Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

The facts are clear: Regulate the companies or lose your democracy. FB's impact on democracy has been clear for a long time. This is just the latest - https://www.brusselstimes.com/1916422/us-tech-giants-allying...




If regulations can legitimately be advocated for, they can be advocated against as well.

Facebook wouldn’t have any vested interest in the far left, the far right, the far up or the far down in the EU if the EU wasn’t giving them reasons to take an interest. If the parties in power were really worried that Facebook was going to be the difference-maker, they could undercut the opposition and remove the issue entirely by rolling back their needless regulations and keeping their own desire to overstep their authority and dictate terms to foreign enterprises in check.


> If regulations can legitimately be advocated for, they can be advocated against as well.

That's not logically necessary.


So you say we must choose between losing freedom of the press and losing democracy? I say you lose democracy if you lose freedom of the press.

There's already boundaries on what the press can and cannot print (libel, etc). Gotta get out of Constitutional Law 101

Right. You must be referring to the libel laws that have specific exemptions for politically powerful or otherwise publicly prominent individuals specifically to avoid intrusion into freedom of the press. And you think that helps your point?

This isn't true.

Wait, so supporting opposition parties is somehow losing democracy? And you want the government to prevent them from doing that?

That’s missing the key detail that some opposition parties are anti-democratic, or funded by enemy states that would benefit from the downfall of the current democratic world order.

Please name the political parties that have cancelling elections as part of their platform.

Is election cancellation the only form of anti-democratic action? That would be quite naive to believe, wouldn’t it?

Actually, there’s quite a bit of reactionary political theory regarding the weaknesses of liberal democracy and how they can be exploited, especially concerning the concept of the “friend and the enemy”. It’s an incredibly powerful tactic to make the people believe that liberal democracy is not up to the task of navigating the rough waters of “extraordinary times”, nevermind if those extraordinary times are imagined or even manufactured. No, only a strong, decisive, and unencumbered executive can save us.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: