US Politics Mega-thread - Page 855

On October 19 2018 01:51 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Facebook do not have the power of nation states. China for instance has no problem blocking facebook (though easily bypassed by vpn I imagine). I'm not really sure why you want to break up Facebook; I was just talking about how Facebook would want to avoid responsibility for the content posted on their site.

On October 19 2018 01:26 Plansix wrote:
Facebook just released information about the Election War Room, which has to be the ugliest work space I have ever seen. It is impressive how ugly it is given the amount of money Facebook makes. But its like slightly over 20ish people for the entire country? Or the world? This room would be understaffed if they were broadcasting a college sports event or a TV production of Peter Pan. They have 200 million users in the US and this is their PR push to show they are on the whole election interference issue? Facebook constantly tests my ability to measure malice vs gross stupidity.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/18/17991924/facebook-election-war-room-misinformation-fake-news-whatsapp

On October 19 2018 02:35 ticklishmusic wrote:
i think the employees in the room are doing good work, but the issue here is that facebook has a tendency to do the right thing but for the wrong reason (PR) and to not nearly the extent they should be. this is a step in the right direction, but there should be more like 200 people in a really big space (or multiple spaces).

On October 19 2018 02:23 OuchyDathurts wrote:


These pictures look like some sort of high school government group. Kids pretending to be adults, they got to put together their own space so they can feel mature. They go to a nice high school, but not a nice nice high school.

We're definitely at the point (past really) where some of these big corporations have to be broken up. But considering we haven't broken up a big corporation in ages I'm not holding my breath on it ever happening.

On October 19 2018 02:15 Grumbels wrote:
Theoretically, could they force Facebook to relinquish control of its network?. To explain: the FB app would still exist, but there could be competing interfaces for the same network.

And imo its quite obvious that all of silicon valley should break up. Windows and Office and IE should not all be the same company. facebook, instagram, whatsapp should break up. twitch should be independent from amazon. various google products should be spun off.

one big problem is how amazon can monopolize retail by subsidizing it with profits from server departnent, its unfair competition

On October 19 2018 02:15 Grumbels wrote:
Theoretically, could they force Facebook to relinquish control of its network?. To explain: the FB app would still exist, but there could be competing interfaces for the same network.

And imo its quite obvious that all of silicon valley should break up. Windows and Office and IE should not all be the same company. facebook, instagram, whatsapp should break up. twitch should be independent from amazon. various google products should be spun off.

one big problem is how amazon can monopolize retail by subsidizing it with profits from server departnent, its unfair competition

On October 19 2018 03:29 Excludos wrote:


This is incredibly short sighted to the point of idiocy. If a company gets broken up into pieces any time it produces any type of successful secondary software, innovation would literally stop dead in its tracks. It's especially ridiculous considering software like Windows, Office and IE are meant to heighten each other. So not only can you not make secondary software any more, you can't even add features to your primary one! Why waste money on anything if it's just going to split your company up?

I'm all for intervening with big companies to create competition or security, but splitting up core products from a company like that is not the way to go about it.

On October 19 2018 03:29 Excludos wrote:


This is incredibly short sighted to the point of idiocy. If a company gets broken up into pieces any time it produces any type of successful secondary software, innovation would literally stop dead in its tracks. It's especially ridiculous considering software like Windows, Office and IE are meant to heighten each other. So not only can you not make secondary software any more, you can't even add features to your primary one! Why waste money on anything if it's just going to split your company up?

I'm all for intervening with big companies to create competition or security, but splitting up core products from a company like that is not the way to go about it.

On October 16 2018 08:15 Mohdoo wrote:

Honestly, I would not cancel a billion dollar contract over a murder either. Especially since there are other people willing to sell to SA.

On October 16 2018 11:55 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
Stormy Daniels has to pay Trumps legal fees.
Which means the people who donated to her gofundme for her legal fees are literally paying Trump.
He just keeps winning.

On October 19 2018 03:59 Plansix wrote:
The reason Windows got anti-trusted by congress was because they were forcing companies to install windows internet net explorer on all machines that came with windows. And some other ways early windows was designed. Web browsers were not free in the dial up era of the internet.

In the case of Facebook, the market share of the company is so huge that is equal to one of the three major religions in size. And that doesn’t include Instagrams 800 million users. Facebook is so dominate that the best way alert people to that dominance is to post on Facebook or Instagram. There is no other media service with even close to the same reach.

Also, Facebook is designed to be addictive to use. High level managers and directors have been beating that drum for a while now. Over the years Facebook has spent a lot of money studying the physiology of using their service and creating an addictive feedback loop.

There isn’t a part of Facebook you can dig into a feel good about. They are a service that is so data hungry that they will make data profiles for people who don’t use Facebook, but live with Facebook users. Their ad delivery programs are so complex that Facebook often can’t tell why someone received a specific ad.

On October 19 2018 05:47 Grumbels wrote:

I find it incredibly dubious that the biggest companies in the world, that control so much of our digital infrastructure, are basically ad companies. Advertisements are corporate propaganda, it’s psychological trickery to persuade you to buy products you don’t need based on some emotional reason. Meanwhile overconsumption is a huge problem. I personally think the ad industry just needs to die, or at least, handicapped with burdensome regulation and taxation in order to make companies such as Google and Facebook unprofitable.