But even if they never intentionally use subtle powers, they can still lobby politicians legally. For more power.

        And of course they most definitely are not the only ones.

        What not make those things illegal then, rather than trying to go after every single company tracking us and getting rich doing it?

        • > And they aren't the only ones.

          They have the largest cache of information about people and the largest number of users. That makes them stand out. So they have the means and opportunity to make profit by externalizing consequences on society.
      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by uncqual ( 836337 )

        1) Facebook tracks you even if you are not a member. Very hard to stop them from tracking you. From cookies on your computers, friend's addressbook that includes your email, phone number, name, and address, photos of you that have been labelled, Facebook has a ton of info on people.

        A lot of sites track you for advertising. If that bothers you, take defensive actions ("virgin" browser sessions, blockers, etc) to mitigate. Your name, phone number, and address are not secrets -- I can legally buy all of those

        • First of all you gave true responses, but they do not take into account all of the ramifications.

          1) Facebok's tracking is different because it is huge. That makes it one stop shopping to get almost everyone which is qualitatively different than having everyones' tracking information split among multiple companies. Among other things it makes it easy and you would be surprised how much evilness gets done simply because it is easy to do.

          2) You admitted it was a problem, but claimed it was small (one site yo

          • by uncqual ( 836337 )

            1) Facebok's tracking is different because it is huge. That makes it one stop shopping to get almost everyone which is qualitatively different than having everyones' tracking information split among multiple companies. Among other things it makes it easy and you would be surprised how much evilness gets done simply because it is easy to do.

            So, just outlaw all tracking (and expect most "free" sites to go away - you'd pay to do Google searches, join Facebook, or use Google maps etc). I just don't see how some

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Haha, the problem is not that individual users could switch to something else. The problem is that so many users are concentrated into a single system and that system is being tuned for profit, with disastrous secondary effects on society.
  • by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @08:24PM (#60868514) Homepage
    And lipbook, eyebook, chinbook, earbook...
  • And - No. Hope that isn't too curt.

  • ...break up Facebook, since they're the ones writing the laws. The Pres? All he can do is sign or veto what they put in front of him...

    That said, it's completely pointless. People do FB to communicate with friends/family/acquaintances. If I used FB, and the Feds broke it up, I'd just be switching to the new version that includes all the people I currently deal with. As would everyone else.

    So, after a while, everyone will be using the same babyFB, and the others would die on the vine....

    • I don't think the case for breaking up FaceBook is anti-monopoly concerns, and as you say the tendency is going to be for consolidation anyway as people want to group together.

      What's really called for is better regulation of social media, not breaking up the giants. FaceBook is clearly well over the line into allowing it's platform to be used for any purpose whatever, society-be-damned, as long as they can make a buck from it.

    • Would Instagram go bust if it wasn't owned by Facebook? Would people stop using WhatsApp if Facebook didn't own it? Both were quite successful before Facebook bought them. And that is why Facebook is alleged to have bought them - they were popular enough to threaten Facebook's position in the market.
  • Censorship grows (Score:4, Informative)

    by Twinbee ( 767046 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @08:46PM (#60868578)
    All I know is that free speech will suffer and totalitarian control will become an increasing tempting proposition for such organizations. A small selection of Facebook examples from the past few months include:

    https://reclaimthenet.org/face... [reclaimthenet.org] - a 360k user group called "Stop the Steal" was censored. Regardless of the veracity of information spread by this group, can you see how this sets a precedent for corporations to push their agenda for future elections where fraud may be a real possibility? Countless groups [reclaimthenet.org] are being pressured monitor users or face a ban themselves.

    https://reclaimthenet.org/face... [reclaimthenet.org] - Similar to the above - blocking any hashtags which hint at election fraud. They even purge Jewish groups [reclaimthenet.org] if they happen to support the wrong candidate.

    https://reclaimthenet.org/face... [reclaimthenet.org] - White people are being treated differently compared to other groups. I'm sure this will completely reduce the degree of bitterness that's been mounting up for the past decade.

    https://reclaimthenet.org/baby... [reclaimthenet.org] - It's not just politics; Even Monty Python is not immune from the invisible hand of censorship.
    • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @11:36PM (#60868886)

      Private company regulates the content of its platform, shocking. So does slashdot. What is your point exactly?

      • by Twinbee ( 767046 )
        Even as a (mostly) free market kinda guy, we keep a close eye on monopolies for a reason. Facebook is quite a monopoly in the social landscape.

        Regardless, I wasn't necessarily suggesting action against them. If they want to dig their own grave, so be it.
    • If censorship is used to stop blatant lies and establish a platform free of incorrect statistics and unfounded rumours then I guess I like censorship! The 'slippery slope fallacy' is working hard in your post - just because censorship can be applied to lies, does not automatically lead to censorship across other views.
  • The unspoken truth is that a lot of liberals blame Facebook for Trump getting elected, that caused a massive change in treatment of Facebook in the media and by politicians ... which in my opinion is slightly insane. Facebook doesn't deserve this massively outsized level of attention.

    An unspoken and here unspeakable truth, which rarely fails to get me downvoted.

    • A ubiquitous platform that is used disproportionately by nutcases and conspiracy theorists, leading to such popular theories as: "5G towers cause Covid", "vaccinations are used for mind control" and my personal favourite, "buying ice creams makes it sunnier" /s
    • Facebook doesn't deserve this massively outsized level of attention. An unspoken and here unspeakable truth, which rarely fails to get me downvoted.

      Have you been in a coma the past 4 years? Does Cambridge Analytica ring any bells, or the fact that Facebook openly admitted that their platform was disproportionately used to get Trump elected to the point that they went full Stasi on their own service banning accounts in the millions in the leadup to the recent election?

      If you're getting downvoted it's because your head is so far in the sand that we can barely see your toes stick out.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        Cambridge Analytica was a storm in a teacup, a couple of provocateurs pissing in a sea of piss.

        Liberals just need a witch, any social media platform suffices for people to talk to each other ... or for a couple of Russians to post some bullshit to make rent. Facebook wasn't and isn't special in any other way than being top dog, but there will always be a top dog.

        Burning them at the stake will change nothing.

        • Cambridge Analytica was a part of a much larger operation. What hit the media was a storm in a teacup with the rest of wide platform misinformation campaigns going largely unnoticed.

          Liberals just need a witch

          You still there? I can't even see your toes now.

  • by zawarski ( 1381571 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @10:43PM (#60868798)
    Amazon is the one to worry about.
    • Depends on what you worry about.

      Data agglomeration which could be abused by a dictatorship? Google and Facebook equally ... but Apple certainly on the horizon (that they only use their information internally doesn't make the power less scary if they become top dog). Amazon less so, purchase history is just not as powerful as social history.

      Success being turned into an ever widening monopoly disrupting competition, Amazon and Apple about equally.

  • Nope. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Sunday December 27, 2020 @12:15AM (#60868924) Journal

    This is more posturing. There was an old The Onion cartoon with Mark Zuckerburg as CIA agent of the year. The Onion is supposed to be satire but this is basically true. Why would they disrupt one of their best intelligence gathering tools?

  • Just revoke their business license. We don't need a dozen little Facebooks all competing to fuck over the world. It's the business model itself that isn't acceptable.

  • Won't there be more important things that need to be done?

  • good clickbait. Who the fuck is stupid enough to imagine a POTUS can unilaterally do that or that lawyers cannot defeat any attempt?

    • Well, a President can tell the DoJ to launch an anti-trust investigation. Don't forget - Teddy Roosevelt earned the nickname "Trust-buster" during his presidency by taking an aggressive executive stance, not by begging Congress to do something. Congress had already passed the Sherman Anti-Trust act in 1890, so all that was left was a President with the will to apply it. He didn't even have the FTC or Clayton Anti-Trust Act to help, those wouldn't come around until five years after he left office.
  • They should be broken up into all back into all the individual companies they have bought like instagram, and even breaking up facebook itself and it's messenger. They've already made that breakup easy. It used to be that messaging was built into the mobile facebook app. They have now made it mandatory to install a completely separate resource hogging application to use messaging on mobile. Facebook themselves made it easy to break that up.
  • I'm not a big fan of social media (Facebook, Twitter and such) for the simple fact that it enables advertisers to target ads even more than most methods and provides content that draws people further and further into their little bubbles. It's what's going to make the COVID recovery in the US take longer...half the population has been convinced that the vaccine is a government mind control device planted by Bill Gates so he can rule the world.

    But, the question is whether they're violating antitrust laws, an

  • Biden has made it clear is sole objective is maintaining the status quo Youâ(TM)re poor? Youâ(TM)re going to get poorer Youâ(TM)re rich, youâ(TM)re going to get even more money from those working class losers And prisons! Fill them up and build some more, because being âoetough on crimeâ and turning the US into the worlds largest prison society Bidenâ(TM)s most cherished legacy. At least with Trump we knew America was a dumpster fire with a cliff. Situation is the same
  • I fully expect Biden to announce he will form a panel of experts and give them six months to advise him - that's how he weaseled out on his promise to end trumps policies on the border. Oh, and toss in a "listen to the scientists" statement for good measure. (Apparently we elected Biden so that he could blindly obey whatever instructions unelected "scientists and experts" tell him.)

  • Ask people if they want the Republican or the Democrat version of Google and FB, each with different ranking and filtering settings. Put the responsibility of choice on people. But no, in fact the Democrats want to control the Republican messages and vice-versa. They want just one interface, but tweaked in such a way as to be a tool for political influence.

Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis. It makes sense, when you don't think about it.

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