[stickfigure]

What exactly do you want the government to do about, say, Facebook? Split it up? Which half of your social network goes to which part?

This idea of "government should do something!" just stokes outrage. It's not constructive. Propose something, and you'll find that the devil is in those details. Laws? Which laws? Apply them how? Those laws are not as clear or useful as you seem to think.

[bobthepanda]

We need to blow the gates open and mandate that

1) a person has the right to export their data and receive it in a usable format 2) a person has the right to use this exported data and give it to a competitor

There is no reason why switching between, say, Spotify, Google Play Music, Apple Music, and Amazon Music should be any harder than switching a cell phone carrier. Imagine how much faster Myspace or Digg would've imploded if you could just export to a competitor with a click of a button.

[tensor]

You can switch today by just cancelling one service and signing up for another. If, however, you are suggesting that somehow your internal "profile" of likes can be easily moved, then you should first learn a little bit about how these services work.

Each uses internal IP, unique to them, that won't work with a competitors technology even if they could get access to it. And of course that ignores all the issues of trade secrets and patents that your suggestion would bring up.

You can switch cell phone carriers because of a few very simple standards. But when you do you are not taking the majority of data about you. You are only taking your number.

I also challenge that all of this data is "your data." Let's take hacker news as an example. What is "your data"? Your username, passwords, comments, those all seem pretty clear. But what about your upvotes and reports? Is that your data? An upvote involves you, but also someone else's comment or story, so it's hard to argue that it's yours alone to do with as you please. Also, what about website log data? Is that your data? Logs about web requests that you make are definitely trigger by an action of yours, but the log message itself is produced by ycombinator software, so why should you get to "own" it?

[stickfigure]

I'm pretty sympathetic to this! But for the most part you pretty much can? AFAICT Google Takeout lets you download pretty much everything.

The only big controversy I'm aware of is trying to download your social graph from Facebook. You can't even export your friends' email addresses! But... this was a big controversy a few years ago when Google was pissed that Facebook would import all your Gmail addresses but FB wouldn't let them be exported back out. It seems like the privacy advocates argued Facebook's side of this.

You can have data portability, or you can keep data private. Without crazy DRM schemes, you can't have both.

[pllbnk]

The legislature doesn't have to come up with every minuscule detail because it is impossible to have a detailed plan which would make all sides happy. They only have to come up with a certain sane law and then let the companies figure out how to best execute to stay alive and well with the help of the free market. And that's the best thing about it - if there is a demand, the split companies will stay alive but their reduced size will also allow for the competition to come into the market. I don't worry a little bit that some destructive anti-monopoly government action would cause any high-demand market area to stay empty in the free market economy. And needless to say, it is also better for consumers.

[keiferski]

1. Facebook is vastly more than just their website. For starters, they own two of the other most popular messaging/social media entities: WhatsApp and Instagram.

2. There are plenty of antitrust laws on the books from the early 1900s.

[esotericn]

The obvious examples are Instagram and WhatsApp.

Over the years Facebook have acquired over fifty lesser known companies.

[mortenjorck]

> Which half of your social network goes to which part?

For starters, the part of my social network on Whatsapp can spin off to Whatsapp, and the part of my social network on Instagram can spin off to Instagram.

[darkerside]

This is utterly wishful thinking, but I wish we had a technically literate government that could help foster technical solutions, without necessarily building them.

Example: personal data format standards, making it simple to export your data from one platform to another,

Another example: regular vertical spread of data companies, so they can collect but not utilize, and you must be notified of anything sold about you (e.g. inclusion on an email list)

[kopo]

Don't show people their like counts or delay it. Provide noprocast settings like HN. That's all they have to do.

[stickfigure]

I'm... kinda bewildered by this.

Honest questions:

Do you think FB users want to have their like counts hidden or delayed? If yes - what evidence? And if no, are you saying that you want legislation that changes FB to work in a way that neither FB nor its users want? How do you justify that?

Do you think noprocrast would change anything about Facebook? Would anyone use it? Can't you just make a chrome extension that does that and see if anyone is interested? For that matter, do you have evidence that a statistically significant part of the HN audience uses noprocrast?

[kopo]

You asked for suggestions that didn't involve outrage and I gave you some.

These are suggestion that have been around for a long time and even Jack Dorsey from Twitter and Tim Cook from Apple have bought it up recently.

Facebook's creates hundreds of unintended consequences. The suggestions I mentioned just addressed two specific issues - addiction and the spread of ignorance/fakenews/bad info (nuclear chain reactions require control rods same with viral info). Especially dangerous in countries where most of the population is too illeterate to counter it.

Look up Tristan Harris former Googler humanetech website and you will find many more human thought and behaviour effecting dark patterns that social media sites use that need to be addressed.

Ideally we need a bug tracker for social issues being generated in the same way we track software issues.

One example of a big problem without a fix that would be at the top of the list is having 14 year olds exposed to the most viral and extreme problems of 35 year olds day in and day out is leading to higher anxiety/depression in kids. The EU, Canada and UK have data out on this.

The suggestion for these kind of issues is, mandating such a "bug tracker" increases awareness. The regulations are being worked on.

[skh]

There are lots of cases where a significant portion of the populace wants something that is bad or is opposed to something that is good. Government is supposed to look out for the greater good. We can't just say that people want X so we ought to allow it. Similarly we can't just let government ban/endorse whatever it wants.

I think it's clear that Facebook on the whole has detrimental effects on society. It does have benefits for people but it has very bad negative consequences for society. Therein is the conundrum. I have no solutions to the problem but also won't discount regulations on Facebook simply because people like certain features.

[stickfigure]

We can't just say that people want X so we ought to allow it.

Who's "we"?

At least here in the US, >60% of the voting public are Facebook users. So we're not talking about "a significant portion" - we're talking about the majority. You sound an awful lot like someone trying to claim that "you know what's best for us".

I think it's clear that Facebook on the whole has detrimental effects on society.

I don't think this is clear at all. Rigorous evidence please! And not "oh look this bad thing happened" - because if that's the standard of evidence then we should ban cellphones, airplanes, riding lawn mowers, and chewing gum.

[skh]

I sound like someone who recognizes that there are circumstances in which the majority ought not get their will satisfied and that there are circumstances in which the majority will ought to be satisfied. I’m someone who recognizes that merely stating that the majority wills it so is not sufficient reasoning.

My post was pointing out a flaw in your stated reasoning. Specifically your over reliance on the fact that the majority wants it without any supporting arguments that this is a case in which the majority will ought to prevail. I was not taking a position on any issue. I’m certain that if you were sufficiently interested in the topic you could find studies showing detrimental effects of Facebook. A search engine will provide you with links.

The “we” is obviously society.