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CNN Contributor Urges: Stop Calling Facebook a Tech Company (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a CNN opinion piece by Stanford business school lecturer David Dodson:
"Senator, we run ads." That's what Mark Zuckerberg told Senator Orrin Hatch earlier this year during his congressional testimony when asked to describe Facebook's business model. The 84-year-old senator was later mocked on social media for not understanding modern technology. But I'd argue that the wily senior senator understood Facebook's business quite well. Hatch was simply getting Mark Zuckerberg to say it out loud. Sometimes it takes an old guy to call out a youngster....
For media companies that run ads, especially ones that use public networks, we tell them that they can't lie or mislead, that it's not okay to advertise cigarettes to children or push prescription drugs without including the risks. We have laws governing deceptive advertisements and Truth in Advertising laws. Companies that run ads can't say a car gets 40 miles per gallon unless it's true. They can't say a movie won an Academy Award unless it did. If you say the wool comes from New Zealand, it must.... When nearly half of Americans get their news from Facebook, its newsfeed should be subjected to the same standards of fairness, decency and accuracy as newspapers, television and other media outlets....
Calling Facebook a tech company is how we got into so much trouble. It's also why, when Zuckerberg answered Hatch, the 34-year-old billionaire smiled in a way that was interpreted by many as smug. As if the senator was too antiquated to grasp the complexities of Facebook's revenue model. I see it differently. The company founder was offering a grin of acknowledgment. The jig was up. Facebook places ads just like most media companies do and should be held to the same overall standards.
For media companies that run ads, especially ones that use public networks, we tell them that they can't lie or mislead, that it's not okay to advertise cigarettes to children or push prescription drugs without including the risks. We have laws governing deceptive advertisements and Truth in Advertising laws. Companies that run ads can't say a car gets 40 miles per gallon unless it's true. They can't say a movie won an Academy Award unless it did. If you say the wool comes from New Zealand, it must.... When nearly half of Americans get their news from Facebook, its newsfeed should be subjected to the same standards of fairness, decency and accuracy as newspapers, television and other media outlets....
Calling Facebook a tech company is how we got into so much trouble. It's also why, when Zuckerberg answered Hatch, the 34-year-old billionaire smiled in a way that was interpreted by many as smug. As if the senator was too antiquated to grasp the complexities of Facebook's revenue model. I see it differently. The company founder was offering a grin of acknowledgment. The jig was up. Facebook places ads just like most media companies do and should be held to the same overall standards.
Users are the product! Facebook doesn't need to run ads, the companies and political parties already know to come to Facebook to buy users!
Stop calling CNN a news company.
Stop Calling CNN A News Channel
"Data theft company catering to the clueless" is less buzzy but more honest.
You can argue all day about whether a creative work has merit, but arguing about whether it's art is ridiculous. Facebook sure as hell isn't in the hospitality business, or manufacturing. Their technology is all in advertising, but technology has been used in advertising as long as there's been advertising. Of course Facebook is a tech company, just like an advertisement in a magazine is art.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Compared to Fox or Breitbart, Sesame Street is a news company AND more fact-based, and probably employs more trustworthy actors even if they have to wear muppet outfits - as they do so knowingly.
Google is an ad company too. That's where they make their money.
Facebook is not a newspaper. Its more like a town square where people are going about browsing in various shops, gossipping with their neighbors and hanging out. To shout fire in such a place and cause a stampede which leads to deaths is not an exercise of the first amendment. We need to go after Facebook with public order laws not just truth in advertizing laws
**Life is too short to be serious**
... personal data whore.
The other big box data stores like Apple, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter are particularly pleased that Facebook is at the lead of the media and legislation bow shock.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Of course FB is an advertising company that tries to hide behind the fiction of "we're just connecting people!" Isn't that the BS that every marketer since the snake in the garden has pushed?
Wake up sheeple, our economy, our nation (and every other industrial nation), and our very existence depends on consumerism, and therefore marketing. This is a doublethink that makes it nearly impossible to perceive the true insidious nature of marketing -- lies for profit.
They're not the ones lying or misleading, it's the people who actually make the ads or who make the claims that are lying; Facebook itself is just the medium. It's like a newspaper is in the business of collecting and disseminating news, but it's paid for only partially (a small part) by subscriptions... the majority of it's revenue comes from ads. If the newspaper prints an ad that is deceptive or misleading, it's not the one lying... whoever created the ad is.
Facebook's model is not that dissimilar to that of a newspaper, although they don't charge a subscription cost. Suggesting that a newspaper, or Facebook, should be (or even are) held accountable for third parties who place ads on them (or communicate through them) is pretty much nonsense;newspapers have guidelines on adds they can't place (such as discriminatory housing or job offer ads), but they are not required to verify the validity of third party ads (in general).
Now you can argue that you'd like them to be, but we've already seen how that works out with them 86'ing lying conspiracy theory asshats like Alex Jones, and then they get (a very loud) feedback loop by those lied to who still want to believe the lies, and then push even more lies like the whole "bias against conservatives." The real answer would be directing the remedy (whatever that is) towards those who actually produce the misleading or false ads in the first place.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Big tech should have stayed an ad company.
Let the users be the "publishers" and have the full protection of been a "utility".
Now that big tech wants to ban, report, detect and curate users they have become more than just an ad company.
Wonder when the full protection of the Communications Decency Act stops when a platform becomes a publisher?
Want art great Section 230 to stay? Just let your users content pass.
Start to publish and take political sides? Become a partisan censor?
What was government protected allowed platforms to grow.
Try for algorithmic and human political censorship and the gov free expression legal protections stop as the "ad" company is now just another publisher.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Think of all the Christmas Markets which get setup around this time. They need permits and its the job of the organizer to provide security (or pay the police dept for it). Facebook has setup the largest Christmas in the Park and not spent anything on security. So yeah we need to take their permit away and shut them down till they spend enough on security to ensure the safety of the general public attending.
**Life is too short to be serious**
At least he's not spamming wordpress blogs... well, not exactly.
[($)]
Serious question for the Slashdot readership, which is generally knowledgeable about "tech".
How do Google and Facebook stack up in terms of tech that they have introduced to the world?
My guess is that google has produced more technologies that have been picked up and used by others. They also failed to become a big "social media" player (google+ going away soon). So one might argue that they are a bit of a tech/media hybrid.
Extra credit: how do those two compare with other "tech" companies of the past. Examples: Kodak, Ford, Bell labs, etc?
I'll take my answers off the air..
Do you disagree with the relevant studies? Or are you just unable to read them?
Free speech should not include fraud and misrepresentation, which is what Fox delivers under the rubric of "News." We are cutting our own throats as a society by allowing them to do that.
I think the only real solution here is to shut down the internet.
So did significant improvements to HBase, PyTorch, Haxl, PHP compilers, and much more.
And Facebook is inventing sophisticated AI hardware (https://code.fb.com/ml-applications/the-next-step-in-facebook-s-ai-hardware-infrastructure/) including semiconductor design (https://www.networkworld.com/article/3268974/hardware/is-facebook-looking-to-build-its-own-data-center-chips.html). and is the primary contributor to the Open Compute Project's work on more efficient data center hardware (https://www.opencompute.org//
TL/DR: The only reason they are able to invade our privacy that effectively is that they really are an impressive technology company.
So $BigNetwork isn't responsible if they run an ad along the lines of "Jews must be eradicated" because they didn't create the ad?
I understand I'm getting old and it's getting harder and harder to monitor this stuff. But seems to me if you use your resources to broadcast such blatant bullshit then the resulting avalanche of crap needs to, and will, fall on your head.
Oh, the company that bought the ad time went broke yesterday? Guess what. They planned to do that. You chose to take their money and run the ad. So sad, too bad. Except not sad at all. Fuck you.
It seems to me the summary has misunderstood where the liability for lying in an ad is placed. It's with the advertiser, not the media where the ad is placed. You can't sue a newspaper for Ford running an ad in it that lies about mileage. If that were the case, that newspapers were required to fact check every ad someone pays them to print, it seems to me that would be the end of advertising.
http://kspress.com/sites/defau...
There's some reading about the basics (from Kansas of all places). First one that came up on the search, so there it is. Places that carries ads (such as a newspaper or like Facebook) have the right to refuse anything they deem might be offensive. That's not too hard to understand, and if you are getting old, you should already know that. That doesn't mean the medium (whether it's a newspaper or Facebook) has an obligation to check the veracity of every ad that comes across their desk (passed those things that are regulated by statute).
Advertisers can obviously game the system, and often they pay a penalty for that (whether legally or in negative reactions). I do think they should pay a greater penalty, but what that system would look like, i don't know.
Too much of this is conflating who's doing what, and who should be responsible for the content. If you hold the medium itself responsible,and not the bad actors creating the advertisements.... it would be the end of all mediums because no one would take the risk of running any ads whatsoever. It's also conflating product with revenue. If Facebook is an ad company because it uses ad's to generate revenue, then every single company in the entire world that's ever placed an ad is also an ad company, which is a patently stupid statement to try to make. Facebook is a social media company who makes revenue by selling ad space... they are not an ad company (personally i don't see them as a tech company either, but more of a regulated forum for people to converse).
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The Facebook Dilemma
That's an excellent documentary, especially Part 2. The Facebook system is seriously flawed, Part 2 says. In several countries people have died because of Facebook posts by destructive people.
Mad Magazine has ads. The Onion has ads. The *ads* are held to a certain "truth in advertising" standard. That does NOT mean the stories in Mad magazine have to be approved by the administration, or any other government entity.
When nearly half of Americans get their news from Facebook, its newsfeed should be subjected to the same standards of fairness, decency and accuracy as newspapers, television and other media outlets....
OK, first of all, "newspapers, television and other media outlets" are not in any way synonymous with "fairness, decency and accuracy".
That said, Facebook is nothing like those things anyway. A Facebook feed is a crazy quilt mix of stuff your friends posted, ads, random crap FB thinks you might be interested in, random crap that pushes their political point of view, etc.
None of this can end well. There is no way that regulation can ensure "fairness, decency and accuracy".
With a hat tip to Winston Churchill, free speech is the worst way of handling this ... except for all the other ways.
The link you posted appears to have some facts comparing Vietnam to Mexico but then leaps to the illogical conclusion that it is the result of "culture and genetics."
I could see making the argument that it's at least partly due to "culture", but I don't believe it's "genetics" especially given the genetic diversity in places like Mexico which had a caste system based on "race". In paintings they often portrayed 16 different classes of people based upon how "pure" their Spanish roots are.
But to some Americans, they're all just "Mexicans" even when they come from Honduras, Guatemala or even Texas. I'm not convinced it's cultural especially given the large number of "Mexicans" who have lived in the US for generations.
And we have people like Tucker Carlson saying they will make America "dirtier". It's racist nonsense in my opinion.
Comparing Facebook to the attitudes of "Christian clergymen" is interesting but in the past the Church, particularly the Vatican, wielded so much power they were much more like the government. They didn't just excommunicate people. Often they would banish them, imprison them or even torture them and burn them at the stake.
I do think FB has too much power but it is the people who give it to them and no one is forced to submit to them as many were forced to do by "Christian clergymen" of the past.
And let's just refresh our memories on what happened to scientists like Galileo.
“We order that by a public edict the book of Dialogues of Galileo Galilei be prohibited, and We condemn thee to the prison of this Holy Office during Our will and pleasure; and as a salutary penance We enjoin on thee that for the space of three years thou shalt recite once a week the Seven Penitential Psalms.” And then he spent the rest of his life (nearly a decade) either in prison or under house arrest.
Fortunately, all Facebook can do is kick people off their platform. When they start arresting people for their beliefs your comparison will be applicable.
I agree completely, but they're a cab company "with an app".
Have cab companies realized they should build apps too? Maybe they have. I don't take cabs very often.
And if the cab companies can't develop their own apps, why can't a 3rd party step in and deal out fares to several cab companies? I don't particularly care if my cab driver is from Yellow Cab or some other cab company. I just want the one who will get here first. They can display available fares to cab drivers and they can click that they're on their way and notify the service that this fare has been spoken for.
And like a dumbass I typed all that out before checking to see that indeed Yellow Cab does have their own app. And there's also Curb, Waave and Myle that appear to connect people with actual licensed cab drivers.
But Uber was the first one with an app as far as I'm aware.
Stop calling CNN a news organization
But Uber was the first one with an app as far as I'm aware.
They were one of the earlier ones, but by no means the first. Uber was the first however to have an almost unlimited stream of VC money and a willingness to simply break the law until it won.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
of labeling companies with a single arbitrary label we instead list the things they are involved in to help get a clearer picture of what companies are and aren't.
Calling Facebook a technology company instead of an advertisement provider is silly.
Calling Facebook an advertisement provider instead of a social network is silly.
Calling Facebook a social network instead of an open source software developer is silly.
Calling Facebook an open source software developer instead of a VR company is silly.
While I agree that Fox is the worst of the bunch - though not by much over MSNBC - I should point out that you are defending CNN, which according to your own link lies 22% of the time. A supposed "news" network lying 1 out of every 5 times they open their mouth is disqualifying IMHO. TV cable news channels make you dumber and cater to the worst part of you - all of them.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I didn't know about their unusual policy of not advertising unrelated products, but they have advertised products related to Mad, and those ads are subject to truth in advertising laws. The point is we don't have similar "truth in articles" laws that allow the government to come after you for printing things it doesn't agree are true. Having ads doesn't mean the articles have to be true.
(Though if you engage in outright libel, the *victim* can sue.)
Nobody ever died from a Facebook post. They may have died because of the actions of mentally ill individuals reacting to things they saw on Facebook, but they could have seen those things anywhere. Unstable buildings can kill people, but in order for Facebook to be involved in a death, unstable people are required.
Lots of people want to use Facebook as an excuse for their actions, but that is not how it works. It doesn't matter where you go, there are liars everywhere and checking up on things before reacting to them is your due diligence.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Big banks & financial firms develop tons of cutting-edge tech as a platform to support their core business. Not to mention governments.
Does that mean banks and the gov't are tech companies?
(Open sourcing is an unrelated matter. Note that plenty of true "tech" companies don't open source anything, but the US government does so big-time.)
As is explained in the documentary, people are accepting social media as news. But social media has no editor, in many cases. So, often people, especially those with little education, are accepting fake news stories on social media as true.
... and basically being ignored."
Social media managers, especially the Facebook managers interviewed for the linked PBX Frontline documentary, say they have no responsibility.
"News" without an editor is a social problem that existed far less before the Internet became available because it was too expensive to distribute.
Look at this in the 2nd part of the documentary, The Facebook Dilemma, starting at 43:11. Zeynep Tufekci of UNC Chapel Hill (University of North Carolina), Associate Professor, UNC School of Information and Library Science; Adjunct Professor, Department of Sociology says this about deaths as a result of people accepting a Facebook post as news:
"years and years of people begging the company [Facebook]
Yes, I get that. But if you are using the numbers presented in the linked story, then CNN is guilty of the same things as Fox - just not quite to the same extent. If you personally are willing to tolerate 22% failure on Politifact checks, and someone else is willing to tolerate 58% failure, then you are both doing the same thing except with a different threshold of tolerance.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The author is correct that this is an important distinction and breaking it down into the simplest of terms is absolutely essential. For regulatory bodies to successfully exert authority over a business it is important for that business to be neatly classified. We can see this issue popping up when we see broadband service providers rejecting FTC due to their business classifications, opting for FCC rulings instead. This might cause further problems for Facebook down the line. The trust busters might decide that the technology part of Facebook is truly independent of the marketing and sales department and could force them to split into different companies. With so much of Facebook's technology being released open-source, a split like that would force the technology department to monetize the technologies they are building in some useful way. It could get ugly.
Suggestion: Look around you. Most people aren't as logically-minded as you.
If you read back you'll see I say "... I agree Fox is the worst of the bunch". So, yeah.
But if you "like facts" you'll just stop watching cable news.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
CNN is nothing but the left wing version of fox news.
True. What Mad shows is that private enterprise can have a lot of power over what is said as well. While not put in jail power, it can be take away means of making a living power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Facebook is neither an advertising company or a tech company. It's a databroker. Their true power lies in getting data about user behaviour into the hands of banks, insurers, governments, etc. That can be used to inform ads. Or it can be used to inform hiring decisions, manipulate elections, etc.
"Facebook, longtime friend of data brokers, becomes their stiffest competition"
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
"Facebook, the new king of databrokers?"
https://www.wired.com/insights...
... factual statements from some conservative populists (e.g., Ann Coulter) ...
Ann Coulter made factual statements in public? I'd like to see the video. How big an ocean of lies and strategically convenient omissions were those little factual statements floating in?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Which raises an interesting question. What was it about Uber that got them the investors over companies like Lyft and others?. I've only used one of those jitney services once and it wasn't either Uber or Lyft and I don't recall their name.
But the driver arrived promptly which is probably why I didn't call an actual cab company. Those bastards have left me hanging or "ghosted" me too many times in the pas
The cynical side of me thinks it's just that they had no morals and were willing to beg forgiveness when they broke laws rather than ask permission or try to get legitimate taxi licenses in the first place.
I believe there are good reasons taxis are regulated, but the regulations often discourage competition which is bad in my opinion. If anything good comes out of Uber it will be a revision of the taxi regulations in every city where I've ever taken a taxi.
Which raises an interesting question. What was it about Uber that got them the investors over companies like Lyft and others?. I've only used one of those jitney services once and it wasn't either Uber or Lyft and I don't recall their name.
Well, in the case of Uber vs Lyft, Uber was simply first. They launched their modern service in SF in 2011, it was 2013 that Zimride changed its name to Lyft and basically started competing with Uber. Lyft also started out in Cornell, while Uber was a Bay Area company, and being so close to the California tech scene probably gave Uber an initial boost.