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The Honeymoon is Over in Silicon Valley

posted by martyb on Wednesday December 06 2017, @05:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the thorny-questions dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

The bloom is off the rose:

It was about an hour and a half into a hearing with the Senate Intelligence Committee when Sen. Dianne Feinstein laid into Facebook, Google and Twitter.

"I don't think you get it," she began. "You bear this responsibility. You've created these platforms, and now they are being misused. And you have to be the ones to do something about it. Or we will."

The tech giants were being grilled by Congress over Russian trolls abusing their services to meddle in last year's US election, and the California Democratic lawmaker had had it.

It was just one of very public tongue-lashings the Silicon Valley companies received over the course of three marathon congressional panels last month, held over a two-day span. The hearings were anticlimactic, in part because the three companies only sent their general counsels instead of their famous CEOs -- a point several lawmakers bemoaned during the public questioning.

Is it Google, Twitter, and Facebook who don't get it, or Senators like Dianne Feinstein who don't get it?

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 07 2017, @04:30PM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 07 2017, @04:30PM (#606852) Journal
    My point is that calling for changing law to allow good behavior as Joe did is futile, if the society isn't enforcing existing law and/or businesses can choose to their advantage not to embrace the good behavior. I happen to agree somewhat with edIII that regulation imposed by a neutral party is necessary for many sectors and activities. For the evergreen example, if something doesn't directly pertain to a traded item on a market, like pollution and other externalities, then it doesn't exist to the market. Libertarianism never has given an effective, alternate way to deal with obvious negative externalities. Either one goes through some cumbersome court process or self-enforcement via something like a vigilante posse. I grant that regulation need not be done by an official government, but someone needs to do it.

  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday December 08 2017, @09:50PM

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday December 08 2017, @09:50PM (#607452) Journal

    I grant that regulation need not be done by an official government, but someone needs to do it.

    C'mon, man! Don't bogart that joint! Let's hear some names. You know, this majority rule thing is higher maintenance than most people want to admit. Businesses are very active in government decision making every day. The voters need to be just as active, or at least learn how to better delegate. Let's turn the rotating door into a one way turnstyle.

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..