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.
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.
Okay, which nation gets them?
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?
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.
Oooooorrr…Let’s just break them up like we should have done a long time ago.
Yeah I don’t want government or private monopolies. Competition in an open, well regulated market seems better.
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, putting the government in charge of media is always a good idea and never results in any problems.
And the current system is working so well too!
