Treat Facebook like something between a telco and a newspaper, says Zuckerberg

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-security-facebook/treat-us-like-something-between-a-telco-and-a-newspaper-says-facebooks-zuckerberg-idUSKBN2090MA

by notlukesky • 6 years ago

74 78 6 years ago

reuters.com

notlukesky• 6 years ago

A brilliant suggestion by Mark Zuckerberg. Rules, regulations and compliance are a burden and a barrier to entry for startups and competition. In most countries there are only a couple of regulated telcos.

Imagine with the tech landscape and how many fewer companies there will be if it is regulated like telcos.

Governments and regulators will have a bigger say in picking winners and losers.

thulecitizen• 6 years ago

"Hero myths like the ones surrounding Musk and Jobs are damaging in other ways, too. If tech leaders are seen primarily as singular, lone achievers, it is easier for them to extract disproportionate wealth. It is also harder to get their companies to accept that they should return some of their profits to agencies like NASA and the National Science Foundation through higher taxes or simply less tax dodging.

And finally, technology hero worship tends to distort our visions of the future. Why should governments do the hard work of fixing and expanding California’s mass transit system when Musk says we could zip people across the state at 760 miles per hour in a “hyperloop”? Is trying to colonize Mars, at a cost in the billions of dollars, actually the right direction for future space exploration and scientific research? We should be able to determine long-term technology priorities without giving excessive weight to the particular visions of a few tech celebrities.

Rather than placing tech leaders on a pedestal, we should put their successes in context, acknowledging the role of government not only as a supporter of basic science but as a partner for new ventures. Otherwise, it is all too easy to denigrate public-sector investment, eroding support for government agencies and training programs and ultimately putting future innovation at risk. As Mazzucato puts it, “It’s precisely because we admire Musk and think his contributions are important that we need to get real about where his success actually comes from.”"

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539861/techs-enduring-gre...

allears• 6 years ago

Of course Zuck wants you to think he's a utility, essential and ubiquitous like electricity and running water. Absolutely not a predatory and amoral monopolist, no sir.

andrewflnr5• 6 years ago

Those aren't actually contradictory. But anyway, the point of this article is that he's distancing Facebook from the "utility" category, not trying to join it.

ericd• 6 years ago

Well, utility also means "incredibly heavily regulated".

v7x• 6 years ago

So long as certain content (that is not restricted by external forces, i.e. the law) is prohibited from the platform, I fail to see why they should be considered anything other than a publisher. If the platform can only be used for content they approve of, they can't be defined as anything else.

andrewflnr5• 6 years ago

I think the "default allow" of a social media platform is materially different from the "default deny" of a typical publisher. That's kind of tricky to build a sharp distinction on, but it's where I would start.

snisarenko• 6 years ago

I think the issue is more nuanced than you think. I understand where you are coming from.

BUT

By your own logic, hackernews should be treated as a publisher, and not a platform.

Hackenews is a forum where the moderators restrict discussion to specific topics to keep discussion high quality. But I consider them a platform and not a publisher.

Or for example a car discussion forum, bans anyone who wants to discuss airplanes. Again, I would still consider them a platform and not a publisher.

contingencies• 6 years ago

Just think of how many lawyer and PR dollars came up with this PR / regulatory relations strategy.

andrewflnr5• 6 years ago

We might disagree with Zuckerberg about the specific consequences, but as far as the headline goes he's mostly right. Social media is a new thing, and trying to use existing regulatory frameworks for it, like those for telcos and newspapers, will lead to us all having a bad time.

Where I disagree, or at least am uncertain, is that the right regulatory framework for social media lies on some kind of straight line between the two others mentioned. In particular, those are both pretty heavyweight, and I don't want any real obstacles for new competitors or people just running a phpBB.

csydas• 6 years ago

Can you elaborate a bit on how anyone "but" Facebook has a bad time by applying the existing regulatory frameworks? You mention itsy-bitsy start-up boards, but really none of the concerns being address in courts world wide have anything to do with minor boards and everything to do with Facebook's lack of control over their advertisers, the amount of information being shared out to said advertisers, their position as a news platform (upon Facebook's own insistence) plus their lack of vetting (keep in mind, this isn't about them generating content or user posted content, it's about Facebook's algorithms purposefully promoting this content; this is much different than some nutcase spinning up a site on a VM somewhere an trying to SEO as much as they can to get some attention from random google searches on hot-topic subjects).

Social media walks a strange line where it seems that its proponents both want to be treated as legitimate news, but not held to the same standards of veracity and validation of the claims that traditional news sources purport to follow*. Such scrutiny of Facebook isn't a concern for a start up unless they're already engaging in bad-faith practices and/or problematic practices per stringent Privacy Law (i.e., EU law).

Simply put, Facebook can see that their ability to expand past the US strongly (more than it already has) is gated by the public perception of what Facebook is/does. I'm no in the EU proper but close enough and get various Warnings/messages about Facebook from facebook itself...and for me it's empty.

But make no mistake, Facebook really is trying to muddy the waters by pretending that existing legislation targets or directly affects persons who are not engaged in the non-sense which was required before.

andrewflnr5• 6 years ago

I feel that I should not have to justify the idea that applying laws designed around a certain set of assumptions, in a situation that violates those assumptions, is likely to produce bad outcomes. I feel that this should be the default belief. But since you asked so nicely...

The case of treating FB as a telco is obvious: no accountability. I think we're agreed that this is no good.

A news outlet (a) explicitly has their credibility on the line with regard to their output and (b) is very selective in what they publish (for better or worse). Neither of these is really the case for Facebook. For a given link, only the poster's and linkee's credibility is on the line. Facebook defaults to allowing posts, and is only somewhat selective in what it allows and promotes. If this means Facebook is legally equivalent to the New York Times, then so are HN, reddit, Pinterest, etc. Treating FB as a new agency requires all of these sites to take responsibility for the opinions of all of their users. This will discourage medium-sized sites where hand-moderation (doable for small forums) is just becoming infeasible, and more importantly have a chilling effect on people's online activity, because you'll never quite know when the admins of the site you're posting on, or their robotic minions, will panic about your controversial link. Better for them to delete your post just in case they get in trouble with the law, and maybe better for you to not bother and stay silent. This is also no good.

Of course that's just one scenario. Details may differ across the multiverse. But one thing that doesn't change is that basing policy on something other than reality always finds a way to go wrong.

kbenson• 6 years ago

So, treat them as a mash-up between one of the best known monopolies in US history and an industry known for equal parts educating and confusing people? That's both very forthcoming of him and completely terrifying.

The National Enquirer is a newspaper too, and probably the closer analogy to Facebook in reality than more reputable news organizations.

hinkley• 6 years ago

My first thought:

Imagine if William Randolph Heart and Ma Bell had a love child.

DyslexicAtheist• 6 years ago

My first thought:

shall I burn it or wipe my arse with it.

Frqy3• 6 years ago

Treat Facebook like both and apply all the telco and content regulations to them.

One of the key principles in telco regulation is ensuring any-to-any connectivity. It is now established in most jurisdictions that telcos have a monopoly over connecting to their end-customers (i.e. the only was to call a T-mobile customer is for T-mobile to accept the call into their network). Hence regulators not only mandate interconnection, but require it to be done on fair terms and conditions, including a fair wholesale price, which is often set by the regulator.

heartbeats• 6 years ago

Let me guess, he should have the discretion of a newspaper and the freedom from liability of a telco?

MaupitiBlue• 6 years ago

Do whatever the hell you want with FB, Zuck!

Stop worrying about trying to please the PC police and just run the most addictive and profitable BBS you can. Promote whatever you want and shadow ban whatever.

The Europeons may object, but ultimately in the US the political will doesn’t exist to make you do more. A few politicians like Hawley on the right and AOC on the left may have an issue that works for them, but the American majority is going to look pretty skeptically at any significant regulation.

Animats• 6 years ago

I've been reading "Zucked", by McNamee, a VC who was involved with Facebook in the early days and is now one of its harshest critics. Read the book.

bonestamp23• 6 years ago

Treat Facebook like cigarettes, says me.

Suggesting they're a near necessary part of life, like a utility, is laughable. But since he brought it up, replacing them with a proper newspaper would be much more useful.

hi5eyes• 6 years ago

Facebook serves many important roles especially with the groups feature. I know many reddit/tech headasses will jerk off to the fact they abhor facebook but facebook is integral to many local communities helping facilitate an online flea market of sorts and almost being the most important network for students (used textbooks, study groups, entrepreneurship etc.)

dont like it but its much more useful than the local news website

ginko• 6 years ago

Yeah, but I don't see how that's a good thing. Many groups near me have moved exclusively to Facebook meaning I'm essentially locked out from participating in them.

Previously stuff like this would have been organized through a mailing list or maybe a BBS. Facebook taking this over means that you have to allow them spying on you to take part in basic social activities.

threeseed3• 6 years ago

I do love the hypocrisy and lack of self awareness amongst people who criticise Facebook and Instagram on websites like Reddit.

Reddit has some of the most toxic communities on the internet bar none e.g. /r/gamersriseup, /r/kotakuinaction.

tmpz22• 6 years ago

It truly is an excellent place to fence stolen goods!

travisporter• 6 years ago

It’s true and sad it’s come to this. Meetup is great but just doesn’t get the attention FB does. I either have to deal with the inconvenience of two accounts or let my local frisbee team look up my info, friends, any posts FB “resets” privacy settings on on, etc.

hejei00• 6 years ago

It’s just software. There dozens of alternatives: Craigslist, next door, targeting all the things you say

You’ve fallen for exactly Zuckerbergs real goal: make his printing press the only one that matters.

But then his invention isn’t as unique as a physical printing press would have been to a community even just a generation ago.

It’s not as hard to duplicate.

This is where we ended up with forums like this one jacking itself off at how novel it’s Todo app, and IM clone are. So ubiquitous it’s banal, a single example is barely worth the extreme value placed upon it.

This site spent years being mesmerized by the values placed in these companies. It was market manipulation: keep attention on a select few. Government let them become a monopoly of information because they could see the value in distributing their message. Powers that be are always at the cutting edge of information distribution. Not cause they care about tech but propagandizing the public.

And the people cheered it on.

And since you’re so worried about the local value: imagine the local value to tech workers who are hired to deal with local tech needs instead of it being outsourced to FAANGs which can restrict hiring and manipulate wages as they have.

Your post is pure propaganda, mate. You’re regurgitating exactly the talking point they want. Please continue to carry water for the rich man, since he’s so concerned about the local value you highlight... while bailing on taxes that would directly help locals that prop his wealth up by continuing to go to work.

Give me a fucking break.

edgefield0• 6 years ago

Treat it like cancer...

krtong• 6 years ago

If you're referring to social media platforms when you say "treat them like they're cigarettes" just remember you're smoking a pack right now.

bonestamp23• 6 years ago

If Hacker News is a pack of cigarettes, what is Facebook? I mean, this platform itself isn't tracking me across a major portion of the internet or trying to manipulate me to any significant degree relative to Facebook. Maybe some users are, but at least the platform itself isn't. Like any bad habit, some of worse than others.

aabhay• 6 years ago

Isn’t that the very problem with Facebook, that it wants to impartially serve content like a telco, but partially control the content like a newspaper?

type0• 6 years ago

Zuck wants to have cake and eat it too, and now it's as if somehow he'll genetically engineer himself to shit out more cakes for everyone - that's the facebook for ya'll, enjoy it!

sjtindell• 6 years ago

I don’t think Facebook wants to control content, it’s hard, expensive, and hurts their reputation. It’s users and governments complaining that forces them into that game.

amirmc• 6 years ago

Of course FB wants to control content. It helps them increase engagement and also monetise.

npunt• 6 years ago

I think data and metadata is a good analogy. They don't want to control the end content (the data), but want to route users to the content that is engaging (the metadata, aka knowing the users prefs and knowing what content meets those prefs).

Argued to the extreme, there could be infinite variations of content that you could route users to, and the routing algorithm is so good that it effectively 'controls the content' by selecting which exact content to route to, even though technically speaking they are not controlling the content.

This kind of hairsplitting is basically the 'have cake, eat it too' situation.

tal8d2• 6 years ago

I don't think Facebook wants anything, as it is simply an abstract legal concept. Employees and shareholders of Facebook are the ones to watch. They were the first movers on the totally not coordinated Alex Jones shunning. Youtube had previously struck a video or two, but Facebook was the first to bring down the ban hammer. Days later Jones was banned from every other major platform - with Twitter being the single exception.

jayd16• 6 years ago

They do and they have. They already let the genie out. They could reimplemented themselves as a privacy focused dumb pipe but they clearly do not want to do that.

metalgearsolid• 6 years ago

Facebook is really big so lets treat it as such, and look at things piece by piece. Start with treating Facebook's NEWS FEED as a newspaper perhaps, then move on to other problems like hate groups using facebook to organize, marketplace fraud, etc.

Traster• 6 years ago

Shall we go and ask the head of Exxon Mobil what level of regulation he thinks we should enforce for sub-standard engineering practices on oil tankers and oil rigs?

How about next time the policeman stops a drunk driver we ask the drunk driver what BAC would be reasonable for him to be driving with?

officemonkey• 6 years ago

Let's treat Facebook like something between a mental health threat and a propoganda site, said ex-User.

danielrhodes• 6 years ago

Rephrased: Let us have the power of a telco, but with the regulation of a newspaper.

Barrin92• 6 years ago

I'm still not sure why we don't regulate companies like facebook like we did the rail industry. Force facebook and other social media companies to develop an open API and standard and guarantee interoparibility, akin to other federalized networks that already exist.

This takes the biggest anti-competitive aspect of facebook out, the network and walled garden effect they have due to their sheer size.

It will mean that companies like Signal have much greater chance to compete with whatsapp, it will reward whoever provides the best service to their users, and it is relatively light and uncomplicated regulation.

SlowRobotAhead2• 6 years ago

Because you could show a politician a set of incompatible railroad tracks and they would understand the problem. No such luck here.

pochamago• 6 years ago

I'll admit, I just don't think the way we've been regulating social media has been bad. I think perceiving it as a source of news or truth instead of just a place where people talk to each other is weird. I understand that people don't like what some social media sites have become, but outside of removing content that isn't protected by the first amendment, I really don't see why we would want to create regulations surrounding it.

iamleppert• 6 years ago

A phone company doesn’t suggest other phone numbers or people you should be calling, or try and optimize for your engagement on making the most phone calls. A telco company also traditionally does not directly market to users, or sell ads based on the content of their data (voice calls and text messages). So by this test, no, Facebook is nothing like a telco.

chillacy• 6 years ago

That seems to be the point in the article, it's not like a telco. Another thread here points out that it's not like a newspaper either.

In reality it's an entirely new category and applying regulations from the 20th century isn't going to work as well as coming up with entirely new ones to address entirely new problems.

spodek• 6 years ago

How about treating Facebook like an unapologetic monomaniacal psychopath fixated on provoking polarization and undermining communication?

sys_64738• 6 years ago

Zuckerberg is a safe pair of hands. We can trust him with our data.

root_axis• 6 years ago

Treat Facebook like a website. It's just a website. It's not so important that it needs a special designation. I think it makes sense to come up with data and privacy laws that apply to all companies, not just Facebook.

butterfi• 6 years ago

Im going to treat them like the yellow pages, i.e. never use one again and explain what it was to my kids.

picantePepper• 6 years ago

wondering if this could pave the road for treating internet service as a utility too

impalallama• 6 years ago

Newspapers have now accountability.

dntbnmpls• 6 years ago

So he wants all the benefits of being a monopolistic platform without any of the responsibilities and he wants all the benefits of being a publisher without any of the responsibilities. Zuckerburg wants to eat his cake and have it too.

Letting facebook be part telco and part newspaper would make it the greatest propaganda machine in human history - one that is controlled by one person. Hopefully countries will start banning facebook outright soon.

CameronNemo• 6 years ago

Are we just going to pretend that telcos are not heavily entrenched in the entertainment, media, and content publishing industries?

The difference with Zuckerberg is that he is so brazen about the conflict of interest. Goes to show that our antitrust laws are a joke and not taken seriously by anyone in the industry.

mlb_hn2• 6 years ago

Is he wrong?

Like a telco, Facebook allows people to communicate with one another without going through another intermediary. However, it's not one-to-one like your phone, it's one-to-many.

Like a newspaper the messages are broadcast out to everyone that's subscribed to receive them. However, there's limited editorial control by Facebook (except for content breaching their policies).

If we thought of Facebook as a glorified listserv with a pretty UI (and a bunch of tracking cookies and injected ads) would it still seem like it should be treated as a publisher?

celim307• 6 years ago

I’d say Facebook does much more than have limited editorial control. They dictate what you see, malicious Intent or not

kerkeslager• 6 years ago

You're asking questions which nobody should care about, which goes to show how effective it is to make weird pointless statements like the ones Zuckerburg is making. Placing Facebook in a category is a pointless exercise.

The questions that matter are:

1. How is Facebook harming people?

2. How can we stop Facebook from harming people?

nikofeyn• 6 years ago

Hopefully countries will start banning facebook outright soon.

not gonna happen in the u.s. the u.s. government has 99% removed themselves from anti-trust deliberations. i suspect the government is deeply benefiting from facebook's data. in other words, they care about keeping it around.

and in many countries, facebook is the internet, consisting of both user facing applications and the backbone.

lightgreen• 6 years ago

Hopefully countries will start banning facebook outright soon

After living long time in a country where “ban it” is the answer to all the problems (drugs, child abuse, election interference, terrorism, name it) (USSR, and then recent Putin’s Russia) I’m deeply worried about western voters seriously consider banning the solution to all the problems.

If you don’t like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, just make another one, better, safer, fairer.

Split it if you consider it a monopoly. (I’d personally prefer Apple to stop advertising their streaming service using their devices).

Don’t open the door of government censorship. Once opened that door is very hard to close.

mikl• 6 years ago

Of course Facebook wants to have its cake and eat it too.

It would certainly be nice for them if they can claim editorial discretion, without editorial responsibility or transparency. The perfect legal shield. Power without responsibility.

It would be insane to grant them this. This might well be the most important legal question this century.

habeebtc• 6 years ago

Break them up like Ma Bell.

Hold them accountable like News of the World.

Give them the highest scrutiny afforded both platforms. Not the greatest freedoms.

beenBoutIT• 6 years ago

So IOW he's ok with the government breaking Facebook into a bunch of smaller Regional Holding Companies, as it did with the Bell System?

SlowRobotAhead2• 6 years ago

Don’t worry, in 30 years they’ll just coalesce back into the same blob. Maybe sometimes they’ll make a big show out of it, but enough time will have got by for everyone to forget why it happened in the first place.

kats• 6 years ago

I feel like Zuckerberg doesn't get enough credit. I never heard anyone describe Facebook that way, but immediately when I read "something between a telco and a newspaper" I felt like "oh yeah, that makes sense." They clearly offer services that are very telecom-like, and others that are more newspaper-like. They probably also have planned out how being viewed this way would effect them favorably, but it also just makes sense.

solarhoma2• 6 years ago

But the thing is absolutely no one should be using Facebook for their news source.

meowface• 6 years ago

Absolutely. But, this is Zuckerberg's full statement:

I do think that there should be regulation on harmful content ... there’s a question about which framework you use for this.
Right now there are two frameworks that I think people have for existing industries - there’s like newspapers and existing media, and then there’s the telco-type model, which is ‘the data just flows through you’, but you’re not going to hold a telco responsible if someone says something harmful on a phone line.
I actually think where we should be is somewhere in between.

Here is a charitable interpretation: he's considering how it should be regulated, not what the company exactly is or should be. And I think his statement there is correct. In practice, many people do treat Facebook like a sort of newspaper. I definitely think they shouldn't, but it's a fact.

He seems to be saying that, as a result, some kind of regulation similar to newspaper-targeted regulation is necessary. But, at the same time, it's certainly not exactly like a newspaper, where content is produced and published exclusively by the source. Facebook doesn't even explicitly curate content (or so they claim), let alone create it; they try to let curation occur automatically through algorithms.

This absolutely may be a duplicitous attempt at humility on his part, but, regardless of the underlying intent, I think his public message is that Facebook is in a unique position where it can influence a lot of people to believe certain claims and ostensible facts like a newspaper would, and yet is not an author of content in the way a newspaper is. I think he's trying to allude to the additional responsibility they have and the risk they pose which telcos don't share, and that there's a need to regulate them more strictly than telcos as a result. He's saying they're a telco that should be treated with some of the regulatory gravity of a newspaper, rather than that they're a newspaper that should be treated like a telco.

So I think people are kind of interpreting it in reverse. He's trying to sound humble and accountable - perhaps to misleadingly deflect from his probable true personal belief that they should have as minimal regulation as humanly possible - rather than arrogantly proclaiming they should be immune from regulation. (One can't rule out the possibility that he's being sincere, but of course that's not exactly his reputation.)

tl;dr I think he's likely being sneaky rather than shameless.

dana321• 6 years ago

Its more like a huge building with cameras everywhere watching what you do, with you walking around with a huge sign with your real name on it, your likes and what you have shared. People in far away lands are paid to watch the cameras to make sure what is posted does not violate the building's terms of services.

The building's walls have boards everywhere, some of them move upwards in a continuous loop on a conveyor so you can stare at them, then stop them once you see something interesting, open the ducket contained. They make money by gluing sponsored ads in-between, that you must pay for.

You can see a copy of any other person's board in a small envelope next to each person's name.

There are also rooms called "groups" you can go into but some of them are private and you must answer 3 questions to get in.

Would make an interesting art exhibit recreating Facebook into a physical form, well.. er. The closest thing i can think of is a library..

Its a bit dystopian when you think about the first line i wrote, about the cameras watching everyone. But, its needed to stop horrible things getting posted.

rblion• 6 years ago

I see it a mix of Big Brother, the Galactic Empire, and the Eye of Zuckron.

Treat Facebook like something between a telco and a newspaper, says Zuckerberg

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