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Comment by greenail | Hacker News Reader

The knee jerk reaction to this is likely one to push for regulation but I don't think that is the solution. We should keep in mind that we still have choice, we can choose not to use Facebook. That choice is likely to have a powerful effect on the direction Facebook (or any other platform) takes. My fear is that government control of social media is such a tempting power it would be hard for politicians not abuse it. It strikes me that this is more of an issue with our culture than anything. That begs the question: can we choose to self moderate social media? The pandemic sure isn't helping.

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> we can choose not to use Facebook

You're looking at this from a western perspective. Some non-western countries are entirely linked by Facebook products. When Facebook went down last week, some people couldn't access their BANKS. You OK with that?

That's what Facebook wants: to become something you simply MUST use to survive.

It goes deeper in the US as well but not as deep: some restaurants and small shops don't have websites, they have facebook/instragram pages, which means I cannot access them.

We need legislation to stop Facebook creep, because that "creep" eventually makes it mandatory.

> You're looking at this from a western perspective. Some non-western countries are entirely linked by Facebook products. When Facebook went down last week, some people couldn't access their BANKS. You OK with that?

I'm not ok with that at all however I would guess that those decisions are being reevaluated as we speak!

>That's what Facebook wants: to become something you simply MUST use to survive.

But if you choose not to use the platform they will never have the power to make that happen. Anyone in power would be tempted to make themselves indispensable. It is a very human thing and let's not forget how flawed we all are.

>We need legislation to stop Facebook creep, because that "creep" eventually makes it mandatory.

You just move the power from Facebook to the government, it doesn't solve the core problem.

> But if you choose not to use the platform they will never have the power

It is far too late for that. Facebook is too big.

I'm guessing you don't know that there are countries in the world where Facebook is the only internet, am I right? Free Basic is a service that they offered with free internet in poor countries, but Facebook is the only internet. It has changed a little as governments have realized this is a problem but it is still the dominant form of internet in some places.

There are 2.8 billion monthly users, but only 200 million are from the US, yet it is a US company. [1]

> You just move the power from Facebook to the government, it doesn't solve the core problem.

You are assuming Facebook and the government are the same thing. (US I presume.) They are not the same. A government isn't a corporation. This is a totally different discussion.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-...

>You are assuming Facebook and the government are the same thing. (US I presume.) They are not the same. A government isn't a corporation. This is a totally different discussion.

I'm saying that social media is a form of power. If you take control from Facebook and regulate it (give the power to the government) you are simply just shift the power from one potential abuser to another.

Anyone can abuse power. A government can be changed by the people. Like I said, this is a different discussion. If you're coming to the discussion that cynical about government already, there's not much I can say.

It is much easier to change the "CEO" of the US Government than it is to change the CEO of Facebook.

Wasn't this because DNS servers were effectively DDoS'd when applications overwhelmed them with requests looking for Facebook without caching the response? Or are there actually banks out there that require Facebook to log in?

So many people these days instead of creating separate account to some websites (login/password) the use instead integrated Login via Facebook button. I tried to educate friends and family not to use this feature even for the reason that if their FB account will be blocked they will loose access to many other websites. However many people give up because it's not so convenient as to just clicking one FB button.

I have accounts with a couple of banks and can't say I've ever seen them using OAuth. But if they did, I'd consider other banking options.

how is using OAuth any different from using your email for a password reset.

I would not want to rely on a social media company to vouch for my identity for something as crucial as my finances

I agree that single sign on takes advantage of people not understanding what they give up when they choose FB/Google for SSO. What government policy could fix that? The fallback seems to be that people just re-use their email address in all their accounts.

which probably brings them back to a google or microsoft email account. back in the early twenty teens facebook even tried running a email service but killed it latter. if this were to happen it would probably make a comeback.

gambling, cigarettes and alcohol are tightly regulated where I'm from. Let's stop pretending that people are able to act in their own best interest.

When I was a kid *all* advertising in F1 was for cigarettes. We stopped that shit because smoking fucking sucks for all of society.

Fuck Facebook. It's an evil company. Not because Zuck or the people working there are inherently evil, it's just that their incentives (profit) happens to coincidentally and unfortunately be aligned with extreme negative externalities.

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