NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system(bitsoffreedom.nl) |
NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system(bitsoffreedom.nl) |
I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs.
You pay for instagram with your personal data, which is used to target you with high value ads. Which covers the cost of your continued usage. If you don't like it, don't use instagram. If you really don't like it, lobby for the law to make it illegal, but get your credit card ready for another monthly subscription.
But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. Making them enter a credit card -- even if you told them it would never be charged -- would send enormous numbers away.
Many won't even create a free account. Tracking tech is so sneaky because just the effort of logging in is too much.
Maybe the world would be a better place if we bit the bullet, nuked the vast majority of web sites, and built a better web on what's left. But it's not going to be an instant, ad-free privacy paradise.
Dear god, yes, please, good. Pass laws that force the bloated companies to lose users. Yes. World = better.
I have a pet theory that these business models paper over the vast worthlessness of many modern technologies. That the value of Facebook is not in it's technologies or network, but rather in the arbitrage of the value of data when combined. We pay for the nearly worthless service of facebook, with our nearly worthless data. Facebook combines that data with other data from other people, and create data that is extremely valuable for advertisers.
The important bit of this theory is that Facebook is presumed nearly worthless. What that means is that outlawing their combining or collection of data from users wouldn't cause their service to transition to a pay-per-user model, but rather would completely dissolve the product, which nobody would miss.
To an extent. I think if everyday users were shown just how much personal data follows them around from site to site I think they’d be horrified. Enough to change their habits? Possibly not. But I don’t think people have full understanding.
That's precisely why it should be done statutorily. People are known to be irrational about free things, so it's a fundamentally anti-competitive business model that disadvantages companies that want to actually charge for their services.
The reason is of course that tracking is their moat. Nobody else has tracking networks as pervasive as them. But everyone can sell context-based ads
Really? It took me until like 2012-2013 to realize Google searches stalked me to other websites.
Then again much critics at that time of big tech was disregarded as lunatic crackpots. And nowadays your are a crackpot if you claim they are not spying on you. I guess that matters.
That is unfortunate, due to Mark Zuckerberg has redefined the successful business model. META is on track to clear $80 billion per year in net profit. Like it or not, they have a mutually beneficial relationship with advertisers and investors. It's like a Unicorn reproduced with an ATM. It's one of the stocks that seem like neutral ground for institutions, like TSLA. There has to be a high table where those guys talk on phones carried in suitcases.
To put $80 billion per year in perspective, that is approximately the amount of annual federal Medicare matching funds reimbursement for the state of California (Cal-Aid).
So yeah, I understand that Meta wants a lot of money, but I reject the idea that we need to suffer this much to have the social features we need.
Even that's not enough with the shadow profiles they build on people without accounts. It's more like "if you don't like it, don't use instagram and also make sure none of your friends, coworkers, family, associates, or anywhere you go doesn't use it either. Also make sure you, nor the others mentioned, visit any website using Meta's pixel."
We definitely need laws when an individual effectively can't opt out because of network effects.
I do worry that without that free option users just simply wouldn't ever try anything new and just stay where they are new. If everything costs money to move ... I worry nobody moves and everything stagnates. Facebook and similar, now in an even stronger position.
Users, for worse, like it this way and make free with ads the best route because of their choices. Users with their choices incentivize this system too ...
It's not quite that simple though. The problem is that they are not simply showing you relevant ads, they actively attempt to deliver an outcome the ad is trying to achieve.
On the surface this is relatively benign, Nike wants to sell shoes, they run ads and optimise towards shoe sales, and Meta makes that happen.
But what happens when people run political advertising? What happens when crypto companies promote scams?
this can be a business model, economic circumstance, mgmt change. a lot can trigger such a shift in services up to then just fine to use.
most companies did not start out on these premises, and its really hard to tell what service will turn next.
i hope maybe ISPs could handle it and offer it as a service. like an ad free internet. but then they will just more deeply embed the ads and it will still get past. changes in designs of the apps will lead to blocking being ineffective.
so really then all that is left is not to use anything that has potential to identify you and your use of it. thats not a lot of things currently. most are frowned upon if you use it in a lot of regions.
You do not pay for Instagram with your personal data. The data is elsewhere, not on Instagram. For example with your local retailer or credit card company.
Instagram pays for data about you, which they buy from other people. You do not have a say in this for the most part. Whether or not Instagram buys this data does not affect its collection.
You pay for Instagram with your time spent watching ads. The data they collect about you is mostly not for ads, it's to get you to spend more time on Instagram
To make it clear why this matters: If you banned advertising on social media, the amount of data collected about you would not decrease
I am not arguing for this model, my feed is getting more useless every day, but the only other model is subscription based like you say. And for Facebook, Meta and the like, I don’t think the subscription revenue will be anywhere close due to economies of scale on the free model.
I like the hybrid approach of being able to be ad-supported or paid with no ads. I would like to see more of it.
What I don't like is a paid service like Amazon Prime that also includes ads. They include ads in their search results and they include tons of ads in their video library.
FWIW: Hulu offers paid access to content with ads but offers an upgrade to get rid of most of the ads, so there seems to be a whole lot of testing what works in this area going on right now, which I see as a good thing, I just hope that once everything settles the predominant model will be fair and respect user privacy.
Or to put it another way, most of the content on the internet is already unpaid with the creator not receiving any compensation. What's left is the hosting/distribution and we can find many different ways to (collectively) pay for that besides ads and user subscriptions.
actually i forgot about youtube
For me the tracking is a lot more harmful than the ads. Ads are much more noticeable but tracking is a lot more insidious.
It's really that tracking that I want to see gone
Don't they already offer this? Did it get canceled?
basic history one google search away for the top ranking comment on Hacker News
So if any ad is shown based on user profiling from data gathered illegally (i.e. without a proper opt-in as per GDPR etc) then the site showing the ad could potentially be sued?
Essentially, make it so onerous to legally advertise without risking a large class action lawsuit that the practice more or less dies out without technically being "banned" per se...
I get what you're saying but by current EU privacy law interpretation this approach is not allowed.
You can of course charge for services but you cannot charge people just to get rid of tracking. This is not to be confused with ads. You can run ads and offer a paid version without ads. It's about the tracking.
Early Google style text box ads were fine. Any ad put on the side of the page with no animated elements is probably fine. But in reality ads are intrusive and those block my mental process when I'm trying to read about of focus on something. Especially ads in videos would just make me focus really, really hard on blocking off the message until I can restore my mental stack and continue with the original video. (I can't watch youtube with ads, for that reason.) Anything that pops up, takes space, or requires me to find an X button to shut them off gets me to C-w the browser tab nearly without exception.
If the ads do behave I don't particularly mind. I even used to peruse ads in print magazines. In fact, untargetted ads are generally complete shit and if the "inter Net cloud thing" has even an inkling of what I might be interested at all, that's all the better I think. I don't ever click on ads though, so I'm probably not part of the prime target audience. But meaningful ads may make me add their products in the comparison set if I'm in the process of buying something similar.
The data is extraordinarily valuable and the morals of Meta is so utterly low.
I've long thought we are going to reach a point where the return on social advertising isn't worth the investment, these models have a crisis and pivot, but it still seems to be going strong.
There's also a bit of competitive pressure. Even if people get numb to ads, business, especially small businesses, can't afford to not show up if their competitors are still showing up in feeds.
The usual advertising psychology tricks still apply also which is why ads still work. Even if the ad itself doesn't result in a conversion, there's still the exposure effect of someone seeing your brand over and over again in their feed. The more times someone sees it, they'll subconsciously start preferring that brand or see it as more trustworthy. Among other tricks.
These companies are filled to the brim with utter sociopaths, Especially Facebook. Companies that internal metrics with them fully aware of the mental health damage they're doing at a massive scale to young children, and buried it.
Companies that did psychological manipulation AB tests.
The judgement requires Meta to change their platforms within 2 weeks so that the user's choice is persistent. If not implemented in 2 weeks, there is a daily penalty of €100'000, up to a maximum of €5 million.
I would be curious if the order stands as for curation as well. Someone could have 1000s of friends, and you cant show posts from everyone in a reverse chronological order for a good ux.
That’s pretty much what I do. Discoverability happens off-site, which might be a hindrance for you, but I don’t necessarily want more stuff to watch for the sake of more stuff to watch.
It would be nice if youtube could include some of these handy features in the settings, but it is not something they want to do it seems.
(it also lets you disable Shorts and suggestions and so on, pretty fantastic actually)
All people should see the same information, in the same order, with the same metadata such as likes and comments.
Example:
I go to Reddit. I see a list of only the subreddits I subscribed to. This is fine. But within this subreddit, I should see the same information as other users do.
Currently, you don’t even see the same comments and same replies, likes, dislikes on topics. This puts people in bubbles, and makes it impossible to enforce fair reporting, illegal content or manipulation.
in my not so humble and often overly verbose opinion, we desperately need to get back to a place where we have more control over what our own inputs.
a handful of people are now in control of the overwhelming majority of what we see. whether that’s the few websites most people visit or the wildly merging media ecosystem which is now also overwhelmingly controlled by a tiny few with even more mergers on the immediate horizon. to the corporate live event space. it’s insane that weve allowed such a tiny few to control nearly everything our people ingest.
anything which counters this stranglehold on our inputs is a good thing, no matter how small.
IIRC, around 2008-2009, "most recent" was the only kind of feed, and within the span of a couple years, they added their "personalized" feed but would let you switch between the two freely (and the setting would persist), and not much later, the setting would no longer persist.
The moral panic over feed ranking models will seem to history as quaint as the moral panic over the telegraph and the train.
If your new technology isn't attracting a swarm of moral gnats buzzing about it corrupting the youth, are you even making something impactful?
Facebook is a massive part of social media. Billions of users. It is apart of society in its sheer size. A society decided “we want to make this better” and acted appropriately. I think it’s a noble pursuit for a society to attempt to reduce the clearly negative aspects of social media.
There is no real freedom of choice. The network effect cements big players positions. Try telling an 80 year old grandma with a 20 year old laptop to use mastodon. Likely no one she knows is on it.
Finally, individuals make essentially no difference when choosing to not use FB. But when choosing to not go to a local bar, that may be 0.03% loss of their monthly revenue. The only actor that can reasonably bargain with huge organizations is other huge organizations.
but there is? simply choose to not use facebook.
So your analogy should be more like there’s one big shopping mall network in the city that basically everyone has to go because certain stores are only there — and the owners bought any competitor that seemed to start becoming popular in the past so there’s no perspective of competition either.
In Dutch this is called a "last onder dwangsom": an injuctive order enforced by a conditional fine.
Their annual report is online at https://2024.bitsoffreedom.nl/en/ for people who want to learn more.
Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
That is the implication. The point of the first fine isn't to actually hurt Meta. It's to signal that there will be consequences, that the excuse of "but we thought it was legal" is gone now and give them one final chance to get their act together.
It's to pre-emptively clear away any possibility for Meta to appeal to either higher courts or the court of public opinion that they're being treated unfairly. Which they would do if you immediately hit them with a say, €5 billion fine.
Meta: lol
Though, practically speaking, America has been threatening to make the trade war they started much worse for the EU if it tried to enforce things like DSA and GDPR fines. We'll have to see how enforceable these laws really are.
Perhaps this case doesn't warrant it, but generally speaking I'd like to see allocating jailtime across the top shareholders as an option.
If my dog bites somebody, I'm on the hook, it should be no different with a company.
So not entirely useless.
Of course, there is something to be said about the dangers, effectiveness, and societal impact of social media. But companies should have the right to decide how they conduct their business. They should also have the incentive to innovate and improve- without being threatened by overly strict or poorly designed laws.
on the contrary, companies leaving will allow and force us to develop european alternatives that can actually compete in europe. they don't need to compete on the global market.
Nope - not if it is to the detriment to society ( as decided by society via democratic means ).
In the UK - when radio and TV came along, society recognized the power of these platforms and the danger of how they could amplify single voices with money in an anti-democratic way. As such political advertising on such platforms very tightly controlled.
In addition there are overall limits on campaign spending.
Then along comes companies like Facebook and money powering political ad campaigns comes in through the back door, and in addition a lack of transparency on the overall spend as it's now much easier to hide.
Moves to curb this is simply society re-asserting it's existing rules, not some new imposition.
If your "technological progress" is dependent on algorithmic feeds and pervasive tracking, good riddance.
What Meta does is the equivalent of dumping nuclear waste in the middle of your city. I'm sure you don't think companies have the right to do the latter.
I'm very sceptical of the origin of comments like these. I don't know any actual Europeans who share these concerns because they know that the status quo is that the entire EU market is captured by US tech. And that this has been done through anticompetitive tactics as well as offloading trillions in negative externalities onto societies.
If you're truly a concerned European, you're incredibly naive, and need to read much more about how banally evil Meta is.
Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuckerberg: Just ask Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuckerberg: People just submitted it. Zuckerberg: I don't know why. Zuckerberg: They "trust me" Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks
I guess they're writing the paperwork to cut off that particular subdivision as we speak.
This comment is akin to asking farmers cut off from repairing their equipment "why don't you buy tractors from a different company instead of fighting to fix your existing ones?"
The investment in the case of social media is the network you've built. In my country most local events are announced primarily on facebook for example.
In the first step, you get everyone to invest into your platform. You provide some valuable services to people, and they sign an implicit contract as a result.
In the second step, you reap what you sow. You switch the platform entirely and change its core nature and functionality. It's hard to stop using Facebook when everyone else is using Facebook, and this fact means you can do things which would normally have people leave your platform in droves.
This ruling limits the extent to which you can run such a bait and switch campaign. It's somewhat remarkable, because it extends some basic consumer rights to tech companies, even if there's no direct product nor a subscription in place. Personally, I think it's long overdue.
You can opt to not use facebook yourself to protect your own data, that is more or less fine. (Though we can talk about Facebook's collection of non-user data another time)
You can't individually opt out of the election influence.
Those people are in the app because of the social features and the feed in the first place. The messaging features were built on top of the platform.
Requiring companies to make and maintain a separate app entirely if their product has messaging features is an unreasonable requirement. If someone has such a strong self-control problem that they can’t message someone without becoming addicted to the feed, they shouldn’t be involved with the platform at all.
Just exchange emails, phone numbers for SMS, or any other type of communication. I seriously doubt that your friends are only able to communicate through exactly one communication channel and it happens to be Instagram.
the better alternative is to require interoperability with other messenger apps, so can use the app of my choice. this is a proposal under discussion since years ago.
I seriously doubt that your friends are only able to communicate through exactly one communication channel
some people do exactly that. they refuse to communicate on anything but their messenger of choice. and sometimes keeping in touch with that person is more important than my preferences. oh, and for many people i do not want to share my phone number, which limits the available messaging platforms we can still use. we'll be lucky if there is one.
I disagree. I think it's more than reasonable. Facebook designs its features with dark UX to cause addiction, it's not about self control, it's about Facebook engaging in anti-human behavior.
It's reasonable to use the State to force a corporation that makes tens of billions of dollars of profit a year to behave in a way that's beneficial to people. The corporation will be fine, it's air conditioned and listening to its favorite music.
In this case Meta already has such an app (Messenger), and it has at times supported instagram messaging. I'm not sure why they broke that association a little while ago, but it's not unreasonable that they could reconnect it.
Well, I suppose that's one take on it.
I would argue that people are in the app because Facebook gave out Facebook Messenger. Then Facebook changed how Facebook Messenger works. You could call it a rugpull, I would call it US business practices.
I don't think it's unreasonable and I'll take it further - messaging should be forced to use an open protocol. No more iMessage or Facebook messenger. If you want those, great, then open them.
Now everything works with everything and the world is a utopia and also we cured cancer. Downside: Meta will make slightly less money. I can live with that.
2. SMS is probably the most insecure protocol created for anything, ever.
3. The experience is as close to as shit as it can get.
4. Most modern messaging features aren't supported.
5. Most devices don't support SMS.
6. You can't sync SMS across devices.
Please for the love of god do not make legal requirements about how to build an app and what features can be included.
> We need to be able to message our friends without seeing a feed without having to convert all of our friends to a new platform.
lol, you have no legal right to how a chat dialog must be presented.
Why don't you try innovating instead of suing?
Anyone can make any social app work the way they want to. But that doesn't mean the same rules and laws applies - or should apply - to one with 1B users as one with 100 users.
Even if the government agency makes the worse decision possible, which they probably will, that's still an improvement, because we're completely maxed out on shit levels. That's how bad many products are today.
There's also an economic problem with the pay-or-ad model. The users who won't pay are the ones with the least money, so your remaining advertisers won't pay as much. They may not even break even with the ads, but persist just to annoy you into subscribing.
The only way you can exist on the modern world is to accept the TOS and crap that a small number of companies are in control over. Saying “just don’t use major tech services” makes people revert back to older methods like snail mail, which is just silly, not a real choice.
The consequences of “simply choosing no” matters. If that means you can’t interact in modern society, that means that service is essential, and should be tested as such.
Talk to somebody who works at Netflix or Spotify
The reason is that retention is much, much more important than reducing usage cost for almost every business
How does it hurt you by requiring social media to offer a working chronological sort?
I think even casual users understand the appeal of having both options and wouldn't want to lose it, assuming they discover it.
I agree with the judge. We are not obligated to suffer the degeneracy of the hyper-optimized algorithm with no alternative.
Just because you have never experienced the utility of working chronological sort doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Attribution, for example, has to be an absolute mess. Especially in the case of the psychology tricks you mention... If I was shown an ad for Subway, and then ate a Subway sandwich a few days later -- it had absolutely nothing to do with the ad. I only eat there when there aren't better options. Yet, I bet some ad conversion counter ticked up somewhere. I see ads for ShopRite all the time, but it's the only grocery store in my area, so of course I shop there. When you repeat this millions of times, it's surprising to me that ads are still provably effective to the point of being a trillion dollar industry.
I wonder if it will become less so as older generations go offline.
I think courts are generally swayed by many lawyer-hours and many legal-sounding-documents, because the judges are law professionals too, and naturally they think the profession is admirable, and so is doing so much legal analysis.
Maybe the judges in NL are better than that, what do I know.
When it comes to Meta or any other dopamine-driven platform, European society would only gain from their absence. Anyone would do really.
Shareholders don’t control day to day operations of a company. Top shareholders rarely have enough shares by themselves to control anything about the company. Remember the VW emissions cheating scandal where people were jailed? It would be completely unreasonable to jail top shareholders because some manager somewhere concocted a scheme to cheat on emissions.
Jailing top shareholders for decisions made by the company would be a weird misdirected use of the justice system. If someone is to be jailed, it should be people responsible for the decision.
That said, I can’t believe anyone would be watching the news about the current U.S. administration threatening companies with spurious and often nonsensical demands and think that we should be normalizing the process of letting the government jail individuals if the company does something the government doesn’t like that would have previously been a small fine. You can’t think of any way this power might be abused by elected officials?
If the cheating had gone unnoticed, the shareholders would've been rewarded, so they should bear some risk whether or not they sold after the crime was committed.
As it is, we've got incentives set up to encourage investment in bad behavior so long as you get out before your people get caught.
As for the government abusing the justice system... What rules would create justice is sort of orthogonal to the circumstances under which the rules are broken.
~Robert Reich
It is obviously known how to get corporations to comply, and the mechanism is used when governments really want to. In this case and others like it, probably they don't care enough.
The Dutch subsidiary has been acquitted, as it only managed advertisement income, not the app design.
Meta Platforms Inc. has been acquitted, as it itself doesn't directly provide apps or services in Europe (nor the Netherlands) - legally that's managed by Meta Platforms Ireland and so not Inc.'s responsibility.
Meta Platforms Ireland has been ordered to implement these changes, enforced by the up to 5 million euro fine (see pages 20 and 21 in the verdict)
I should also say that it's more general than Meta. Google are also notorious for doing stuff like this. About time we start legislating against it.
If Meta can provide a reasonable time frame for compliance, the judge may also choose to let the existing limit on reparations stand rather than increase it, despite them not complying the day they hit the 5 million euro mark.
It's all up to what the judge deems reasonable to make Meta comply with the court's orders.
> 5.3. orders Meta Ireland to pay BoE a penalty of €100,000.00 for each day or part thereof that it does not, or does not fully, comply with the orders under 5.1 and/or 5.2, up to a maximum total of €5,000,000.00.
Original:
> 5.3. veroordeelt Meta Ierland om aan BoE een dangsom te betalen van € 100.000.00 oor iedere dag of gedeelte daarvan dat zij niet of niet volledig aan de beelen onder 5.1 en/of 5.2 oldoet. tot een maximum an in totaal € 5.000.000.00 is bereikt.
It seems like usually they start with smaller fines, and if the offense is repeated, they ramp it up. Kind of makes sense.
The “price” includes giving your data to the data vampires and is thereby incredibly unreasonable.
Try selling moonshine you brewed under the counter, and you'll quickly learn how much regulation there is.
That sounds like as good a metaphor for addictive and unhealthy social media feeds as any! :-)
That alone is definitely not worthless lol
The truth is the content on Facebook is basically worthless and basically nobody wants to watch it. But humans are stupid. If you tell them something is free, they're gonna use it, even if they don't want to use it.
If Facebook cost even 1 dollar a month, I can garuantee those videos views would fall off a cliff.
a huge number of people think their ads are targeted based on their phone microphone always listening to them. and they don't change any habits as a result of that assumption.
us discussing things here won't reach those people and frankly I am not sure what would.
There is so much actual content about it that I am sure even I don't know 20% about, of all the ways these companies spy but I do know that there are some options to soften the blow by using things like librewolf etc. if you need privacy and ublock origin etc. too
We don't need people to have a full understanding imo, we just somehow need to show them enough and show them the alternatives somehow and hope that things change or try our best but I am not sure.
Now, one must also say that Instagram wasn't the incumbent messaging platform in any place in the world. It's just that newer generations always cannot tolerate to do things like their parents did, so if their parents primarily used Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger (oh, wait, all of them owned by Meta!) to communicate, they ought to find a new platform to get locked in.
Having messaging feature inside an app is harming people? Have we lost all perspective?
Why stop at this? Why dont we have a dedicated device just for messaging because if you really think about it, iPhones are actively harming people.
Lack of a messaging app is harming people? Let's be serious here.
I am willing to pay 0.01$ out of my pocket to not comply with some regulations in my country. I can even pay annually
It’s an intentional slap on the wrist because they don’t actually want to fine them, they just want them to change their behaviour. The general MO of European courts is to get people to comply, not to punish non compliance. There’s a subtle difference. If Meta change their tact in the next two weeks then they got what they wanted. If they don’t, fine increases and they’ll escalate responses.
Best positioned as in, make the most money? No, of course not.
Best positioned as in, not completely and totally fuck their users up the ass? Yes!
Look at Meta, Google, OpenAI, you fucking name it. These companies are a cancer onto humanity. They are actively making everyone's lives worse, on purpose, for the pursuit of advertiser revenue and new and innovative addiction mechanisms.
It's sort of like asking, who would you rather make your food? The government, or R.J. Reynolds?
Shockingly, the answer is the government!
I’m sure there are some number of people out there who only use Facebook Messenger, do not check their email, refuse to use any other messenger, for whom you do not want to share your phone number with for SMS texting, and for whom one of their friends cannot self-control enough to scroll a Facebook feed when they use the Facebook Messenger app. I agree this scenario is plausible for some very small percentage of users with eccentric habits and specific demands who are unwilling to compromise.
I do not agree that we need to start using the force of government to regulate that companies cater to this exact edge case situation where both parties refuse to bend their messaging habits or exchange SMS contact information but want companies to create an entirely separate app for them to communicate on their platform.
I don’t know how old you are or where you live, but I’m in my mid 40s and don’t live in a tech city. A good quarter of everyone I know in my age range uses Facebook Messenger as their primary form of texting. Most of them don’t even use Facebook itself anymore, they just have a lot of momentum on Messenger.
https://umatechnology.org/eu-could-force-whatsapp-messenger-...
It's easier to expect that your phone is always listening (because it is) and sending that data to apps for advertising than to force app providers to open source their code and prove they aren't collecting data on what the phone mic picks up.
But maybe you have more insight on a single provider's application that has been thus accused than other people in the thread.
My understanding of the parent comment and the comment above the parent comment was that the grand comment was frustrated on why things can't be subscription based internet instead of a sneaky ad tech which invades our privacy.
The comment responding to it basically said that it isn't profitable. Users just don't sign up and growth / stock profit matters to the company and so that is the reason why the world is the way it is right now with so privacy invasive ad spyware tech
Now, you want to pass laws to force the bloated companies to lose users, so deep down you are saying that losing users is unprofitable for them and that a subscription based model just wouldn't work for the internet which the grand parent comment wanted / preferred and many people do.
I might not be able to explain it but in just 3 different comments of different people, we might have gotten a justification as to why the internet is the way it is right now
Companies don't want to lose users or money :) which is why they turn to spyware. Now I am not for big tech at all but we need to understand them, we need to realize how this economy of privacy works to fix / liberate ourselves.
And also I think that a lot of these companies just pay fines when they do in fact breach any laws as for them its just a drop of bucket and there is very few amount of times that a company is genuinely punished reasonably and I am not even sure the last time that it happened...
but this is exactly why they spy on us, for profit and how we don't really pay for subscriptions or even let alone the idea of signing up or adding credit card details.
I feel somewhere somehow along the way, we got entitled to everything and we stopped paying for internet services and we started paying with our privacy. There is a point to be made that we live a world where evil adware no matter how much we might comment here is still more profitable sometimes than subscription for a lot of companies and so somehow I do think that its a bit of both on us and taking responsibility ourselves might help us too instead of just dunking them Completely on big tech.
I also think that open source is a good example of this, I just don't understand why people would much rather pay with their ads which might scam them or they might pay for subscription based software and not donate to an open source software.
We as a society complain about open source sometimes not being as good as closed source but why would it if we as a society don't fund it and open source is in a dire state of underfunding, how do we as a society then feel entitled of good quality open source...
The system is a bit broken and it starts from all of us I suppose.
Since the point of these comments on these websites to me seems to be to try to bring change imo otherwhere there is no point in discussing and I want to take it in that direction...
Like, The point I want to really ask is, do people care? Aside from the people here who might be passionate about it, but is there a way that the masses can be taught about such things in a way that they start caring?
Is there a way that we can show people how insane these companies track you all across the internet and how insane big tech is to the general public so that they might care and look at open source or any things like donations / subscriptions as a healthy medium and start taking part in it instead of being into yet another adware software part.
What are some mechanisms to help people share this knowledge I suppose?
Who will share this message of cutting the hand of algorithm when the algorithm is feeding the people the slop and people are eating it. The algorithm wouldn't listen, it wouldn't bother. We might need to think of something else and I just wanted to discuss it here if its alright.
Nebula, the "answer" to the shittyness of youtube that creators have been falling over themselves to promote for the last 5 years, still has a conversion rate under 1%.
People hate ads, but they really really hate subscriptions.
If I can be honest, in an ideal world we would have something like patreon and the likes and people sharing their videos on something like peertube and other mechanisms.
I don't want to gatekeep content behind a subscription so that people would be unable to access a community or content when the economy might be out of their hands and they don't want to pay for a subscription but I just wish if more people who do have the means to help and wouldn't be financially impacted much by donating actually do that more often / more as that would be the ideal world but maybe the question is if we can ever reach that or would that always remain an ideal and that we are just stuck with the things in current form.
Personally, I really don’t think the problem is subscriptions at this point. I think it’s just having enough content to justify the subscription. Netflix probably costs 4x what Nebula does but certainly has at least that much more content.
I subscribe to Disney/Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube premium. I’ve tried others but there’s not enough content to justify the monthly expense unless I’m actively watching something. And Disney/Hulu is next on the chopping block because the content sort of sucks, there are large periods of time where nothing I want to watch is released, and the whole thing with Kimmel.
My feeling is that this arrangement is massively negative for people and since we ostensibly live in a democracy we should fix it and they can go fuck themselves.
another issue which might be is that we are living in a democracy but our options are limited because of the money that flows into these elections.
Is it truly a democracy if its just two options and in my opinion, there is very little that both parties do to fundamentally drastically change the system because of both of them are funded by money donations from large corporations mostly...
They are just different flavours and one might be more preferred than the other for obvious options but even that is not enough and there might be a need for something radical if we truly want to call ourselves democracy and fight against an oligarchy and the sheer influence that big tech has.
I think that we definitely might need to do something as the rights of citizens if we feel like the govt is favouring the big tech or taking decisions that aren't in our interests but that takes real energy but that might be the best way moving forward I am just not sure.
We definitely need some radical change for the economy too and the influence that big tech has. In my opinion we have fought for less and won yet this things seems so hidden that nobody discusses it in real life except here and maybe its hidden because some people might be scared of having all people be educated about this topic as its not in their interests.
To me, I am not sure mate but a lot of the times, to me it seems that people have given hope on radical change, they have accepted things, they have accepted being spied upon so much that they don't even think about it. But as I said in my previous comment that there is definitely a scope of discussion / real change in this I suppose too.
Absolutely nothing stopping you from starting a social network
> But that ship sailed LONG ago.
I'm pretty sure there are hundreds? thousands? of startups ready to launch that all do some variant of FB.
Why are you on YC if you think free market tech is dead?
> But that doesn't mean the same rules and laws applies - or should apply - to one with 1B users as one with 100 users.
lol, what? We have different laws depending on how popular you are? What are the thresholds for when new laws apply? Is it strictly user count? Engagement time? Revenue?
Innovation may be dead in Europe but don't try to bring this nonsense elsewhere.
That's what platforms are. They're markets. Its not like making a couch or something.
That's why those other apps are literally worthless.
It doesn't matter if the other apps are super amazing and they walk your dog and suck your dick and make you live forever. Literally does not matter.
The app, itself, does not matter. Which is why Facebook is allowed to be as shit as humanly possible.
What matters is what the app proxies, which is a market. Those other apps will always fail, forever, because they can't compete with facebooks market because they're not even allowed into that market.
It is a market that exists in the free market.
> And an unfree one ruled by a dictatorship that you can't vote on.
Ok, so don't use that market. You're not entitled to Facebook, or being able to dictate anything.
> That's what platforms are. They're markets. Its not like making a couch or something.
Bud, I am begging you to close your Facebook account and see it is exactly like a couch you don't have to buy.
> It doesn't matter if the other apps are super amazing and they walk your dog and suck your dick and make you live forever. Literally does not matter.
You heard it here. YC is dead. Close up shop. All these investors just wasting their money because you can't vote Zuck out.
> The app, itself, does not matter. Which is why Facebook is allowed to be as shit as humanly possible.
This is just nonsense. You're trying to sound smart by taking an extreme position. Nuance is smart.
I have been visiting this forum for 12 years. It took probably 5 years before I _heard_ about the "other" part of ycombinator - the startup thing. But I never really cared about that bit, it's just an online tech forum that happens to share domain with the startup incubator.
> lol, what? We have different laws depending on how popular you are?
Absolutely. I think that is pretty universal already. For example laws preventing monopolies (government approvals of mergers, for example).
Can you show me the federal code that includes number of customers?
Do you think monopoly rules are about size or behavior? Do you think a small mom and pop store couldn't act in monopolistic practices?
Do you think a small mom and pop store in a rural captured market couldn't price fix?
Hint: It's not size :)
It's the correct take. Facebook had 800M users on the day Messenger was released.
> I would argue that people are in the app because Facebook gave out Facebook Messenger
Why would you argue a nonsense point? Literally all you have to do is Google "when was messenger released" and "number of facebook users in August 2011"
Unless you think those 800M users were just waiting for a shitty messenger?
Messenger was never the primary draw of Facebook. It came long after Facebook was popular.
I should have known better than to step into a conversation about Facebook on HN. Doing anything other than blindly agreeing with anti-Facebook comments, even if they’re factually incorrect or illogical, attracts downvotes and more illogical arguments.
I didn't say it was. Remember, my statement was: ... that people are in the app because Facebook gave out Facebook Messenger
Indeed, I remember using Facebook just for messages. So when Facebook Messenger came out, I used that exclusively.
Now, I've long since moved off of Facebook and Facebook Messenger. Some of my family still use it though, and I've seen it. It's not what it used to be. So, I then expanded on that to say: Then Facebook changed how Facebook Messenger works
> they’re factually incorrect or illogical
So, where's the factually incorrect or illogical argument?
The final straw for me to move off of Facebook was Cambridge Analytica. Once I realized how terrible not just Facebook was for not only permitting that kind of shit, but practically inviting it as a feature... that was very telling. And I've since stopped using nearly all social media, present website excluded.
Fixed it for you.
In this case we're talking about social media 'innovation' though. The science and art of getting a population highly addicted to doom scrolling. I'm not sure if that will help said population outcompete the other guys.
FYI, the big players today are the US and China. Nobody has the heart to call and tell Europeans that they aren't really part of the future, they're still away on their 8th week long holiday of the year.
Not staying economically relevant is far (far) more harmful to society than forgoing social media.
Europe decided to vacation for the last 30 years rather than go to work. The fruit of the post-war era was bountiful, and bank accounts were healthy, so why not take time off? Stone age is not a good way to describe Europe today, but over the next 10-20 years it very well may become more appropriate. European leaders are keenly aware of this, but man is it hard to convince the kids that they need to end their vacation, especially when it is all they have ever known.
I never mentioned ”number of customers”. The relevant law surrounding monopolies is the Clayton antitrust act of 1914
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/18
What is and isn’t a monopoly is of course decided on a case by case basis - as it should. There is no law saying that 80% market share is necesssarily a monopoly or that 20% is so low it can’t be blocked.
> Do you think a small mom and pop store in a rural captured market couldn't price fix?
Not sure how it’s relevant but they can of course haves local monopoly - but afaik in the US such local monopolies aren’t subject to regulation.
Yes, this is actually true.
You want nuance? Here's the nuance.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, is actually competing with facebook. They're not trying to.
So what is YC funding? What are these companies doing? They're attacking different markets and making different products. When was the last time you saw a startup make a general purpose social media platform? It doesn't happen. Nobody does it. Because they know they'll lose.
If you look at the hot new kids on the block, none of them are actually competing with facebook. TikTok? TikTok is not facebook, it's a completely different product. Twitter? They're incumbent too, but completely different product. Youtube? Disney Plus? Pintrest? Linkedin? Just think about it.
You could, TRIVIALLY, make a better facebook. I, right now, in the course of a few weeks, could make a better facebook. But I'm not. And you're not. And nobody is. And nobody is even trying to.
Search your feelings, and you will know it to be true.
this is even worse in smaller and in less developed countries. they are most certainly being conquered.
and i don't get what you are trying to say. i am terminally coddled because i view google and facebook as conquerors? what does that even mean?
The election choices are between some-one is clearly senile, or somebody who clearly has no substance and, well, Trump.
Other recent candidates include sons of previous presidents, or wives of previous presidents.
And you are worried about Europe.
Europe is worried about Europe - but in the context of catching what the US has via dark money flowing through tech platforms driving politics.
You guys keep working 80% harder! We will keep 99% of the profits, but don’t worry it will eventually trickle down to you. Hey, maybe one day there will be enough cash left over to fix our healthcare and education systems. Those Europeans are asleep on the wheel. Always protesting and striking and vacationing. Those fools.
Who designed the chip in your phone? Is it more likely to be Intel (US) or is it more likely to be ARM (UK)?
Where does Linux ( which pretty much runs the entire internet from routers to servers ) originate from?
> Industry running on American energy
Eh? While EU imports of US gas are on the rise due to the Ukraine war ( and the blowing up of Russian pipelines which, BTW, the US is implicated in ) - it's a fraction of total energy.
> protection totally reliant on American defense
So the US bases on British islands in the Indian Ocean, or in Japan ( put there after the end of the war with ... Japan ) are purely for the benefit of others and not in anyway part of US global interests?