At the very least, from a "I expect the worst from my government" skeptic POV, one could see this as a good shakedown opportunity from Facebook for massive fines.
The only reason that doesn't happen is either fear of FB or corruption.
What is happening is that Facebook is shifting from being AOL 2.0 to being a government contractor. They'll eventually be more entrenched and integrated (in the US) with the IRS, police, intelligence, etc.
The first step is to get them over a barrel, with public opinion against them. The rest is easy, and FB will embrace it.
I am not a fan of calling FB a utility. Are you ready to pay the taxes for a 5x buyout of FB when the government attempts to nationalize it? And what do you think its going to happen after the state has reins on it. Only bad things.
No question. They captured two billion users, they're starting to see usage signs of developed market erosion (where all of their money comes from), now they want to use government powers to permanently enshrine their place (ensure that those two billion users have nowhere else to go). At this point Facebook has everything to lose from competition and nothing to gain from it. The regulatory capture approach pivot is a key indication they feel like they've fully fleshed out their social monopoly using traditional means. They can no longer purchase major competitors, due to anti-trust issues. They will never be allowed to buy/own the next Instagram or YouTube type companies, so from their perspective they only have to gain from using the government to pre-emptively destroy those companies from being birthed in the first place (or at a minimum severely hamper them).
Regulate the hell out of me please, just guarantee me that you'll restrict competition in the process with tall enough barriers. It's a deal that governments go for every time and without exception. The power to control speech, news, expression on the world's largest media platform will prove irresistible and Facebook knows it. It aligns the always persistent desire by governments for censorship and control with Facebook's desire to never compete again.
This seems like a statement of faith. Facebook, and the markets it operates in, have seen very little government oversight for most its lifetime. It's mostly market forces that got us here. I don't see any reason to think that market forces will improve the situation in the future.
This is a corporate decision based on cold profit projections, and it affects FB users worldwide. Your local politics have little to do with that. This is about washing FB's image.
It would give Facebook way too much power if they could decide what is true and what is not. Better allow lies than to block free speech.
I wonder if this open letter by employees advocating for more control over content combined with Mark Zuckerberg's 'hands-off stance on political ads' are just a coordinated act of 'good cop, bad cop' designed to manipulate the public. Also, my cynical side thinks that maybe some of these government authorities are in on this charade.
It seems like a show to make people think that the good employees of Facebook are on the public's side. Whatever the big mean Zuckerberg wants must be bad for everyone.
Facebook must have a PR team the size of a small country working for them by now. Of course everything they do is orchestrated. We have to be really cynical to see through the BS.
The government is completely under the thumb of these big corporations. Many of the regulations that are coming out of Washington are carefully crafted by corporate lobbyists to superficially look like they're bad for corporations and good for the public, but in reality they're intended to give corporations more power and to create a moat around their monopolies. The government and corporations are on the same team; their common objective is to fool the public into slowly accepting the erosion of their most basic rights so that corporations can have more money and governments can have more power for themselves.
I don't see how this makes Facebook worse than other corporations. Isn't trying to influence the goverment (and probably partially succeeding in it) the norm?
All of this moderation stuff feels like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for Facebook.
People have been crapping on Facebook for making judgement calls on what's allowed on its platform. When Facebook does so without government backing, people get up-in-arms saying that it should be the government's role to decide free speech. But when the company goes and requests that government start doing that, people get up-in-arms about how it'll be "regulatory capture".
I can't predict what the outcome of all of this will be. I can however, predict that there will be an angsty article (Bloomberg? New York Times? Wall Street Journal?) decrying how Facebook is awful, evil, and incompetent.
Unless this open letter gets a very significant amount of media coverage, facebook isn't going to do jack to help any of their users out when the user's government doesn't doesn't want facebook to. Facebook has become big enough that they're scared of what rocking the boat, even the tiniest bit, will do to their buisness opportunities.
It is censorship. It isn't government backed and hence legal, but it is by definition censorship.
Telling people to divest from facebook is as helpful as telling a chinese citizen to leave china if they don't like government censorship. Especially if facebook becomes entrenched and monopolistic. Also, considering facebook has more power and reach than almost every country in the world, perhaps it's time to think about censorship and corporate power.
After all, government censorship was the norm until we decided that governments have gotten too powerful to allow to exist unchecked. Perhaps it's time to think of large corporations in the same manner.
Facebook would have to be stupid to not be bribing everyone in sight, it's not like anyone is going punish them. Anyone who still uses the site must think it's a good deal and additional information clearly won't change their mind at this point. The US government can't regulate any corporation without 50% of the population losing their shit at "big government overreach". There's no mechanism beyond those two to affect change in a corporation.
It's strange that you're ignoring the massive area between "unregulated" and "nationalized" (which is where most companies fall already).
No one is saying to break up Facebook and give it to the government. The idea is to break up Facebook because they've been buying competitors instead of trying to compete. It is an attempt to make the market more competitive.
There's nothing more on this earth that Google would want than to split up Facebook. Essentially destroying its biggest digital advertising competition.
I don't trust Facebook or Google...but I also don't trust the government to regulate them (in the regard to the topic of this piece); or for government to be unduly influenced by either company's competitors trying to stifle the companies, or the possibility of limiting speech. There are so many things that can go wrong in getting government involved in this aspect.
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