[fleddr]

Not seeing any "character assassination" in any of the quotes. None of Facebook's defense lines, low quality as they may be, seem overly personal.

For the record, I fully side with the whistleblower's claims. It's just that this article is very emotional, and could have been so much more. This is a fascinating quote the author failed to address fully:

"Facebook PR: “Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet. It’s been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act."

Facebook has a point here. We don't even know what Facebook is. A media company? A news organization? A shop? A dating site? And if it does all of these things, and does so at planetary scale, is has the potential to do harm to big parts of the world, in countless ways. Yet there's pretty much zero rules.

I think we vastly underestimate how complicated the balancing act is. If Instagram does mental harm to teenage girls, whilst this very likely was not the original intent, what exactly is the "correct" course of action, in a way codified in law? Should it be forbidden for other girls (influencers) to broadcast their beauty lifestyle? Should there be a maximum time cap for consumers to browse the feed? The China way? Should influencers just be deplatformed if we don't like them, taking away their income?

None of these rules or laws seem very plausible or sane to me, and this is just one example of how Facebook can do harm.

Anyway, to end constructively, I'd say a first step is to force Facebook to give full access to its underlying (anonymized) data. If we've created a planetary-scale monster, we should treat it as a special case.

[cherrycherry98]

Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing for regulation for years. He wants this for two reasons:

1. Abdicating responsibility so that when the public or politicians complain about Facebook hosting or not hosting some content he can say it's not his problem, he follows the law.

2. The second is for regulatory capture. Once a social network gets a stigma of being uncool, people move on to the next thing. His status and net worth are tied up in an entity he must aggressively defend against becoming the next MySpace. If he can't buy out upstarts anymore because of antitrust then the next best protection is to make it so difficult to build a new network without a team of lawyers and moderators that no one would even think about doing it.

[scotuswroteus]

Mark Zuckerberg has also been opposing regulation for years, which means you need to qualify your statement: Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing for his preferred regulation as the only regulation, for years. That's nice. Me too. Neither serves the country.

[adolph]

> Abdicating responsibility

Is it avoidance or asking for a democratic process to provide guidance? For example, yes automakers did push for a lot of rulemaking that cemented the car's position in transportation and yes a rule about driving on the left or right side is better decided by the community of drivers represented by their government, not GM alone.

[fleddr]

Good points. I violently agree that regulation favors Big Tech, instead of harm them.

But I still believe there's a category of societal issues that are extremely hard to codify into rules, even if Facebook would be morally sound. It would still be hard or impossible.

[fleddr]

I forgot to add one important part: guess which company will be uniquely capable to comply with whatever regulation comes up with?

You guessed correctly.

Guess whom can't comply? Indeed, everybody else. That's why they welcome regulation.

[angelzen]

> We don't even know what Facebook is. A media company? A news organization? A shop? A dating site?

Facebook is an entity that controls the information flow reaching its users and shapes it in the interest of the highest bidder.