Comment by infinity0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by infinity0 | Hacker News Reader

Again, this country-vs-country bullshit propaganda.

The web is already less open from the efforts of US companies developing massively centralised platforms like Google, Facebook, and so on, you're familiar with the story. And they look very eager to play into the Chinese government's rules for their own profit, whilst at the same time paying lip service to liberal principles and internet principles of openness.

At the same time there's plenty of Chinese investment into decentralised cryptocurrencies, probably more so than coming from US investment groups. Some large western companies are doing more blockchain research for sure, but the vast majority of them are only interested in those within the context of their own centralised, privatised, permissioned systems.

Enough of this China vs US crap, your narrative is simply wrong. If you give a shit about the open principles of the internet, talk about the actual projects in reality actually trying to preserve these principles, and stop narrating based on false political boundaries.

How does Facebook, etc make the web less open?

They have the power to censor posts on their platforms, and use it, just like the Chinese government has the power to censor the internet in China, and use it.

Why are you asking such an obvious question?

That doesn't decrease the openness of the internet, just the "openness" of Facebook, doesn't it?

I happen to think whether they should be allowed to do this considering their size is worthy of a public discussion, but it doesn't affect the overall internet, at least how I think of it.

That's like saying monopolies don't decrease the competitiveness of the market, just the "competitiveness" of their own products for their own consumers.

No it isn't. Monopolies have the ability to crush or buy any competition that arises, which clearly decreases competitiveness of the overall market.

Facebook or Google doesn't have the ability to crush or buy any competition that arises, that provide a more open platform? Which world are you living in?

It's displaced several competitive ecosystems.

Many of the things Facebook is used for were originally disparate services-- think of the smaller social groups that would have been mailing lists, or at least message boards. Event management-- RSVPing and messaging participants-- used to be a fairly competitive space too.

If you need services in those spaces, and lack the technical skills to roll everything from scratch-- but it doesn't fit with the Facebook model or business tastes-- you've got far fewer options than you had 10 years ago.

I'm thinking, for example, a community I enjoyed many years ago. It was for collaborative writing so most everyone posted under pen names. In 1998 it was implemented by a mailing list which got cross-posted to a newsgroup. In 2005 it would have probably been thrown up on a cheap "hosted forum" service like ProBoards. In 2018 it would be a Facebook group, and almost certainly stuck with posting under real names. And that's the most benign "we lost something" outcome I can picture.

It's an odd situation, while anyone is certainly still able to do any of these things (openness), Facebook and their kind have largely made it a fool's errand to even try. And I agree, the world has probably suffered more than we can imagine (and you have to imagine, what could have been). Yet, I think even the most rabid anti-FB person would have a hard time making a case they've broken any laws, at all.

And this is all distinct from the very serious free speech (not first amendment) issues, which are another huge problem.

I wish instead of freaking out over the latest petty outrage du jour, our societies would spend more time considering whether whether we might be going down the wrong path in a variety of ways. All the same stuff we see on the news day after day after day almost feels like cover fire.

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