The CEO said this almost verbatim to Pelosi on her recent trip to Taiwan.
>> When US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, she met with Morris Chang and Mark Liu, chair of TSMC. Chang told Pelosi that Washington's efforts to rebuild its chip manufacturing were doomed to fail,
Another uncomfortable truth for overwhelmingly overweight Americans: fat-shaming seems to work.
Anecdotally, the girls I know whose parents/family criticized them when they started to get fat never became truly fat and the ones whose parents were completely laissez-faire about it are now whales.
Sure, they can. Should they? And should they be allowed to looking forward, or are they now an active threat to democracy? By the way, I say this speaking as a conservative who opposes basically everything the Socialist Workers Party stands for, but who is more threatened by autocratic tech censorship than by opposing ideas.
There isn’t a shortage of means to socialize and communicate digitally. Facebook rises and falls on its own merits and if your speech depends on Facebook, that’s a personal problem, and reflects your own personal choices.
20 years ago Facebook didn’t exist. Now we have Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, WordPress (both the service and the software), YouTube, SoundCloud, the Fediverse, Twitch, Slack, Discord, iMessage groups, whatever the 3 Google messengers of the day are, XMPP clients and servers, IRC (which is admittedly more than 20 years old), countless dating sites, Reddit, and countless other “social networks”. When the bars re-open, we’ll have those too, and that is an ancient institution.
And for what it’s worth, there’s also the comments section of NRO and The Dispatch. Oh, and the forum we’re talking on.
Sure, there isn't a shortage of digital communication, but they are responsible for a large proportion of that communication and they hold the power of tilting democracies by choice of those in charge of the company or by seemingly random bearucratic decisions made by their employees. They are a medium of information distribution. If certain phone companies decide to not put through calls years ago in an effort to sway democracies, would that have been acceptable? They are a for profit business ruled by one individual that has extraordinary power. As a society, are we really supposed to just let them do whatever they want just because there are less popular alternatives?
There was an argument to be made to treat phone companies like common carriers, I’m not entirely sure that was the best way to handle them, but it happened, and it was a good argument nonetheless, or at least well argued.
Social media isn’t like that at all. Social media proliferates and in different forms and it does so internationally with popular and unpopular opinions easily spreading like wildfire. I have no problem with the Facebooks and the Twitters of the world running their servers with the carte blanche of the private property owners that they are because what you and others perceive as a lack of options and alternatives looks more to me like there’s not a lot of options today compared to how many there will be 20 years from now.
Go look back at the history of the web, here’s an incomplete and not comprehensive list of sites and internet services which have existed, do exist, ceased to exist, got gobbled up by bigger fish and spawned smaller networks of their own and probably in some small way contributed to the political conscience of most Americans alive today and definitely not concerning ourselves with all of the countless web forums, Usenet groups, and mailing lists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_serv...
Classmates.com: 1995
GameFAQs: 1995
Newgrounds: 1995
ICQ: 1996
AIM: 1997
CaringBridge: 1997
Slashdot: 1997
Penny Arcade: 1998
Yahoo Messenger: 1998
BlackPlanet: 1999
Blogger: 1999
Fark: 1999
Kiwibox: 1999
LiveJournal: 1999
Metafilter: 1999
Neopets: 1999
Something Awful: 1999
Xanga: 1999
CrossFit: 2000
DeviantArt: 2000
Radio UserLand: 2000
Wikipedia: 2001
YTMND: 2001
Yahoo Groups: 2001
last.fm: 2002
Meetup: 2002
4chan: 2003
Gaia Online: 2003
LinkedIn: 2003
MEETin: 2003
MySpace: 2003
Second Life: 2003
Steam: 2003
WordPress: 2003
Digg: 2004
Facebook: 2004
Flickr: 2004
hi5: 2004
IMVU: 2004
PatientsLikeMe: 2004
RoosterTeeth Forums: 2004
TV Tropes: 2004
World of Warcraft: 2004
Yelp: 2004
Vimeo: 2004
Dailymotion: 2005
Google Talk: 2005
LibraryThing: 2005
Ning: 2005
Reddit: 2005
YouTube: 2005
CafeMom: 2006
Flixster: 2006
Goodreads: 2006
iLike: 2006
ReverbNation: 2006
Twitter: 2006
Chess.com: 2007
Italki: 2007
SoundCloud: 2007
Tumblr: 2007
Hacker News: 2007
Justin.tv: 2007
Academia.edu: 2008
GovLoop: 2008
identi.ca: 2008
Nextdoor: 2008
Formspring: 2009
Foursquare: 2009
Grindr: 2009
Pinterest: 2009
Quora: 2009
WhatsApp: 2009
Friendica: 2010
Instagram: 2010
Untappd: 2010
Duolingo: 2011
Fishbrain: 2011
I Had Cancer: 2011
Letterboxd: 2011
Twitch: 2011
Whisper: 2012
Google Hangouts: 2013
Slack: 2013
Vine: 2013
Voat: 2014
Yo: 2014
Discord: 2015
Periscope: 2015
Gab: 2016
Houseparty: 2016
Mastodon: 2016
Peach: 2016
micro.blog: 2017
Parler: 2018
So let’s break this down.
> Sure, there isn't a shortage of digital communication, but they are responsible for a large proportion of that communication and they hold the power of tilting democracies by choice of those in charge of the company or by seemingly random bearucratic decisions made by their employees.
No. We are responsible for our own communications and when we don’t trust the messenger, we encode our messages or we use a different messenger. We are also the ones responsible for the upkeep of our own democracy and the upkeep of the institutions which maintain it because it’s ours and our responsibility. Corporations, as it turns out, as organizations which represent the aggregate interests of their owners and employees, are also actors in aggregate within the framework of our democracy, much like name a group of three or more people.
How ten thousand people voted in one place or fifty-thousand voted in another isn’t Facebook’s responsibility, or Twitter’s, or Reddit’s, or Slack’s. It’s the responsibility of every single person who cast their own vote, which should be all of the people who cast votes in every election.
> They are a medium of information distribution.
They are a handful out of the millions of ways that exist to distribute information.
> They are a for profit business ruled by one individual that has extraordinary power. As a society, are we really supposed to just let them do whatever they want just because there are less popular alternatives?
They are dust. If our free speech depended on the whims of one Mark Zuckerberg and one Jack Dorsey, then we didn’t have free speech to begin with. Facebook and Twitter are critters of the last 20 years, there have been others, and there will be more like them, but also entirely unlike them.
The way people talk about social media companies today they make it sound like we need some sort of Social Media Public Commission to control the moderation policies and enforce the publication of government speech. We don’t, because we have what we need: competition and the many many technologies that enable it and a free flow of cash and labor and capital.
It’s disgusting to me how freely conspiracy theorists, socialists, PRC apologists and neo-Nazis can easily congregate and talk themselves up into a furor about seizing the means of killing the Jews before Bill Gates takes over the world and prevents Chairman Winnie the Pooh from leading us into glorious revolution, but that’s the mark of a free society that they can find a way and will always find a way. So is being able to tell the President and anyone else to get off your lawn and/or servers.
> the list
Just because there are hundreds of extremely less popular social media platforms does not erase the fact that they have most of the users. Decisions they make about filtering content impact a large majority of our population.
> They are dust.
How is having 223 million users in the United States in 2020 equate to facebook being dust? They have a strangle hold on the market and a large portion of the United States uses facebook as their primary news source.
> If our free speech depended on the whims of one Mark Zuckerberg and one Jack Dorsey, then we didn’t have free speech to begin with.
I either don't understand what you mean by this or it sounds incorrect to me. People use facebook as a means of communication and as a means of receiving news. Why does that fact have any bearing over whether or not we had free speech before they came along? And are you saying that just because we didn't have free speech before means its ok that free speech is entirely free now?
> Facebook and Twitter are critters of the last 20 years, there have been others, and there will be more like them, but also entirely unlike them.
Does it really matter what the state of social media companies was before or in the future in this conversation? They are infringing on speech now. Their goals are not aligned with the United States, they are aligned with making money.
> The way people talk about social media companies today they make it sound like we need some sort of Social Media Public Commission to control the moderation policies and enforce the publication of government speech. We don’t, because we have what we need: competition and the many many technologies that enable it and a free flow of cash and labor and capital.
Are you seriously saying that fair competition is currently happening in the social media market? Facebook is currently being sued for being a monopoly. They have unfairly crushed numerous companies and will continue to do so.
Is your conclusion that everything is fine and that companies should do whatever they can to make money no matter the impact it has on people or our democracy?
Facebook dominates the social media market right now. They are making decisions on speech of a large proportion of our country. They themselves have attempted to setup commissions to better define how to moderate content fairly, but to this point they have failed. Why would laws detailing how they should moderate content be a bad thing? There are already laws around horrible content that should not be served, could it really hurt to extend it and make free speech content moderation a public policy decision of our democracy?
Facebook and Twitter are a blip in history. Their relevance today pales in comparison to their historic and future relevance. All 233M, scratch that, all billion or two billion or however many of those users have other things to do with their time besides Facebook all day. Facebook in that case is a part of their lives, it is not a replacement for their lives nor what ultimately determines their lives and choices, meaning it does not absolve anyone of personal responsibility for the choices they make.
So yes, they are dust, as dusty as the lot of us together. Reactionary policies and laws would do more to cement their place and continued presence in society than letting new generations grow up and make determinations about which social networks they value and develop antibodies to the shrillness of mass to mass communication. There is value in Facebook, so new users continue to make accounts and make use of the service much as people continue to buy smartphones and PCs and automobiles, but the value looks different to every person.
If Facebook and Twitter were the only two socialization methods available to society, I might be more concerned. They’re simply not, and most people have multiple means of socialization and multiple social networks.
EDIT: Forgot one bit in particular I wanted to address.
> Their goals are not aligned with the United States, they are aligned with making money.
That is correct. We’re not just one big unified hunky dory family all marching towards the same ends and the same future. We’re a bunch of people, with our own interests, and mostly unconcerned with the government and the State until we need to be. Facebook is concerned with making money, I’m concerned with my own affairs, and you are also concerned with your own affairs. That’s life, and if we see each other on the street, let’s get along.
> Facebook and Twitter are a blip in history. Their relevance today pales in comparison to their historic and future relevance. All 233M, scratch that, all billion or two billion or however many of those users have other things to do with their time besides Facebook all day. Facebook in that case is a part of their lives, it is not a replacement for their lives nor what ultimately determines their lives and choices, meaning it does not absolve anyone of personal responsibility for the choices they make.
Why does the past or future matter? Their decisions can impact our democracy now. The fact is, they own the market now and they can impact our democracy now.
Are you in favor of a completely "free" market? You really believe that competition alone will ensure consumers have the final say? What about standard oil? Did that go well? Monopolies and oligopolies strangle out competition and harm the consumer. That is why laws were put in place to prevent those types of things from happening. That is why facebook is being sued by the FTC right now. Their business practices are unfair to competition and are not in the best interest of our society.
> That is correct. We’re not just one big unified hunky dory family all marching towards the same ends and the same future. We’re a bunch of people, with our own interests, and mostly unconcerned with the government and the State until we need to be. Facebook is concerned with making money, I’m concerned with my own affairs, and you are also concerned with your own affairs. That’s life, and if we see each other on the street, let’s get along.
So are you saying we just let facebook do whatever they want until they are replaced by competition? What if that impacts our society negatively for a year? A decade? 100 years? At what point do we step in and enact laws to protect our society from negative consequences?
The point of the government is to be a steward of our society and to ensure it is fair, healthy and prosperous. Laws are put in place to do just that. The content moderation practices of facebook can impact our society. It seems logical to me that the government should enact laws to do the same in this case as it would in other activities detrimental to society (e.g. murder, drunk driving, etc).
> The point of the government is to be a steward of our society and to ensure it is fair, healthy and prosperous
This is your understanding of government, and it is a paternalistic understanding of government. I do not share this view and that is a source of contention between us.
> Why does the past or future matter? Their decisions can impact our democracy now. The fact is, they own the market now and they can impact our democracy now.
They own some of the servers people spend some of their time and do some of their communication on. Everything from Netflix to POTS is their competition, and Facebook does not have a monopoly on community.
> So are you saying we just let facebook do whatever they want until they are replaced by competition? What if that impacts our society negatively for a year? A decade? 100 years? At what point do we step in and enact laws to protect our society from negative consequences?
At what point do we charge people with the responsibility of managing their own time and making their own choices independent of where they choose to spend it and how they choose to socialize and communicate? Our democracy is the countless choices people make every day, at the ballot box, in the courts, and how we live with our communities. Facebook is an option.
Whatever relative power Facebook holds today, has held in the past and will hold in the future is a consequence of the choices of billions of individuals, but power has its own economy that competes against power for varying outcomes. Power, no matter how concentrated, does not exist in a vacuum.
The pricing for this is ridiculous. Far easier to just unsubscribe + report to spam + set a filter if that doesn't work. This takes almost no time for me currently because I unsubscribe diligently.
