What Should Be Done About Social Media?

Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by tehjoker on Monday November 16, 2020 @10:49PM (#25120085)

More and more I am coming over to (what I interpret to be) Greenwald's view that the safe harbor provision is fine. I think the attack on safe harbor is a way to make it easy for supranational unelected and unaccountable entities like Facebook to engage in censorship activities which will limit discourse to whatever the power brokers in Washington deem acceptable. The social media companies must be reigned in, but not by suppressing speech. Instead, I advocate for their nationalization so that way the 1st amendment will unambiguously apply to their activities.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by ch4s3 on Monday November 16, 2020 @10:52PM (#25120100)

Do you really want to nationalize vast troves of private information and sophisticated ad targeting tools?

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by ethbr0 on Monday November 16, 2020 @11:00PM (#25120143)

If "vast troves of private information and sophisticated ad targeting tools" are too dangerous in the hands of government, then why aren't they too dangerous in the hands of a corporation?

The former is democratically elected. Facebook and Google aren't even controlled by their shareholders.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by asciident on Monday November 16, 2020 @11:12PM (#25120196)

Because governments have a monopoly on violence, and can use your data against you to imprison you, bomb your village, defame you, etc. I can quit Facebook or Google much easier than I can quit the TSA database or DMV record system.

And I don't think too many people would disagree that the best software developers, machine learning people, and computer security people are going to tech companies rather than work at government offices.

And finally, governments are influenced by temporary forces of who's in power, like we are seeing now in the United States. And whoever is in power can replace departments with people to do what they want, which can be borderline illegal. They only have to worry about the next N years, where N is often a number less than 5.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by tehjoker on Monday November 16, 2020 @11:28PM (#25120264)

The good news is that with the death of the profit motive, machine learning applications will become less important for the operation of Facebook's core mechanisms.

Yes, you are right about the government, but I think FB is being used by the government to get around the built-in legal protections. Moving it to the other side might make those tradeoffs more visible, but also more fair.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by ethbr0 on Monday November 16, 2020 @11:20PM (#25120225)

I think I have a much dimmer view of Facebook (16) and Google (22), and a much brighter view of American democracy (232), than you.

Time will tell.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by ch4s3 on Monday November 16, 2020 @11:41PM (#25120318)

Why infect the democracy by shackling one of these companies to it? Companies basically all die eventually, but they’re much more durable the more closely attached they are to governments.

Facebook proper is losing droves of users in the US. We might do well to keep the playing field level and let someone else beat them. More dominant market players from the past have misstepped and gone under.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by tehjoker on Monday November 16, 2020 @10:55PM (#25120118)

News flash, the government already has it. They either siphon it off into the NSA database, they employ spooks at the companies, or they have data sharing relationships with law enforcement. If we nationalize them, we can also kill the profit motive and eliminate the advertising.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by ch4s3 on Monday November 16, 2020 @10:58PM (#25120131)

The ability of a spy agency to gain access while deeply troubling to me, is quite different than turning it over to politicians. Would you trust you own favorite political villain with access to all of that?

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by tehjoker on Monday November 16, 2020 @11:02PM (#25120156)

I trust the spy agencies far less than I do my elected officials. These guys' job is to lie, cheat, steal, and murder at a grand scale. At least it is in an elected politican's job description to represent me. Also, many of these villains are getting briefings from and giving direction to said agencies already.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by meowster on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @12:11AM (#25120466)

I trust spy agencies far more than elected officials. Those employees get vetted, elected officials don't (and they most likely lie to get elected as well).

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by tehjoker on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @12:31AM (#25120571)

Try reading about Iran-Contra or the NSA Snowden disclosures sometime.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by meowster on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @10:29AM (#25124862)

As opposed to the wars and "wars" that politicians have started?

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by ethbr0 on Monday November 16, 2020 @11:02PM (#25120152)

> Would you trust you own favorite political villain with access to all of that?

Yes. Information asymmetry benefits those in power.

Better an even playing field, where everyone has access to everything.

Or, you know, don't use social spy platforms if you care about privacy?

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by ch4s3 on Monday November 16, 2020 @11:36PM (#25120299)

You can avoid social media all you want and still end up with a shadow profile that’s quite info rich. I’d prefer these companies to eventually fade away like most companies do, rather than become permanent government appendages.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by smt88 on Monday November 16, 2020 @11:20PM (#25120222)

I have almost never heard of a more dangerous solution to this problem.

Under absolutely no circumstances should the government control a large percentage of media.

Our current government seems pretty friendly to the First Amendment, but you have no idea if or when that might change.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by tehjoker on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @01:23AM (#25120825)

Have you heard of the BBC? Try reading Manufacturing Consent. The government doesn't need to, they already get their message out in spades with virtually no opposition on anything they consider important.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by smt88 on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @09:31AM (#25124090)

The BBC is not a monopoly. There's a huge difference between a state-run public broadcaster and a state-run monopoly of social media.

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Re:What Should Be Done About Social Media? by tehjoker on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @07:28PM (#25131713)

Is an unaccountable corporate monopoly with a revolving door with government better?

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