Posted on 05/09/2019 10:50:56 AM PDT by Monrose72
A co-founder of Facebook called for the government to break up the tech giant in an op-ed article Thursday in The New York Times. “The Facebook that exists today is not the Facebook that we founded in 2004,” Chris Hughes, who started Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg in their Harvard dorm, told NBC News after the op-ed was published. “And the one that we have today I think is far too big. It's far too powerful. And most importantly, its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is not accountable,” Hughes said of his former business partner.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
“It’s a social media website. It does not provide the only source of electricity or telephone communication. We could all give up facebook tomorrow and literally nothing would change. Why does the government need to get involved here?”
Facebook, Google, and Twitter are among the large companies that provide cross-platform identity verification to many smaller sites and businesses. We all pay a cost when identity theft occurs. A lot of personal identity information is for sale by Facebook. There have been security breeches.
Interstate commerce. Facebook engages in billions of dollars of interstate commerce and engages in unfair business practices.
Facebook is publicly traded and has access to market capital. It must not engage in arbitrary discrimination based on political viewpoints. By not disclosing its real criteria for banning the commercial use of its products it is committing fraud.
Facebook is engaged in deceptive business practices by pretending to be an open platform while simultaneously profiting from people who are otherwise banned from benefitting from the platform.
In general, we also have a problem with ALL of the multi-national corporations that game the system in order to avoid being regulated in the first place.
And we have these same companies selling private personal data with the Deep State “Intelligence” agencies without proper public disclosure. Regardless of whether the Patriot Act or other laws shield the companies and agencies from legal liability, in practice it is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.
Facebook is not quite on par with Google and Apple when it comes to being a “public utility” but it is close. More than 99% of cell phones today run on either Google or Apple software and are continuously tracked by these companies. You are listened to even when you have not given explicit consent. Your location is tracked. All of your online activities are tracked if they are not hidden behind VPS. Facebook is third-place when it comes to tracking and communication. With its purchase of Whatsapp, it is a dominate communication service by virtue of this most popular messaging and voice over IP communication platform. Keep in mind that Whatsapp is not merely a smart app, it is a platform that allows many other third-party services to offer extended functionality or piggyback on its platform.
Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al, count on the ignorance of people such as yourself (not meaning it as an insult but in the sense that I’m trying to make you aware of something they’d prefer to keep hidden from the average consumer), because they do not want to be regulated or broken up. You simply cannot compare a multi-billion-dollar, multi-national, publicly-traded corporation with mom-and-pop businesses. They MUST be regulated. In fact, they already are, just not well enough.
“It’s a social media website. It does not provide the only source of electricity or telephone communication. We could all give up facebook tomorrow and literally nothing would change. Why does the government need to get involved here?”
Facebook, Google, and Twitter are among the large companies that provide cross-platform identity verification to many smaller sites and businesses. We all pay a cost when identity theft occurs. A lot of personal identity information is for sale by Facebook. There have been security breeches.
Interstate commerce. Facebook engages in billions of dollars of interstate commerce and engages in unfair business practices.
Facebook is publicly traded and has access to market capital. It must not engage in arbitrary discrimination based on political viewpoints. By not disclosing its real criteria for banning the commercial use of its products it is committing fraud.
Facebook is engaged in deceptive business practices by pretending to be an open platform while simultaneously profiting from people who are otherwise banned from benefitting from the platform.
In general, we also have a problem with ALL of the multi-national corporations that game the system in order to avoid being regulated in the first place.
And we have these same companies selling private personal data with the Deep State “Intelligence” agencies without proper public disclosure. Regardless of whether the Patriot Act or other laws shield the companies and agencies from legal liability, in practice it is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.
Facebook is not quite on par with Google and Apple when it comes to being a “public utility” but it is close. More than 99% of cell phones today run on either Google or Apple software and are continuously tracked by these companies. You are listened to even when you have not given explicit consent. Your location is tracked. All of your online activities are tracked if they are not hidden behind VPS. Facebook is third-place when it comes to tracking and communication. With its purchase of Whatsapp, it is a dominate communication service by virtue of this most popular messaging and voice over IP communication platform. Keep in mind that Whatsapp is not merely a smart app, it is a platform that allows many other third-party services to offer extended functionality or piggyback on its platform.
Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al, count on the ignorance of people such as yourself (not meaning it as an insult but in the sense that I’m trying to make you aware of something they’d prefer to keep hidden from the average consumer), because they do not want to be regulated or broken up. You simply cannot compare a multi-billion-dollar, multi-national, publicly-traded corporation with mom-and-pop businesses. They MUST be regulated. In fact, they already are, just not well enough.
I'll take 'What is the socialist democrat shadow government' for $500 Alex.
The way I understand it, regulating and breaking up are two different things. But the fact remains that people could opt-out of Facebook and see no difference in their life.
“However, ‘breaking it up’ because people on BOTH sides of the political spectrum believe that Facebook blocks their beliefs from being disseminated is silly.”
As someone who hardly uses Facebook, I don’t really have a dog in this hunt. I’m not sure the practical extent of Facebook’s various business services. So I would tend to agree about the idea of breaking it up unless someone can demonstrate how it is achieving a monopoly (or market category dominance) through unfair or deceptive business practices.
Google, on the other hand, does not have narrowly focussed business. I think they could reasonably be broken up into many separate businesses.
To certain extent even Amazon needs to be broken up. They are a retailer and a marketplace. They are a delivery service. They are a web hosting company. They are a video distribution service and video content creator. They are a book distributor but also may arbitrarily block or penalize books based on content or who the author is. Of course, Bezos also owns Washington Post, which is not an Amazon company but certainly should face regulatory scrutiny.
Please don’t touch Amazon! My life is infinitely easier because of Amazon. I have more time because of Amazon and that is important. They just opened an “Amazon Go” store near me. It’s the future of grocery shopping and it’s amazing. It will legitimately change lives for the better.
“It’s the future of grocery shopping and it’s amazing. It will legitimately change lives for the better.”
There is no denying that Bezos got the customer service thing figured out in spite of his radical lefty tendencies. Hate giving him any money, but sometimes it seems unavoidable.
I don’t think breaking up the company would affect your grocery experience though. Competition tends to lead to improvement for the consumer most of the time.
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