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Facebook Now 'Vulnerable' To Government Regulators, Analysts Warn (fortune.com)
Citing new warnings from several analysts, Fortune reports that Facebook's business model now faces threats from "a growing array of bi-partisan criticism and fresh regulatory issues."
Analysts are now flagging an opinion piece in The New York Times, by Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, a Democrat who's chairman of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law. Cicilline wrote about the company's "pattern of misconduct" and called for "an investigation into whether Facebook's conduct has violated antitrust laws."
"Investors should pay attention to the fact that there are people sitting in some very relevant seats that are attacking Facebook in ways that we have not seen in our almost two decade history of covering internet companies," Stifel's Scott Devitt wrote in a note. Recent issues may be transient, Devitt said, and Facebook shares may prove cheap relative to the company's earnings power, but "something feels very different to us this time." He flagged Cicilline's item as "further evidence that this may be more than a passing fad." He rates Facebook shares hold.
Beacon Policy Advisors said in a note that "the potential action that regulators at the FTC could take against Facebook is far more significant" than rhetoric from Congress about reining the company in, whether via forced separation of Instagram or WhatsApp or by taxing companies that collect user data. A "substantial financial penalty," along with other remedies, may be part of a settlement with the FTC in the coming weeks regarding user data provided to Cambridge Analytica, they said.
"Investors should pay attention to the fact that there are people sitting in some very relevant seats that are attacking Facebook in ways that we have not seen in our almost two decade history of covering internet companies," Stifel's Scott Devitt wrote in a note. Recent issues may be transient, Devitt said, and Facebook shares may prove cheap relative to the company's earnings power, but "something feels very different to us this time." He flagged Cicilline's item as "further evidence that this may be more than a passing fad." He rates Facebook shares hold.
Beacon Policy Advisors said in a note that "the potential action that regulators at the FTC could take against Facebook is far more significant" than rhetoric from Congress about reining the company in, whether via forced separation of Instagram or WhatsApp or by taxing companies that collect user data. A "substantial financial penalty," along with other remedies, may be part of a settlement with the FTC in the coming weeks regarding user data provided to Cambridge Analytica, they said.
was a software bug?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
it should be illegal fir ANYONE or ANY corporation or company to sell or give away other people's personal information, and whoever does that is liable for any identity theft or fraud & theft because of that personal information being shared or sold
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Facebook will eventually kill itself off as governments impose privacy penalties, legal penalties, and impose privacy policies that will kill off revenue streams for Facebook. You've already seen some executives leave Facebook knowing the writing is on the wall. Get out now while you still have some credibility.
It is an awesome time to be alive. My stocks are up, my pay is up, my dick is hard. The only thing down is my golf score. And the 2020 democrat field is looking so pathetic. Good times my friends.
Politicians have armies, guns, bombs, etc at their disposal. They want to get some of that green for themselves.
.....is vulnerable to EVERYTHING. It's secure as a wet paper bag. You have to be an idiot to be on it.
You're just butthurt that the President is openly straight, and standing up for American workers.
Have sold their souls. There will be hell to pay.
As for that Russian cocksucking POS Trump and his gang of Jews, we will deal with them.
go straight to Chapter 7 and no payments to stockholders.
Zuck to jail for 25-life for aiding multiple killings and suicides.
"Vulnerable" to being "coerced" into not breaking the law - that's a good one. Perhaps Facebook has been hiring spinmeisters from Uber to place this kind of propaganda for them.
There seems to be so much negativity connected to The Facebook brand that I wonder why some people keep using it. If it isnâ(TM)t for all the ways that Facebook messes with you and your data hen itâ(TM)s all the negativity in comment and shared post, only surpassed by the shithole that is Twitter.
L'Idiot
FB has little redeeming value, but nobody is holding a gun to the user's head. Anybody that uses FB knows what its business model is and unlike a cell phone it's not a service you need in modern society.
Kids on the other hand should be prohibited from social media by law and by parents.
Too many people want all the sweet taste from the FB doughnut but then complain about its health risks. Grow up and take responsibility for your actions.
They need to be broken up as a monopoly. Them, Google, Apple, etc.
Sorry Microsoft, you are 1990's evil.
Corporatism != Free Market
I agree wholeheartedly: Facebook is a CANCER on our civilization, and needs to be ERRADICATED. So, really, should Twitter, and Instagram, and all other so-called 'social media', because they exist for one reason and one reason only: to make profit, any way they can get away with.
What I propose instead is simple: You can have your so-called 'social media' sites, but they MUST be 'subscription-only'. No ads, no selling of user data (anonymized or not!) to anyone for any reason, and all such practices become strictly forbidden by Federal law.
Many will criticize this as 'anti-free speech' and 'does not allow for anonymity', but you can blame Zuckerberg and Facebook and all their ilk for things having to go in this direction. The whole concept of 'social media' has been perverted, leveraged, and annexed by people who not only don't give a fuck about the people whose data they're selling to the highest bidder, but by foreign nationals acting to influence and destabilize our country in general; that last point is reason enough to abolish the entire genre of 'social media', it's done great harm to the U.S., the UK, and who knows how many other countries.
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Real name social media, is an extremely bad idea, whilst it serves corporate greed for analysis and manipulation, it is extremely socially destructive and all down to numbers, bringing too many people together to digitally shout at each other, with enduring long term shouts and allowing the tiniest minorities to collectively hurl abuse about with quite large numbers that echo on and on and on.
You have fringe freaks from all spectrum, lesbo feminist harridans to white supremacists, to black supremacists, to religious supremacist of every ilk, the worst being the fundamentalists muslims, jews and christians (even worse the atheists exploiting those religions for personal gain and power) and every other fringe ideology. Whilst tiny percentages of humanity ie 1 in 1,000 and even 1 in 10,000, they still come together and cause havoc in the thousands on the internet, taking humanity to all sorts of extremes.
Using real names pushing it into the public eye, rather than avatars and pseudonyms, which tends to lock it to the forum in much smaller numbers and in smaller groups. Perhaps a simple law change, the social platform when using avatars and pseudonyms, is not legally liable for the contenting and only hosting but when using real names and identities, is shares full legal liability along with those individuals and if the identity was falsely used, full legal liability, civil and criminal (use real names at full legal risk, civil and criminal). When using real names, the social media channel should be forced to accept fully liability as a publisher and supporter for profit, of that content.
Consider that pseudonyms (fake names) and avatars (fake identities) immediately tilt all that content in the area of publicly accepted fakeness. People can still directly contact each other by sharing real identities behind the scenes. Using real names and real identities, immediately tilts the content to being reality. So fake from the outset only limited web site legal responsibility, forcing it into reality, full legal liability civil and criminal for all content on that website.
The law can quite readily be written so as to divide the two and push huge criminal liabilities on websites who want to use real world names and identities to analyse and manipulate and fuck the social consequences. There is a clear distinction between the two that can be written into law.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen