Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress

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_Maksutov
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Re: Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress

Post by _Maksutov »

The Zuck always reminds me of Data from ST:NG.
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_Res Ipsa
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Re: Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Xenophon wrote:
Res Ipsa wrote:Interesting, Jersey Girl. I haven’t had a chance to watch. Had watching the testimony had any effect on your opinions about Facebook?

So I'm not Jersey Girl but I just now got around to watching the 2 days of back and forth and I really only walked away with 2 nuggets worth sharing. First, I remain confident that my idea to eschew Facebook was 100% the right call (YMMV). Second, that there remains a relatively simple fix (read as "really good starting point") to some of these protection issues. Jack Balkin professor of law at the little known school of Yale has proposed the idea of making these kinds of cloud based providers as "information fiduciaries".

I'm no legal expert, I'd love input from someone smarter than I on the topic, but the concept is pretty straight forward. Just like we do in medicine, finance, and other industries, we tell Facebook and Co. that they can't act against the interest of their users. Essentially it regards the relationship between user and company in a privileged status and puts the onerous on the company to protect and preserve that.

I don't think this will solve all the issues (monopoly-like control and fake news impacts are still a big deal) and it will certainly need to be an ongoing process. But this has a couple of major benefits compared to some others proposed; Zuckerberg has already expressed interest in the idea as recently as the hearings, the general framework for how this would work is already being done in other industries, and it could technically be done without passing something through Congress (always a dicey path) using existing precedent.

For those wanting some more information on Balkin's plan, you can find it here (PDF warning).


Thanks, Xeno. Much appreciated.
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
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