Some of Facebook's Libra backers are discussing how to distance themselves from the project

[nanoguy]

In brief: Facebook's Libra hasn't even launched and some backers are discussing whether it would be in their best interest to jump ship before they attract unnecessary attention from regulators, who are probing every aspect of the social giant's business.

When Facebook announced the Libra cryptocurrency and the associated Calibra wallet, it made a big point of how it is leveraging the infrastructure that powers Messenger and WhatsApp and the popularity of the two messaging services to provide financial services for everyone in the world. The company's ambitious project isn't even up and running and there are signs that early backers are looking to withdraw their support.

According to a report from the Financial Times, at least three members of the Libra Association are weary of the regulatory pressures that surround almost every aspect of Facebook's business. The body has a total of 28 members that include financial industry heavyweights like Mastercard, Visa, as well as Spotify and Uber -- all of which have pledged upwards of $10 million for the Libra project with the ultimate goal of disrupting the global payments market.

The social giant has drawn the attention of U.S. authorities as well as the European Commission for several reasons, the most notable example being the company's penchant for anticompetitive behavior. All acquisitions, big and small, are now under the regulators' microscope, which is concerning for some Libra members who are thinking about pulling out.

Interestingly, Facebook itself is said to have grown tired of the lack of public support from the other members of the Libra Association, who seem to express their approval of Libra as a concept but not so much as a financial service. Their main concern is that the project "raised fears over the risk of money laundering, tax evasion and disruption to wider financial stability," judging by statements from officials in the UK, US, Canada, EU, and Australia.

It's not just Trump that sees Libra as problematic. Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib described the Libra Association as a potential "crypto mafia" that has the potential to strengthen members' businesses in anticompetitive ways. Facebook has defended against that claim by saying that joining parties have done so because they "can add value on the network and provide services that are relevant to the people we serve.”

In the meantime, scammers are capitalizing on the demand from people who believe in Facebook's Libra, even though it hasn't been launched. Others see Facebook's regulatory troubles as the perfect opportunity to take the financial industry by storm, with Binance as a notable example with its Venus cryptocurrency. In any case, cryptocurrencies have yet to prove themselves as a proper alternative for secure payments, with fraud and theft being so prevalent that $3.1 billion were lost at exchanges in 2019 alone.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/81583-facebook-libra-backers-discussing-how-distance-themselves-project.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I watched a video earlier about "A Cashless Society" that really got me thinking about the dangers of allowing our government to get us all into a cashless, digitized currency.

How many of you feel comfortable having your constitutional rights and access to your money dictated by or regulated by Facebook?

 

[psycros]

I watched a video earlier about "A Cashless Society" that really got me thinking about the dangers of allowing our government to get us all into a cashless, digitized currency.

How many of you feel comfortable having your constitutional rights and access to your money dictated by or regulated by Facebook?

Big corporations already dictate most of what we can and can't do. Monsanto spent billions to get natural farming, as its been practiced since the dawn of time, outlawed in the US. Its the same with Big Pharma and many effective natural remedies and older, cheaper drugs. Try to sign up for literally ANYTHING now without a credit card and smart phone - you'll be branded a Luddite, and quite possibly put on a watch list. We're already living in the techno-dystopia everyone from Orwell to Gibson warned us about.

 

[Bp968]

I watched a video earlier about "A Cashless Society" that really got me thinking about the dangers of allowing our government to get us all into a cashless, digitized currency.

How many of you feel comfortable having your constitutional rights and access to your money dictated by or regulated by Facebook?

Big corporations already dictate most of what we can and can't do. Monsanto spent billions to get natural farming, as its been practiced since the dawn of time, outlawed in the US. Its the same with Big Pharma and many effective natural remedies and older, cheaper drugs. Try to sign up for literally ANYTHING now without a credit card and smart phone - you'll be branded a Luddite, and quite possibly put on a watch list. We're already living in the techno-dystopia everyone from Orwell to Gibson warned us about.

I really hate how the word "natural" is used now. The idea that "natural" means safe and good is absolutely incorrect. Belladonna is a deadly poison in its "natural" form. A little bit of chemistry and boom, you have atropine and scopolamine, two potentially lifesaving drugs.

As for natural farming as practiced "since the dawn of time", well natural farming wouldn't feed us all. The worry in the 60s and 70s was that we would have horrible worldwide famine soon because we couldn't support the earths population. And then we started using very effective pesticides and fertilizers and productivity skyrocketed.

We could go back to "all natural" farming like it was done at the dawn of time, but its going to make food much more expensive and end hundreds of millions of lives. Excessive pesticide and fertilizer use has a cost, and we are seeing it, but the "natural" crowd is resisting the fix, which is genetic modification. Every single food we cultivate now is genetically engineered, its just the methods that have changed. We started with splicing cultivars or selective breeding. Then we would irradiate a bunch of plants and see which ones would get positive genetic changes (and discard the rest). It was a way to increase the speed of random genetic mutations (which is how we have most of the food we have). Now we can directly modify in very specific ways rather than hoping to get a random genetic mutation that's useful.

But going back in time isn't going to help. Well unless your rich already and don't care about large chunks of humanity dying off. I guess in that case lowering food productivity isn't really a problem.