Steigan:
"Vanligvis oppretter rikfolk en veldedig stiftelse for å slippe skatt, slik som Bill Gates har gjort. Men Zuckerberg/Chan har ikke gjort det. De har opprettet det som i USA kalles limited liability company (LLC).
Dette gjør at de slipper skatt og får et redusert juridisk ansvar samtidig som de står fritt til å drive lobbying, noe en veldedig stiftelse ikke gjør. Og det er da også hovedgrunnen til at de gjør det på denne måten. Bloomberg skriver at det er fire grunner til at paret gjør dette:
De kan gå aktivt inn i å forme politikken slik de vil ha den. Som de skriver i brevet til den nyfødte datteren: «We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates.»
Det er ingenting som hindrer dem i å gjøre profitt.
Det vil blli lettere å gjøre «joint ventures».
De unngår 5%-regelen. En stiftelse må gi bort 5% av stiftelsens verdi hver år for å beholde skattefritaket. En LLC slipper det. Den kan velge å bruke penger i det tempoet den foretrekker."
ortsatt gjelder Edvard Munchs ord: «Rikfolk stjeler fra samfunnet. Den rike som gir almisser, stjeler dobbelt. Han stjeler hjerter også.»
"The White House intellectual property adviser Colleen V. Chien noted in 2012 that Google and Apple were spending more money acquiring patents (not to mention litigating them) than on doing research and development."
Brad Burnham Jun 10, 2010 "Once you start thinking about large web platforms as governments, the logical question is what kind of government are they. One thing is for sure - none of these platforms are democracies. They are oligarchies controlled by founders, investors or shareholders. That may not be at all bad. As long as citizens (users) can move freely from one government to another with little switching cost, there is no reason to burden these polities with the inherent inefficiencies of popular democracy. But that does put a special premium on emigration policies and property rights. Do I own my data, can I export it freely? It also suggests that large networks that have strong network effects may someday need other incentives to act in the best interests of their citizens."
"In the end, the big networks on the web will all have to find a balance between state power and private initiative."
Facebook has 59 million users [2008] - and 2 million new ones join each week. But you won't catch Tom Hodgkinson volunteering his personal information - not now that he knows the politics of the people behind the social networking site... Although the project was initially conceived by media cover star Mark Zuckerberg, the real face behind Facebook is the 40-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist and futurist philosopher Peter Thiel. There are only three board members on Facebook, and they are Thiel, Zuckerberg and a third investor called Jim Breyer from a venture capital firm called Accel Partners (more on him later).
by Lina Dencik, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cradiff university "Who is in charge here? It is not us." "Facebook has recently tried to close down the popular Anarchist Memes page on its site in the latest of a string of crackdowns on political online activism. It’s just one more example of the social media police in action."
All over the world – from the Americas to Europe to the Middle East to Africa and Asia – companies in the Information & Communications Technology (ICT) sector face increasing government pressure to comply with domestic laws and policies in ways that may conflict with the internationally recognized human rights of freedom of expression and privacy.
Christian Sandvig, blog "multicast the Internets, technology, and policy" June 26th, 2014 " You likely didn’t know that your “like” clicks are merrily producing ads on your friends pages and in your name because you cannot see them. These “stories” do not appear on your news feed and cannot be individually deleted" ..." Facebook’s business model is to produce attention for advertisers, not to help you — silly rabbit." Det generella problemet är att det finns många sätt på vilka algoritmer fungerar som blandningsventiler mellan saker som lätt kan värderas med pengar (som annonser) och saker som inte kan. Och denna typ av blandning är ett normativt problem (vad ska vi göra) och inte ett tekniskt problem (hur gör vi det).
This isn’t about Facebook per se—maybe it will do a good job, maybe not—but the fact that algorithmic filtering, as a layer, controls what you see on the Internet. Net neutrality (or lack thereof) will be yet another layer determining this. This will come on top of existing inequalities in attention, coverage and control.
By Iain Thomson, The Register, 26 Sep 2014 : The Russian authorities have told Google, Facebook, and Twitter that they face prosecution if they do not comply with the country's crackdown on free speech."If they do not comply with the requirements of Russian legislation, they would face administrative sanctions," Maxim Ksenzov, deputy head of the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (Roscomnadzor) told newspaper Izvestia.
Online giants Yelp, Facebook, Google and Microsoft all have representatives on ALEC’s technology task force, the Daily Beast reported Friday. Via the Beast: