Big Tech: Malaysia won't let us set our own rules and that's not fair and makes us grumpy The Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), a lobby group whose members include Google, Meta, Amazon, Twitter (aka X), LinkedIn, Apple, and other Big Tech players, has called on the prime minister of Malaysia to rethink laws requiring social media and instant messaging providers to secure operating licenses. The missive [PDF], signed …
Upvoted 1000x if I could. We have, what, over 170 years in the history of the Industrial Revolution to prove your statement as truth but, time and time and time again, we're all supposed to believe otherwise because business whinges like little children??
And this one...!
"The Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), a lobby group whose members include Google, Meta, Amazon, Twitter (aka X), LinkedIn, Apple, and other Big Tech players, has called on the prime minister of Malaysia to rethink laws requiring social media and instant messaging providers to secure operating licenses.
...
The letter goes on to allege that Malaysia's upcoming licensing framework "will adversely impact innovation by placing undue burdens on businesses."
Oh, the humanity! These BILLION-dollar companies having to actually pay out of pocket for something! It'll "adversely impact [their] innovation"!! The Horror! Imagine the terror! Being Meta and Google and having to pay RM2,500 ($57.44) *a year* for a internet class license!!
www.mcmc.gov.my/en/licence-under-akm-98/licence-for-broadcasting-mobile-services-fixed-s/class-licence-nfp-nsp-asp-casp
It'll mean the end of the internet in Malaysia as we know it! It will!! We promise it! >:/
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Listen carefully, and you can hear the voices echoing down the ages of Victorian mill owners complaining that the cost of having to install safety cages to prevent their child employees getting mashed in the machinery will impact their God-given right to maximise their profits.
They're protesting this because they know full well that if it flies in Malaysia, it'll become a model for other countries to adopt. No doubt there'll be an EU wide one, a US one, a Canadian one - and each social media / messaging system will be required to get them all to operate in that territory, meaning they'll need to abide by whatever censorship regime happens to be in that country. Section 230 will mean nothing.
Yes. While I have little sympathy for social-media providers and social media in general, letting Malaysia regulate them is a terrible idea in itself and a terrible precedent.
I would very much like to see these firms simply pull any physical presence from Malaysia and then tell the Malaysian government to fuck right off.
quote: The platform allegedly has enabled organized crime, drug trafficking, fraud, and the distribution of child sexual abuse material.
You could say that about the postal service, courier services, the sale of cameras, VCRs and video cameras, and the use of cash. Oh, and street corners, which enable dealing. Surely pavements should have no 'corners' in future. Just straight bits that end.
Every technology we have ever had enables crime one way or another, so 'enabling as a crime' is the slippery slope that allows governments to ban everything they don't control and cannot monitor 24/7.
Next they'll ban pubs for enabling the spread of misinformation and whispering for being difficult to monitor. Ideally, of course, the police would have a copy of your front door key, so if they suspected you of being up to something, they could check when you aren't in. Luckily, the use of password entry codes fixes that one.
And what does universal surveillance 'enable'? Dictatorships.
When I was a county fiscal officer, every time raising the sales & use tax was brought, the merchants claimed it would destroy their business and drive away customers. And every time the sales & use was raised, there either no change or sales continued to grow. So the tech crybabies are more concerned about wall street and their own back pockets, not investment. And one thing they never mention is that once a share of stock is first issued, the issuer get NO benefit from price increases, just an additional liability to pay dividends. And woe be unto the business that decrease or skips a dividend.
"Tron" wrote:
Every technology we have ever had enables crime one way or another
Not really.
The platforms in question here are specifically designed to create discussion and social engagement in general.
It has often been said that they are progressively replacing the former role of the "public square".
Which is true to a great degree, but it's more than that.
The public square did not dictate the contents of the discussions or how many people were participating/listening. (Except that there are only a limited number of people who can hear what you are saying in a public square. Online, you are potentially "speaking" to ~6-7 billion people instantaneously. Bit different impact there.)
In addition to that, that dictating of the contents thing. Modern social media has a very large degree of control over what "content" gets "surfaced" to any particular group of people, and what gets effectively hidden. As it turns out (surprise!) the most controversial (which often means "false or inflammatory") material gets the most attention because that is what the social media algorithms effectively promote. (Because it makes them the most money. Surprise, surprise..)
As a result, many of these platforms are basically misinformation and controversy magnifiers.
And that's a problem. It's a problem you can see the impacts of everywhere these days.
Michael Wojcik wrote:
Yes, it's a problem. This "solution" is significantly worse.
Too bad that "the solution" is not defined in your comment, nor is there any singular, universal and identical "solution" that has ever been proposed, but varies in a plethora of ways from platform to platform, nation to nation, politician to politician, etc etc etc.
All I can say with a high degree of confidence is that "zero moderation" is not a remotely acceptable state of affairs for a variety of reasons when it comes to very large global social networking platforms in modern times.
This is not your granny's public square, nor is it your grandaddy's hand-printed newspaper with a circulation of 100 that we are talking about here.
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