What If the Government Ran a Social Network? (theguardian.com) 190
A publicly-funded social network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation "has been proposed as one possible response if Facebook and Google limit services in Australia when the mandatory news code becomes law this year," reports the Guardian:
Facebook has warned it will block Australians from sharing news if the landmark plan to make digital platforms pay for news content becomes law. Google has been running a public campaign against the code and launched an international campaign targeting YouTube users when the government announced it would force the company to pay news publishers for content... The proposal for a platform hosted by the ABC is among a raft of risk mitigation proposals in a report commissioned by the Centre for Responsible Technology, "Tech-Xit: Can Australia survive without Google and Facebook?"
The proposed platform would connect the community without harvesting data in the way Google and Facebook do, and could rely on the wide reach of the ABC across local, regional and national communities, as well as the trust the invested in the institution by the public. "An ABC platform which engages the community, allows for a genuine exchange and influence on decision making, and applying principles of independent journalism and storytelling would provide real value to local communities starved of civic engagement," the report says. "[We should] develop viable alternatives to Google and Facebook, such as national online social platform hosted through the ABC..."
The report argues the arrival of the mandatory news code is a chance to push back against the profit or surveillance imperative of the tech giants and look for alternatives. "Google and Facebook's response to the ACCC mandatory news code has placed in stark relief our national over-reliance on them," the director of the Australia Institute's Centre for Responsible Technology, Peter Lewis, said. "This analysis shows that two global corporations that play a dominant role in our civic and commercial institutions are prepared to threaten to withdraw those services to protect their own commercial self-interest."
The proposed platform would connect the community without harvesting data in the way Google and Facebook do, and could rely on the wide reach of the ABC across local, regional and national communities, as well as the trust the invested in the institution by the public. "An ABC platform which engages the community, allows for a genuine exchange and influence on decision making, and applying principles of independent journalism and storytelling would provide real value to local communities starved of civic engagement," the report says. "[We should] develop viable alternatives to Google and Facebook, such as national online social platform hosted through the ABC..."
The report argues the arrival of the mandatory news code is a chance to push back against the profit or surveillance imperative of the tech giants and look for alternatives. "Google and Facebook's response to the ACCC mandatory news code has placed in stark relief our national over-reliance on them," the director of the Australia Institute's Centre for Responsible Technology, Peter Lewis, said. "This analysis shows that two global corporations that play a dominant role in our civic and commercial institutions are prepared to threaten to withdraw those services to protect their own commercial self-interest."
Nobody needs a social network (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nobody needs a social network (Score:5, Insightful)
Says the guy posting on a forum, the earliest form social network
Re: Nobody needs a social network (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when are forums social? I always thought it was about attacking each other's ideas and substantiating our own bias... wait... my God, they are social networks.
Re: Nobody needs a social network (Score:2)
Lile, share and subscriiihiiibe!
And don't forget to suck that little bell-end button!
Re: Nobody needs a social network (Score:5, Funny)
Since when are forums social? I always thought it was about attacking each other's ideas
No they aren't! Wait .... Dammit!
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"Wait it's all social networks?"
"Always has been".
Re: Nobody needs a social network (Score:2)
Kind of miss my dial-up BBS running Grapevine - I let people dial in for stuff that matters - joke of the day, etc., and whatever they wanted to post.
Colourful ASCII art screens, download area, it was simple. And ad-free (paid for it out of my pocket).
Re:Nobody needs a social network (Score:5, Insightful)
No one needs anything, but they have them because they are useful. e.g you don't need a washing machine... you could just use a bucket or the kitchen sink and hand wash your clothes. People use social networking platforms to organize gatherings, share photos and videos etc. People use social networks because they're useful, not because they need them.
Re: Nobody needs a social network (Score:2)
Useful...
Are you some kind of extra-perverted masochist?
Shoo! Go away! You scare the gimp!
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Only idiots who are not on a social network think that.
Re: Nobody needs a social network (Score:2)
Oh you poor hopeless kid.
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Oh you poor hopeless kid.
Funny you bring up ageism. My grandmother couldn't master email but she did master facebook. It was a useful way to talk since we lived far from each other. In fact, she sent her final goodbye message on facebook the day before she died.
Re: Nobody needs a social network (Score:2)
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Re: Nobody needs a social network (Score:3)
Caught myself nodding in approval (Score:5, Insightful)
If Orwell knew we think a government would provide more privacy than a corporation he would be rolling in his grave.
A sad state of affairs we are in
Re:Caught myself nodding in approval (Score:5, Informative)
The title is misleading because the government gets little say in how the ABC is run beyond providing an annual budget. If anything it has a tendency towards anti-establishment. This is well highlighted by how often government ministers criticise it.
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The title is misleading because the government gets little say in how the ABC is run
Misleading!? It is a deliberate click-bait troll. The sort of thing that would get promoted on Facebook because it increases engagement.
ABC is most certainly not the government, or the political establishment.
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Watch it... don't confuse the Australian Broadcasting Company with the American Broadcasting Company. The American company is owned by corporate structure Disney, the Australian one is funded by the Aussie government.
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Yeah, thanks. I'm Australian so that comes as quite a shock. Not.
Re: Caught myself nodding in approval (Score:2)
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Do they have a comment section on their website? How well does it work?
The BBC has had comments on news stories for years. It's not been going very well.
At first posts were ranked only by the number of up votes, and every day one particular UKIP Facebook group would post a commend and then get their members to mod-bomb it to the top. After a few years they fixed that by allowing both up and down votes and showing the highest ranked by combined total, but it was still quite easy to game the system.
Recently t
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I think every comments section under a political issue is more or less doomed to fail
Re:Caught myself nodding in approval (Score:4, Informative)
The title is misleading because the government gets little say in how the ABC is run beyond providing an annual budget.
Little say, except for deciding completely who is on the board of directors, a role that conveniently changes after each new party comes in power. The ABC is under constant government attack, be it the management positions as determined by the government, the withholding of funding as determined by the government, or the recent push to partially sell them off to Murdoch.
Saying the government has "little say" is woefully ignorant.
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The title is misleading because the government gets little say in how the ABC is run beyond providing an annual budget. If anything it has a tendency towards anti-establishment. This is well highlighted by how often government ministers criticise it.
Government taking your money then tossing it, hands off, into the laps of someone else is still a government problem. It is further from democracy because the problems with government have to do with lack of controls on government.
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Once again, the 'capitalism provides' mantra: How much have you paid to Facebook and Twitter, for the convenience of privacy? Nothing, then you're not getting capitalism. In the USA, government demands little respect for privacy and corporations happily sell to each other, details of your life. You are lying to yourself and everyone else about the power of capitalism.
In Australia, the ABC is a Qua.NGO with leftist leanings. The right-wing government hates paying it to fill children's heads with 'for
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I think the ABC is an essential service to Australians, and one of the few places I can trust to tell the truth, but as for them running a social network, forget it.
There would definitely be some silencing of views that didn't fit the agenda of management.
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He's probably rolling in his grave anyway, the only difference would be the direction of rotation [theonion.com].
I certainly don't want run by Trump administration (Score:2)
Where I love, the government is currently the Trump adminstration. So when I hear "X run by the government", that means "X run the Trump administration".
I don't care for a Facebook replacement run by Trump administration. I don't want one run by the Biden-Harris administration either.
What's love got to do with it? (Score:2)
Where I love, the government...
What's love got to do with it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: I certainly don't want run by Trump administra (Score:2)
Re: Caught myself nodding in approval (Score:2)
Uu, are you implying a type of organization, whose single and only purpose is to steal as much money as possible woth zero morals or conscience is good at keeping privacy?
Besides: The US government IS an ologarchy of corporations. So shouldn't you be cheering right now? ... Alright ... they only use that term when it's *other* corporations writing regulation to gain more power. Not when it is *themselves* writing regulation to gain more power. Except to blame that regulation on $notThem in the eyes of the l
Re: Caught myself nodding in approval (Score:2, Insightful)
Like you even know what communism is... lol.
Hint: The Soviets were not a communism. Nor are Cuba and China. And the GDR was not a socialism either. :P
But hey, your country is not a democracy either, so we're good, right?
(Because those are fuzzy-lighted unrealistic idealostic fantasy concepts, that in reality, with actual humans, are impossible to happen.)
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The free software movement is an example of communism in practice. When physical goods can be reproduced at almost zero cost, we would have communism outside the digital realm.
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That is the opposite of communism. You are not free to pursue your own ends in communism. You give dear leaders power to assign jobs for the greater good, so the rhetoric goes, and then are shocked vile pigs rise to the top.
Re: Caught myself nodding in approval (Score:2)
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Like you even know what communism is... lol.
Hint: The Soviets were not a communism. Nor are Cuba and China. And the GDR was not a socialism either. But hey, your country is not a democracy either, so we're good, right? :P
(Because those are fuzzy-lighted unrealistic idealostic fantasy concepts, that in reality, with actual humans, are impossible to happen.)
Soviet, Cuba and China were communism... it might not be what you wanted it to be, but it is what it will turn into. Economic fiasco, and dictatorship.
That being said: Americans have a tendency to call a lot of things communist that aren't - typically anything that is to the left of oneself. I'm not sure if it is caused by lack of knowledge, a desired guilt by association - or the combination. Having a public broadcaster do something has nothing to do with communism. Neither does things like public healt
Re: Caught myself nodding in approval (Score:2, Insightful)
No, they were not (by far)
It would crash (Score:2)
A Matter Of Public Record (Score:2)
A great idea and about time, the name obvious, 'A Matter of Public Record', an anonymous social forum where all the issues of the day can be discussed and citizens can interact. The anonymous public forum and the behind the scenes private communications network.
The public forum needs to use anonymising avatars because some people would take it upon themselves to take forum difference to the streets in stupid and violent ways.
The social networking should be private and in the background 'A Matter of Private
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Actually, forum and blog comments have to be censored... there's a hidden -2 level for posts on Slashdot that can't be published. It's really for posts that cause liability. Things like useless swearing and unacceptable commercials cause posts to go to -1.
a nice idea in a way ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... but people wouldn't use it. We don't use social media platforms because they are a useful source of information that we need. We use them because they hook into our unhealthiest instincts as human beings and manipulate our attention in a carefully crafted way designed to keep us "engaged". The described platform wouldn't do this and therefore people would simply get bored with it.
The thinking is backwards: no one should be relying on social media for news, that's not what it's good for, if it's really good for anything at all. If news on Facebook is going to die then let it die. It fact lets forcibly kill it and kill it good so that there is no illusion that anything on Facebook should be considered reliable. People can and should continue to get their news from other sources, like the ABC.
Perhaps experiment with building an online community around the existing ABC services, but if the sometimes-enabled comments section are any guide it would be a dumpster fire. Getting an online audience to engage in good faith without betraying our tendency to be assholes is maybe an impossible task. It doesn't need different or better platforms, it needs a fundamental shift in us and how we interact with each other.
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A key point you're missing is that this entire thing started when newspapers decided social media should pay them when their users share news articles. Creating a government social network won't solve that problem. You still have to levy a tax and pay the newspapers. But if you were going to do that, you could also do it without building a new social network.
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Are you taking the piss ?
There are NO trusted news services.
The only news you hear is the news they want you to hear.
If you want to know the truth you must seek it .
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what?
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You know you comment smells like PR=B$ for existing social networks.
Yep, PR bullshit that disses their own product and says people shouldn't use it while pointing out the only thing that keeps them in business is network effects.
Like seriously did you even read the comment before replying?
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"A publicly-funded social network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation"
Not American Broadcasting Company
Re: a nice idea in a way ... (Score:2)
It would work like a government-run site (Score:3)
Ever go to your DMV Web site to register your vehicle or update your driver's license? How about your county tax office site for looking up property tax records? What do nearly all government Web site have in common? They are old and clunky. The National Weather Service still uses Flash for its radar time lapse images! The only people who want to use them are those who MUST use them.
A government-run social network wouldn't be any different. It might be nice at first, but it would age quickly, because government funding is rarely adequate for proper maintenance and upgrades to its Web site.
Re:It would work like a government-run site (Score:4, Informative)
Also you've listed websites run by US government agencies. This story is about Australia... I don't know much about how they might run things, but here in NZ govt websites seem to get updated fairly often and are ok in quality.
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Social services platforms in Oz are pretty sketchy. They "work", that's about as good as it gets. Development and improvements are slow and the user experience is only just acceptable. Plenty of examples of it going badly wrong too, total system crashes. And that's for mission-critical stuff, not a nice-to-have social platform addon.
Having said that, I think you're on to the right idea with an existing open source project implemented with ABC-driven guidelines. Could buck the trend and set a new standard fo
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Yes, there are OSS networks. Did you ever bother looking at them? And while they sort-of work, they also show what happens if you have no or limited moderation - a small number of posters poison the network and lack of those algorithms we frown upon actually makes 90% of the content pure noise at best and offensive for the general public at worst, leaving only a small fraction of sincere and interesting posts.
I realize that the the fb and twitter and the likes have to balance on a thin line between free spe
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But to address the issues you bring up. A government run website using an OSS platform could still mandate that you're not anonymous. Here we have a govt provided login called RealMe which I'm sure they'd love every
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Spot on. I's just saying that in order to be popular with the general public, a platform needs some sort of moderation. But any government would be the last entity eligible to do so. At least with the commercial offerings, we can vote with our feet.
In my country too, especially the socialists here would love to have a government owned social network so they can easily weed out anything that does not confirm the official narrative. It's not relevant if that narrative is right or wrong. It's just that i don't
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Ever go to your DMV Web site to register your vehicle or update your driver's license?
Yes. I've heard the stereotypes about the DMV or Post Office in the US. But in Australia or UK, they seem to function OK. Not perfect, but no worse than a big corporation.
ABC is somewhat left-leaning, but lacks the blatant partisan reporting of US networks. It is a bit like America's PBS (of Sesame Street fame), but with a budget, so they don't need advertising or begging to survive.)
People trust them, unlike Facebook.
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I'm pretty sure it's not just US government Web sites that do not pour billions into making first-rate Web sites. US government Web sites DO function OK. They do the 20% of the work that handles 80% of the use cases. It's that last 80% of the work to make a truly polished site, that governments won't pay to do. That is what makes them clunky.
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Ever go to your DMV Web site to register your vehicle or update your driver's license? How about your county tax office site for looking up property tax records?
Did both recently. Both were fine. DMV here is a bit old-fashioned, but actually refreshingly functional without all the "material misdesign" nonsense. County parcel browser was also just fine, I located my house on a map and got all the records I needed with a couple of clicks.
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If you know how to use a command prompt such as bash, you are not a good judge of how well a Web site works. The vast majority of users are not technical at all. It takes a lot more polish to make a web site usable for such people. My 80-year-old parents can't even figure out how to buy things on Amazon, but they do know how to use facebook. A government-run site would not put the same level of effort (money) into usability.
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In essence it's a battle over the attention of the public. Newspapers, TV stations, online media companies, social networks, political parties - they all fight over it. Full control in the hands of a private corporation is not OK, government control is not OK, maybe we should try putting people in control of their own feeds for once.
What the government should do it to require that users have control over the r
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Ever go to your DMV Web site to register your vehicle or update your driver's license? How about your county tax office site for looking up property tax records?
Why is your government's inability to make a website relevant to a story about a different government?
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Because crappy government web sites are not limited to the US. Your Australian sites might work well now because they are new. Just give them a few years and see how well they age.
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Slashdot is not a good example, because it's a site primarily used by technical people. Government web sites, particularly a social media site, needs to be usable by people like grandparents, who have little or now technical skills. Think about people like my in-laws, who still can't figure out how to get digital pictures off their camera onto their computer, or order something on Amazon. But they DO know how to use facebook, because the company has put huge amounts of resources into making sure they can.
To
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Ever go to your DMV Web site to register your vehicle or update your driver's license? How about your county tax office site for looking up property tax records? What do nearly all government Web site have in common? They are old and clunky. The National Weather Service still uses Flash for its radar time lapse images! The only people who want to use them are those who MUST use them.
A government-run social network wouldn't be any different. It might be nice at first, but it would age quickly, because government funding is rarely adequate for proper maintenance and upgrades to its Web site.
In the US, you often have private interests lobbying for bad user interfaces. E.g., the IRS can't make delivering your taxes too simple [propublica.org] or the tax software and preparation business might lose a lot of business. Improving the weather service might inconvenience The Weather Channel and others who repackage that date for profit etc...
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What are you talking about? While there might be some Flash based pages, I use this nice page [weather.gov] for a radar loop, which is a simple animated GIF. And it has quick links to other regions of the country.
Though I just noticed a warning saying that site is going away to be replaced with this JS laden monstrosity [weather.gov]. Not only is it slow and bloated, it doesn't even show me what I want (I radar loop). Why do all weather sites just get wo
Re: It would work like a government-run site (Score:2)
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Perhaps this is because they haven't been around that long yet? In the US, NEW government Web sites are generally modern, but the problem is upkeep over time. Most don't want to redevelop their old classic ASP Web sites to Angular or React. Your Australian web sites will age just like the ones elsewhere in the world.
I'll go one further... (Score:5, Interesting)
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represent.us
What if multiple private platforms coexist instead (Score:2)
The Town Square (Score:4, Insightful)
I heard they're calling it "the town square" now. Town squares are not privately owned though.
Or, if we want to keep the current paradigm that these are private businesses operating in a free market, it would seem their anticompetitive behaviors need some adjustment. I'm not sure what that would look like on a technical level. Mandating an open API for anyone to interact with your database?
Come to think of it, everything social media claims to provide - "connecting people", "today's town square" - has historically been accomplished peer-to-peer by individuals without the auspice of a corporation. Only when the time came that normal people needed technical assistance to do it (like the introduction of telephone networks) did third parties get involved. And then, it was treated specially as infrastructure. The organizations operating the technology were heavily regulated, out of necessity.
With the power of these technical advancements comes a crushing responsibility. Or, what should be crushing responsibility. If not, it turns into a Soviet Russia joke where technology crushes you.
How is that working in China? (Score:3)
Or North Korea?
Only thing worse than a social network run by big tech is one run by the government.
Re: How is that working in China? (Score:2)
Decentralize! (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't need more centrally-organized platforms, whether privately-owned or public.
Everything "useful" about a social network -- feeds, reactions, comment threads, groups, photos, discovery of new people and content, filtering of undesired people and content, etc. -- can be done without requiring a central authority or a single point of failure, and without the problems of privacy, censorship, consolidated market power, and single points of failure.
The entire thing can be run the same way as email: mobile applications combined with a plethora of always-on hubs for shuttling messages for their own customers.
Re:Decentralize! (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. Social networks should be like email:
- For most people it is a service provided by their internet provider, but you can set up your own server if you want to.
- The protocols are open.
- Free implementations are available.
There is zero need for centralisation in a social network.
Social networks will be like Email, I fear (Score:2)
Once email is replaced by them.
Kids use snapchat. Middle aged women use Facebook messenger instead of email. Business people use Slack or Teams.
E-mail is an accident of history. From a different time. Nobody would build an open system like that today.
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All the more reason why we need an email-like basis for social networking, I think. It stops power from concentrating in the hands of the few (like Facebook does), without raising the technical bar so high that only people who read manpages for fun can figure it out. In other words, ubiquitous, like email, and running at your provider, like email (but with an option to run your own system if you feel that way - like email).
Re: Decentralize! (Score:2)
tried before (Score:2)
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This is what I keep thinking. There would have to be some heavy moderation in place and this opens up the question of censorship. What might work is something more like the slashdot community where we moderate ourselves. Even then it's really hard to find the line between robust debate and pointless arguing. I wonder if the Q&A format is an option where ordinary citizens form a panel that has a live moderator and an interactive audience. Whatever the format, it needs to be somewhat revolutionary in orde
Goverments Should Not Use Social Networking (Score:2)
old concept (Score:4, Insightful)
This was part of economics 101 for the last century or so.
When a natural monopoly emerges, society (typically in the form of government) must regulate it. Otherwise it will proceed to extract monopoly rent.
Note that the term isn't to be taken literally "mono-poly" does not have to mean "one". Two companies dominating a market to the point where there's little to no competition left are the same thing. One dominating force and a dozen tiny competitors struggling to survive in their respective niches is also a monopoly. The point is that a free market has ceased to exist.
So the idea to either strictly regulate or put it right under government control is textbook economy. You know, the same textbook stuff everyone points to when they want to keep the government out of business. Funny how quickly everyone forgets that economic theory has more than one answer.
This is a trick question, right? (Score:5, Informative)
What If the Government Ran a Social Network?
This is a trick question, right?
Think of the Cold War era. Imagine "the Letter Column of Pravda". With the KGB providing the manpower for handling the letters, laying out the pages, picking what gets printed, and hunting down anyone that looks suspicious.
Or maybe the same era in the US - during the Vietnam conflict antiwar/antidraft protests. This time it's the FBI. Look up "COINTELPRO" (which was NOT a tinfoil-hat fantasy).
Or how about the issue in leadup to the American Revolution that led to the Third Amendment? The issue with "quartering troops" in the citizens' homes isn't the inconvenience and cost of supporting an invading soldier. It's that the troops double as a spy in every house, listening to conversations, going through papers, looking for subversive activity and reporting it to the military authorities. (The 1770s version of a keylogger malware in every computer.)
What happens if the government is in charge of its people's communications? What ALWAYS happens when a government is in charge of its people's communications?
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The government is in charge of the FCC here... the primary mission of the FCC is to prevent RF users from interfering with those licensed to use that part of the the RF band. So, basically, any content that the government finds offensive can be used to pull the license of that broadcast station... even cable TV and DBS need licenses.
The "swearing rule" is part of this. ABC(US) tonight had to bleep Tiffany Haddish for swearing as she was told she gave a wrong answer as a celebrity player on Who Wants to be a
Google broke the Internet... (Score:3)
In the early days of Google News, it was fast and up to the second with every tick of the AP Wire... it treated the AP as authoritative because so many sites were repeating the AP news quickly. No editor, just a computer program working on the PageRank theories. But when the AP pulled back the full wire, Google News started becoming expensive. Just like Froogle, it had to be replaced with a more profitable version.
So, now we've got Facebook, Twitter and others being blocked by governments for stealing real news and promoting fake news... don't you know you're supposed to write about yourself on these sites? And this leads to the "great firewalls" to insist news must be local... blocking the American .com sites in favor of localized versions, and if the Americans won't run that for them, they ask their national media to run a social network for them.
Seems like we need Web 3.0 soon...
Re: Google broke the Internet... (Score:2)
Run by no-one (Score:2)
Why does anyone need to run it? Usenet was decentralised and offered similar functionality in a basic form.
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Usenet only worked because of the efforts of news admins. It wasn't magic.
What if the US government was social? (Score:2)
You know: As in Americans working together, being there for each other, ... like what's half the reason for the success of human beings.
Oh, and I hope you do not still believe that a concept that involves drowning empathy in amonymization of masses and distances of people, is, has ever been, or can ever be social...
Open standards and federation (Score:4, Insightful)
If the australian (or any other) government creates their own social media site, it will end up being local, restrictive, and never updated etc...
What's needed is instead of centralised sites, an open standard allowing federation between multiple sites. Then the government or any interested parties in australia can create their own sites, while still allowing users to communicate with their friends on other sites including foreign ones.
You can't rely on the government to run such a site..
But you also can't rely on a commercial entity that locks users into a centralised site...
If multiple entities are competing with each other on a level playing field, that's the only way you're going to see a service that respects its users.
Eggs in one basket (Score:2)
I suspect that the government might run a social network better than a private company. Because the private company is motivated solely by its profit, while the government network would be indirectly responsible to politicians who are responsible to the consensus of voters. The BBC is an example of a news network that does a pretty good job under this model, and I think the issues with social media are similar.
But even if my government ran such a social network, I still wouldn't use it. This is because the
All to Protect Trump's Lie-Based Reality? (Score:2)
Needs funding well prior to rollout (Score:3)
The Australian ABC do a good job at news, in a variety of media (not unlike the BBC). So it seems to me that if they had a go at creating a social network, they'd have a similar chance to any other startup, if they got a fair shot at it and it didn't get stuffed up by bureaucracy. Though if you look at all the tech companies that have taken a shot at any given field, the success rate is not high.
But the key problem is that you'd have to give the ABC funding to start developing that social network a year or two before you wanted it in production use.
Australia Post (Score:2)
Auspost is a social network. A little slow maybe.
There is no reason why Auspost cannot run Email and other communications services.
Monopolies is the issue (Score:3)
If you could have a people-only network... (Score:3)
...an argument for this is that no private, profit-making entity would refuse to let artificial "persons" (corporations, bots...honestly, is there a difference...) have accounts.
A real "social" network would allow one account per human, and a government could use your social insurance number or something, or in any event, require you to prove yourself human before giving you an account.
I think social networks would be a lot more tolerable with no bots allowed, and no commerce. Remember when the internet considered ".com" a controversial concept? Something like that.
Re: Mainstream media is already government-run. (Score:3)
Re: Mainstream media is already government-run. (Score:2)
Re: UI (Score:2)