> shining a light on the way that apps like Instagram and YouTube use algorithms that pick and choose what content to show us (and not show us) in order to keep us scrolling and clicking, to sell more ads. These dangerous algorithms use our own personal data to manipulate us<p>I think we should start somewhere more practical first. Did you know that Walmart designs their store layout and inventory to maximize purchases? They deviously use our own shopping patterns to manipulate us!! We need to stop retailers from being able to analyze what people are buying right now!<p>ok, so this is definitely hyperbole, but come on, the fact that Facebook builds its product such that they optimize for the chance that you want to spend time on their platform is not itself evil. If the same sort of simplistic logic had been driving policies back in the “video games are making kids I to violent criminals”-days, the narrative had been just “Evil game developers are making games entertaining in order to get kids to play them! We need to stop this!” And furthermore they would have won that political battle and video games would have been forever outlawed, because apparently the narrative that anything that causes a kid to look at a screen is inherently evil has becomes a given these days, and you don’t even need to argue for anymore you can just assume it.<p>Now don’t get me wrong, I think that stronger private data laws are a great thing, but you can’t just argue that companies using engagement data to optimize their services is itself evil. They are businesses, of cause they want the better product and of cause the better product is the one that provides what people want. We don’t want congress making it illegal for Walmart to stock more food during Christmas because they know from data that they sell more during Christmas. Now if walmart was asking to see your social security information during checkout, that would of cause be an issue, but that’s an entirely different thing.
Their pivot to Meta indicates that Zuckerberg knows Facebook is dead. The continued survival of the company now depends on whether they can successfully pivot to something else other than a social network. If they can then they might manage to survive but if not then it's pretty clear Facebook is finished even without people doing anything about it.
3 months ago discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28871105" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28871105</a><p>How's it going since then?
Facebook is just a symptom.<p>To stop <i>surveillance capitalism</i> more then an email to congress is needed, starting with an amendment to the United States Constitution that declares a human right to personal data and digital privacy (like article 8 of the charta of fundamental rights of the european union.)<p>Abstractly there are three major ideas related to this: corporations are free to buy, process and sell any data they can however they want, 2) governments have access to all data 3) humans are to be protected from governments and corporations<p>America does not believe in 3 anymore when it comes to digital data. Changing this will take more then some 1-click-democracy portals sending e-mails to congress - and harvesting contact data for engagement.