Why governments can always be counted to be critical of Facebook

Allow me to first be clear…I am not particularly fond of Mr Zuckerburg or for that matter his business philosophy. I detest facebook. As I believe as a social media platform, it is nothing more than a panoptical snooping apparatus that will ultimately dessiminate the post modernist disease of narcissimg by giving posters the illusion that they are smarter or better than they actually are because they have X or Y people who they will probably never meet in their life liking their post.

But to ask of government to appraise Facebook is like asking Count Dracula whether he would like to be the CEO of the national bloodbank….of course the count will run down the current CEO…as he has a vested interest. Just like governments all over these days who are slowly and surely losing the power to influence the masses due to the balkanization of how news is produced and distributed.

Between Facebook missing the occasional ‘fake’ news or the iron fist of officialdom…..I would have to say I for one much prefer Facebook.

The internet belongs to all of us….as for governments they are also stakeholders. But certainly no more or less.

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‘Was facebook wrong in not taking down a post to incite racial violence in Sri Lanka. Yes! But that doesnt alter the fact it will always be disingenuous to hyper inflate one incident beyond all scale and statistical sensibilities and assume that just because of one isolated incident the net requires regulation by way of legislation.

If that is the pariah dog logic of how to inject sense and sensibility into this fake news debate. Then it may be a good idea to transform both the ECP and PIE into canals to augment Singapores water independence from Malaysia. After all we have seen cars driving at full speed in the opposite direction and causing loss of life and limb. We have even seen so many cases where cars and roads are as dangerous as a full clip of semi auto in the hands of crazed and angry gun man who mow the innocent down indiscriminately….so why do we the human race continue to the nurture the technology of cars, planes and trains despite them being so dangerous…the reason is because we all inject a sense of scale into these trajedies and by that calculations the trade off of being able to take a commercial jet is far superior to the good olde days of sail boats!

But what do we have here…suddenly in the internet you have a bunch of bureaucrats who are so atrociously bad in math that they cant seem to conduct simple cost and benefits analysis on why it makes far more sense to leave the internet alone than trying to put a policeman in the head of everyone produces content in the internet.

Truth of the matter is the crux of the issue – the ratio so to speak is why didnt Edwin Tong ask of Facebook in London – why they categorically refused to take down a post alleging that the PM of Singapore was complicit in the 1MDB scandal. In this particular case I see no one inciting violence of any kind, yet the custodians of power wanted Facebook to take down the post.

This should prompt every sane and reasonable person to ask – what would happen if one day governments no longer need to ask online enterprises like Facebook to take down or remove content….then what actually happens to the quality of the content. That question would remain quite sterile, if the daily rag is a reliable purveyor of quality reportage. The problem is they are fake news content producers on an industrial scale as their ring masters are governments themselves.

I think at some point in this entire conflagaration of fake news and what to do about it. We would do well to ask whether governments can truly be trusted with the job of winnowing truth from lies in such a manner where it serves the interest of the people….that is a question that I shall leave entirely to the preceptive reader.

Meanwhile I remain yours.

Darkness third stage Guild Navigator of the brotherhood!