UK Internet Watchdog Increasingly Led by Ex-Big Tech Executives (bloomberg.com) 18
UK's Ofcom hired former Google executive Gill Whitehead to head up a team regulating search engines and social media firms, the latest in a string of Silicon Valley appointments as the watchdog prepares to impose sweeping new online safety laws. From a report: Whitehead, formerly Google's senior director of client solutions and analytics, will work alongside Ofcom Chief Technology Officer Sachin Jogia and online safety lead Jessica Zucker. Jogia and Zucker were was previously executives at Amazon.com and Meta Platforms respectively. Ofcom's top hires over the past 18 months underscore a pivot in its role from an auditor of the airwaves and postal service to one increasingly concerned with the internet and Big Tech.
This has existed in Canada for years. (Score:2)
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I'm already missing the "Wild West" days of the internet. I think I jumped on in about 1991-92 some time.
Remember when USENET was where the world seemed to revolve around?
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The Guardian are running a story headlined "more than 70% of English water industry is in foreign ownership" and the foreign ownership doesn't really pay much in the way of taxes either.
However, the English know exactly what they're going to get when they elect the Conservative party, but they do it anyway. No surprises the Scots are pissed off.
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The "neoliberal wet dream" would feature less regulation. Regulatory capture is the inevitable result of government regulation of businesses that government doesn't necessarily understand.
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Its entirely unsustainable, but it doesn't stop them claiming to want it.
Regulatory capture is not inevitable of course, despite the neoliberals claiming it is. Witness all the countries that have managed to regulate industries reasonably well over the last couple of generati
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How about this one: Because of the resulting concentrations of wealth & power due to neoliberal capitalism, it is a direct challenge & therefore a threat to democracy. We'll have a very weak democratic political system if a tiny minority hold most of the power. Elections become little more than the wealthy choosing a shortlist of candidates that they approve of that we are then allowed to
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Not necessarily. Governments create corporations. Ponder that, if you're able.
Necessary evil (Score:4)
It is necessary to employ people with industry experience to prevent government managing 'by the numbers', such as writing bills that tell corporations to stop everyone being mean (For example, clauses in the recent Online Safety Act). The obvious problem is the conflict of interest that such people have, becoming a 'fox guarding the hen-house'. A secondary problem is the 'revolving door', where such people use their inside knowledge of government policies to help corporations block achievable limits and controls.
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While that's true for many fields, software isn't one of them. You could easily hire people from academia or open source communities with the same level of expertise. And if you really wanted someone from the business world, hire a senior dev instead of an executive. That is if you wanted an expert, not a lobbyist.
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It's the Tories. The appointments are rewards for donations and other forms of support. Qualifications don't matter - they put Dido Harding in charge of Test & Trace!
Makes me hopeful for no porn age verification (Score:2)
Next year the UK government is supposed to roll out a legislation which would require every porn site to legally verify a user's age before allowing access. This would be done mostly via "secure" 3rd parties where you'd have to send your credit card information or passport data in order to pass checks.
If these ex-big-tech execs can make this insanely dumb law go away, I'm all for them being a part of the watchdog.
Yay regulatory capture! (Score:2)
n/t
Not A Good Idea (Score:2)