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Advocacy Groups Are Pushing The FTC To Break Up Facebook (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Verge:
Advocacy groups are calling for Facebook to be broken up as a result of its Cambridge Analytica scandal, subsequent privacy violations, and repeated consumer data breaches. Groups like Open Market Institute, Color of Change, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote to the Federal Trade Commission Thursday requesting a major government intervention into how Facebook operates. The letter outlined several moves the FTC could take, including a multibillion-dollar fine, reforming the company's hiring practices, and most importantly, breaking up one of the most powerful social media companies for abusing its market position...
According to organizations like Open Market Institute and Color of Change, Facebook should be required to give up $2 billion and divest ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp for failing to protect user data on those platforms as well. "Given that Facebook's violations are so numerous in scale, severe in nature, impactful for such a large portion of the American public and central to the company's business model, and given the company's massive size and influence over American consumers," the letter reads, "penalties and remedies that go far beyond the Commission's recent actions are called for."
According to organizations like Open Market Institute and Color of Change, Facebook should be required to give up $2 billion and divest ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp for failing to protect user data on those platforms as well. "Given that Facebook's violations are so numerous in scale, severe in nature, impactful for such a large portion of the American public and central to the company's business model, and given the company's massive size and influence over American consumers," the letter reads, "penalties and remedies that go far beyond the Commission's recent actions are called for."
make it very illegal for anyone or any company or corporation to sell other people's personal information, with severe punishments like prison time
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Only the courts, or congress can break up a company.
The author needs to get a clue.
The autor's opinion is basically worthless.
Damn FB really pissed of the DNC didnt they.
Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do EET Now.
Will you split userbase geographically? By age? Randomly? The whole point of it is to be centralized and inclusive.
It's a free service. Just don't use it. What the fuck is wrong with people? If it's not the government trying to control us it's corporations or it's the "public opinion". How about you just go about doing your own thing and come up with something better? Ohh wait the entire world has plenty of alternatives!
If they split it up largely on the hardware and software divide. The main Facebook site, along with Instagram and Whatsapp, that are funded primarily through ad revenue would be one company. Then hardware ventures like Oculus and their Google Home Hub-like thing, along with everything else that doesn't quite fit anywhere else, would go into a second company. It would free both companies to sharpen their focus. Finally, I'd make it so that Zuckerberg could never own more than 49% of the stock in either of the companies.
For any breakup of Google or Facebook, the FTC should focus on splitting all the ad networks back out, and enforcing data escrow and consumer protection laws (a la consumer research companies like credit bureaus are now). DOJ can focus on un-doing the Instagram/WhatsApp mergers, etc. (For Google, FTC might be able to split Chrome and Chrome OS from the site, and Play Services from Android.
Next up: Amazon and its vertical commerce infrastructure monopoly.
Hopefully, after that point, the public cloud companies will agree to divestiture of those into non-vendor-lock-in utils. Maybe.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
If you don't understand surveillance capitalism, you don't understand a single thing that's happened this century.
And I have come up with something better. It's call inalienable privacy rights. Inalienable as in your data could be sitting right there on the table, and no corporation would dare fucking touch it. Like plutonium.
That is what it will take to smash surveillance capitalism to bits, and restore democracy.
Because Facebook is the poster-child for economies of scale -- people find it useful precisely because all their friends and relatives are on it.
So imagine that a court orders Facebook to split into two separate companies, we'll call them BabyBookA and BabyBookB. Each of these BabyBooks inherits half of Facebook's customer base.
No matter how the customer base gets split up, that is going to leave a lot of people cut off from some of their Facebook friends. So if they want to keep in touch with those friends, they are either going to have to create a redundant account on "the other" BabyBook service, and then check both accounts every hour, for the rest of their lives... or they are going to encourage their friends to move over to "their" service instead, so they can all be together again.
This might work for a short while, but eventually one of the two BabyBooks will become sufficiently larger than the other, at which the smaller one might as well call itself MySpace -- it will wither away and die from lack of users, because with fewer users it's less useful than the larger one, causing a downward spiral.
And then we're back to square one, with a single giant monopoly monopolizing the Facebook-style social-media market.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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If everyone leaves, the problem is solved.
The problem (for the advocacy groups) is that they can't convince people to do the thing they think they should, so they want to skip the hard work of explaining their case and asking the courts to tell people what to do, and what to think. Meddling by the gummermint rarely ends well.
Everybody west of the Mississippi stays on Facebook. Everybody on the East Side has to migrate to MySpace.
From then developing a new WhatsApp 2, Instagram 2, Messenger 2, etc?
There's a reason that "smart" spying devices like alexa, fitness trackers and roombas are being given away basically for free.
You are no longer the customer. You're not even the product. You're the raw material for the most valuable resource: Data for the most omnipotent view of the world that money can buy.
See it's not just facebook. The corporations buy, sell and barter personal information in order to get larger sets for themselves. They package it into services for smaller companies to rent.
They're also massive opportunists. You only have to slip up once, and they have a data-point, which goes into the database forever.
They extrapolate. Things you share can be used to extrapolate things you absolutely don't want to share, with every new data-point increasing the certainty. Even if you're privacy aware, you're casting a shadow in these vast data-sets.
Facebook keep shadow profiles, just waiting for the day they can connect it all to a real identity. One of your friends or family will inevitably fuck up.
They keep speculative profiles which are probabilistic. Think you can start over with a new profile? No chance in hell. Eventually the probability of your new profile being the same person as your existing profiles will cross a threshold, and they'll merge.
You're absolutely naive if you think anyone can compete with state-backed monopolies, or that market competition is even what's going on here.
Asymmetric knowledge is power and societal control. These companies are vastly more dangerous than their childish branding and PR suggests.
not that /. or any corporate owned media is going to tell you that
Facebook is the most visible, but but not the only, game in town.
Google has got to be looking at this very closely. All of the points that are relevant to Facebook apply to Google.
Twitter is in this space. So is Microsoft, Apple, Amazon ...
It's gonna take some energy to move those beasts.
Good luck.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Breaking up FB, even if it could be done, will accomplish exactly zero. Like every other breaking up, from Standard Oil in 1910 to the telephone monopoly.
..then burn the pieces and scatter the ashes. Zuckerberg, too.
Facebook doesn't monopolize anything. There's nothing to break up. They're just one of many advertising platforms online. There's Google's ad network, Microsoft's ad network, and countless others. When we advertise, we never use just Facebook.
I don't respond to AC's.
It's not unusual for Congress to pass a law that applies to a single company, though. They can pass a law saying:
"All social networks founded in Cambridge, MA in 2004 must be broken up"
The court would then rule that Facebook was in fact founded in Cambridge in 2004, and therefore needs to be broken up.
It would then be the executive that actually does the things, so I don't think it's really accurate to say "only the courts can ..." Congress decides under what conditions a company can be forcibly broken up, and they can decide to break up Facebook. If Congress did so, the role of the court would be basically be to notice that Congress decided to break up Facebook ("social networks founded in Cambridge in 2004").
It's not unusual for Congress to pass a law that applies to a single company, though.
Citation needed.
They can pass a law saying: "All social networks founded in Cambridge, MA in 2004 must be broken up"
This is an example of a bill of attainder, which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.
The law would be invalidated in the time it takes Facebook's lawyers to drive from their HQ to the courthouse.
There is, in my opinion, one major problem with Congress making a law that is that narrowly directed. If they can make a law that only applies to one company, then they can also make a law that only applies to you. Do we really want to go down that rabbit hole?
Another reason I don't like the idea of breaking up Facebook is look how well it worked on the phone company in the 60s and 70s. We're now back to monster companies like Verizon and AT&T. In the long run, that breakup really didn't accomplish anything.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
A bill of attainder is a finding that a person is guilty of a specific criminal act. "Every veteran before 1918 gets an extra $10,000 of social security" isn't a criminal conviction, and therefore is not a bill of attainder. You will notice it applies to very few people, approximately one.
Anyway you asked for some citations for laws that apply to a single person or company. Here are a few which actually NAME the person. Most of them don't name the person, they just use criteria specific enough to apply to only one person:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
More commonly, Congress would pass a law saying something like "all Presidential candidates must ... any commercial real estate holdings valued at more than $5 million". Gee, I wonder which presidential candidate had over $5 milion in commercial real estate. That law pretty much covers everybody, right? :)
That should say "every veteran born before 1918".
How many 100+ year old veterans do you think there are?
One law specified companies in a certain industry founded in 1954 (or whatever year) in a certain county. Exactly one company qualified, of course. How much that company donated to the politician who sponsored the law, I don't know.
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Whatever else, this should be denied lock, stock, and barrel because of freedom of speech issues.
End of story. No further discussion or "weighing" of other considerations.
Sweden just fined someone $210 for saying Allah Ackbar. Allow no cracks for those in power to control speech.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
YES, break-up Facebook into little pieces. Zuckerberg is too much of a leftist dork to run facebook in an honest way that respects the privacy of Americans.
At this point in time, FB's behavior is notorious and well known to anyone who uses, or might use, it and has an IQ above (Fahrenheit) room temperature.
No one is forced to use FB. It's not an essential service. People will decide to use it, or not.
The problem, if there is one, will solve itself as younger people gravitate to other platforms and FB's name becomes more mired in mud.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
What do hiring practices have to do with the bad things Facebook is doing? Facebook's mandates, behavior, policies, etc, all come from the top. Facebook is not the result of employees going rogue and doing their own thing. It's exactly what Zuckerberg wants it to be. So this "hiring practices" garbage is completely unrelated (probably to do with the Color of Change organization and forcing FB to hire a minimum amount of non-Caucasian employees).
Further, I don't see how Instagram, Whatsapp, etc, directly contribute to Facebook's problem. The three platforms are currently so separate in every way that forcing FB to sell them will not penalize FB in any way. They'll just get their money back, and Facebook, the social media platform, will be exactly the same as it is now. Perhaps, maybe, splitting them from FB will protect user privacy in some way on those platforms, but that is assuming that user privacy was even protected on those platforms prior to FB. Or that a breach would never occur had FB not bought them.
The only way to really penalize FB is to somehow fragment their primary Facebook platform in some way. Like totally strip the advertising company out of FB. FB gets some small flat rate from ads shown on its platform (no more ad auction to the highest "bidder", etc) and the dynamic market of selling advertising is then its own entity (or entities). Or force some other 3rd party source of posts into the user's stream. So every 2nd or 3rd post a user sees is totally independent of FB and out of their control. That could be an ad, or something the user has followed in some way external to FB. The point is that FB would have zero control over that information being inserted into the user's stream. Then other companies could innovate and compete for the user's interactions and attention, and FB would have to then compete as well. This would result in a better user experience since users will follow and interact with what they like most.
Better known as 318230.
Almost any company can make a platform with the technical attributes of those offerings.
What triggers the acquisition is when some 'brand' magically is deemed the 'hot' platform. At that point there is no technical thing you can do to capture that population and your solution is useless because nobody is on it. So a company has little choice but to just fork over tons of money to take over the brand and users.
Of course the risk of chasing these fads, on a whim suddenly everyone decides some other random equivalent technology is cool instead and your investment evaporates.
It's a rather challenging thing to do since you have no way of knowing that a change of fad is around the corner.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Why stop at just breaking it up? Enact a real privacy law that stops ALL these data collectors from collecting/selling data.
... than what the pieces created by a break-up will be used for.
Do you really think anyone else in charge of those assets won't use them in the exact same way? There *is* no WhatsApp or Instagram without the data collecting, so why would breaking Facebook up into pieces do a damned thing?
And Faceplant moves the servers offshore to somewhere where they can buy the government. Somewhere where there are no liability laws. And tells the rest of the world to buggeroff. You can't stop money, it never sleeps.
MacOS model's NOT done yet so you can STOP now as you IMPERSONATE me here on /. nigh constantly, ok? Good!
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IMITATING me as you do proves you WISH you were ME though, lol!
APK
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The examples all suffer a problem. Acts of congress that BENEFIT a specific person (individual or company) are not bills of attainder.
What they cannot do is pass a law that penalizes a person (individual company) or deprives a person (individual or company) or group of people of a right that other persons have.
For example: "Effective starting January 2020, and for the next 10 years thereafter, the person named "Mr. John Doe shall pay an extra tax of the greater of $1000 and 1% of gross assets per month on top of his or her regular income tax amounts to be assessed by the department of the treasury"
That would be a bill of attainder because it Punishes joe --- an Act of congress cannot do anything to Joe in that manner that deprives him of normal rights under the law, property, etc. Its also unconstitutional due to a separate issue besides being bill of attainder: Article I, Section 2.
The Federal government doesn't have the authority to levy direct taxes on individuals (persons or corporation) ---- all direct taxes are required to be apportioned to the states based on population, other than excise taxes which are laid on specific goods being traded (not people): the only exception is the Income taxing authority - congress has the power to tax income you earn, but they don't have the power to tax property that someone owns: only the individual states (and sometimes localities under their authority) have the power to charge property taxes.
These are all legitimate things that congress can occasionally perform: Issue merited awards to particular individuals; Acts that authorize, refuse to authorize, continue, or cancel the authorization of specific government projects, which ultimately happen to benefit some specific people....
As Thomas Jefferson said of ex post facto laws "The federal constitution indeed interdicts them in criminal cases only". The Supreme Court has been consistent on this point since at least Calder vs Bull (1798).
> if you make a contract that is lawful at the time made, or you begin engaging in an activity, then congress cannot, and it would be unconstitutional for them to in any way attempt to invalidate your lawful contract or restrain your continued performance of your contract or activity after the fact
Congress can in fact nullify a contract for the sale of slaves, or for the delivery of whiskey, and has done so. What they can't do is make it a crime to have done those things in the past.
They can't make it a *crime* for a social network to have had more than 100 million users in 2015 and Zuckerberg in jail for what happened in 2015. They absolutely CAN say that starting next year, any social network which has over 100 million users will be divided up. If you want to argue otherwise, please cite a case for your assertion. It is my memory that the government did indeed free the slaves, prior terms of service notwithstanding. What they didn't do was criminally prosecute slave owners for having owned slaves in the past.
What's the advocacy group's Facebook page? I'll go from there.
If they wont break up Microsoft who STILL should be broken up why would we even think FB could be broken up? our justice system is set up to step on the small people and protect their political campaign contributors.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Good point on slavery being a Constitutional amendment.
However re:
> as congress did not have the authority to do so with a resolution for it would be an ex post facto law
Again, see Calder v Bull or pretty much every Supreme Court ruling in the history of the country. Within 10 years of the Constitution being ratified, the Court cleared up any misunderstandings anyone might have about that. Just in case people hadn't heard Thomas Jefferson when he explained they ex post facto and attainder together on purpose, they are talking about ex post facto laws that result in attainder (punishment for a serious crime). Congress may not create a retroactive punishment either by convicting someone of an existing offense or by creating a retroactive offense.
Again, you can dream up whatever you want to dream up, but for 220 years the Supreme Court keeps saying you're idea is wrong.
Again, see Calder v Bull or pretty much every Supreme Court ruling in the history of the country.
Try 1810 Fletcher v. Peck -
the Georgia legislature granted 35 million acres of land to private speculators at a very low price. When it was discovered that most of the legislators voting for the grant had been bribed, the legislature voided the grant the following year.
Several years later, John Peck purchased some of the land in question, and subsequently sold it to Robert Fletcher. Fletcher subsequently sued Peck for breach of contract, alleging that the voiding of the initial grant had invalidated Peck's title to the land.
The Supreme Court ruled that Georgia’s voiding of the 1795 grant was invalid because it violated Art. 1 Sec. 10. of the U.S. Constitution forbidding states to pass laws interfering with contracts. The decision in Fletcher v. Peck expanded the parameters of judicial review, as it marked the first time the Supreme Court struck down a state law as unconstitutional.
> was invalid because it violated Art. 1 Sec. 10. of the U.S. Constitution forbidding states to pass laws interfering with contracts
Did you see that part about "forbidding states" that you copy-pasted? Article 1 Section 10 starts with "No state shall". It goes in to say states can't sign treaties or coin money. Would you like to now argue that the federal government can't sign treaties because Section 10 says states can't?