[whatshisface]

Here are some points I notice about this whole thing:

- Facebook has stated (in the press release the article is reporting on) that they support regulation. This is typical for large market incumbents, who have been said to always support fixed-overhead regulation, because it hurts smaller competitors more than it hurts them.

- Washington loves regulating things and can be safely assumed to be pro-policy in most cases. More to the point, incumbents today are far more concerned about the possibility of being blindsided in their campaigns by maneuvers on a platform their own team doesn't know how to work with, than they are about the difficult to quantify pros and cons of balancing antitrust and libertarian policy. You'd expect them to be pro-regulation on average, if it reduces the importance of the internet in running campaigns.

- The public is not presently pro-regulation and nobody really knows what form the regulations should take.

So in a nutshell, everyone who's powerful in this situation wants the same outcome, and all that is left is to convince the public to support a bill which will probably be titled something like "Cyberspeech Freedom Act of 2022." Lobbyists may have already drafted it, and we can expect that well-meaning activists will be swept along by the push and end up supporting something they wouldn't like if they fully understood what it was.

[busterarm]

100% share your take on the subject.

Additionally, reading the whistleblower's account and her opinions/goals struck me as an incredibly naive way of thinking...although I think she may be genuine (she's my age and I have many peers like her).

What kind of organization respects the value of complete top-down organizational change initiated by rank and file members of the company? Who would think an organization would give them that kind of power? The role that she was hired for seems destined to give her no resources to accomplish the stated goals; we saw something similar but on a much smaller scale with Basecamp.

I know a lot of my peers believe in the power to make sweeping organizational changes like that, but it's "fucking with other peoples' money". To me the whole situation seems like the setup to a bad joke.

Facebook doesn't have to do much to smear her in my eyes because she already strikes me as a ridiculous person. That said, Facebook is similarly ridiculous for hiring people with causes in direct opposition to how they do business and giving everyone in the company unfettered access to damaging internal information.

[whatshisface]

Focusing too much on the personality of the whistleblower is in a sense getting sucked into the celebrity drama hole that will always take us away from consideration of the real issue.

In fact, I think being taken away from consideration of the real issue is a major consequence of the way this is being approached: nobody can debate with the obvious truth that teenagers are getting a little too sucked in to the fake world of influencers, and right now we're not discussing it, ironically.

[busterarm]

Again, I agree with you on this point as well and it's got my spidey-senses tingling like crazy that the whole thing is a work.

I've long been in the ban social media completely camp. It's a tool too dangerous for use by regular people.

[whatshisface]

Well, let's not fall prey to thinking that we, in doing what we are doing right now (talking on the internet), are too much smarter or less corruptible than most of our fellow man, including those of our fellows who spend too much time doom scrolling.

[FFRefresh]

Nice analysis. I'm certainly not suggesting that this is a coordinated campaign by FB without evidence to suggest it, but the net result of these viral news events could be FB getting the regulation that they want.

If one did want to coordinate such a campaign, there's a certain society-wide informational/narrative vulnerability that makes such a campaign potentially attractive:

-You have a public who loves latching onto 'good vs evil', 'david vs goliath' stories, and in this meta-narrative, we the public shall vanquish the evil goliath by any means necessary!

-We also have a public who at large isn't terribly interested in questioning their own biases, thinking through the higher abstract principles at play, thinking through externalities from vanquishing said evil, and in general going against the grain in these 'good vs evil' battles

-You have a news media environment who profits off such engaging meta-narratives and stories, and is more than willing to push these stories out into the public

-The companies and their employees in the news media environment also have their own in-house biases against certain 'villians' such as FB, which further incentives the spread of such stories and meta-narratives. FB has been a competitive threat to media companies. FB has also done or been accused of things which have frustrated media employees of all political persuasions.

FB is a perfect villian in this meta-narrative, regardless of any of the facts at play. They know it too.

[whatshisface]

There's no need for coordination when every participant independently desires a similar outcome.

[xqcgrek2]

It is certainly coordinated. Several of the parties involved are influential and have a PR record in Democratic politics.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftis...

[mthoms]

I hope you realize the irony of posting smears of a whistleblower to the comment section of an article that decries smearing whistleblowers.

Do you have anything to say about the substance of the revelations? Or just want to interject irrelevant BS about her personal life?

[smoldesu]

The Hacker News crowd doesn't like to hear this, but it's definitely looking like the case as each day passes. If everything we know about domestic surveillance and PRISM is true, the path of least resistance would be to ratify their control. I can hear a lot of "so whats" in the audience, but this would be unprecedented. The United States would now be able to advance their control over the global internet with total impunity, and the results... are harrowing to imagine.

[SquishyPanda23]

> The public is not presently pro-regulation and nobody really knows what form the regulations should take.

A majority of Americans support regulation of big tech https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/20/56-of-ameri...

[ceejayoz]

Sure, but within that majority, they support vastly different concepts of regulation.

It's like asking "do you think the government should do something about abortion?" Banning it and enshrining it as a right are both "doing something", but the two groups are unlikely to see themselves as agreeing with each other.

[Hokusai]

> The public is not presently pro-regulation

I guess that this is true for the USA. But Facebook is a global company and other countries may be more regulation friendly.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

> because it hurts smaller competitors more than it hurts them

Is this always true? I always thought that these companies do want to fix themselves but fixing yourself when your competition won't means that you lose. Regulation helps force everyone to fix themselves.

[cratermoon]

Regulatory capture and barriers to market entry. See, for comparison, Intuit. https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

I'm aware. I'm asking if this is always the case.

[kwertyoowiyop]

It’s laughable for Facebook to point at Congress now and say it’s their fault for not acting, when they know darn well that if there’s one thing Congress is incapable of doing, it’s “acting.”

[shadilay]

This seems to be a case of tech monopolies usurping power from the traditional power brokers who are now pushing back demanding to be put in charge again.