Facebook and Other Social Media

For all of the people paying any attention to the Mark Zuckerburg testimonies, I feel like this is a bit of a watershed moment in history, a thing that we'll all remember in later years. It is the time when the freedom we've been experiencing on the internet is in jeopardy; it is when our freedoms will disappear into bullshit governmental regulations in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the revelations about FB’s role in the spread of Russian disinformation during the 2016 presidential campaign, as well as CA's misuse of private information of FB users; it is when Zuckerberg has to answer questions about Facebook’s past, current, and future actions.

I'm not a big fan of government.
Smaller government is my preference, and not  in the Current Day Republican form of smaller government, but in the traditional fewer rules and more freedoms form of smaller government.

But the problem with fewer regulations is this: human beings can be opportunistic, lying, scheming assholes. We can't trust some people. Our personal freedom and our personal information is all at risk because of these few baddies. But, just like in every other sphere of life, if a baddie is going to do bad stuff, regulations and rules won't stop them. 
So it's the little guys, US, who are inconvenienced by all of the new regulations that are going to be smacked down on FB and other social media.

And just like in other spheres of legislation 
(gun control and others) basic, essential, reasonable laws of operational control are fine with me, more than that is useless and overbearing. But that shit never happens.


I love the internet.
It is a vast place with access to so much information. I'm amazed by it almost every single day. I'm constantly wishing I would have access to information so easily as I was growing up. I'm not the type of person who knows much at all about the ugly places, the seamy underbelly of the internet, hate groups, so I can't speak about any of that. So, with the exception of all of that crap, even with all of the imperfections of the internet, I am in love with more access, more information, more knowledge, more connection.

How to keep that, that is the question.


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