Edwards must go

It seems our Privacy Commissioner John Edwards has been busy but not busy protecting our privacy.  Instead, he’s been laying into Facebook of all things.

Privacy Commissioner John Edwards has piled into Facebook, describing the social media giant as “morally bankrupt pathological liars”.

[…] Late last week Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg gave an interview to ABC News in the US. One comment in particular that seemed to particularly anger Edwards related to Facebook’s efforts to identify livestreams that needed to be stopped.

“One of the things this flagged for me overall was the extent to which bad actors are going to try to get around our systems,” Zuckerberg said.

Edwards tweeted in response: “You didn’t have any systems.”

Actually, Facebook does have systems in place but it’s very difficult to get systems to work properly when there are people deliberately trying to sabotage them.

Facebook cannot be trusted. They are morally bankrupt pathological liars who enable genocide (Myanmar), facilitate foreign undermining of democratic institutions,” he went on.

Edwards’ political bias is showing. He obviously has a thing about Burma and is blaming Facebook for the trouble there.

[…]In the ABC News interview, Zuckerberg resisted the idea of putting a delay on broadcast videos, saying that would “fundamentally break what livestreaming is for”.

Edwards thought a delay could be worth considering, or maybe livestreaming should be turned off.

“Maybe a delay on livestreaming would be a good thing as an interim measure until they can sort out their act. Maybe they just need to turn it off altogether. It is a technology that is capable of causing great harm,” Edwards said.

Edwards is an idiot. Of course, Facebook isn’t going to add a delay as that would defeat the whole point of live streaming. As for causing great harm, yeah right. If you want to go down that path do you know what other communication technologies are capable of causing of great harm? Pen and paper. The telephone. Books. The goddamn Internet!

Let’s put things in perspective here.  One person out of hundreds of thousands murders fifty people and live streams it and now Edwards wants all live streams banned.

The reason they have been able to launch an unsafe product and escape any liability is the Communications Decency Act in the US, which says if you are a platform, a carrier, you have no liability for the content.

[…]It was no longer tenable for Facebook to say it was not responsible for what was run on its services. “They have been responsible for appalling content that set the pre-conditions for genocide in Myanmar, they have enabled their service to be manipulated by Russian trolls to influence the outcome of elections,” Edwards said.

Stuff

I guess Edwards never got the memo about Trump and the Russians. If a terrorist, drove a truck into a bunch of people picnicking peacefully at Albert Park, would Edwards be out there demanding to know why the truck manufacturer didn’t have systems in place to prevent it happening?

If Facebook complied with what Edwards wants, every post and every live stream would have a delay and would have to be approved by a real live human being which in turn which would mean goodbye to any privacy. Smooth move, Privacy Commissioner!

There is no doubt. Edwards needs to go.