Senate Democrat Floats First Serious Proposals For Regulating Big Tech (gizmodo.com) 223
On Monday, Senator Mark Warner published 20 proposals on how to regulate big tech platforms. What's interesting is that none of the proposals call for breaking up the pseudo-monopolies. Instead, they aim to start a substantive debate by laying out different paths to address problems posed by the platforms. Gizmodo reports: What may be more important than the individual proposals themselves is that the document is at least trying to organize a holistic way of thinking about the issues now on the table. It breaks down the areas that need addressing into the promotion of disinformation, privacy and consumer protection, and ensuring competition in the marketplace. Just to highlight a few of the good issues on the table, the white paper blessedly brings the conversation back to privacy and data ownership -- something that seems to have been lost as the conversation has turned to content moderation. The easiest recommendation is to implement what it calls "GDPR-like" data protection legislation that would give Americans similar data rights as EU citizens gained in May. The jury is still out on the long-term consequences of those reforms, but they require greater transparency and consent for a company's terms of service, along with many more tools for keeping track of what information a company collects on you.
On the competition side of things, the proposal suggests a data-transparency bill that would give users a more granular idea of how their data is being used and how much its worth to an individual platform. One concern it addresses is that platforms expand how they monetize a person's data while the user is often unaware of how much they're actually giving up, value-wise, when they agree to hand over their data in exchange for a particular service. Another benefit would be that regulators would have a better idea of what they're evaluating in antitrust enforcement cases. The proposals relating to disinformation are a little more worrisome. A requirement that platforms "clearly and conspicuously label bots" wouldn't be so bad, but it's a daunting task and opens up the potential for false positives. Likewise, demanding networks identify a user's true identity is unrealistic, and the option of anonymity online should be protected. Axios was first to publish the list of 20 proposals compiled by Warner's staff. Is there a proposal that resonates with you? If not, how would you regulate the Big Tech platforms?
On the competition side of things, the proposal suggests a data-transparency bill that would give users a more granular idea of how their data is being used and how much its worth to an individual platform. One concern it addresses is that platforms expand how they monetize a person's data while the user is often unaware of how much they're actually giving up, value-wise, when they agree to hand over their data in exchange for a particular service. Another benefit would be that regulators would have a better idea of what they're evaluating in antitrust enforcement cases. The proposals relating to disinformation are a little more worrisome. A requirement that platforms "clearly and conspicuously label bots" wouldn't be so bad, but it's a daunting task and opens up the potential for false positives. Likewise, demanding networks identify a user's true identity is unrealistic, and the option of anonymity online should be protected. Axios was first to publish the list of 20 proposals compiled by Warner's staff. Is there a proposal that resonates with you? If not, how would you regulate the Big Tech platforms?
What? (Score:4, Interesting)
What? Perhaps you mean oligopoly?
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"What? Perhaps you mean oligopoly?"
They mean the internet breaks accountability between buyer and seller, aka high speed internet allowed videogame companies to defraud gamers and deprive them of ownership rights. Before high speed internet they had to release the full game to you complete, after they keep part of the game files on their computers. Customers can't defend themselves from these practices because they are hundreds of miles away. AKA companies can force loss of privacy because of the forced
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
An oligopoly (or duopoly) implies there are several (or two) vendors I can choose among. However, because of vertical integration and lock in, each actually acts more like a monopoly because the cost of switching OSes on your phone/computer are so high.
In other words, with a Ford, nothing stops me from buying a Chevy, or a Tesla, other than brand loyalty and relationships. Maybe, maybe, maybe, if I stockpiled parts. If I buy a ticket on United, there's no reason not to buy a ticket on American next (except loyalty cards/points). Those are oligopolies. Compare to the cost of rebuying all you apps and moving all your data if you go from GooglePlay to Apple, or even from GooglePlay to Amazon Apps.
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Take advice from a gentleman who has been embedded in Silicon Valley culture for decades. It is an oligopoly run by a big club of people always high-fiving each other. Everyone's money is forced into the stock market as it's the about the only accessible thing that "grows," and all the people in the Fortune 500 companies take as much off the top as they can get.
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Big Tech mostly does a pretty good job at data security. Small Tech is a bigger concern, and non-Tech (like Equifax, where the CTO had a liberal arts degree) is an even bigger problem.
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Well, there's been Yahoo, Adobe, RSA, Sony.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not if Google, FB, MS, etc. are who you want to protect your data from.
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The iShiny has better data control and protection than GooglePlay devices
data migration, vendor pseudo lock-in, and interop (Score:4, Interesting)
There needs to be some serious thought on how to best address data migration and pseudo vendor lock-in. Data migration is easy. I should have the ability to download all my data from facebook and upload it to google plus (or some other competitor) and vice versa.
Pseudo vendor lockin is a bit trickier. If all your friends are on facebook then you can't move to a new platform without convincing all your friends to move too.
I think the solution for this is to require companies to allow interoperability between sites. If I want to create a facebook clone, I should be able to allow my users to sync their account with facebook so that posts on my new site are crossposted on facebook, etc...
There are already some marketing tools that allow this to a limited extent but it should be explicitly allowed so that people can more easily hop from platform to platform.
Currently, trying to do a true sync of facebook with a facebook clone would be against facebook's TOS.
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Re: data migration, vendor pseudo lock-in, and int (Score:1)
With search engines it is still a network effect: The more people use it, the more feedback it gets on the relevance of its results, improving its usefulness.
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In Facebook you could say "it's because of network effects," but it's not really true with search engines. When freed, we just kind of......flock together.
With search engines I think it is likely enonomy of scale and probably some patents thrown in there. Because google is so huge, they can afford to index more of the web, they can afford to hire thousands of PHDs to analyse their results. They also have some of the network effect that allows billions of clicks to give them realtime feedback about how good of job they are doing. They now have billions of dollars of R&D most of it behind closed doors that runs their search engine and they are receiving
Re:data migration, vendor pseudo lock-in, and inte (Score:4, Interesting)
Say hello to universal ID and Zero anonymity on the internet.
I hope you are the first person in court fighting for your life after someone steals your identity and does something illegal with it.
I hear nowadays just being accused of certain crimes destroys your future... no one will even wait until you go to trial to find out if you are innocent... you are automatically guilty... even if you eventually get a "not-guilty" verdict.
Identity theft is about to get a lot worse after someone like you gets a hold of the problem.
And no, data migration is NOT easy. Businesses spend ass loads of money on migrations all year round with many of them either resulting in failures or projects that did manage to finish but are only limping along.
Just talk to a few systems admins and engineers... they will be happy to tell you how broken a lot of shit is.
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Too easy to regulate them, make it more expensive to be privacy invasive dick brains than it is worth.
So want to be real harsh, all companies, 'ALL COMPANIES', must forward details of the information they store about individuals to the individuals concerned and if the individual demands they delete the information, the company must delete the data. Note this is just data stored, not stories about individuals, just databases and obviously data required for taxation purposes must be kept. There also needs to
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I like your ideas, now... how are you going to convince a politician to implement these? As a voter you offer very little money to their coffers and lets me honest, you are not going to get enough fellow voters to remove them from office for this issue alone. In fact this issue is not even going to register in any meaningful way for the next 30 years. The politician is going to take the money from the businesses and regulate them as they agree to be regulated.
I am going to just go with history and make t
Re: data migration, vendor pseudo lock-in, and int (Score:1)
Didn't the EU do just that?
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At first yes... we will do the same as well... at first! But like I said... how do you get them to ONLY do that? Look at what is going on now. The EU now wants to add more regulations... like the ones I said would come after these making my very point. Again... how are you going to keep them from doing more than what we want? You can't. They will quickly become drunk on the power of regulation.
https://www.theguardian.com/me... [theguardian.com]
There is at least a double whammy to this issue. One is the opening of the
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RE: the word "NEWS". I appreciate the hope behind your words, but unfortunately it won't help.
Why?
99.9% of the population doesn't even pay attention to.. anything. Except for the screaming headlines.
I'm the curious sort, and I speak to random people .. people in elevators, on planes, public transport, etc. How else can you find people you'd never normally find, outside of all contact with your social / economic circle?
Do you know how many people don't even know that the government spies on people? That
Innocent but on his record (Score:3)
The UK supreme court has agreed that the police can tell a potential employer about a case where the accused was found not guilty. https://www.theguardian.com/uk... [theguardian.com]
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"I think the solution for this is to require companies to allow interoperability between sites." - Well, sorry but go fuck yourself, legally speaking. Bad idea, zero chance of happening, back to the drawing board. Sorry but that's just dumb.
I must be dumb then, because I don't see why it's a bad idea. Can you explain it to me?
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just think about the problem and it should come to you. But like most other voters, thinking about anything but the next reality TV show is verboten. You just want to hear some smooth sounding politician to say "we go this" right?
Here is just a small reason why it is a bad idea. Once the government can force a business to be interoperable... then all businesses will have to become interoperable. Big businesses with money will quickly increase the complexity of this interoperability so that it will not b
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Once the government can force a business to be interoperable... then all businesses will have to become interoperable. Big businesses with money will quickly increase the complexity of this interoperability so that it will not be easy or cheap for competitors to be interoperable making it easy to squash them and simultaneously raise the barrier of entry.
Requiring them to allow and not inhibit interoperable is not the same as requiring them to have a specific interface. Although it would be nice to have a standard like email or ftp, it would be enough for them to not outright ban or block it. Facebook does already have an api so it's already possible if they would allow it but it would be easy enough for a company to reverse engineer and/or scrape a website for the needed information for an end user. If anyone tried it though they would get sued. It wou
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So you're a new startup and you're just putting together a new social network. Not only do you have to pile on interoperability onto that limited budget, but if you're actually innovating you have to come up with a way for people to clone your innovative idea and give the big companies a way to steal all your users.
dealing with bots. (Score:2)
It's gone far past the old (a couple years old) systems.
Anything that fails gets labeled a bot. There needs to be allowance for people to get their bot status rescinded, but if they don't they might as well be bots.
Unlike the US constitution, you're a bot until you prove otherwise.
prefixing posts with "Posted by a bot:" will rip the teeth out of most fake news, and other BS.
Re: dealing with bots. (Score:1)
What does it matter if someone is a bot?
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Because bots help Republicans.
Great, we're saved now. (Score:1)
A whole new round of pointless "This site uses cookies, if you don't like it then fuck off" popovers, and a lot of other unworkable bullshit and disclosures that 99.99% if the world won't care enough about to read or understand.
The only thing to look forward to is earning and brandishing an official twitter Bot Badge, presumably by posting absolutely anything positive about Trump.
Am I the only one? (Score:3)
Am I the only one who thinks they should simply be required to have profit sharing or otherwise pay you for the data, rather than try to stop it?
Re: Am I the only one? (Score:1)
Suppose there was a creepy stalker literally hiding in the bushes outside your home every day. Would you prefer he pay you $0.00035/day for the "right" to stalk you? Or would you prefer a policeman came by and forced him to stop stalking?
Re: Am I the only one? (Score:2)
The difference is that when I share my info online, I do not have an expectation of privacy like I do with my home. If you share anything with even one of your friends, then the expectation on privacy is zero. Even if you share info only with a corporation, there is an expectation that corporation is going to use my info for analysis and monetization.
Want privacy online? Use encrypted person-to-person messaging. Otherwise, why do you keep sharing your info?
Re: Am I the only one? (Score:2)
Why would you need a form of Real ID? I'm fine getting paid in anonymous crypto. If you wanna get paid with legacy EFT, that's fine, but you are making a choice to abandon privacy for convenience.
We don't need to go that far (Score:2)
I would be happy if they made one small change in the current "sharing" regulations.
Today, sharing is opt-out - information can be shared by default, anyone who gets it from you just has to tell you:
You can stop us from sharing your data - call this number during a full moon and give us your user number, shoe size and blood type.
I think that sharing needs to be opt-IN, with statutory penalties for sharing without permission.
This would make held data a liability, instead of the asset it currently is.
This alo
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I would like to point out that your data is in fact way more valuable than you give credit for.
In a vacuum it might seem that it is not that valuable, but what if that "data" connects you to the sale of a home, or other large expense. It becomes real valuable then, to the potential tune of thousands per successful sale. Think of it like being a car salesman... how many customers does he lose before he gets one? The value of a lost customer is very little... those are the .00005 cent people... but to the
Re: Am I the only one? (Score:2)
In 2012, a single data broker called Datacoup was spending $8/month per social media account. That's just one company. No, profit sharing won't be a living, but it's not some trivial amount, seeing as people left Netflix when the price increased by $2/month.
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Yeah, that's why nearly every online discount offer wants your address, phone number, etc., etc.
Bureaucracy at its finest (Score:4, Insightful)
... none of the proposals call for breaking up the pseudo-monopolies. Instead, they aim to start a substantive debate by laying out different paths to address problems posed by the platforms.
Let's not propose a solution, let's not propose a method of making a *plan* for a solution, let's propose several plans for how to approach a solution, and have a debate!
Bureaucracy at its finest.
(Futurama quote: "Don't quote me the regulation! I chaired the committee that reviewed the proposal to change the color of the book that regulation is in." --Bureaucrat 1.0)
did anyone read the proposals? (Score:5, Informative)
I read the first 4 pages and then skimmed the rest. It reads like a 2nd year college student wrote it.
"The hope is that the ideas enclosed here stir the pot and spark a wider discussion..." These colloquialisms are scattered throughout.the paper. Hard to believe that this is supposed to convince legislators.
The list headings:
Duty to clearly and conspicuously label bots
Duty to determine origin of posts and/or accounts
Duty to identify inauthentic accounts
Make platforms liable for state-law torts (defamation, false light, public disclosure of
private facts) for failure to take down deep fake or other manipulated audio/video content
Public Interest Data Access Bill
Require lnteragency Task Force for Countering Asymmetric Threats to Democratic
Institutions
Disclosure Requirements for Online Political Advertisements —
Public Initiative for Media Literacy
Increasing Deterrence Against Foreign Manipulation —
Information fiduciary
Privacy rulemaking authority at FTC
Comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation
1*‘ Party Consent for Data Collection
Statutory determination that so-called ‘dark patterns’ are unfair and deceptive trade
practices
Algorithmic auditability fairness
Data Transparency Bill
Data Portability Bill
Interoperability
Opening federal datasets to university researchers and qualified small businesses/startups
Essential Facilities Determinations
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Wikipedia needs to be on the list (Score:1)
Just try to edit anything on wikipedia without a man child admin and his goons reverting and trashing even your minor edits.
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I don't seem to have trouble getting the supermajority of my edits to stick on the first try. One thing that helps is being willing to discuss reverts in a civil manner [wikipedia.org] and then take into account constructive criticism when retrying your edit a week later.
But then I have years of experience on that platform, and I know getting used to Wikipedia's content policies can be tough for new users. Could you link diffs of your edits that got reverted so that others can help you?
Labeling bots is a trap (Score:3)
There is no reliable way to "clearly and conspicuously label bots". Even if you require all registered users to prove a human identity, they could still let a bot use their account. A smart bot implementor could even pay users to utilize their identity and to install a VPN host so that the bot can make its posts from their IP.
But, you can be assured that proving identities would still be the first thing they jump to if this is required. It moves the blame. Kaspersky would get the internet where all users have to prove their identities that they have pushed all of these years.
They may also criminalize it. Criminalizing anything that has value usually increases its value. We should know well by now how well that works.
Are bots really the problem? Or is it the way we are making decisions?
I know people who will debate me with statements like "well, so and so had xyz happen, so it happens". First of all, they don't know that so and so told them the truth or even really knows the truth. People rarely remember even their own experiences in a accurate fashion. Second, anecdotal evidence doesn't rise to a level of any statistical relevance in trying to understand any truth about the massive society or complex world we live in. Basing your beliefs or fears on miniscule samples from your personal life or news stories you've seen without tempering it with large sample sets is the path to a very twisted and often unreasonably panicked view of the world.
The problem is that people aren't being taught why we have the scientific method. They aren't being taught just how horribly flawed their reasoning without it is and why our society started exploding in success when we started using it. You can't protect people from that lack of knowledge. If they don't have it, others will always find a way to use their ignorance.
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"The jury is still out" (Score:3)
The jury is still out on the long-term consequences of those reforms.
Which jury? Where? Not around here (Europe) is it.
The long term consequences are known. Questions about the GDPR that everyone is waiting for include
Certainly the GDPR has made additional work for people, including me. It has not brought out the orchestrated hostility I see from the USA. I have not seen anything in the press here against it. Perhaps our government and its tabloid press controllers don't want us to think too much about it so that they can water it down in a couple of years. That sort of thing is less succesful than it used to be. Corporate foulups with security will keep people aware of it.
What sort of changes might be needed? They may need to raise the maximum fines. What is $5 billion to the likes of Google? They may need to use more effort in getting top executives to actually turn up and not just send some underling. I'm not complaining though. So far, so good.
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The jury is still out on the long-term consequences of those reforms.
Which jury? Where? Not around here (Europe) is it.
The long term consequences are known. Questions about the GDPR that everyone is waiting for include
Certainly the GDPR has made additional work for people, including me. It has not brought out the orchestrated hostility I see from the USA. I have not seen anything in the press here against it. Perhaps our government and its tabloid press controllers don't want us to think too much about it so that they can water it down in a couple of years. That sort of thing is less successful than it used to be. Corporate foul ups with security will keep people aware of it.
This cannot be overstated. GDPR has thus far been a good thing but several sites in the US have completely lost their shit over it. Their loss I suppose, all they're doing is ensuring that people from Europe are switching off. I can only surmise that the sites which are outright blocking EU countries are doing something well and truly illegal with our data.
However I've considered an adblocker to be mandatory for web browsing for years and recently added a script blocker to that.
Aka regulation of speech (Score:2)
I agree with the breaking of monopolies but simply breaking companies because they are "too big" without quantifying eBay it means leads to abuse both by squashing competitors that are getting bigger and de facto government control/blackmail of the large players.
Same with false information - who gets to be the arbiter of true information then? What sorts of metrics do we have to measure truthfulness.
As bad as the invisible hand of the market works, it's a lot better than politicians telling us what is and i
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Why else do you think these "regulations" are being asked for by the very players that will be regulated by them?
Can you imagine if, every time we wanted to amend criminal law, we went around to all the prisons and ask the burglars and drug traffickers (sorry, stakeholders) how it would affect their business model?
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This is a non-sequitur.
Regulations do not always result in criminal prosecution.
And in the case of business regulatory agency... talking to the burglars and traffickers is pretty much 'exactly' what they do when they amend regulation.
Oh, and before I do forget, it actually might be genuinely a good idea to talk to those criminals before amending criminal law. You do understand that many of the laws in place actually increase recidivism rates instead of reducing them. After all, the more you treat petty cr
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I would take many of those criminals as fellow citizens before someone like you.
Just FYI, this is the precise point where I started disagreeing with you. You don't know me.
We do indeed treat white collar crime very differently from lower-class crime, even though white collar crime is more often motivated by greed rather than (say) desperation.
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"You don't know me."
Then why do you think that a criminals should not be consulted on punishment? Sure individually they are going to be biased, but collectively they are likely not because at that point, they are no longer evaluating themselves, they are evaluating others that have performed the same crime and you may find that they will be far more insightful than you would be about the problem.
"We do indeed treat white collar crime very differently from lower-class crime,"
I agree
", even though white col
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So true, it has happened so many times.
"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. "
~Madison
I would say that Madison was very short sighted in his prognostications... he failed realize or at least mention that these dangers, real or pretended, can also be from home. But then again, in those days "free enterprise" was the ideal so very few quotes directly mention them, but still apply 'in logic' all the same.
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Can we call that Astroturfer's Corollary to Ben Franklin, or something like that? :D
That is actually a pretty good addition.
Re: Regulating 'Big Tech Platforms' (Score:2, Insightful)
Fuck off ivan? He has a very valid point. Fuck all this regulation. The best way for a democracy to work is to have a free market of ideas. The day you decide someone has the right to declare info as good or bad on behalf of you, the citizen, is the day you trade your freedoms for the tyrant of a king you just made. Why undo the revolutionary war? Don't you want the freedom to decide who you want to believe rather than have someone make the choice for you? Isn't that your right?
Re: Regulating 'Big Tech Platforms' (Score:5, Insightful)
A free exchange of ideas sounds good. But it stops at lies. Journalists and advertisers are not allowed to propagate lies. (Exceptions may apply. And lies by ommission seem to be acceptable.) Now that even news agencies get their info off Twitbook, it is easier than ever to spread lies with impunity.
But there are reasons why lies are not welcome in this marketplace of ideas. We cannot hold everyone publishing on a public forum to the same standard as professional journalists and advertisers, for purely practical reasons.
But do we want this "free marketplace of of ideas" to become an arena about whose lies are less implausible? Then we may just as well forego journalism altogether and go back to church. Or succumb to the brainwashing of "scripted reality" and of "entertainment" shows emulating the presentation styles of news shows.
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It's easy to have a point when you're arguing against a straw man.
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Nonsense. "Free markets" don't exist, first of all, and unencumbered commercial behavior is anathema to democracy.
Um, no. The only thing that encumbers commercial behavior is regulation by the state (bad), and competition (good). It is always better to have options, rather than instructions.
The revolutionary war was not about democracy, it was about exchanging one aristocracy for another. The Founding Fathers were very careful to limit the democratic impulses of Americans and make sure that the wealthy elite, who they believed know better than everyone else, could rule without being encumbered by democracy.
Um, no. They established a democracy, rather than an aristocracy specifically for this reason. Go read Thomas Jefferson. It took almost 100 years for everyone to get the right to vote, but they laid the bedrock of this great civilization. We have the free'est people because we are allowed to express ourselves. There are going to be
Crazy talk (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, no. The only thing that encumbers commercial behavior is regulation by the state (bad), and competition (good). It is always better to have options, rather than instructions.
I think you'd best have a look around. Any society and/or economy would do. And even a brief look should suffice. Then you would see that regulation by the state is absolutely essential. The alternative is all the power coalescing in a few commercial interests (bad).
The end point of unrestrained capitalism is a slave class of underlings (if there's even any point in having them alive at all) and a ruling class of capital owners. Regulation is essential to keep capitalism as a useful economic engine for
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Sorry, you are being detrimentally obtuse.
You are not even trying to mask your reverence for the state.
"Then you would see that regulation by the state is absolutely essential."
What does that even mean? No one is saying complete zero regulation? You are just implying that they mean that and then using overbroad and meaningless batter to soak your message in.
"The alternative is all the power coalescing in a few commercial interests (bad)."
Bad argument, we already have that problem even with the regulations
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Same AC here...
Reverence for the state? Well, I guess. It's a pretty handy thing. I'm very happy it's here. It keeps the petty crims in check and I haven't seen a private army pillage anyone for ages. Are you suggesting we not have one? That's radical. Explain.
The post by "saloomy" suggested that zero regulation was a reasonable situation. I argue that's utter nonsense and deserves rebutting (and ridicule). I can't tell what you are arguing. You seem to have some predetermined dislike of ... somet
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You need to learn more history and economics.
Corporations are a creation of government regulation. They were initially created to reduce the risks of investors in cases where risk was too great. Before corporations if someone invested in a company and the company folded they could be held libel for all of the failed company's debts. Incorporation meant that once the assets of the corporation ran out the debtors could not go after the assets of the investors.
This all worked great when corporations were only
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It needs to be clear they are not people and they do not have rights beyond the individual rights of anyone acting in their name.
Re: Regulating 'Big Tech Platforms' (Score:4, Insightful)
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The U.S. is not, and has never ever been a democracy. We are a republic. We do not want to ever be a democracy; and none of the founders ever declared us a democracy; so stop calling the U.S. a democracy. WE ARE NOT!!!
"To the REPUBLIC for which it stands", not "To the DEMOCRACY for which it stands."
I take it they don't teach that sort of thing in school any more?
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I'm so sick of hearing this shit. "Republic" just means you don't have a King, "Democracy" means the people choose their leaders. They are not at odds with each other at all, and basically every democracy takes place in a republic.
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There are some similarities, in that the people are supposed to be the ultimate decision makers, but there are also some important differences.
A Republic is the form of government where each citizen rules via their representative and has rights that the majority can't take from them.
A Democracy is where majority vote on a matter wins no matter what.
The two do conflict with each other when the majority wants to trample on or take away rights [wethepeoplegame.com]. The point of a constitutional republic is to spell out the limits
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"The oligarchs are the victors. They're the ones teaching you that "free markets" and "less regulation" are a good thing. You have been lied to."
When why do they call for regulations and install revolving doors between themselves? Are you that easy to fool? They stand at the podiums and decry that they hate regulation for your ears and then they run to the back rooms and create themselves deals.
What they say and what they do are two very different things. Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Elon Musk, and many lik
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The oligarchs are the victors. They're the ones teaching you that "free markets" and "less regulation" are a good thing. You have been lied to."
Unfortunately, both sides have been lied to. First of all, I'll absolutely agree that regulation is necessary for public safety, and to limit corruption. But also, and we do a very bad job of this, limit monopolistic behavior, including local monopolies (cable for example). That said, anyone trying to run a small business these days is going to see a huge chunk of margin eaten away by unnecessary regulatory overreach. I grew up watching my dad run a small business that sold specialty containers to the a
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Shortly before he passed he'd told me that he couldn't even start up that company in the current environment due to the time and expense required to simply follow the regulations.
Genuine question: what kind of regulations are these? When I hear regulations on business, I tend to thing about health and safety, proper accounting rules, worker's rights ... things that seem like they would protect the worker from the potential greed of the company, which was historically a big deal. What other kinds of hoops are companies jumping through that are unnecessarily burdensome, and that aren't providing benefits? Most of the anti-regulation folks just say "regulations" and leave it at that, a
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Good question, and to be honest I didn't quiz him on it, and didn't get to observe the situation closely since I had my own career. I'm all for regulations that are necessary for employee safety and such, but I think that many of the compliance/reporting requirements have put a much higher burden on them. As a hiring manager in a major company now, I see some of what I consider silly compliance requirements. For example, when I want to hire someone, I'm required to open a requisition and interview a mini
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The Founding Fathers were very careful to limit the democratic impulses of Americans and make sure that the wealthy elite, who they believed know better than everyone else, could rule without being encumbered by democracy.
That's a popular revisionist concept. If it were true, we wouldn't have the bill of rights, the press would be run by the government, no right to bear arms (allow the peasants firearms?!?) certainly no right to trial by jury, and absolutely no fourth amendment protections.
The issue is, because the system doesn't work perfectly, people assume it must be skewed towards the rich. It does allow for rich people to become rich, however, it doesn't enable them to stay rich, which is why you don't see a lot of Vand
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Nothing you said is untrue. But at one point, there were:
The idiots who believed in evolution against the church!
The idiots who believed the mixing of blood with other races was a punishable thing!
The idiots who believed there really were witches in Salem!
The idiots who believed that prayer would heal you, and taking medicine was the work of the devil!
Do you really want to live in a world where authority to determine what is right or wrong is given to someone in power? Really?
Go to North Korea then. See wha
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By the way, I really can not believe that in 2018 we are having a real discussion about weather the freedom to think and speak what you believe in is up for debate! Wasn't this settled in like the 1790s? Thats why we have a first amendment!
C'mon. Really?! IF you really want someone else to decide for you. Follow that person. But please, don't try to force the rest of us to by codifying it into law!?
Re: Regulating 'Big Tech Platforms' (Score:3)
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Indeed they were, but it also speaks to another often undiscussed issue that voters have.
*Eternal Vigilance*
We the People are supposed to be in a free market where we can apply our Eternal Vigilance to everything. But we don't, why? Because it is just easier to say... I don't want to fight the big businesses, I want government to do it for me. I don't want to be eternally vigilant... it's too much work.
Shortly after they all wonder why their nation is falling apart. There is no eternal vigilance any lon
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Re: Regulating 'Big Tech Platforms' (Score:2)
No, that's not why the electoral college was installed.
The electoral college was installed because the slave-holding states wanted their slaves to weigh in on the elections of the day without actually casting a vote. The electors were numbered such that 3/5ths of slaves were counted towards population for purposes of representation.
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The public is the victim. You are victim-blaming.
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Nah.....there are too many people in the public who are happy when their side wins......even if they win by Gerrymandering.
They're victims too, because they think that's their side due to ongoing brainwashing... and the deliberate compromise of education systems by their governments. By the time they figure out that they were lied to, they're old and broken. Or, they never do.
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Peer review is great at this
It would be if peer review was actually done as much as it should be. There are plenty of articles on what's going on with peer review that you can easily google, but the short story is that there's no money/fame/promotions in reviewing papers done by others.
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Not posting as AC.
So if free speech in the real world is not anonymous I guess no anonymous works were published before the invention of the internet. Thomas Paine, Mary Shelly and hundreds of other writers, all who published works anonymously might disagree with you.
Many works (not all of them pornographic) have been published anonymously.
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Sure, leave it to Democrats to further entrench the Fascism.
That's a kind of bullshit definition of fascism, though in fairnes, the link you posted points out how it's a much a Republican thing as democrat. Though given your blind, hyper-partisan zeal it's not really surprising you pick out th eother tribe.
Anyone interested in a better description of facism (not you, since youre impervious to anything that you don't believe is "rah rah republicans") should go here:
https://www.nybooks.com/articl... [nybooks.com]
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Wow the level of blind partisan tribalism is strong here.
OP: Other tribe is bad!!! Here's a link.
ME: That link sayy your tribe is equally bad.
You: NO! Your tribe is BAD!!! BAD! Your tribe BAAADDDD!!
Fascism is totalitarianism.
Read the link. I mean you won't because it's long and you're probably too dim and with too little attention span to actually process the substantial number of words. But you really ought to.
Also drop the fucking tribalism. You're part of the problem.
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Fascism is, most certainly, not a terminology. Perhaps, you meant "ideology"? Still wrong...
You got it all wrong. Fascism and Socialism/Communism are both Collectivist ideologies, mostly identical and differing only in a few insignificant details. Both consider the cantankerous Individual to be inferior to the Glorious Collective. To wit:
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Fascism is, most certainly, not a terminology. Perhaps, you meant "ideology"? Still wrong...
To get pedantic, I mean item of a larger terminology. And yes, the word happens to describe an ideology. Every historian classifies fascism as right-wing. Don't take it up with me - it's settled history.
That is not fascism, those are the tenets of the Nazi party. Fascism might have inspired it, but they are not the same. And both have very populist and actually good ideas. It's both the implementation and the motive that are the problem in both cases. That's not to say that the motives of any politic
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That's just not true [fff.org]. But even if it were true — and you are offering no citations — it does not help you. Because now you have to define "right wing"... Meh...
Appeal to Authority [yourlogicalfallacyis.com].
Whether they are from actual Fascism or not, you are spot-on regarding them being tenets of the Nazi party. And of the Democrats...
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I think you're both right. Omnichad's point is that the sum of policy actions make the 'national socialists' far-right. Then you're correct to argue that declaring fascism to be synonymous with far-right isn't valid either, due simply to association fallacy.
Somewhat like how the 'Democratic Party' has lawyers that argue it is actually a private organization that is not beholden or liable to any such principle. Branding is important, but not accurate or even honest.
The same Democrat, who started the day firmly rejecting Nazism as the greatest evil, ends the day admitting, he likes the Nazi ideas... I'll leave it at that...
Which is why everyone should just under
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Only a few hours before expressing his liking of Nazi ideas, Omnichad wondered, how can Democrats be possibly associated with anything Fascist. His ignorance and my educating him can not possibly be "both right".
Nope, the fallacy you speak of is not applicable to our little chat. I'm not claiming, Democrats are Fascists, because members of both groups have 32 teeth, nor based on any other similarly irrelevant common trait.
The points I listed re
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Fake news is the same as yelling fire in a crowded theater. You don't have a right to do that.
Pizzagate caused a shootout in a restaurant with children present. People could have died.
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Teaching children to ignore all their senses, to turn off their bullshit detectors, and instead to try to believe in paranormal explanations for everything, is surely just as harmful. That's like yelling "it's not a fire, stay here and burn to death" in a crowded theater.
How can you possibly outlaw bullshit without also outlawing religious prosthelization? That's like outlawing Bullshit Light while Bullshit Heavy Duty is for sale on every corner.
Re: Why so complicated? (Score:2)
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Yes it is. My father taught me how to use computers and setup servers when I was a kid. I loved it, I don't do it as a profession but as a hobby now. It did however help me with thinking and troubleshooting skills that I do use in my day job.
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They DO regulate them... quite heavily in fact.
O wait, you mean regulate them in such a way as to benefit or protect the consumers? Why didn't you say that? Here let me get my lobbyist oiled up with some "gifts" for your elected officials. I am sure they are going to listen to you on regulations over me right? After all, you are ARE calling for more regulations and the politicians hear that call for more regulations. Let's have more regulations, I am just going to tweak them just a touch to improve my