David Harsanyi

It's not the state's job to undermine competition -- or to fix stupid.

In the year 2018, at the height of The Russia Scare, the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hauled in front of a tribunal of tech-illiterate politicians and asked to explain himself. “It was my mistake, and I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg told senators upset about the company’s exploitation (and fumbling) of user data – which, unbeknownst to them, was social media’s entire business model.

A number of panics have brought us to this preposterous place: The notion that Russian trolls on Facebook could swing the 2016 election and undermined our “democracy;” the idea that Facebook’s leftward bias is so corrosive the company should be regulated like a utility; and, finally, the general way in which social media tends to reveal the ugly side of human nature — which is indeed scary, but has little to do with any particular platform.

Granted, one platform that never seems to fail us is the dais at the Senate. If one could brush aside the bipartisan preening and soundbites during the Zuckerberg hearings, he would be still subjected to an infuriating mix of ignorance and arrogance. Across the media, it was accurately noted that the United States is, in large part, run by a bunch of elderly politicians completely unsuited to regulate the tech industry. The obvious lesson, though, was still lost on many. Rather than trying to elect more technocrats, we should come to terms with the fact that, in an increasingly complex world, politicians will always be unsuited to regulate most industries, which is why they should do so only sparingly.

Not that ignorance has ever stopped senators from grandstanding. Republican John Kennedy, for instance, believes Facebook should be disciplined because its users erroneously assumed the service was free. “Your user agreement sucks,” said Kennedy, describing a perfectly legal document that had already been subjected to an array of contractual regulations and was probably read by only a fraction of social media giant’s users. “The purpose of that user agreement is to cover Facebook’s rear end, it’s not to inform users of their rights,” he went on to say, “I don’t want to vote to have to regulate Facebook, but by God I will.”

So if a private entity follows the law, but happens to upset the sensibilities of a power-abusing bully in the United States Senate, they will, by God, be punished by with some nannyistic intrusion or byzantine regulation?

Well, not really punished, right? Because of course the rent-seeking Facebook desires more regulation. For one, it would make the state partially responsible for many of the company’s problems — meting out “fairness,” writing its user agreements, and policing speech – but, more importantly for Zuckerberg, it would add regulatory costs that Facebook could afford but upstart competition almost certainly could not.

It’s a long-standing myth that corporate giants are averse to “regulations” or that those regulations always help consumers. We’ve already seen the hyper-regulation of health-care “markets” create monopolies and undermine choice. We’ve seen the hyper-regulation of the banking industry inhibit competition and innovation. Politicians, often both ignorant of specifics and ideologically pliable, tend to fall sway to the largest companies, which end up dictating their own regulatory schedules. I mean, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina actually asked a compliant Zuckerberg to submit a list of government interferences he might embrace.

The bigger, ideological, problem with the Facebook circus is that our politicians are acting as if being subjected to an opinion — or to an ad — they dislike is some kind of attack on an individual’s rights. Not one senator will ever tell his or her constituents: Hey, if you don’t like the way Facebook conducts itself or you’re unhappy about its political bias or you don’t like that smaller companies also get to target you with content, then leave. No one is forcing you to open or maintain an account with Facebook, much less forcing you to hand over data. And if you’re constantly falling for fake news, well, that’s your problem, because the state can’t fix stupid.

Yet to assure senators that he could, in fact, control billions of interactions, Zuckerberg noted that in five to ten years his company would possess artificial intelligence technology sophisticated enough to eliminate “hate speech” and “fake news” before it was even posted. If Facebook wants to use that technology, it has the right to do so, of course. But many of us who are familiar with the expansive definition of “hate speech” and the people who curate “fake news,” think, well, no thank you. Moreover, the idea that the platform should be responsible for governing the speech of billions of users is not only dangerous, it’s also incredibly expensive.

Sen. Ben Sasse had a good point when he told Zuckerberg that although Facebook may decide it needs to police speech, “I think America may be better off not having been policed by one company that has a really big and powerful platform.” The answer to quelling the outrage mob isn’t for the government to help Facebook entrench its position with some cronyistic regulation, but to let Facebook fix itself or go the way of MySpace.

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The whole thing was a circus and ALL participants (Congressional Critters, Zuckerstain, and the media papparazzi) were the clowns.

FB is a bunch of lefties and mines the living shit out of data that people chose to put on there. The hearings were about a company supposedly on the right that got a portion of that data to mine for themselves.

Regulating people voluntarily going to a private company's servers and volunteering info about themselves is ridiculous and a waste of taxpayer money. Even worse is that someone even more dishonest than Facebook would be making decisions - the feral government.

I just have to shake my head and laugh every time I hear about this Facebook "scandal" as if people couldn't possibly have known that their information that they willingly put out there for millions to see on a free platform was going to be "harvested" or used in some way to benefit someone else.

Really, how completely dense can you be?

I read this original post a couple times. Perhaps I'm rattled from not really understanding the obvious conclusion, which seems dominant regardless of considerable holes in the arguments the author presents.

Not ready to defend my own argument here as of yet, just disagree in a number of paragraphs.

quote:

And if you’re constantly falling for fake news, well, that’s your problem, because the state can’t fix stupid.

Of course it can't, because the state usually leads the way when it comes to stupid.

The only things that really came out of this dog and pony show were that Washington is utterly incompetent when it comes to technology, yet is as pompous and arrogant about tech as it is about every other topic it knows nothing about, and there are millions upon millions of mentally deficient Farcebook users out there so "stuck on stupid" no one can fix them.

I watched part of it. Politicians grandstanding for the voters and Zuckerberg doing his best dorky college kid impression claim8ng he didn’t know any better. Liars all!

Regulation would be a boon for FB. Regulation would seal FB’s domination of the genre. New companies wouldn’t be able to afford to compete with them. The kid knows that and is likely baiting Congress to give him that windfall.

The stuff that people explicitly post, they can't be surprised at being used. That's not what these guys deserve their grilling for.

It is all the meta-stuff they collect, analyze, package and sell - that people didn't post, don't know about and couldn't imagine unless they were incredibly knowledgable about what goes on behind the scenes at websites and in their devices, acutely paranoid, and able to imagine how much money could be made in hiding a data vacuum behind a friendly app.

I see nothing wrong with government regulating Farcebook and its ilk into oblivion.

Make their employees and stockholders personally responsible for any bias or outrageous content with public flogging consisting of a minimum of 100 strokes of a 1756 British Navy cat-o-nine-tails.

I think that only fair.

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:
I see nothing wrong with government regulating Farcebook and its ilk into oblivion.

Make their employees and stockholders personally responsible for any bias or outrageous content with public flogging consisting of a minimum of 100 strokes of a 1756 British Navy cat-o-nine-tails.

I think that only fair.

It's already done. The new SESTA/FOSTA regulation. Only one victim of human trafficking has to come forward and claim she was trafficked through Facebook. FBI seizes Facebook, FBI arrests Zuckerstain, and DOJ builds a case and prosecutes Zuckerstain.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
The stuff that people explicitly post, they can't be surprised at being used. That's not what these guys deserve their grilling for.

It is all the meta-stuff they collect, analyze, package and sell - that people didn't post, don't know about and couldn't imagine unless they were incredibly knowledgable about what goes on behind the scenes at websites and in their devices, acutely paranoid, and able to imagine how much money could be made in hiding a data vacuum behind a friendly app.

A friendly free app. Some people need to realize that nothing is free in this world. Maybe they're starting to get the hint.

while I agree with the 'nothing free' point, and I've never joined let alone visited the 'friendly free app', it seems the water continues to deepen around the techno--informed as well as the clueless regarding the ever expanding surreptitious use/misuse/abuse of their 'data'.

Slithering, lying little bastard. I'd like to run over you with my truck.


"I...I..uhh...I'm not specifically aware..."



Watch Cruz's face at the end of the clip. He's not buying any of what this little shit was selling.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:
I see nothing wrong with government regulating Farcebook and its ilk into oblivion.

Make their employees and stockholders personally responsible for any bias or outrageous content with public flogging consisting of a minimum of 100 strokes of a 1756 British Navy cat-o-nine-tails.

I think that only fair.

It's already done. The new SESTA/FOSTA regulation. Only one victim of human trafficking has to come forward and claim she was trafficked through Facebook. FBI seizes Facebook, FBI arrests Zuckerstain, and DOJ builds a case and prosecutes Zuckerstain.

I think there is a small BIG problem with your plan....

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Slithering, lying little bastard. I'd like to run over you with my truck.

< snip >

Be sure to back up to see what caused that thumping sound.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
The stuff that people explicitly post, they can't be surprised at being used. That's not what these guys deserve their grilling for.

It is all the meta-stuff they collect, analyze, package and sell - that people didn't post, don't know about and couldn't imagine unless they were incredibly knowledgable about what goes on behind the scenes at websites and in their devices, acutely paranoid, and able to imagine how much money could be made in hiding a data vacuum behind a friendly app.

A friendly free app. Some people need to realize that nothing is free in this world. Maybe they're starting to get the hint.

Surely you are not implying that anything goes on a free app. A an app that let you see dates of music concerts in your area for free, for example, but then encrypted your files and sold the decryption key to third parties so that the third party could ask for a ransom would be bad. So, to be clear, it's not about the cost.

What is insidious and evil is not just the depth and intricacy of the data being collected and aggregated, it is the combination of the hiding of the sources of the info (every freakin' website with a 'like' image, e.g., and not just 'Facebook.com') and the means (web beacons, cookies, device features, e.g.) and the failure of these parasites to provide transparency and control to their unwitting hosts.

If Para ever were to do his truck run, I would request to ride shotgun.

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:
Make their employees and stockholders personally responsible for any bias or outrageous content...

I don't have a problem with them manicuring their content to suit their bias. It's Zuckerberg's house. He's the ringleader. He can do whatever he wants.

quote:

Originally posted by Keystoner:

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:
Make their employees and stockholders personally responsible for any bias or outrageous content...

I don't have a problem with them manicuring their content to suit their bias. It's Zuckerberg's house. He's the ringleader. He can do whatever he wants.

Except Farcebook claims an exemption under the Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as a non-biased, open to all forum.

If they bias towards one political pole or another they are no longer exempt.

Watch the video in Para's post above. This is the point Senator Cruz was asking about.

You DO realize that Google knows more about you than Facebook ever will?

One meme that seemed to light up Twitter was a zoomed-in photo of Zuckerberg's face next to a surprising doppelganger: Data, the fully functional android in Star Trek



Another Twitter user, Pat Flanigan, shared three photos and noticed how he and the man sitting directly behind him had a similar facial expression throughout the hearing

quote:

.....FB is a bunch of lefties and mines the living shit out of data that people chose to put on there. The hearings were about a company supposedly on the right that got a portion of that data to mine for themselves....

Yeah...stupid me puts his phone number and email address on FaceBook, 'cuse they wanted it posted.

It wasn't long before the Robo generated sales phone calls and email spam came pouring in.

Took me about three months to clear up that shit.

quote:

Originally posted by GWbiker:

quote:

.....FB is a bunch of lefties and mines the living shit out of data that people chose to put on there. The hearings were about a company supposedly on the right that got a portion of that data to mine for themselves....

Yeah...stupid me puts his phone number and email address on FaceBook, 'cuse they wanted it posted.

It wasn't long before the Robo generated sales phone calls and email spam came pouring in.

Took me about three months to clear up that shit.

Get yourself a Google Voice number, then the spam calls get mined and generate more spam that gets recorded by Google Voice generating more data that is mined to generate more spam that is used to call your Google Voice number that generates more spam....

I view it as a perpetual motion device.