Reply to post: Foreboding Forecast?

No, no, you're all wrong. That's not a Kremlin agent. It's someone with 'inauthentic behavior'

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Foreboding Forecast?

One does get a sense that governments all over are beginning to gun for Facebook, Twitter, Google. In my opinion their current business models are taking the companies on a road to corporate disaster, it's just a matter of when it becomes unsustainable in the face of regulation, laws, fines, and special taxes.

It would be especially ironic if companies so fond of the word "trending" fail to respond to the likely changes in the legal environment within which they operate. Yet so far they sound like they're trying to ignore the increasing levels of government criticism, determined to not change at all, adamant that change is not required.

However, they have to greater or lesser extents admitted that change is required. Hence measures such as AI moderation. But clearly these are simply short term technological bluster because it isn't working and they're not going to work well enough soon enough. They not even keeping up with the trends in their users' activity (e.g. incitements to murder / genocide) that cause newsworthy events (the incited murders / genocide) that they themselves then report by scraping stories from other people's websites. Doesn't say much for their vaunted analytics, does it? At some point they're going to have to admit that they cannot adequately moderate the objectionable content, or prevent users creating more of it, or even spot it happening in the first place.

So then what? Take the rap, pay the fines, and carry on? Sounds unlikely. Force users to provide legally admissible ID (e.g. bank details, validated through a credit card transaction?) for accounts so that users take the rap in court instead? Sounds like the only way to survive. It also sounds like a good way of disappearing entirely if one is not offering a substantively useful service, because who really wants to have to pay for a myriad of frivolous messaging services when only one is needed?

I can see Google surviving such a transition, because they actually offer useful services (search, maps). Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat? Likely not, especially if Google got its act together and did a decent messaging app and stuck with it for more than 6 months.

Question is, would Google then survive the resulting monopoly / anti-trust investigation? Probably not. They're already losing on that front anyway.

Interestingly I've not mentioned Amazon, Apple or Microsoft. Perhaps there really is a long term future in selling something tangible to paying customers for an honest profit, instead of syphoning off the advertising business.

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