but wait there’s these spaces

Image description:
Young woman helping an old woman as she reminisces about the old web, “The web used to be open and distributed! Not closed and concentrated in the hands of a few companies!” The young woman, “Sure grandma, now let’s get you to bed.”

  • ExocrinousEnglish
    1•9 months ago

    The problem is, people have decided (for reasons which are entirely mysterious to me) that they are entitled to all the services and benefits of these large, pre-existing platforms. People think they’re entitled to have someone else pay for their hosting, provide them with access to a large audience of potential subscribers, and provide them with free tools to upload and manage their content

    People are right. Governments spent thousands of years providing people with parks, forums, markets, and libraries for the public good. Democracy was founded in the Agora of Athens itself. Society no longer exists solely on the material plane, it now also exists on the web. The government should provide parks, forums, and markets on the web. Just like it provided state sponsored television broadcasting like the BBC and ABC.

    There is no intellectually sound basis for demanding that these platforms act as you might wish them to act. You don’t own them. I don’t own them. The government doesn’t own them. They can set whatever rules they want, and I can’t think of any valid reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to do just that.

    The government should seize them, because their control over the spaces of public meeting and information exchange are a threat to democracy as proven by Jan 6. It should be illegal for them to have that much power. The law should be changed and the companies should be made public.

    • @ChillDude69
      1•9 months ago

      The government should seize them, because their control over the spaces of public meeting and information exchange are a threat to democracy as proven by Jan 6. It should be illegal for them to have that much power. The law should be changed and the companies should be made public.

      And which party will then control those platforms? Whichever one is in power, obviously. Let’s assume the Republicans manage to win the Presidency, both houses of Congress, and install another three Supreme Court justices, over the next 8-12 years.

      Do you think it would be a good idea for THE MODERN DAY REPUBLICAN PARTY to have direct fucking control over these massive social media platforms? Please don’t tell me you think that’s anything other than a nightmare scenario.

      Just for starters, imagine Marjorie Taylor Greene being appointed to a position where she can start deplatforming people on the newly public social media sites, for holding opinions she considers to be wrong. Imagine these people deploying AI tools to track people’s activities and send cops to their doors, when the system suspects they might have committed crimes. That way, they can have their voting rights taken away, and the next election will be even easier.

      Imagine right-wing propagandists being in DIRECT CONTROL of all the social media algorithms, without even having to make any backroom deals. Is this looking like a dumb fucking idea to you, yet?

      If you think January 6th is a good reason for social media platforms to be kept out of the hands of right-wing terrorists, then WHY ARE YOU ADVOCATING FOR A GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER OF THOSE PLATFORMS? The fucking terrorists are already in the government. From where we’re sitting right now, as of the time I’m writing this, I figure there’s about a 38 percent chance that Trump will win the Presidency, and at LEAST maintain the status quo, within the rest of the elected government.

      Even if they’re held off this time, what about the future? If social media platforms are taken by the government and made into public utilities, there will always be that danger of them being controlled directly by the government. Instead, I’m simply advocating for people to REMEMBER THAT SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS ARE NOT THE SAME THING AS THE INTERNET.

      As someone else pointed out, in a reply to my comments, the current state of cloud technology has actually made it cheaper and easier than ever to make “alternative” platforms, outside the “mainstream” social media structure that currently exists. Right now, it’s easy to go out and make your own website. You can connect to the Fediverse, you can make your own platform for any purpose, and all of that access is currently guaranteed, basically as a utility.

      Do you think that guarantee would still exist, after a government takes over the social media platforms? Of course not. A corrupt government wouldn’t just be satisfied with controlling the existing platforms. They’d enact laws to restrict hosting of new platforms, monitor internet traffic in general, and generally make it impossible to speak on the Internet without their approval.