Facebook insider testimony is valuable, but Congress should not make policy based on a former Facebook exec's recommendations any more than they would regulate cigarettes by listening to Big Tobacco. On Section 230, they should solicit testimony from what's left of the open web
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The content of the whistleblowing so far has been the same critique that's been directed at Facebook by outside observers for many years. It's neither a story about evil monopolies or an evil CEO, but how we choose to embed ubiquitous communication and surveillance into our lives
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This is a vital area for regulation, but previous efforts like the GDPR or the European cookie law show how important it is to get your thinking right if you don't want to make things worse. That requires expanding the conversation beyond a morality play about corporate greed.
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Section 230 repeal in particular, the way it is being discussed, would simply bring the world of personal injury lawsuits to the internet and guarantee the extinction of whatever remaining social bits of the open web that have not yet been subsumed into the big five oligopoly.
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What is missing so far from the discussion is a goal for the role we want the internet to play in social and civic life in the coming decade. If we can make those goals clear, or at least figure out what we disagree on, then the appropriate regulatory strategy will fall out of it
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Big Tobacco is the preferred metaphor for social media, but it would be better to think about it like junk food. It overloads a sensory system that never evolved to handle such direct stimulation, but it also serves a deep human need. Vilifying Lays over potato chips is silly.
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The issue of monopoly is orthogonal to the problems of weaving social media so durably into our daily lives, but unfortunately the two have been conflated and there is almost a belief that splitting Instagram off Facebook will make influencers start reading Spinoza or something
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Finally, any attempt to regulate Facebook has to accept and respect the fact that it is a multinational entity and that the global effects of regulation by the American government will be profound and complex. Congress, which has the power, needs to listen to those voices as well
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A synonym for "algorithm" is "spam filter", and the proposal to make every site that uses algorithms liable for speech is equivalent to repealing Section 230 entirely. The confusion around this point shows that Congress is not getting good information about how the web works.
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Anyway, use Pinboard while you can.
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