[ijonas]

Very simple. Facebook is a company. You can legislate laws that determine what companies are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do. Particularly if it concerns financial instruments.

A "ban" doesn't need to be technological.

[mrtksn]

How do you stop people obtaining it and using it through their buddies on the internet? Is libra tied to an account like game money? AFAIK it's a cryptocurrency? Haven't looked at the details but cryptocurrency implies it stays on some distributed ladger and no 3rd parties have control over the transactions. Isn't that the case?

[freddie_mercury]

I'm not sure why you think this is so hard?

You pass a law. Most people don't break the law.

You make it illegal for banks to transfer to known Libra things. You audit people. You apply big fines.

Murder is illegal but that doesn't mean nobody can commit murder.

[nextlevelwizard]

Murder is also immoral.

Libra is hardly morally questionable. If you want a better comparison take (software) piracy.

Piracy is illegal and while I'm sure Steam, Spotify, and Netflix has reduced it a lot it is still thriving and many people break the law if not daily at least monthly.

Best thing you can do is to make a law that forces banks to prevent payments to known Libra sellers, but again if there is value in Libra this hardly makes a difference.

For one unless there is official list of every entity that sells them and they get instantly blocked you could just buy them before they get blocked. Secondly you could just use PayPal to transfer the money (first to your PayPal wallet and then to the seller), EU is not crazy enough to block PayPal without an alternative in sight.

Secondly take any gray-market on the Internet. On these markets you can already use a range of payment methods starting with freaking Starbucks Gift Cards to just plain old cash.

Yes, yes, just like most laws it will keep the honest people honest and we can assume that at least in the start that will be most of the population, but such a law would be so trivial to bypass that if there is any benefit of having some Libra people will have it and outside of completely breaking privacy of EU citizens there is nothing they can do about it.

[gjulianm]

Using Libra is morally questionable as you're giving away currency and economy control to a bunch of private entities motivated by profit and accountable to no one.

>Best thing you can do is to make a law that forces banks to prevent payments to known Libra sellers, but again if there is value in Libra this hardly makes a difference.

It does make a gigantic difference. They don't need to ban all of the Libra exchanges, just the big and knowledgeable ones, and go around banning anything that goes too big, so that people who want to retrieve EUR from Libra need to search a lot and comb through exchanges to see who's trustworthy. That makes using Libra a hassle, and if there's not a lot of adoption of Libra and it doesn't reach a critical mass, the currency becomes useless.

> if there is any benefit of having some Libra people will have it

That's a big if.

[nextlevelwizard]

>It does make a gigantic difference.

You skipped the part where I detail how underground markets already get past this. To reiterate here: banks can ban money transfers to the biggest exchange, but people can simply use PayPal, Bitcoin, Cash, or even gift cards to transfer the money.

Sure this will drop the most casual of users off, but again if there is value in Libra that hardly matters.

>That's a big if.

You need to realize that because someone is poking holes in what you believe doesn't mean they are completely against you. I have and probably will not advocate for anyone to use Libra. I have no Libra and I probably never will have any. I don't trade with any currency, I'm only interested in Bitcoin and other blockchain currencies as technology enthusiast.

I feel like people on the Internet often forget that the world isn't black and white. Just because I don't agree with one of your views doesn't mean I don't agree with the rest.

[freddie_mercury]

The US outlawed gold at one point. Holding gold is clearly not immoral. Yet almost everyone handed their gold over to the government.

[nextlevelwizard]

I fail to see relevancy here. If a physical good is made illegal to own and trade most people can not do anything about it. You'd have to smuggle the goods out of the country or find someone who is willing to take that risk. Most people simply do not have resources to do this.

With digital goods such restrictions aren't nearly as big of an issue. You can trade (semi-)anonymously with very little fear of getting caught. You can easily disguise your country of origin and even hold the money off shore, all of which would have required a lot of capital to setup with actual gold in the 1930s.

[lapnitnelav]

If murder is immoral, what are death penalty and soldiers killing other soldiers (when it's not civilians)?

Besides the context (and the legal aspect), they are the same act, homicide with intent. Their morality seem to be different depending who you ask.

And as for Libra being made illegal, I don't see what value it provides in EU to make it worth breaking the law.

[nextlevelwizard]

>If murder is immoral, what are death penalty and soldiers killing other soldiers (when it's not civilians)?

Death penalty is not moral. How you got this out of my message is beyond me.

Killing enemy soldiers to defend your life or land is justifiable. They are trying to destroy you. But I guess this is weird from American point of view (I'm just assuming since I don't think anywhere else has death penalty still in use and other countries haven't been involved in war in foreign countries for past two decades), but killing people who don't look like you in their own land because they are firing at you because you have invaded them is actually immoral in more ways than one.

[atq2119]

Many, probably most people would argue that the death penalty is immoral. Similarly, soldiers killing soldiers is generally seen as immoral unless it happens as part of a genuine war of defense. On both accounts you can twist the numbers using framing, but there's really no inconsistency here.

[pjc50]

It's Facebook. If we were talking about a privacy-conscious system, maybe, but it's guaranteed to be the opposite. Facebook wouldn't do something like this without tying it to the user's FB account.

[mrtksn]

If Libra becomes a thing, I would guess people will start selling things with it and Europeans will sell their services with Libra if Americans ell their services with Libra.

Maybe in Germany, most people will stay away from it but in Bulgaria, Spain, Italy etc. - in places where people are more "relaxed" about the law enforcement will not miss business opportunities just because their rich neighbours can afford to miss it.

If audits materialize they, the users will simply set-up or use proxies to deal with it. Someone in the USA will set-up an Libra-Bitcoin-Euro-USD exchange for example and the transactions will go through these. I can already see an Ukrainian-Russian-Bulgarian-Romanian-Turkish partnerships to run these operations. Europe is a mess, laws and enfrcement capacity is very different in every country and countries are in multiple clubs(in EU, in EEA, in customs union, in Eurozone, in schengen, not in EU but confirms to EU, not in Eurozone but the currency is pegged to Euro, in EU but not NATO, in NATO but not in the EU. It doesn't have an end) giving differnt rights and different obligations to people in each country and even messier when they are not in their own country or hold multiple citizenships.

[tastroder]

I'm one of these European users. An American shop only offering payments via Libra would end up the same fate as American shops that don't offer PayPal or another convenient payment method do right now. Why would I even remotely want this? These crypto threads make it out like it's the second coming, we have a more or less functioning financial system and even if it's broken I would not trust Facebook of all companies to offer up a better, global, alternative.

The forming of a financial underworld in the Eurozone is pretty doubtful in my mind. Sure, enforcement varies country by country but if this would get a big enough problem we also have international efforts in the EU to get rid of it. Worst case somebody gets a data dump in lieu of Swiss tax evasion dumps on CDs a few years in and the laws against it get even stricter.

[mrtksn]

I would imagine machines doing the transactions. For example, a market for game characters where you buy and sell characters where the systems automatically keep tabs and handle the transactions without the friction of large bureaucratic institutions like banks.

[orbifold]

Just require people to provide a valid ID to Facebook in order to use it. Shouldn't be too hard to enfore, at least in the EU your phone number is tied to your passport.

[mrtksn]

>at least in the EU your phone number is tied to your passport

Not true. It depends on the country, in the UK you can buy SIM cards from wending machines that work straight out of the package and it's not he only country that does not require ID for SIM cards.

Anyway, even if your identity is tied to your Facebook account, what stops you from creating an American or a Filipino Facebook account? Phone number? You can buy a phone number online. You can also buy a verified Facebook account too.

Let's say that Facebook somehow starts operating as strict as a governmental body and checks everything, what stops you from buying Libra from an American or a Mexican? I haven't checked the details but this Libra thing doesn sound like Steam game money but like cryptocurrency, so they probably cannot do whatever they want just like that.

[thinkloop]

Yes but so is weed and downloading pirated movies, poster is asking how it could be more like murder than mp3's.

[SanchoPanda]

You tell Facebook that if a French national is offered Libra you will fine them. If they complain they don't have the tech to prevent that. You fine them anyway.

The theme here is that Facebook has lost the trust of too many important people, and maybe they just want to hurt what looks like another enormous American tech company that has been too careless and too aggressive.

[CaptainZapp]

If they complain that they're not able to identify who lives in France you bring the hammer of the law down; hard!

They would just have conclusively proven that they ignore KYC regulations and are running the biggest money laundring operation ever

[alacombe]

French citizen (even with French addresses) are not prohibited to do things which would be illegal in France but legal where they currently reside. So KYC is utterly useless in this case.

[kazen44]

why would people want to use libra? Especially if the currency is declared illegal to use inside the EU/Eurozone.

Let's not forget that the euro is a stable currency compared to most other markets libra wants to compete in (the developing world). What is in it for me as a consumer? Atleast the Eurozone has rules in place to protect my savings (up to 10.000 euro[0]).

Libra brings nothing to the table in terms of transaction speed or costs either (for the consumer atleast).

1 https://www.ecb.europa.eu/explainers/tell-me-more/html/depos...

[pjc50]

People who want to buy drugs over the internet, but using their real name facebook account?

(No, I don't get it either)

[shakna]

> Haven't looked at the details but cryptocurrency implies it stays on some distributed ladger and no 3rd parties have control over the transactions. Isn't that the case?

Not quite, in the case of Libra. Only a handful of companies control the nodes. Which makes it relatively easy to enforce a ban.

[alacombe]

That's completely false. Today, you don't need to interact with the NYSE to buy stock listed in the NYSE. There is plenty on intermediaries providing the service for a fee.

[shakna]

If the half dozen nodes are required to block payments originating from a nation, then it would require illegal middlemen to accomplish that, and they can continually be shut down.

[NeedMoreTea]

Same as banks have to inform tax or money laundering authorities when certain types of transactions take place, you require any French bank to notify the currency crime unit of a transaction from a known Libra exchange. Maybe you fine the bank for accepting the transaction without proof it was a legal cryptocurrency.

[remcob]

AFAIK, the Libra design is very centralized (which follows from the throughput requirements). All usage of it would be through Facebook's servers. So that would be where you can implement any censorship.

[pjmlp]

You make its use a criminal charge.

[mrtksn]

I'm sure that they keep spare guillotines around but I'm not sure that it would be a popular thing to punish random Louis libra user for his few hundres Euro transaction when Facebook is paying less in taxes than him, figuratively speaking.

[pjmlp]

Really?

Sadly it is not uncommon to see people going to jail for stealing a few chicken because they were hungry, while many company owners and politicians hardly face any jail time for their proven corruption affairs.

Being popular and law seldom come hand in hand.

[mrtksn]

Stealing a chicken is very different from using something. Stealing chicken is no doubt immoral for most people but punishing the usage of something that Americans can use will not fly unless the USA becomes the arch-enemy and using Libra is perceived as treason and way or unfair enrichment.

Stealing a chicken has a clearly defined victim and stealing, not even piracy or patent infringement is well understood and universally condemned action.

[_r_o_y_]

Tell that to all the people in jail for smoking weed.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> Haven't looked at the details but cryptocurrency implies it stays on some distributed ladger and no 3rd parties have control over the transactions. Isn't that the case?

It's about time we all disabused ourselves of the libertarian utopian dream that just because cryptocurrency is on a distributed ledger than governments can't control it. "How do you stop people obtaining it and using it through their buddies on the internet" - quite simply, by telling them they'd go to jail, or get a hefty fine, for doing that.

Companies are even easier to control than people because their whole existence is made possible by laws and regulations of governments.

[primroot]

> Companies are even easier to control than people because their whole existence is made possible by laws and regulations of governments.

And this is how we know the "small government" slogan is an absolute sham.

[drchaos]

> "How do you stop people obtaining it and using it through their buddies on the internet" - quite simply, by telling them they'd go to jail, or get a hefty fine, for doing that.

That method does not work very well for e.g. weed.

[kerng]

Facebook can't prevent people from using it via fake profiles, etc. that have the intent to bypass things. Unless we want Facebook profiles to always be official profiles (validated via government ID) - which the government would like.

France and Germany can entertain IP blocking these services and put laws in place for citizens to not use it. Interestingly though, this is exactly what a free country should not do I guess.

[gjulianm]

Unless a full economy develops under Libra, people will want to convert their Libra to Euros. So you ban the exchanges from operating in your country and force banks to reject any transfers from them. Make using Libra hard enough that most potential users are discouraged, and with low adoption the currency becomes useless.

> Interestingly though, this is exactly what a free country should not do I guess.

I think a free country should be able to put restrictions in place to avoid foreign profit-driven corporations to interfere and manipulate their economy.

[alacombe]

France and Germany are not "the Euro" and IIRC can't decide on their own on EU monetary policies. If they were, we wouldn't be far from the colonial era.