Executive Order 13943 - Wikisource, the free online library
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Context in the URL.

If WeChat is not sold to a US company by September 15th, it’ll be banned in the US. And, well, September 15th is nearly upon us…

Thoughts?

  • michel
    21·
    4 years ago

    Yeah, the choice is theoretical. Agreed that the Chinese model is more dangerous, but the US needs stronger regulation to control what tech companies can do with our data. I like one of the ideas suggested in The Social Dilemma that data hoarders get taxed on how much data they collect, as an incentive for them to get by with less.

    I would use Messenger (either Lite or web, so no ads) to talk to people who are only on it but I draw the line at using Facebook Pay for sending or receiving money (unless it’s to a fellow Facebook employee). If you’ve seen how bad Facebook’s customer service is it’s obvious that end users are not our real customers – so using us for financial transactions is madness.

    • ster
      2·
      4 years ago

      Regulation won’t fix this problem. Regulation fixes details. We are talking about a system that was designed from the ground up to exploit people for their money and their data. The only way to approach this is to have the public take free software seriously, and not fund or support companies which have power structures that care only about profit. We need non-profits and transparent worker co-operatives.

      • ster
        1·
        4 years ago

        Furthermore the companies are the ones who really have the power in the west. Regulation to them is practically just guidelines that they choose to follow if they wish, and manipulate and lobby if they don’t feel like it.

          • ster
            2·
            4 years ago

            I would argue that while western governments and their militaries are certainly the most powerful in the world, they are held accountable to at least some extent by the political system. China and Russia’s military have no accountability and no consequences to any of their actions, so they post a much greater threat.

              • ster
                1·
                4 years ago

                The government certainly does serve the corporations no doubt about that. But there is still some accountability, due to a little more transparancy and freedom of press. I’m not defending the extremely corrupt system we have.

      • michel
        1·
        4 years ago

        I’m in complete agreement there. We should try pushing on both fronts - build the replacement from the ground up, but anything that makes it a bit harder for attention economy platforms to maintain the status quo would help too.

      • michel
        1·
        4 years ago

        Make it progressive perhaps. Make it a multiple of userbase * data per user * number of privacy antipattern.

        Facebook and Google **would*be affected if the fines amount to billions per year instead of haphazardly every decade or so

          • michel
            2·
            4 years ago

            ah, any source for Google’s OKR? 8 bytes per user seems overly ambitious.

            I guess we also have to consider how data is tied to the use cases that the user intended. e.g. Facebook misusing 2FA phone numbers for other purposes should have been fined under any decent privacy framework.

              • michel
                11·
                4 years ago

                My best bet right now is for EU regulations like GDPR creating a space for service providers selling paid hosting for open-source software that replace proprietary US tech.

                e.g. Nextcloud hosting to replace Dropbox / Google {Drive, Contacts, Calendar}; mailbox.org / migadu / posteo / protonmail to replace Gmail, Mastodon/Pleroma to replace Twitter; Lemmy to replace Reddit…

                just gradually ramp up the friction for using privacy-invasive US tech for EU businesses and consumers (it might already be illegal for EU businesses to store their data in the US depending on how you interpret that recent ECJ ruling) … it won’t happen fast since the US sees any immediate curtailing of its tech companies as a trade war.

                  • michel
                    1·
                    4 years ago

                    This is all great for the percentage of people who can reasonably migrate to these systems, but I have a hard time imagining the information technology platforms of society at large adopting these systems …

                    Agreed - I think we need more tech-savvy people to adapt these systems and gradually improve them to the point that they are more accessible to the average person.

                    It’s not someting that free software folks are historically good at, so this definitely would not be an easy goal to achieve…

                    There are claims that regulations like GDPR disadvantages smaller players and actually help Facebook and Google, but it’s early days still – and maybe it makes it harder to compete with FB and Google on their own turf, but that’s a red herring and we should incubate business models that are more privacy-friendly to begin with?