<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<br>
<font face="Verdana"><br>
<br>
</font>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On Thursday 19 February 2015 01:03 AM,
David Conrad wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:A409F25A-822D-4A14-B79C-2526E94D8966@virtualized.org"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=windows-1252">
Parminder,
<div class="">snip
<div><br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" class=""><font
class="" face="Verdana">Smacks of public street
pay-off rackets involving petty businesses that most
police forces in developing countries live off.<br
class="">
</font></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br class="">
</div>
Except by definition, police forces have the authority of law
behind them: you generally don't have a choice whether you
obey the police or not (at least if you want to stay out of
jail or worse). </div>
<div><br class="">
</div>
<div>If you don't like what Facebook does, instead of trying to
spin up a global regulatory regime to try to force your will
on a private company, why not simply stop using them?</div>
<div><br class="">
</div>
<div>Regards,</div>
</div>
<div>-drc</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<font face="Verdana">Dear David<br>
<br>
I am not sure how to respond to this. There may be some kind of
ideological polarisation here, if you really think that no matter
what be the level of market power involved (and facebook's extreme
market power is so obvious) or how deeply public interest oriented
a particular service is (again, there can be little doubt in this
regard in case of a basic social networking platform), the
paradigm of 'individual choice' and the market is enough for all
situation - we just do not ever require specific policies or
regulation. </font><br>
<br>
BTW, would you in that case also oppose net neutrality regulation,
which again can be read as trying to force 'someone's will' on a
private company - and of course there are people who use the same
words for NN regulation? And what about regulating financial capital
that so thoroughly ruined the world economy just a few years back?
Can people just not stop using the telco or the bank they do not
like rather than seek regulation? <br>
<br>
I myself do not use Facebook, but I am not talking here of a
personal problem, rather a social one. It bothers me a lot
professionally what the emerging digital techno-social architectures
mean for people's rights, vibrant democratic media, transfer of
value/ wealth across people, groups, classes, countries, etc,
cultural rights and diversity, society's control over its
socialisation processes (which is why education, and also media, is
such a regulated sector), and so on. It is in this regard that I
made a tentative construction of the problematique of the dangers of
Facebook arbitrarily monetising everyday processes of socialising,
without any public interest oversight. If this does not outrage you,
I will accept that viewpoint as well. <br>
<br>
regards<br>
parminder <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>