With Google’s recent monopoly status being a topic a discussion recently. This article from 2017 argues that we should nationalize these platforms in the age of platform capitalism. Ahead of its time, in fact the author predicted the downfall of Ello.
Nationalizing Facebook is a terrible idea. 1a would turn it into an almost unmoderatable hellhole Twitter would pale in comparison to.
Ever seen the discussion on a government Facebook page where they’re not legally allowed to block trolls?
Ever seen the discussion on a government Facebook page where they’re not legally allowed to block trolls?
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Alternative Title: Here’s why we need to give the government more reach into people’s daily lives (and how it will make you wealthier because fuck logic)
The genuises on PCM supported this and would try to push it occasionally because it would make YouTube be universally covered by the 1st Amendment so they could spread Nazi propaganda to children even more easily.
Using anti trust laws to ensure a free marketGiving ownership of the monopolies to the government… whose leaders are funded by said monopolies…
This is a dumb idea even for politicians.
How is democratizing dumb again?
Government bureaucracy. Social networks should be as close to direct representation of the people as we can get, like the fediverse.
This is a dumb idea even for politicians.
Politicians are usually smart, just parasitic and destructive.
Giving ownership of the monopolies to the government… whose leaders are funded by said monopolies…
So this idea gets promoted by people from that loop you are describing here. What’s dumb? It makes sense that they are doing this. It’s in their interest. They are stronger than you and are forcing you into that bent over position. It’ll only be dumb if you can prevent them from succeeding.
The government doesn’t need a warrant to browse data that it’s already in possession of. Food for thought.
Sounds like it really shouldn’t have possession of that, although my sympathy is limited for fools who post their crimes on the Facebook
That’s not the kind of data they’re looking for, if you post it somewhere publicly available they already have that without a warrant or anything. The kind of data to be worried about is the kind that those companies collect about where you travel and when, and what kind of people you talk to through email or private messages. Even if you don’t think there’s anything incriminating in there, law enforcement loves to collect evidence that they think can be used to pin any crime on anybody, even if they don’t know what that crime is exactly.
This
Exactly this
The government doesn’t need to know my search habits without a warrant
Good thing they already possess it all via realtime backdoors into every major tech company. The only thing that would change, is the (im)plausible deniability.
I agree, though. We’re all in danger.
Maybe not a warrant, and IANAL, but government agencies aren’t necessarily at liberty to share information amongst themselves. For instance, IRS needs a court order to share returns with law enforcement (IRC Section 6103(i)(1)).
But yeah…this seems like maybe not a super great solution…
They also don’t need a warrant to browse data that companies just give them freely. The government can often easily get your data without a warrant if it’s stored by a megacorporation.
Back before the media decided it wasn’t a competitor but rather a potential profit source. I do think the government does need to have it’s own alternatives (obviously not identical more on this one day) for other reasons, such as for it’s own media releases, but more internationally coordinated appropriate & considered legislation is probably better.
What people think when they haven’t heard of the Fediverse.
- Google: plenty of other search engines exist right now, if this argument had been about gmail or Android, I could have understood it better
- Facebook: yeah we can tell this was written before the rise of the fediverse because the solution there is completely obvious to anyone reading this…
- Amazon: maybe because of its cloud services? In terms of e-commerce Amazon is literally just one online shop out of many, I at least do not buy from Amazon especially more often than other online shops.
This is actually an interesting proposal. In fact, many utilities went the way of nationalization like water and electricity. Searching the internet, socializing and ensuring a fair market are all also things which could in theory be nationalized given they fulfill a basic need.
Of course, as they are, they would grant whichever government they were given untold power over the entire internet and our lives. Which seems rather… unbalanced. Moreover, no government should retain that right given the internet transcends borders. No one owns all of it.
Letting the free market run its course with no breaks clearly didn’t work particularly well either.
Perhaps a third option? Instead of one government ruling all of it. Perhaps they were to be owned by a supranational body where several governments can propose and discuss changes/regulation and keep balances on each other? UN style? Worthy of discussion.
If anyone has other ideas I’d love to hear them.
PS: (Also, when one suggests nationalizations such as this, one does not intend for a nationalized framework to be the ONLY one. Alternatives brought upon by the free market would still certainly compete with any such services.)
This is a complicated problem but the answer is likely ~socialism. The scenario you presenting is fix forward and try to retain the current economic status quo, which is imbalanced and rewards power and exploitation. We really should be living in a world where basic needs are guaranteed for everyone by a regulated market with multiple stakeholders keeping the process honest. Giving a single entity power generally doesn’t last longer than a generation or two.
One very much agrees, the ideals of socialism are certainly interesting. The current model is a bit of a joke, but it is the world we live in, and we have to shift from the status quo if strive towards other ways of doing things.
But moreover, if the system isn’t owned by an organized body whose members chosen by the people. Then who owns it? Who operates it? Who makes the calls on what decisions ought to be made? The people can demand change, but someone needs to heed that change and delegate workers to do the change.
Modern governments (mainly democracies), in THEORY are supposed be a representative of the people. The people vote for politicians that supposedly want the same they do. Law is written, bodies are created and demolished and so the wheels of society spin.
Problem is that accumulation of wealth opens the door by buying the mouths of democracy. If you have friends in mass media, half the work is already done. Humans are lazy and unlikely to act upon politics unless they are directly threatened (and even then, not that frequently)
Again, I agree. It’s just hard to picture a different world. Power generally works best when it’s distributed, but how exactly it’s destributed is critically important, as well as the mechanisms that ensure that it its purpose is not so easily perverted.
Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon? If somebody posted that on Google, Facebook and Amazon, I’d say, “well, they seem to not know better”. But posting that in the noncommercial Fediverse? Why?
I found the idea interesting, just something to think about as these platforms continue to develop.
Note:
This article is more than 6 years old
Seems like it would be better to have government buy-in to federated platforms. There are some governments that have moved their official announcements to Mastodon, which is a good start.
What the Fediverse really needs to ensure longevity is government and journalist support.
How about just making them actually pay an amount of taxes commensurate with the burdens they apply on society?
First I’d propose a nationalization of internet services.
Without that is partly like being without electricity.
Yes, you’d survive but it’s damn inconvenient in the modern way of life.The only thing worse than a monopoly is a government owned monopoly
You prefer your monopolies to not be democratically accountable?
I prefer no monopolies, but if it’s something that is a natural monopoly, I certainly don’t want it by a for profit foreign company.
Maybe the answer is to split these guys up by country and each government decides what they do with their chunk. We’ll see which works best.
Independent not for profits, straight up nationalised, private still(baby Bell), publicly owned and privately run, etc etc.
Best case it’s gonna get bloated and beurocratic (any monopoly, but especially state run ones) and if it’s government owned they’ll use the power of the government to prevent competition (more than a private monopoly which will still try but won’t have as much power to do so).
Worst case it goes off the rails and the service is unavailable/unusable. If it’s anything important - say the Soviet’s food production - anybody who needs that service doesn’t get it.
There’s not really much difference. Either way it’s a legal entity defined by the state and run by the extremely privileged.
