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.
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The government doesn’t need a warrant to browse data that it’s already in possession of. Food for thought.
This
Exactly this
The government doesn’t need to know my search habits without a warrant
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…
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.
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.
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.
Note:
This article is more than 6 years old
Fuck nationalization of social media. Honestly, this is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard.
The idea that giving the government a monopoly on the biggest data hoarders is somehow better than having the capitalists own it is mind-boggling.
The government doesn’t need a warrant to search through its own data.
The last thing we need is to give the state more power over our lives, more insight into our lives, and more control over the narratives we learn.
Every time humans have centralized more power into fewer and fewer hands, nothing good comes from it. We need more decentralized forms of media, not more centralized forms.
If the government owns it, isn’t it subject to FOIA and public records laws/disclosures?
FOIA is great and all, and so are public records laws and disclosure laws.
But the state is gonna state, and when push comes to shove, social media will be another tool to manufacture consent, break up movements, and preserve itself over the interest of the governed.
I’m not concerned about the ability to FOIA shit about Twitter or Facebook’s algorithm, as much as I’d like to know about how it targets the content slop to its users. I’m concerned about how it will consolidate power into fewer hands, and how state sponsored social media will be abused. And I don’t think FOIA would ever reveal that if it happened.
social media will be another tool to manufacture consent, break up movements, and preserve itself over the interest of the governed.
it already is that, or did you miss the stories about Biden administration officials meeting with Facebook, TikTok etc about “content moderation”?
You are absolutely correct, I’m just worried about one less barrier.
Yes, but since most people for whatever reason believe that you can fight the state only by the rules the state makes, you won’t be able to do anything about it.
They are doing this pretty intentionally. Tomorrow is always different from today. People have been complacent, while some other people perceptive of the future in a bad way have made plans for taking unprecedented power over societies.
You are saying this
Every time humans have centralized more power into fewer and fewer hands, nothing good comes from it. We need more decentralized forms of media, not more centralized forms.
as part of discussion, but they are not discussing this with us. Public opinion won’t stop them. Only force will.
French political tradition and all that.
Yes, but since most people for whatever reason believe that you can fight the state only by the rules the state makes, you won’t be able to do anything about it.
I agree. As an anarchist, I do not think following whatever rules the state makes will ever be sufficient for achieving any liberatory goals.
They are doing this pretty intentionally. Tomorrow is always different from today. People have been complacent, while some other people perceptive of the future in a bad way have made plans for taking unprecedented power over societies.
This is why I advocate for decentralizing power (and the dissolution of all hierarchies and hierarchic power structures). The last thing I want is a despot using the current mechanisms of power and centralize everything, and have such an absurd amount of power.
You are saying this [cut quote about my advocacy of decentralization] as part of a discussion, but they are not discussing this with us. Public opinion won’t stop them. Only force will.
I agree. Every single movement that has gone against a component of the government required either violence, or backed, credible threats of it. The government will never reduce its power to the benefit of the people, even if that policy is popular.
I agree. As an anarchist, I do not think following whatever rules the state makes will ever be sufficient for achieving any liberatory goals.
There are issues with that position as well, as described best in chapter 38 of Tao Te Ching. Anarchy would be “doctrine of humanity” in that quote, while the current state of things would be “li” (which is bad), and the previous supposedly good state of things would be “justice”.
I’m not familiar with taoism, and I do not understand the point you are trying to make. I’ve read the chapter on this site.
I think you are talking about this paragraph:
Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is kindness. When kindness is lost, there is justice. When justice is lost, there is ritual. Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
I don’t get what you are trying to say. Are you saying that Li is Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_(neo-Confucianism)), or in the quote I have, ritual? Are you saying I’m an advocate for Justice in the sense of this quote? I think you are either misunderstanding me (I know I am not understanding what you are saying since it is unclear), or ascribing a set of values to anarchism that doesn’t line up with what I’m arguing in order to dismiss my argument.
To be fully clear, I’m going to elaborate on what I’m saying. I’m giving a simple cause and effect statement here, not some moral justification. When there is a liberatory movement that threatens the power structure that enforces hierarchy that oppresses people, those in power will use their position to make the movement, threatening tactics/techniques of, or other things done by the people of the movement illegal, necessitating breaking the law to continue. Working within the shifting bounds of law is insufficient.
It was a fuzzy thought about anything done by abstract ideal rules being a bad solution IRL.
Like sure, anarchism is fine, but if right now you are a group of honest people with some time-pressing threat, it may be better to do things the old-fashioned way and choose a leader for the time being.
About the original subject of this conversation - we were agreeing with each other.
No, you’d be an advocate for goodness, many people would be advocates for kindness, status quo 20 years ago would be justice, and ritual would be what we have now. Anyway, don’t look too much into this, I just thought it fit. If I’m understanding it correctly, Tao Te Ching actually is supposed to be treated that carelessly, ha-ha.
Oooooorrr…Let’s just break them up like we should have done a long time ago.
Or both!edit: My enthusiasm was well meant but misplaced. On further consideration, I don’t want government to control social media.
Yeah I don’t want government or private monopolies. Competition in an open, well regulated market seems better.
Okay, which nation gets them?
Can we go with Egypt? I feel like they should get some more time in the history books.
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.
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.We need to split them, kill them, do whatever it takes to scatter the power they’ve accumulated.
They , as in people holding that power, want to nationalize them, because it simplifies the system they have already built for themselves.
Both Harris’ program and such articles are all in the same direction. “Corps are fine, they just should be state-controlled and their services affordable”.
No. People who want this are power-hungry fools, and despite their feeling of victory factually achieved and only waiting to be formalized, they will get fucked and this will fail.
Governments are bad; I get it.
But is it tiring to constantly mistrust the people we’ve put in charge of our shared resources or is it resignation to keep choosing the same people each time instead of the ones you CAN trust?
I didn’t put anybody in charge. I could theoretically employ them. They are employees.
When someone wants trust, they are the last person to be trusted.
I obviously don’t choose much.
First, because an anonymous vote where you can vote only for one candidate, not even against. Something similar to likes\dislikes would make more sense, but with each voter getting, say, the amount of likes equal to floor of 1/3 choices in the ballot, and the same amount of dislikes.
Second, because I live in Russia.
Yup. It’s time for some trust-busting. Amazon’s logistics is great (though there is need for unionization of the employees) but their shopping site sucks. Kill the vertical integration so there can be different websites that use their logistics to deliver stuff. Many shopping portals competing with each other to allow people to quickly find products that don’t suck and have those products be delivered within days.
Pull out the Cloud services from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Probably should have some standard APIs for cloud services so to make it easier to switch between them which means they will have to compete instead of just locking people in to their particular service.
Social media just needs to be regulated like the phone companies are. Required to interoperate. Don’t like what Elon Musk has done with Twitter? Move to Mastodon, Threads, or whatever and still be able to communicate with your friends that are still on Twitter. Create a common social media API standard that the biggies are required to implement so they can’t use the network effect as a barrier to entry. Moving to a different social media platforms should be like changing to a different phone company. You don’t have to be on the same phone company that your friends use, so why should you have to be on the same social media platform that your friends use?
Maybe update the CDA so that if their algorithm recommends something, they face the same liability as traditional media does when they publish something. Sure they shouldn’t be liable whenever a random user posts something, but if their algorithm is recommending that post to millions of people, it doesn’t seem any different from a newspaper printing an article saying some bullshit.
I’d say computers with internet have done to regulations of mass media the same thing that early computers have done to encryption.
They allow platforms\businesses\whoever to make systems of enormous complexity, easily incompatible and with intentional gray zones for laws here and there, and to do that fast and in enormous quantities.
For example, with algorithmic recommendations and who’s responsible.
What in the world before the Internet would be generally contained to real physical objects and procedures hard to change that fast, after it became wholly models defined by computer programs. When Facebook reads your messages, they don’t open any physical envelope and they don’t even do something at a telephone station.
There’s an explosion of facts legal systems have not been designed to deal with. As we’ve all seen with the way they react to it.
Scattering it just creates an opening for the next monopoly to come and fill the gap. Nationalizing ensures everyone gets fair and equal access and prevents a capitalist monopoly.
It’s so easy to just say “they” and sound scary it’s harder to actually figure out why some solutions are good and others bad without resorting to a mysterious malevolent entity.
Nationalizing ensures everyone gets fair and equal access and prevents a capitalist monopoly.
Some people live with a regulated market and think that it won’t lead to monopoly no matter what.
Some people live without seeing what nationalization does and think that it will be something fair and equal.
Let’s generally avoid being so certain about things we haven’t seen.
It’s so easy to just say “they” and sound scary it’s harder to actually figure out why some solutions are good and others bad without resorting to a mysterious malevolent entity.
There’s nothing mysterious in this.
If hard narcotics are highly illegal, but also still generally available in your country for those who seek, then somebody does that work with protection from sufficiently powerful people.
If prostitution is illegal in your country, then the same.
And so on and so forth.
Now we are talking about the government control over a large chunk of your communications. There’s no need to sound scary, this is bullshit and you are either a shill or very inexperienced.
Some people live with a regulated market and think that it won’t lead to monopoly no matter what.
It pretty much by definition has to be a monopoly. The point is that profit isn’t the goal anymore. Serving the people is.
There’s nothing mysterious in this.
If hard narcotics are highly illegal, but also still generally available in your country for those who seek, then somebody does that work with protection from sufficiently powerful people.
What? That’s totally an unrelated topic.
Now we are talking about the government control over a large chunk of your communications. There’s no need to sound scary, this is bullshit and you are either a shill or very inexperienced.
They already partially are in most places. Building infrastructure requires government consent or it’d be chaos. Having an option of a search engine being national does not put them in charge of all options though. It just creates a base version that people always have access to.
It pretty much by definition has to be a monopoly. The point is that profit isn’t the goal anymore. Serving the people is.
You can’t possibly have any instrument to set that goal to people with more power than you or “the people”. And idiots thinking they can have centralized power with “a different goal” somehow set are the ones who’ve lead us to the current state of things.
What? That’s totally an unrelated topic.
It’s not. That’s the kind of system you are suggesting to nationalize something under.
They already partially are in most places. Building infrastructure requires government consent or it’d be chaos. Having an option of a search engine being national does not put them in charge of all options though. It just creates a base version that people always have access to.
Having an option of Meta or Google doesn’t put them in charge of all social networks too. But in practice it’s different.
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?
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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.
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.
Ahem, No. We need something better. And nations should respect their citizens’ privacy and digital security. Not exploit it. 99% of any of those companies is about harvesting people’s personal data and show them ads. We need the other 1%: offer some useful services. Nationalize Free and Open Source Software, Proton, Nextcloud and healthy social media platforms. Not Facebook and Google!
I think since we’re living in capitalism, what we should do is force some competition. Make them interconnect and open up so the people can choose which company to use. Like with E-Mail or federated services. That should apply to instant messengers and social media.
Best would be if they nationalized these systems and then migrated them to their FOSS alternatives over time.
I’d say that’s overly expensive and complex. Since almost everything with these companies is about the ad selling, harvesting and using the data and tieing the users attention. The state would adopt something that is mostly concerned with that. And they’d struggle with their role influencing political views with the algorithms that now belog to them. And it’d be pretty much an Orwellian dystopia once the state starts getting into the advertisement business. What we consider a “product”, the social media platform or mail service is just a means to have users. It’s a tiny fraction of what these companies do. And it’s an expense to them, not what they make money with.
I think it’s far easier and quicker to start fresh. Have something that has good features baked in from the start. And not adapt a business, settle >90% of what it’s about and change the product 180 degrees so it’s about something entirely different. I mean everything Google programms is with the idea in mind to sell ads. They’d need to change pretty much everything about that program code. And we already have some good alternatives to some things. And the EU for example already funds some Free Software. I think if we were to educate people, regulate online services in a good way and offer proper alternatives, the rest follows automatically. IMO nationalising an ad selling business comes with severe issues, as I lined out earlier. And if we did it over, we could also learn from the past and address issues like filter bubbles, unhealthy behaviour, being overly addictive and whatever is baked in to the current generation of social media and almost impossible to get rid of.
They wouldn’t need to run the ad business. Downsize and replace it with taxpayer dollars.
The reason to nationalize something existing in these spheres rather than build something new is because the network effects of these platforms make it near impossible for something competing to get a foothold. And if anyone could fail to compete against big tech, no one could fail better than the government.
I’m still unsure. That’s certainly a possibility and something that happens in the actual world… Buy a company just for the userbase and throw out everything it consists of. Except for a really tiny portion of the software assets and a few hundred employees. And the database with the user accounts. It’d be super hard to keep the users, though. As they’re then on a platform that’s not anymore what they originally signed up for. If it doesn’t go smoothly, they’ll go someplace else and everything was in vain. Maybe prohibit other private companies from offering competing online services. Or it has to be perfect and stay like that indefinitely.
And I mean the network effect is there. But it can be overcome. Or we’d still use MySpace, ICQ, Facebook, Friendster… I’ve changed instant messenger services like 4 times in my life. Similar for social media platforms and pretty much everything. Just my email is still with the same company.
I’m not entirely sure if that still holds true because companies like Meta and Google are so big these days. But as one example I’d like to mention TikTok which was able to attract like all the young people and get them away from Google and Meta’s grip. And they were able to do that by competing and offering a better(?) service. And it’s pretty much ran by a government. So I’d say it can be done that way. You just need a good product and a lot of money.
But eventually, yeah we should all end up on FOSS services that aren’t paid for in private data.
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.
Lol. What a ludicrous idea.
How high do you want your taxes to be, for a start?
How high do you want your taxes to be, for a start?
High enough to cover proper healthcare and education (including higher education) for everyone. Personal wealth should never be a factor when it comes to education and healthcare.
Right. But do you realise how high they would have to be to nationalise multiple trillion dollar companies?
Considering it wouldn’t need to run for-profit, it would cost much less than their market evaluation.
I’m not the guy suggesting nationalising SoMe, and I actually don’t think it’s a good thing to nationalise that particular function. But shutting down for-profit driven SoMe would probably be a good idea.
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.
