Much of the Internet has grown far beyond its original concept.

[MineralMan]

Facebook, Google, Amazon, eBay and many other entities could well be examples of that. Their original founders probably no longer understand the platforms they created years ago to do some simple thing or another. With growth comes management chains that are no longer completely controllable by an individual.

Amazon now owns the retail sector. Facebook is the mother of all social media bombs, and Google has morphed into an advertising and marketing empire. Their founders are rolling in money, but may no longer comprehend the systems they originally launched, really.

It happens. A great idea ends up morphing into an out of control behemoth. Apple, Microsoft, WordPerfect, and others had the same experience, but earlier.

And, along the way, people found ways to exploit all of those entities for their own benefit.

So, when Mark Zuckerberg says that he's willing to testify to Congress, he may actually not be that valuable a witness. He may not even understand his own company any longer very well. He may not have the information Congress needs.

Stuff gets big and gets out of control. Eventually, the founders of such enterprises end up being pushed to the sidelines or even out the door, in the end.

[eleny]

1. Seems like the end users have tied their wagons to the incompetent

Or people like Zuckerberg are just playing innocent.

[MineralMan]

2. I can't say for sure, really.

I've been around the PC community since the very beginning. I took my first programming class in 1963, actually. I was a columnist for one of the two largest PC-related magazines for 12 years, starting in the 1980s.

I've watched the online community grow from BBSes and CompuServe right up to today. The one thing I've noticed in all of that is how many founders of companies lost control of what they started over the years.

Zuckeberg? I don't know him. So, I can't say whether he's one of those who started something that grew beyond his ability to understand it. I suspect so, though. He's the face of Facebook, but may not really know what it has turned into, really, at a working level. But, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

It's an all-too-common story, though in the tech industry. Founders get shoved out the door when they lose control of what they started. It has happened again and again. Others stick around, but often no longer are part of the continued growth and no longer really understand the system after a while.

It's just something I've observed over the past three decades. It happens all the time.

[marylandblue]

3. That's probably true for any large enterprise

So other key employees should have to testify as well. The guy.at the top can't know everything.

[MineralMan]

4. Yes. At some point, the founder of most large enterprises

ends up handing much of the operational and development off to others. Sometimes, they continue to guide the growth on a conceptual level, but often they don't even do that after a while. Then, after about 20 years, if the enterprise survives, they become redundant and often bail with their money. Zuckerberg strikes me as such a founder, somehow. I thing he's probably pretty clueless about what is going on on a real basis. It has become what it is.

[NCTraveler]

5. For the most part, I agree.

Here is the thing with respect to Zuckerberg. He is the face of the operation, clearly extremely knowledgeable about the overall workings of Facebook, and this is a huge deal. Depending on the topic congress want to talk about, Zuckerberg should have experts in that area from his company appear. Zuckerberg should be sitting with them.

[MineralMan]

6. I think Zuck can testify about broad subjects related

to Facebook, but probably not about details. So, in that sense he'll be somewhat useful. Some folks used what was available from Facebook for their own purposes. It existed, and could be exploited, so it was. The big data opportunities were exposed by Facebook's business model. All it took to collect the data was app programming. Facebook, itself, provided the data pretty much to all comers, and didn't really monitor how that data was being used.

In some ways, it may be that the Facebook business model was naive in that respect. it worked just fine, but was easily exploited for nefarious uses. I don't know for sure. I always wondered how all that information was being used by all of the third parties who were collecting it. Candy Crush? What were they using the data for? I have no idea. But, there it was, waiting to be harvested, using the simplest of mechanisms, really.

Facebook, itself, may just have been a target of opportunity for the data mining business. It was also a very profitable business model for Facebook, of course.

[FarCenter]

7. Facebook, Google, Amazon, eBay etc aren't part of the internet. They are attached to it.

All the internet does is interconnect networks. More specifically, it interconnects routers and allows communications between the routers using a set of well defined protocols, most importantly TCP/IP.

An Apple Smartphone, Googlej PlayStore, Facebook servers, Amazon Web Services servers, etc. are examples of devices connected to the internet via routers.

One of the breakthrough design concepts of the internet was that it provides only the minimum functionality needed for interconnection of networks. Almost all of the "intelligence" was taken out of the network itself and forced out to the periphery. So there is nothing in the internet that will do a function like format a display for your PC. The browser on the PC uses HTML sent without modification through the internet from a server attached to the internet.

[MineralMan]

8. Technicality. I do know that.

But, nobody cares about that, actually. Truly they don't.

[FarCenter]

9. But lumping them all into "the internet" obscures what they really are

Facebook isn't the internet - it is a media and advertising business attached to the internet and has to be considered as such for legal and regulatory purposes.

Amazon isn't the internet - it is a catalog sales company, like Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward were in the old days, and while it distributes it catalog and collects orders over the internet, it is just a big catalog retailer.

And so forth. The businesses that use the internet are not somehow in a different class by virtue of the communications media that they use.

[MineralMan]

11. Yes, and "cartridges" and "rounds" aren't bullets, either.

For most people, sites like Amazon and Facebook ARE the Internet. They don't care about nomenclature.

Amazon is also a major cloud data storage vendor, too. It's also a streaming service. Amazon is whatever it wants to be, and it all works on the Internet. People don't care about the actual structure of the Internet. They really don't.

I understand it. You understand it. Most people don't even want to understand it. They don't need to understand it, either.

[FarCenter]

12. Most importantly, if politicians don't understand it, they will screw up.

[MineralMan]

13. Well, in that case, you can be sure they don't understand it.

Seriously. The Internet is commonly defined as all the stuff you can access on it. That is the commonly understood definition, and it's really the correct definition these days. Definitions of words are determined by how people use those words. Words change meanings all the time through usage.

Insisting on an outdated definition accomplished nothing.

[Egnever]

17. Sorry but no

the internet is not defined as all the things you connect to it by anyone but the ignorant. Doing so obfuscates what it really is and sets up bad decisions.

Two completely different things and that distinction is very important. Even more so when legislation surrounding it is considered.

[haele]

14. Most people think of the internet in terms of what they do with it, not the infrastructure.

The colloquial term "internet" pretty much refers to what one can do on and with the internet, while the technical term always refers to the infrastructure.
Even in legal terminology, the term internet is a bit fuzzy because it encompasses too much. For instance, an internet company cannot be specifically identified in terms of what it produces or serves; an internet company can produce either internet equipment and infrastructure/infrastructure services (Comcast, Cisco, etc...) or the software platforms and programming (Android, HTTP, Ruby on Rails) or specific applications (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Lyft, Ultima Online, etc...)

All this being said, there are still security vulnerabilities in all of the above, both software and hardware exploits that can be present...especially since the hardware itself - the switching and routing ports and port controllers - will more often than not have I.P addressed application software and firmware and service "backdoors" that can be hacked or compromised. (for example, older Lenovo network blade units that had a hidden backdoor port that reported to the Chinese manufacturer for updates....)

Haele

[FarCenter]

15. Of the names you list only Comcast, HTTP, and possibly Google can be considered part of the internet

Comcast is an Internet Service Provider (among other things).

HTTP is an Internet protocol for communications over the internet between clients and servers, but the internet doesn't actually process it.

Google provides sort of a second level lookup function to translate search terms into likely URLs. When you click on one, your browser goes to DNS to look up the actual IP address of the server indicated by the URL. But, strictly speaking, it is really a directory search system that runs in servers attached to the internet.

Cisco is a capital equipment supplier to ISPs.

Android is a smartphone operating system.

Ruby on Rails is a software platform for developing a web site on a server.

Facebook and Twitter are publishing systems that run on servers.

Lyft is a car ride sharing service that uses the internet for communicating requests for cars and car dispatch.

All this stuff is no more "internet" than all the shopping malls, strip malls, restaurants and bars, warehouses, manufacturing plants, etc. are "interstate" businesses because they are connected to the roadways.

[FakeNoose]

10. The same could be said for Twitter

Its enormous growth due to smart-phone users, many of whom don't even use email any more.

I think you're onto something. The original purpose of these apps was twisted by others for (possibly) nefarious reasons.

[RadiationTherapy]

16. If facebook's tech model was reconstructed as a publicly funded and protected communication utility

I think a lot of people would leave FB. From a communication standpoint, being able to send text, images, audio, video, links, etc., instantaneously and globally is incredible - almost telepathic. If a public utility were to make this available elsewhere, i think people would pay for it to be ad-free and as private as possible.