Current Events > It's Time to Break Up Facebook

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/opinion/sunday/chris-hughes-facebook-zuckerberg.html

It's a really long opinion piece (an excellent one at that), but the TL;DR version is that a reporter recently interviewed Chris Hughes (one of the co-founders that has since quit Facebook around 2008), and he is making an argument that Facebook has gotten too powerful when it comes to social media, news, and information that these big companies have a monopoly over it (like What's App and Twitter). Facebook is freely allowed to control speech because there is nothing to stop these companies from the ability to organize, monitor, and censor conversation of billions of people because they're a private company. Because Facebook (who also owns Instagram now) has such a large market share, getting banned or censored on these platforms can be detrimental to people who want a platform for speech but ultimately get silenced. He says the biggest reason behind this is the lack of Government Oversight. He argues that the free market argument doesn't work against monopolies like Facebook because instead of buying them off, they can easily copy their competitors (like Snapchats stories) to knock out the smaller competition. Chris is arguing that the only way to combat monopolies like this is for Government intervention for these big Tech companies by breaking them up and have actual agencies for protecting privacy and actual guidelines for what is consider acceptable speech.

I know that was a long TL;DR, but there is a lot of stuff in the article that I can't simply just copy and paste, like at one point the article talks about the dangers of breaking up large companies like Facebook because it was a natural Monopoly like pipelines and electrical wires, to other things like improving AI takes a lot of money, data and computing power that only giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook are capable of doing, which can lead to Nation Security problems against China.
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Break it up how?

It's just people posting updates.
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lol
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Hes not wrong.
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RoseLuck462 posted...

Break it up how?

It's just people posting updates.

He's arguing for companies like Facebook and What's App to be broken up to smaller tech companies so that there will be actual competition in the market and the only way to do that is with government stepping in to take on these giant tech companies.
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Social media was a mistake.
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Woah!
You mean if a bunch of people give out every single detail of their daily life to a corporation, they in turn allow them access to a big source of economic, political and influential power?

This is fucking unbelievable!
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Prestoff posted...

RoseLuck462 posted...

Break it up how?

It's just people posting updates.

He's arguing for companies like Facebook and What's App to be broken up to smaller tech companies so that there will be actual competition in the market and the only way to do that is with government stepping in to take on these giant tech companies.

No. I'd rather Facebook have my data then the Trump administration.
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lol
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Facebook does need to be broken up and Twitter either uphold free speech or ban all politics for good.
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Shotgunnova posted...

Social media was a mistake.

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This seems like a problem with no solution.
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Maybe it's time to re-examine the purpose of free speech and it's place in today's society. The argument of "they're attacking my free speech" has been abused by fascists since Hitler.

Not saying free speech has no value or we should silence people just because they're conservative or liberal. But when your speech threatens the well being of the populace, it's time to really question it's worth.
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Blue_Dream87 posted...

Maybe it's time to re-examine the purpose of free speech and it's place in today's society. The argument of "they're attacking my free speech" has been abused by fascists since Hitler.

Not saying free speech has no value or we should silence people just because they're conservative or liberal. But when your speech threatens the well being of the populace, it's time to really question it's worth.

Maybe you should shut the hell up. Free speech is the thread that keeps a free society going. You argue about fascism? I'd argue talking about limiting free speech is in itself fascist. Are you a fascist Blue_Dream87?
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Duncanwii posted...

Blue_Dream87 posted...

Maybe it's time to re-examine the purpose of free speech and it's place in today's society. The argument of "they're attacking my free speech" has been abused by fascists since Hitler.

Not saying free speech has no value or we should silence people just because they're conservative or liberal. But when your speech threatens the well being of the populace, it's time to really question it's worth.

Maybe you should shut the hell up. Free speech is the thread that keeps a free society going. You argue about fascism? I'd argue talking about limiting free speech is in itself fascist. Are you a fascist Blue_Dream87?

Go scream fire in a crowded theater and play victim
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Duncan laying THE SMACKDOWN ITT
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Never used it.
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I haven't gone past MySpace
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