From my perspective, the positive to this is that it will incentivize tech giants to accelerate the development of the web platform (WebRTC, WebGL, Web Assembly, Web Torrent and the like) as stuffing everything in HTTP and using encryption will protect them from the dirty blocking of services, and will allow them to focus their efforts on fighting throttling. For this reason, I hope Comcast and others will scare the hell out of them and do some big time media-covered dirty throttling.
I can already see for-a-better-web.org where Apple, Microsoft, Google and others explain why they have finally decided to move their ass and get serious about implementing the modern web in their browsers. With their level of funding, the time all of this is taking is ridiculous. When Netflix and YouTube get their first bill from tier 1 providers, Web Torrent and libtorrent will receive a pull request within a week and chrome will be patched overnight.
I do not think that the small guy will be hit by these rules, mostly because I think that by the time it comes to that, politics will have changed. The end result will be that everybody will benefit. Implementing the modern web seriously is the one thing that web giants can do to protect themselves, as it would enable a fully decentralized web. The difference between that and NN is that the modern web would actually help the small guy by making it easy to for example start a decentralized YouTube. So it's easier to cry fool on NN, and look like you're concerned about the small guy when in reality you too are concerned about protecting your interests in the most convenient way possible.
Not saying all of this is a conspiracy, just saying tech companies are far from being disarmed, they also have their monopolies they want to protect. Keep it in mind before crying over this vote, or spending money and time on volunteering. Let Tier 1 dudes give them the hardest time of their life and watch. If it gets to hitting the average Joe, do something but my take is it won't have the time to get to that.
Sorry but none of what you said really makes sense.
1) Websites work using FQDNs. ISPs can just throttle on that irrespective of whether the traffic is encrypted or not or what web technology is used. VPNs make that traffic somewhat hidden. But we could just see those banned outright unless you purchase a "business plan".
2) Apple, Microsoft, Google etc have already implemented the modern web. They have deviations in certain areas but there isn't some magical technology that makes it "modern".
3) The small guys absolutely will be hit the hardest. You will pay more as Netflix, Hulu etc are asked to pay more and it translates to higher subscription prices. Likewise you are going to see the richness and diversity of the web suffer as it becomes harder for startups to compete.
You may disagree but saying that it doesn't make sense is quite a stretch. I will nonetheless address your points :
1) Throttling is addressed by decentralizing the web with technologies such as Web Torrent. If every user is a seeder, there is not much the ISP can do. At the same time, the reason tech giants may not be happy with this approach can be understood, but then it is their choice and ISPs should not be blamed. Once this category of heavy traffic is out of the way, with regards to FQDNs if the traffic is lightweight, then throttling wouldn't make anysense. My guess also is that discriminating based on FQDNs provided lightweight packets would be blatantly anti-competitive. It would be similar to denying access based on race. Also, keep in mind that the only thing ISPs are saying is that companies driving more traffic (namely streaming companies) should pay more. So the chinese-like firewall you described is highly unlikely.
2) Too slowly, you can't make a product based on any of the disruptive features as of today. Support is barely existing and not mature enough. If they really wanted it, it would already be done because while the modern web is progressing slowly, these companies manage to iterate much more complex features on their other products. For example, while we've been struggling with the shitty Internet Explorer, Microsoft managed to literally roll out their very complex enterprise cloud business and scale it from zero to a multi-billion dollars segment. This and the .NET Core stuff. Similar things can be said of Apple and Google. Let's be real. In 2017, we should be at the stage where all the backbones are long done and they are rolling out their implementations of the bluetooth spec.
3) Prices may go up on Netflix, but they'll go down on comcasttube.com (if the service is not outright included in the ISP subscription price). Then they'll go down again on Netflix. Regarding the point on the richness of the web, this is not the way I think it will pan out for the reasons I explained. And part of my point was that, with this regard, tech giants getting real with the modern web has much more to do with it than NN, despite the rational currently being pushed by the valley.
In practice not so. The design process is different: in CAD you draw 2D like you would draw by hand. In BIM you don't draw, you build a 3D model. That model will contain all the data about your building (materials, dimensions, etc) and you can analyse it on realtime. With a traditional CAD system (BIM is still CAD - Computer aided design) all data must be gathered manually.
Despite BIM existing for a long time, hardware requirements and unpolished software didn't allow it to become a true alternative to traditional CAD until recently (10y ago?) when it become good enough.
Not as big as standard architecture but landscape architecture still seems to be stuck in CAD world and relying on plugins to do its dirty work. It doesn't work out so well with Revit. So there's a market that could use a good product.
The issue our office had was getting people to put in the time to go from CAD to Revit. We went big and got a BIM manager too to help with that but even he will confess he thinks the company doesn't really know how to utilize him.
BIM also seems to come with a certain mindset and philosophy vs CAD where you would just design, which might throw people off.
I still find it surprising, like others, that Autodesk would lose money give their market dominance and I assume that's why they're switching to subscription.
I think BIM's market is large buildings that you are sure will be built. All the rest I would go for CAD or some light BIM (sketchup) without blinking. Setting up a BIM project is time intensive and you have often to fight with the software when you want to go beyond the standards - that's the reason that architects don't 'fall in love' with it and the reason why BIM managers exist.
While I have nothing against MBAs, this is a typical example of what people call MBAish / corporate BS and why managerial profiles have gained a bad reputation here. It looks smart on the surface but scrutiny exposes non-sense.
>Conversations around whiteboards between stakeholders creates value.
Why ? Are whiteboards magic ?
>Pair programming makes for lower defects and more reliable scheduling
Putting aside the fact that the benefits of pair programming as less consensual than what you seem to suggest, it can be done much more conveniently in a remote setup with a screenshare and a headset than by sharing a desk.
>Software is a design delivery operation.
So ?
>There was recent article on MS office space redesign to create more value.
Here we have the business case reference, always good to include one. The substantial remark is that once again this doesn't prove anything, the first reason being that "value" is extremely vague.
>Productivity is not per-keystroke
The art of looking like you are siding with the people you want to control while it is actually the opposite. If we go the bottom of the reasoning : value is not per keystroke, we therefore need to put employees in a room because their true value must be monitored to be appreciated. "Please understand, I really want to be able to appreciate your true value". Sounds a bit hypocrite to me.
>Personal productivity is almost a misnomer
One more slogan.
>I have been paid extra to kill projects that never should have started.
While I am the first to advocate careful planning and writing code last, as an entrepreneur, I consider it a crime to sabotage projects, because anyone who has ever created something, or started a project or a venture understands that creativity is almost Holy. Beyond the technical deliverables, projects trigger group (and market) dynamics and institutional learning that may be hard to reproduce later in time. For this reason, doers do not sabotage or kill projects, they rectify them. Sure there can be pure follies that need to be stopped ASAP to stop diverting valuable resources of the company, but my overall impression is that you have a more liberal approach to assessing what must be killed.
I respect arguments from both sides, but this comment is really representative of the crap filling most companies.
Anecdotally, for the amount of problems I have seen them solve in short order. Yes. They force an idea in the mind to become concrete and logically digestible to other members of the party. If you can't draw it in a manner that other people understand, you don't understand the idea well enough yourself. It is also free flowing. Ideas can be added to and removed quickly with an interface that almost all humans have been taught to use since a young age. It only contains 3 parts. The pen, the board, and the eraser. No software with far too many options to understand. No weird bugs that crash in the middle of a presentation. Pictographs can transcend language barriers. Software sellers will never create such a simple product, there is little value added reason to.
So yea, if not magical, far better than its competition in portraying ideas.
> They force an idea in the mind to become concrete and logically digestible to other members of the party.
You make a very valid point, what I was highlighting is that good communication can be achieved without whiteboards too.
I understand your underlying argument that whiteboards may constitute the best technology, but I also think there is a tacit convention at play here. People tacitly agree to communicate in a way that make whiteboards work. For there are many effective and fluid ways to iterate on ideas that do not involve live drawings or complex tech.
I know it for a fact as drawing my thoughts on a whiteboard has always been counter-natural to me. I can do it but I wouldn't say that it is necessary for good communication. It is just a communication choice that people make.
Everything that can be drawn clearly can also be written clearly (analogies, bullet point lists for flows, etc...). Not to say that diagrams are never helpful, but it may be a stretch to assume that drawings and whiteboards have an almost essential role.
FWIW, spreadsheets are another remarkable group planning tool with an HDMI big screen. Many projects work forward against backwards constraint logic not always clear from day 1. Bugs made shallow with enough eyes applies early in projects. Even editing text documents of tables and lists around consensus concerning values of features and costs of risks is very useful. I have never had much need for any developer just typing against personal request. I always force stakeholders across roles and departments to sign their names to schedules and sign their names to ongoing weekly schedule adjustments. Every slip is caught ASAP including eyes on features bigger than schedule budget stomachs.
Why don't you ask a question? I am not an MBA. I wrote Harvard's Ultrix manual, C on SunOS, Windows and Linux. I sat at whiteboards with Steve Crocker, Sunil Paul, Mark Pincus and Brad Cox across telecomms, finance, early Net and XML protocols and even early bioinformatics. Do you imagine we channel future visions from God out fingertips?
Let's eliminate some cases. I know some people work on entertainment software or short term content. Others work in departments "against management" for take home pay. I never care about those projects or those people working on them. My words do not apply there.
Interesting hardware is not virtual but involves complex supply chains. The same goes for productivity software interacting with the world already in motion. New training often costs more than new tools. DC folks making NASD broker registration reality are essential personnel in tight supply chain relationships. Any error on a Congressional Report can tumble decision makers into felonies or disrupt global commodity markets. Same goes for folks writing device drivers or porting libraries to new hardware. None of this is any app buried in app stores or Office Space TPS reports.
In such greenfield or release cycle projects the right team size and composition will get there first, avoid mistakes, clean up markets later cheapest or occupy profitable niches longest.
Software projects concern progress and reach and thus "pass the bus test." Nature is not kind to the shy. Individual problem are just problems. Anybody can consult from anywhere if they can make a living that way. Otherwise, nobody cares about homebodies. Never project socials problems or commute logistics as values or virtues. Skunkworks remains the model for focus and shared responsibility. Software is not the deliverable. Tools and answers are the deliverables.
Not taking side on the issue but this article sort of misses the point. The first half of it is focused on demonstrating that unlike packaged goods, producing electricity does not result in packages needing to be put in the trash which is a fact nobody ever challenged to the best of my knowledge. I never even heard of this interpretation of the waste criticism. But the author goes on and opens the Webster's dictionary at the "Wasteful" page to continue his argument.
The other half is an augmentation of the line that the electricity used for mining is actually used by the mining computer, and very little of it evaporates as heat. Moreover heat inefficiencies are not intended by miners. As a result mining is as legitimate as any other business activity and mining bitcoins should not be considered a waste of energy. While in this case an opponent may possibly exist, I am left unconvinced by this demonstration.
The real discussion is that as of today, the raw materials required to produce electricity are in limited supply and in decreasing amount. Provided this limited supply and this decreasing amount, a structural increase on the demand will result in a pressure on price which may have a negative impact on society and the economy. An other concern is that as of today, efforts are made to decrease energy consumption because energy production has a negative impact on environment with the current state of the art technologies. The waste discussion comes from the fact that the energy footprint of the bitcoin network may seem unnecessary to some since alternatives exist to transfer value.
The author fails to consider the issue from the other side of the table and does not even know who or what he argues against. He misunderstands what the opposing view is. Throughout the article a lot of energy is spent defending positions that nobody ever challenged and this for sure is a waste.
Just adding this since nginx proponents seem to be over-represented in threads these days :
- I too find that the Apache documentation is much better than the nginx one
- I also prefer the Apache License over the open-core, pay-a-license-for-more-feature model of Nginx.
- Then the module system of Apache is simply stable, proven, and seamless.
I'd go with Apache any time of the day as far as HTTP servers are concerned. I have nothing against Nginx per se, but I think that the Apache is dying / Apache is obsolete rhetoric is so far away from truth and exaggerated that it is almost becoming some sort of propaganda.
Apache is doing just fine and is going nowhere anytime soon and its configuration file format is not that complicate. Just try it for yourself and read the (well-written) docs.
>Most of the time, when you are working using functional programming you are implementing the business vocabulary.
>Here is where building a vocabulary that represents the business subjects pays off. Change now is a definition-change and, unless the business is pivoting, definitions rarely change; instead, they have constant adjustments. Functional shines in creating a vocabulary and having this adaptability.
I tend to use the same arguments to make the case against FP for business modelling.
I tend to say that FP is good at adding new operations to existing things, while OOP is good at adding new things to existing operations. However when Software Development is used to model a business - as it should be for reasons you accurately explained - the reality it meets is the one of the business world in which business needs evolve and requirements get added. You start by supporting local groceries and then you grow to support global supermarket chains. OOP is more suited to model business because you can naturally extend existing types and apply existing operations to them (ie. pass a supermarket everywhere a shop was expected + things such as polymorphism). In FP, every time you add a type, you need to add switch cases to your existing operations (at best), or redefine them create / new ones (at worse), since the ubiquitous assumption of FP development is immutability and known types.
I'd be curious to know how you approach this conflict in a way that makes FP work in real world business modelling which needs to be extension-oriented. It seems to me that the more operations using a type you have, the more you will be screwed when you want to extend this type. The only reason I can see this wouldn't be the case would be to say that I approach FP with the wrong philosophy and that there is no such things as extending types in FP. But in this case I'd question if FP modelling really is the best tool to model real world business for which it is natural to define things as extensions of other things.
Thanks for the reference, this is indeed all about it. The solutions mentioned are unnatural patches to the respective shortcomings of FP and OOP. It's ok to patch corner cases to complete the last 15% of a job for which the tool was a perfect fit for the first 85%, however the first patch should be to use the right tool for the right job.
The functional and strongly typed value proposition of FP is very appealing on paper but only shines when you have a level of certainty and knowledge on requirements that you typically do not have in real world software development. OOP by design embraces this uncertainty (but as a trade off is less assertive on correctness than FP).
That being said, certain businesses do not have a high level of uncertainty in their developments while correctness is a big deal for them (banks, scientific researchers, etc...). It makes sense for them to reinvest this slack in correctness. However, for those iterating consumer facing products (which represents the majority of developments), OOP modelling usually is the way to go. Because of the expression problem (which should probably be called the expression dilemma to better highlight the fact that the assessment should be continuous and situational rather than ideological and/or philosophical)
What you are mentioning is one of the hardest things to do when moving into FP.
"OOP is more suited to model business because you can naturally extend existing types and apply existing operations to them (ie. pass a supermarket everywhere a shop was expected + things such as polymorphism)"
The reason why you feel is more suited is because you are thinking in an object oriented way. It is not a bad thing, but it is not functional.
"... extend existing types and apply existing operations to them". This means you have things, and you do things to them. This is the OOP way, not the FP way.
In FP the things are immutable, so you don't do things to them because they cannot change; instead, you create new things out of what you have.
In OOP this is what you have, this is what it can do, and you put all the gears (or objects) together and you get your engine.
In FP you have pipes, this is what I have and if I put it through this pipe it becomes something else.
When a local shop there is a sale, there is a function that takes a bunch of arguments and produces something called a sale, Maybe is the total, maybe is a tuple with the different pieces of the sale.
When you move that to a supermarket, then the question is: how what the shop owner calls a sale in the local shop is different from what the supermarket owner calls a sale? How my vocabulary changed? for a lot of things, you will see that the meaning is the same, just over more data; and also, there are new words that didn't exist in the smaller context. A sale is in both cases the sum of the quantity multiplied by the price of the groceries, apply the tax, spit out the result. But maybe the meaning of Tax changed, instead of been a fixed percent, it needs to be the lookup in a table depending on where the supermarket is.
If you need to constantly add switch cases, then probably you are using a functional language using an OOP mentality.
The way that I have introducing FP to people is using Excel. Think on this syntax:
A1: 1
B1: 2
C1: A1 + B2
You don't need new cells, C1 does not mean the same thing and the formula have to change... the formula or is it the function?
When you model the real world, you can focus on the objects, map them to types, and go from there. Or you can focus on the meaning of the words, then you need just a few types, see how those meanings compound, and go from there.
"But in this case I'd question if FP modelling really is the best tool to model real world business for which it is natural to define things as extensions of other things."
I agree, FP is bad at extending things... but it is not FP fault that you see the world as things that need to be extended.
Many thanks for taking the time to explain this, I can see that you have a point.
>Or you can focus on the meaning of the words, then you need just a few types, see how those meanings compound, and go from there.
>I agree, FP is bad at extending things... but it is not FP fault that you see the world as things that need to be extended.
I should probably give another look to FP and continue to study the subject, I have likely been approaching it with a OOP mindset as you suggest. One last question though, what about code duplication ? If you focus on the meaning of words and compounding these meanings to create new things, wouldn't it most of the time create lot of duplicate code ? For example in the case of the local shop and the supermarket, wouldn't you have two functions (or a switch case) containing exactly the same code to calculate the quantity multiplied by the price of the groceries ? One would take a local shop as parameter, and the other one would take a supermarket.
Splitting the sale processing function in two parts - one summing up the groceries and the other one calculating the taxes - so that you can reuse the first function implies knowing in advance the existence of the supermarket structure (which you will only know many years after putting your product in production). Not doing it in advance either means duplicate code or refactoring every time you add an operation. The extension mindset initially comes from the need to avoid code duplication which is known to make maintenance difficult.
Now maybe the strongly-typed experience of FP and its compile-time checks are so convenient in practice that they make the maintenance of this kind of code easily manageable ? Maybe it's not even really duplicate code since what would be a basic number in OOP would be two different types here in FP ? Or maybe it's still thinking about FP from an OOP perspective ?
What goes through the sale function pipe is not the store and its size, it really does not matter for the meaning of sale were the sale happened. What matter for the sale is the cart. The cart might be more or less sofisticated because the size of the store, but is still a cart.
So the sale function is a pipe that eats a cart and spits out a receipt.
Or if you want to put it in another way, a sale is something that might happen to a cart over time. Functions are the clock on the system. In a functional system, times does not pass until a function is executed (does it sounds like lazy evaluation?)
In functional programming, we avoid duplication of code by appliying functions to the data so it spits what the next function needs. If you have a function sale that can eat a simple cart, but now you have a complex cart, one solution is to create a function that converts the complex cart into the simple one that the sale function needs; another way is to make the complex cart having the same data as the simpler cart. What you choose to do is proportional to how different the meaning of cart is, or maybe the cart remains the same. In general terms, this type of thinking tend to produce less lines of code needed per similar acomplishment.
So in OOP your are using objects to put together the store, while in FP your are descriving what happens in the store by connecting pipes betweem the different data. It is not about what can happen to the data, but what makes the data travel. It is not about what steps makes it work, but the fluidity of the data life span.
Many thanks jorgeleo ! I wasn't clear on how FP handles complexity management and the unknown. You've beautifully connected the dots and helped me shift my thinking, this is all clear now.
In particular your demonstration was very convincing from a DDD perspective. I can see that FP is not less natural than OOP for domain modelling while it approaches things from a very different angle. However FP brings to the table rich domain semantics, high correctness guarantees, and I feel productivity gains too. And with the mindset you've presented, it is also clear that the unknown seems to be accounted for in FP too. As an architect, this last point was the grey area and the deal breaker for me. However now I see no reason not to invest in heavily leveraging FP moving forward. Thanks again jorgeleo.
I agree with Twisell. The solution is to create a super data-structure so this really is an architecture and abstraction issue - ie. design things in a way such that these structures can be added in an incremental and painless way when the need appears.
Only a minority of people are good at that. I'd also note that there is a correlation between the importance of such needs and the ability to anticipate them at the initial design stage. (ie. is it reasonable to be surprised by the fact that a holding owning several supermarkets asks for consolidated reporting at some point ?).
If you're good at abstraction, modularity and composability, there really isn't any gotcha to fear. Stuff don't just come out of the blue.
How do you create a data structure for a requirement that doesn't exist at the beginning of the product?
Most of the time when I've seen someone design data structures in a way that attempts to design for unknown or predicted future requirements, the design ultimately becomes over engineered and a nightmare to maintain or expand in ways the actual product requires down the road.
I'll always pick the concrete implementation as long as future requirements are unsure.
I don't know how you get good at magically guessing how your product needs to evolve, e.g., what new industries is your sales team going to crack into, what direction does marketing want to take your product, etc - the only way you could be "good" at that is when the direction is extremely obvious or you have unilateral decision making on every point of your road map.
This is a smart move by YC. This gives them a platform to assess promising ideas and teams at no-cost. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point teams become required to graduate from the program before being able to apply to YC.
I am not trying to be cynical here or downplay the value of their contribution. I think that they will genuinely teach the best of what they know to people. And what I am actually saying is that this is a good example of healthy capitalism.
This is an example of the fact that it is possible to articulate your best interests in a way that also helps people.
But I have to say that also admire the strategy itself. This is the kind of things that get you thinking : "they should have done it a long time ago" after you see the solution. Never thought about it either to be fair, but this is how you recognize the best solutions : they shine through their simplicity.
Anyway, well found and wishing you the best with this, and hopefully this will help and inspire many people to make the world a more pleasant place.
- It all started with Facebook being accused of manipulating the timeline to remove conservative stories during the campaign
- At the time, their PR was along the lines of : we will fire the staff and replace it with an "objective" algorithm
- Shortly before the end of the campaign, the Fake News narrative started to be tested under various forms ("conspiracy theories are going mainstream", "damaging rumors" etc...)
- Post election the Fake News narrative started to be really pushed by politics
- At the same time, FB started to announce actions to fight the so called "Fake News Problem".
- And these day, hearing FB and mainstream media, the rethoric is as shameless as "We need to clean the news".
Having been caught doing some very troubling things, FB answer is to double down with what would be called censorship if it was being done in China.
Shutting down opinions, based on the opinions expressed can remind certain patterns of a not so old history. I find it shocking that people accept this development so quietly. Everybody seems to be ok with that. It seems like citizens are no longer awake and fighting for the bill of rights, seriously folks how can something like this possibly happen in this country ? Are you realizing what is happening here ?
In 2016, the average citizen thinks he is a good citizen and is all proud by being "politically correct" for a number of small things (often ridiculous and preventing him from maturing his own opinions) but everybody is comfortable with movements such as "Cleaning the news" being organized in plain sight. That's how you know something is fucked up. This is a shame.
"It seems like citizens are no longer awake and fighting for the bill of rights"
Nothing in the bill of rights applies here. You don't have freedom of speech on Facebook - They make the rules and decide what is allowed and not allowed. It's a company, not the US Government. If enough of their users are upset that fake news like "The Pope endorses Donald Trump" (a real example) is surfacing constantly on their news feeds, it is in Facebook's best interest as a company to try to remedy the situation. They make money when people are actively using their site - and if the "Fake News Epidemic" is causing people to stop using Facebook, they'll try to stop it.
Nobody is making anybody use Facebook - it does seem kind of silly to me, but clearly they see value in this (or not doing this was losing them money). What we really need to do is stop treating large corporations like they are a government entity and getting upset when they start restricting "free speech" - they have no obligation to allow people to post anything they want, and can manipulate your timeline as much as they want because you signed their ToS.
I just posted on an another thread that the problem here is that Facebook positionning / PR is to be say that they are a neutral agent.
"Share what you want with your friends / family etc." This is why this case is different. If I use ExxonMobilBook, I kind of know what to expect of Greenpeace related stories.
Given their size, extra-precaution needs to be taken. They either need to rollback, or make their agenda more appearent.
"They either need to rollback, or make their agenda more appearent."
That is an opinion. They, in reality, don't need to do anything, nor do they owe you anything. Just because their positioning/PR makes them seem neutral, that doesn't mean they are required to be. They don't need to take precaution, and I will eat my shoe if this decision is what causes Facebook to lose users. Fact of the matter is, 99.9% of users don't care, .09% are cool with facebook doing this, and .01% (you) want them to roll back.
To be fair, facebook can, if it wants, put full blown nazi propaganda on their network and delete anything anti-nazi. Of course just because it's legal for a company to do that doesn't mean it's ethical and okay and we should just accept it. Similarly, while it's perfectly legal or facebook to select news stories to try and politically influence it's users, that would be highly unethical.
To be fair to facebook though, reddit has been actively caught doing this repeatedly so I don't know why everyone is harping on facebook instead of reddit.
More like 99.9% of users don't know enough about the situation to warrant an opinion.
I mean, if you asked random passerby on the street about Facebook's neutrality in terms of freedom of speech, I guarantee you that 99.9% of them will respond with something along the lines of "I don't know, I just use it to share funny cat videos with my friends lmao xD" or "If you don't like it you don't have to click on it".
First of all, you have the chronology right but the causation wrong. After conservative pressure to stop editorially reviewing news, fake news has increasingly trended. Since the election, people have realized how untenable this is and so Facebook is looking for a solution.
This has nothing to do with the bill of rights. Facebook is not the government, government is not requiring fake news to be censored, and the fact checkers are independent organizations.
You don't have an inalienable right to spread whatever political lie you want to millions of people. Facebook is this era's nightly news and, just like the nightly news, they have a right to avoid sharing crazy conspiracy theories and outright lies.
>Facebook is this era's nightly news and, just like the nightly news, they have a right to avoid sharing crazy conspiracy theories and outright lies.
I have no problem with that. I have a problem with them choosing what I can share with my friends, and more generally what people can share with each other. "Sorry it's fake news so we limited the reach".
The problem is that they are not open. My only problem is opacity. HN is transparent, Breitbart is transparent. You know their opinions, you know their agenda. But this is not the case with FB which pretends to be neutral, and this is the issue.
>This has nothing to do with the bill of rights. Facebook is not the government, government is not requiring fake news to be censored, and the fact checkers are independent organizations.
Do you remember the anti-trust suits against Microsoft ? You can't pretend that a company having the influence FB has is just a corporation like another. When you have this size, you have added responsibility / expectations since your actions directly impact a significant part/aspect of the country.
Moreover they coordinate with politics, so this has everything to do with the Bill of Rights at this point. The citizen should at least pay attention to what is happening.
> I have no problem with that. I have a problem with them choosing what I can share with my friends, and more generally what people can share with each other.
They're not policing what you share with your friends, just what you can do on their platform. They are under no obligation to provide infinite reach for whatever drivel you want to share.
If you're sitting in a bar sharing racist anecdotes with your friends, that bar has the right to kick you out if they feel like. It's their bar.
If you don't like what Facebook's policies, go share somewhere else. There's even an alt-right social network you'll fit right in on.
> The problem is that they are not open. My only problem is opacity.
They're completely open about it. They've posted multiple stories about how they're addressing this, will provide links to third-party analysis for any flagged stories, and list the criteria for third-party fact-checking. [0]
> Moreover they coordinate with politics, so this has everything to do with the Bill of Rights at this point.
No, it does not. The Bill of Rights restrains what the government can do, it has nothing to do with what individual corporations can do.
Do you also think Smith & Wesson should be required to provide free guns, since the right to bear arms is in the constitution?
> If you're sitting in a bar sharing racist anecdotes with your friends, that bar has the right to kick you out if they feel like.
Except for a lot of people there is no other bar. Your friends are in that bar, the bar has used their position to close other bars. And the only other bar still open is 20 miles away in a basement.
> If you don't like what Facebook's policies, go share somewhere else. There's even an alt-right social network you'll fit right in on.
The media is pushing the line "Alt-right == Nazi", so you are calling someone a Nazi because they have issues with Facebook controlling what their users see. After Facebook has already admitted to large scale manipulation of their users emotions[0].
>It has nothing to do with what individual corporations can do.
My point was that we should pay attention as "citizens" because Freedom of Speech is / may be concerned. I wasn't trying to build a legal case with references accurate enough to be received by a judge. This is a about "Freedom of Speech" is the only thing I was trying to say.
>If you don't like what Facebook's policies, go share somewhere else
You're ignoring my point on the fact that FB is not a corporation like another. According to you Microsoft could have gotten away with : "People can use another OS" in the 90s, but this is not how things worked out. We need to respect law and understand why this kind of laws have been put in place. We paid a huge price before understandind why we needed them, repeating history will be expensive.
I can understand your point, I hope you could understand mine too even if you disagree.
Finally
>Will provide links to third-party analysis for any flagged stories, and list the criteria for third-party fact-checking. [0]
Thanks, this is interesting. Let's see how it turns out.
> I have no problem with that. I have a problem with them choosing what I can share with my friends, and more generally what people can share with each other. "
They don't choose that, they choose what you can share via their platform. You can share whatever you want with friends, etc., using your own resources instead of theirs, and Facebook has no say.
Facebook limiting the use of Facebook's resources to things Facebook is comfortable with may not make them your ideal service, but why should they be obligated to be that?
> Facebook limiting the use of Facebook's resources to things Facebook is comfortable with may not make them your ideal service, but why should they be obligated to be that?
Ideally, they shouldn't. But, as of this writing, they have a virtual monopoly on social media.
- Want to talk to your friends? Message them on Facebook Messenger/WhatsApp/Instagram.
- Want to share photos? Send them via Facebook Messenger/WhatsApp/Instagram.
- Want to see what kinds of events are happening in your city/town? Facebook Events.
- Want to see different stories of the day (the whole "staying informed" thing)? Facebook Pages
- Want to use a different service other than Facebook? Good luck, because everyone else who may not be as skilled in tech as you are still hooked on the service.
If another IM or events service gets popularized, then FB's foothold might be loosened. But, until that happens, we have to actively make sure that the things shared on the platform are as free as possible.
You don't have an inalienable right to spread
whatever political lie you want
In the U.S., you do. "Real" media do it all the time. There are laws against making slanderous or libelous statements against individuals and entities, but every American has the right to say, "the moon landings were faked and greens are smarter than libertarians" if they want.
You dropped the most important part of that quote: "to millions of people."
You're free to go on any street corner and rant about the moon landings. Facebook just isn't under any obligation to give you a platform to reach millions of people with that.
Sure, but my point is that Facebook is no under obligation to allow you to post that stuff and is free to remove it whenever they feel. They could delete Breitbart's page tomorrow if they felt like it.
> You don't have an inalienable right to spread whatever political lie you want to millions of people.
Well, that's arguable, but in any case, and perhaps more to the point here, in the US you don't have a Constitutional right to force any private party to cooperate with you in spreading any political idea (lie or not) you want, even when you have the right to spread that idea yourself.
OOh, juicy controversial comment. I hope some people take the time to read it instead of passing over it because it's slightly greyed out.
I for one don't agree that reddit and facebook have a "duty" to remain uncensored. If Breitbart is allowed to be overtly pro-Conservative while claiming to be the only "real" news source, reddit and facebook should be allowed to do whatever they please. All the other news agencies do it, what makes facebook so special?
Isn't that a problem when a news that says that the Pope supports Donald Trump gets over 1 millions shares? This isn't opinion, this is pure fabrication.
A guy fired a gun in a pizza place, this is facebook's response. That guy arguing this is an affront to the bill of rights, seems to have never read the bill of rights.
The article could go on and make the case that the actions of the Pope are not aligned with his rethoric which shows that nothing is as black and white as what you suggest.
The example you responded to isn't a "What If" scenario - it actually happened. The headline and body of the article claimed Donald Trump was endorsed by the Pope with no evidence. It's fake news no matter how you look at it.
As long as they stick to flagging/marking posts while keeping them visible I don't see how that's different from how HN works. Are you opposed to that as well?
HN never pretends to be neutral, it is a community with a set of rules. For example we even expect them to filter out-of-topic posts, and we know very well the opinions of the moderators / founders and where their line in the sand is.
However FB pretends to be neutral. If it's only flagged and there is no impact on the ranking algorithm, of course there would be no issue. It would just be a way to know FB opinion. But, frankly, we know better than that, of course the ranking and the reach will be impacted. This is even the stated intent.
I can already see for-a-better-web.org where Apple, Microsoft, Google and others explain why they have finally decided to move their ass and get serious about implementing the modern web in their browsers. With their level of funding, the time all of this is taking is ridiculous. When Netflix and YouTube get their first bill from tier 1 providers, Web Torrent and libtorrent will receive a pull request within a week and chrome will be patched overnight.
I do not think that the small guy will be hit by these rules, mostly because I think that by the time it comes to that, politics will have changed. The end result will be that everybody will benefit. Implementing the modern web seriously is the one thing that web giants can do to protect themselves, as it would enable a fully decentralized web. The difference between that and NN is that the modern web would actually help the small guy by making it easy to for example start a decentralized YouTube. So it's easier to cry fool on NN, and look like you're concerned about the small guy when in reality you too are concerned about protecting your interests in the most convenient way possible.
Not saying all of this is a conspiracy, just saying tech companies are far from being disarmed, they also have their monopolies they want to protect. Keep it in mind before crying over this vote, or spending money and time on volunteering. Let Tier 1 dudes give them the hardest time of their life and watch. If it gets to hitting the average Joe, do something but my take is it won't have the time to get to that.