[HN Gopher] Tim Cook may have just ended Facebook
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Tim Cook may have just ended Facebook
Author : rfurmani
Score : 26 points
Date : 2021-01-31 21:44 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.inc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.inc.com)
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Facebook could try making another phone. I just don't see how you
| get around strategy like this without owning your own platform
| from top to bottom.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I think the only way around it (besides owning everything as
| you said) is to either have more competitors in the mobile
| phone space, or the few that control the market will have to
| have their power to pick and choose winners restricted.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| Despite the fact that Tim Cook's attack on Facebook and its
| business model is really just another round in the ongoing fight
| between Apple and Facebook, he hits on an important point.
|
| Facebook, et al are engaged in an effort to co-opt the freedom
| and privacy of people the world over and make our entire lives
| data points to increase their profitability.
|
| By depriving us of privacy and choice around our information
| spheres, these practices derail and stultify our liberty and
| ability to _knowledgeably_ practice self-determination.
|
| This has been done with the tacit support (with a few notable
| exceptions) of frightened government officials who don't want to
| be blamed for another 9/11-like occurrence.
|
| As Shoshanna Zhuboff put it in her recent OpEd Piece[0]:
|
| "The epistemic coup proceeds in four stages.
|
| The first is the appropriation of epistemic rights, which lays
| the foundation for all that follows. Surveillance capitalism
| originates in the discovery that companies can stake a claim to
| people's lives as free raw material for the extraction of
| behavioral data, which they then declare their private property.
|
| The second stage is marked by a sharp rise in epistemic
| inequality, defined as the difference between what I can know and
| what can be known about me. The third stage, which we are living
| through now, introduces epistemic chaos caused by the profit-
| driven algorithmic amplification, dissemination and
| microtargeting of corrupt information, much of it produced by
| coordinated schemes of disinformation. Its effects are felt in
| the real world, where they splinter shared reality, poison social
| discourse, paralyze democratic politics and sometimes instigate
| violence and death.
|
| In the fourth stage, epistemic dominance is institutionalized,
| overriding democratic governance with computational governance by
| private surveillance capital. The machines know, and the systems
| decide, directed and sustained by the illegitimate authority and
| anti-democratic power of private surveillance capital. Each stage
| builds on the last."
|
| [0]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/sunday/facebook-s...
| throwawaysea wrote:
| As much as I dislike the effects of Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit
| on the world, it is equally alarming that the actions of platform
| providers like Apple and Google can have such broad impact.
| Apple's recent history in political manipulations includes
| swapping the gun emoji for a squirt gun emoji, banning Parler,
| and more. Now, I'm no less alarmed that they could "end" Facebook
| even if I'm not a fan of Facebook and even if privacy protections
| help me.
|
| This issue is that there simply isn't much choice in the market
| here - between Google and Apple it's two companies from the same
| area espousing the same political culture. Having them influence
| and control the entire world between them is dangerous.
| Unfortunately I don't see viable competition for them on mobile
| devices. Who would we look to - Purism?
| harry8 wrote:
| Going from Apple+Google to Apple+Google+Facebook doesn't seem
| like a solution to any problem anyone would care about other
| than Facebook investors.
|
| Nokia n900 is still peak smartphone a decade after it was
| killed.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| It wouldn't be something to get excited about but three major
| players is greater than two. I believe there are still some
| open source phones out there but they are currently a
| minority so tiny their existence is deniable.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| This article makes no goddamned sense. Android is the one with
| the majority and killer apps attract people to platforms. I don't
| like Facebook but it is far more likely that a full block would
| harm Apple way more.
| yuppie_scum wrote:
| If only he could.
| gumby wrote:
| Why? Nobody is forcing you to use FB, are they? I have to make
| a google account in order to work with certain clients, which
| is dreadful, but have not encountered the same with FB.
|
| In the realm of lack of choice, WhatsApp (also a FB property!)
| is pretty hard to avoid in certain countries. So FB the company
| is hard to avoid, but FB the site doesn't seem so to me.
| bagacrap wrote:
| I don't have to be on Facebook to see that it's damaging our
| society, polarizing and radicalizing many of my fellow
| citizens.
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