Does the World Need Publicly-Owned Social Networks? (elpais.com) 122
"Do we need publicly-owned social networks to escape Silicon Valley?" asks an opinion piece in Spain's El Pais newspaper.
It argues it's necessary because social media platforms "have consolidated themselves as quasi-monopolies, with a business model that consists of violating our privacy in search of data to sell ads..." Among the proposals and alternatives to these platforms, the idea of public social media networks has often been mentioned. Imagine, for example, a Twitter for the European Union, or a Facebook managed by media outlets like the BBC. In February, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for "the development of our own browsers, European public and private social networks and messaging services that use transparent protocols." Former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — who governed from 2004 until 2011 — and the left-wing Sumar bloc in the Spanish Parliament have also proposed this. And, back in 2021, former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn made a similar suggestion.
At first glance, this may seem like a good idea: a public platform wouldn't require algorithms — which are designed to stimulate addiction and confrontation — nor would it have to collect private information to sell ads. Such a platform could even facilitate public conversations, as pointed out by James Muldoon, a professor at Essex Business School and author of Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim our Digital Future from Big Tech (2022)... This could be an alternative that would contribute to platform pluralism and ensure we're not dependent on a handful of billionaires. This is especially important at a time when we're increasingly aware that technology isn't neutral and that private platforms respond to both economic and political interests.
There's other possibilities. Further down they write that "it makes much more sense for the state to invest in, or collaborate with, decentralized social media networks based on free and interoperable software" that "allow for the portability of information and content." They even spoke to Cory Doctorow, who they say "proposes that the state cooperate with the software systems, developers, or servers for existing open-source platforms, such as the U.S. network Bluesky or the German firm Mastodon." (Doctorow adds that reclaiming digital independence "is incredibly important, it's incredibly difficult, and it's incredibly urgent."
The article also acknowledges the option of "legislative initiatives — such as antitrust laws, or even stricter regulations than those imposed in Europe — that limit or prevent surveillance capitalism." (Though they also figures showing U.S. tech giants have one of the largest lobbying groups in the EU, with Meta being the top spender...)
It argues it's necessary because social media platforms "have consolidated themselves as quasi-monopolies, with a business model that consists of violating our privacy in search of data to sell ads..." Among the proposals and alternatives to these platforms, the idea of public social media networks has often been mentioned. Imagine, for example, a Twitter for the European Union, or a Facebook managed by media outlets like the BBC. In February, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for "the development of our own browsers, European public and private social networks and messaging services that use transparent protocols." Former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — who governed from 2004 until 2011 — and the left-wing Sumar bloc in the Spanish Parliament have also proposed this. And, back in 2021, former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn made a similar suggestion.
At first glance, this may seem like a good idea: a public platform wouldn't require algorithms — which are designed to stimulate addiction and confrontation — nor would it have to collect private information to sell ads. Such a platform could even facilitate public conversations, as pointed out by James Muldoon, a professor at Essex Business School and author of Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim our Digital Future from Big Tech (2022)... This could be an alternative that would contribute to platform pluralism and ensure we're not dependent on a handful of billionaires. This is especially important at a time when we're increasingly aware that technology isn't neutral and that private platforms respond to both economic and political interests.
There's other possibilities. Further down they write that "it makes much more sense for the state to invest in, or collaborate with, decentralized social media networks based on free and interoperable software" that "allow for the portability of information and content." They even spoke to Cory Doctorow, who they say "proposes that the state cooperate with the software systems, developers, or servers for existing open-source platforms, such as the U.S. network Bluesky or the German firm Mastodon." (Doctorow adds that reclaiming digital independence "is incredibly important, it's incredibly difficult, and it's incredibly urgent."
The article also acknowledges the option of "legislative initiatives — such as antitrust laws, or even stricter regulations than those imposed in Europe — that limit or prevent surveillance capitalism." (Though they also figures showing U.S. tech giants have one of the largest lobbying groups in the EU, with Meta being the top spender...)
More importantly. (Score:5, Interesting)
Does the world even need social networks?
Bettridge says NO!
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Thread done in the frosty piss by an AC.
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The way you formulate that immediately shows how stupid the question is.
Nothing about the term 'social network' dictates that it is one of the Twitter and Facebook-like incarnations we have today (or even anything digital). Of course the world needs social networks. We are social animals and will seek out communication with others of our species. There is nothing inherently wrong with facilitating that in a healthy way.
Re:More importantly. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Of course the world needs social networks. We are social animals and will seek out communication with others of our species. There is nothing inherently wrong with facilitating that in a healthy way."
Social Networks are NOT healthy, that's kinda the point.
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You have a point.
But what large group of people has there ever been where there has been no toxicity or social problems within?
Facebook, Twitter, social media in general, IRC, ICQ, news groups.... I've been around a looooong time on the internet, enough time to understand that the problem is not the platform, its the people.
How do we solve that?
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Social Networks are NOT healthy, that's kinda the point.
You know what, I take it back. You're right. Everybody should be a hermit and have no social network.
Learn to read.
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BlueSky seems to be okay.
People formed ad-hoc social network before the term existed, on forums, and mailing lists, and IRC.
Much of the toxicity comes from the fact that networks like Facebook need to monetize their users. We see that in other areas too, like healthcare. Compare and contrast for-profit healthcare with socialized healthcare.
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We need communities of people working together.
We don't need to be glued to our phones reading divisive rants.
Re:More importantly. (Score:4, Insightful)
heard something recently that fits.
Twitter/FB/Insta/etc are Social MEDIA - they're entire point is to get you to consume stuff, not build relationships. Corporate algorithms aren't for you they are to use you.
Mastodon/Fediverse and possibly Bluesky (TBD) are Social 'Networks'. The point is the communication with others.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Also who is going to use it? Or do the governments find ways to force you to use it?
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter is owned by vice-president Musk. The rest of the social media owner-donors are falling all over themselves to demonstrate their loyalty. Whatever kind of separation you imagine between big tech and big government, there isn't anymore. If there ever was.
Also who is going to use it? Or do the governments find ways to force you to use it?
You're using it, and you signed up voluntarily.
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That would be a start. The government is at least legally bound to protect free speech, unlike a corporation. The next step would be ensuring those laws are indeed followed.
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Twitter is owned by vice-president Musk. The rest of the social media owner-donors are falling all over themselves to demonstrate their loyalty. Whatever kind of separation you imagine between big tech and big government, there isn't anymore. If there ever was.
The first stage of fascism should properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of corporate and state power.
As my country hasn't (yet) slid into fascism I'd still trust the government over the corporations as unlike the corporations, the government is still (ostensibly) answerable to the people... although when it comes to communications, it really should be ultimately controlled by the end users, those who will benefit from it and whilst the government is not directly answerable to individual
Re: No (Score:2)
I think free speech is the larger issue that nobody really considers on this. The government couldn't even prevent trolls from spamming USAREC social media spaces, which was very light on moderation. In other words, if the government owns the space, then it can't do any moderation at all.
For most countries in Europe, that could work because they don't have particularly strong protections on free speech. Though it's probably worth noting that, when given the choice, few users bother with government owned soc
Public Access wouldn't be a bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
You could also keep everything pretty open without things like how Facebook basically shut down all the companies making games on their platform because they wanted to steal the money for themselves.
The problem is you need a government you can trust and to get that then there's a whole bunch of sacred cows and moral panics you have to let go so that you can focus on real material things that benefit or harm your life.
And I don't think our species is going to do that before we Fermi paradox ourselves to death. Honestly based on what I've seen in the last several months I figure we've got about 10 or 15 years left at most before some nut job gets a hold of the nuke codes
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You don't need a government to run/approve of a new social network. Indeed, probably not a good idea to have the government involved.
There are models for open source distributed social platforms (similar to BlueSky) that should work fine and keep government and big business out of it.
Government maybe (Score:3)
But if you run a distributed social media Network and it wasn't a technical mess that was too difficult for anyone to use except a handful of nerdy techies it would quickly get mobbed by Rich assholes with unlimited resources.
You can't just hand trillions and trillions of dollars to a few thousand people and not have them shit all over your communities. They're not going to leave you
Re: Public Access wouldn't be a bad idea (Score:2)
It could work, but I worry that govts are so risk averse that they would restrict content until the site was useless.
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Both parties would censor it and blame the other party for censoring it, while winking at each other.
And we are totally going to Fermi ourselves. It's a matter of when, not if.
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That's the real problem, it's only a matter of time before some nut Job who is competent gets ahold of a nuclear arsenal. One of the crazy things is competence and Insanity are not mutually exclusive. You can be absolutely batshit insane and able to accomplish quite terrifying feats.
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All you need is optional filtering. Have the same underlying set of user data, then let organizations provide their own filters. Then the user can decide which filters to apply (if any). If you really want to hear just the pro-Democrat side, use the filters provided by the Democrats.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like one of those Enlightened Centrism complaints. Or a variant - in this case, implying there's only two options, and then guiding people towards the wrong one. Others might call it JAQing off (or "just asking questions" as a means to artifically inflate doubt.)
If something is owned by a democracy-based government, anything that is problematic can be corrected by voting in a different person or party. Likewise, it means you personally should avoid voting for problematic parties, as demonstrated by what happened in the USA.
It's a stereotype that governments must do surveillance on every interaction. Even then, a government will immense amounts of data would know not to allow it to lea
But more importantly, that complaint is irrelevant. With social media, it's likely going to be viewable by anyone, which puts the difficulty of surveillance as easy as watching someone's twitter feed. In case of governments, simply tell a private social media to provide access.
For one, the government can, simply by making it their official social media contact point.
In case the government is using a type of Mastodon/Fediverse node, then users of Mastodon/Fediverse would also be using it as well, simply because another user would boost a statement by a government worker.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Which would be immensely useful. I frequently see people on /. refer to social media as the "public square", but the current dominant networks simply are not, which was brought home to me forcefully last year. Shortly after the flooding in Valencia on the 29th of October, I was trying to create a map of aid distribution points and to get reliable information rather than rumours I wanted official sources. But most town halls were posting information on Facebook, Instagram or Xitter rather than on their own websites, and none of those three allow you to simply scroll through someone's posts without creating an account and logging in. I would love a genuine public square to supplant the current members' clubs which if you're lucky let a non-member peek through the windows.
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They have websites but they don't use them for day-to-day communication with the public. I don't know whether that's because it's quicker to post on Facebook/Instagram/Xitter (it wouldn't surprise me that updating the town hall website requires a change request) or whether it's because they go where the people are. Quite possibly both.
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Or I could point out such claims is used by ones who think the government is one monolithic entity, at the federal, state and municipal levels, along with thinking that the courts will always backup the president and legislature, and also that it somehow spans multiple countries.
It's a little red, white and blue, without the stars and stripes.
major_hellstrom_sees_three_fingers.jpg
False,
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do we really want to straight up hand it to governments?
Yes, actually. I want a USPS run email service and everything. Surveillance and moderation are small potatoes. I would much rather have the government doing behavior modification experiments on me instead of somebody with a profit motive in addition to all of the power motives that are a part of human nature.
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"This is illegal in Germany."
That can change with the stroke of a pen. Then;
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
Cardinal Richelieu
Or as the American Miranda Warning puts it, "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."
Shovel (Score:4, Insightful)
Who'd pay for it. (Score:2)
Let's say such a network exists. It would still need millions of dollars to run - servers, storage, technicians, etc. Who'd pay for it?
Unfortunately, the core businesses model on the internet is ads and sooner or later this new network would succumb to this model, too.
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Consider it a paid online service that you have no choice but to pay for, at threat of incarceration.
Unlike advertising which you pay for if you buy the product, whether you ever saw the ad or not. There is no free lunch. Someone has to pay for it and it isn't the actual users based on their use. Which is why internet use is so popular.
Public Networks (Score:4, Interesting)
What we actually need is public networks without anonymity where people's identity is established.
For instance, imagine a public network where to participate you had to be a registered voter. And it was divided by jurisdiction. So only people who lived in the town or school district or legislative district or congressional district or state could participate in discussions for that jurisdiction. Where the people participating were identifiable to everyone. In other words, a truly "public" network with no expectation of privacy.
Beyond registered voters, establishing a legally protected online identity system would allow similar "public" forums to be created for any topic. And any information attached to that public identity belongs to the person identified and can't be used without their permission even by the managers of the forum.
You might even make it illegal to attach that public identity to non-public ones. So someone can only keep information based on your ip address or phone number if that information itself is anonymous. Companies would be allowed to track your online activity but only if it cannot be connected to your legally protected identity.
That's a terrible and stupid idea (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're going to give literally trillions of dollars to about 2,000 people in your country out of 350 million then you are going to need anonymity so the people can speak out about their kings without getting their heads lopped off.
My experience with people who want everyone to be identifiable on the Internet is that they are all in on the ruling class and they think that they will never need the protecti
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All that does is let ultra wealthy people abuse their power by crushing anyone who speaks out.
I think its a mistake to believe that anonymity actually empowers anyone other than the wealthy. Anonymity creates a space where people paid by the wealthy and powerful, communications departments, public policy departments, public relations firms, non-profits etc can hide their identify and the interests they are serving. They can control the conversation only allowing other to participate to no effect.
For instance, we have no way of knowing what interests you are representing. Are you just an individual
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For example, people often argue that biometric data should be used for everything where identification is required. It sounds good on the face of it, no more forgetting passwords, and everyone has different fingerprints, no more credit cards, etc.
The problem with biometric data (and similarly the problem with real legal names) is that it remains unchanged your whole life. So when something goes wrong i
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Systems work better when people can have aliases instead of a single global identity.
I don't think that is true. In the real world, people have only one identity. Our criminal justice system doesn't allow someone to simply change their name and no longer be accountable for their crimes. If your drivers license is suspended you can't get a new one under a different alias. You can't get multiple passports under different names. You can't get multiple social security numbers. You can't register to vote under multiple aliases. What you are arguing is that not only are online communities differ
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The nation state is special because its rules are enforced by a force monopoly. The issues I raised still apply, but there is nothing that can be done about it short of emigrating (if possible). In effect, the case of the nation state is "too late to change now".
The case of private systems and systems yet to be designed is different. Tha
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The case of private systems and systems yet to be designed is different. That means they can be constrained to prevent the pathologies apparent in the nation state system, so that they may serve humans better.
Or worse, depending on the pathologies and self-interests of the private owners. I am not sure how they can be constrained to influence those.
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Then you will get people not bothering using it, for fear that someone will set their car or house on fire if they said the wrong thing politically.
What we might need is something that is both. A pseudo-anonymous network. Real info, but allows for multiple identities. If reported or something like that, then action can be taken against all accounts linked to it. This way, someone who gets someone after them can nuke that identity and use another... but ultimately, they are responsible for their stuff, r
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Then you will get people not bothering using it, for fear that someone will set their car or house on fire if they said the wrong thing politically.
I doubt it. In fact, the idea that is possible is largely because people have come to believe they aren't accountable for what they say. You aren't supposed to deliberately provoke people in a civil society and expect no consequence. So if someone clams up because they are afraid things are getting out of hand emotionally, that's a good thing.
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There is a balance somewhere.
On one end is that someone, somewhere, will take grave offense to a comment, no matter what. On the other end is exactly as the parent mentions -- we are back to trolls and people cursing like the old school XBox days.
What might be useful is limiting the size of an audience, and having posts disappear (archived, removed) after a while. That way, there is reputation to be dealt with, but it isn't hoping that one's post passes every single psychopath in the world.
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I don't think anonymous forums are going to go away. The question is whether there is any space that isn't anonymous. An "official" government space that requires you to identify yourself is possible. An official government space that allows people to have multiple identities really isn't. It would require rigid rules and the government would become the arbitrator of what people can and can't say. That would quickly turn into a political issue of censorship.
All you need to do is look at the arguments about
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Seems like a recipe for even mor SWATting and stalking by the unhinged.
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Seems like a recipe for even mor SWATting and stalking by the unhinged.
I don't want to live my life based on your imagined dystopia instead of ending the real existing dystopia of a society where civil discussion is impossible and the "unhinged" rule.
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This sounds so perfect... too perfect. All edge cases and potential for gaming have been ignored. Reality is not so easily cornered.
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What "edge cases" or "gaming" weren't considered and why would they really matter? You can imagine something that might happen but it would likely need to be on sufficient scale to make the system unusable.
That would require both resources and interest. If a corporation wanted to influence the local discussion of the siting of one of its plants it might have both. Its unclear how they would "game" a system that limited the discussion to registered voters. There are certainly ways for them to get their mess
They even spoke to Cory Doctorow (Score:2)
Ok, moving on... So who pays for this ? Advertising supported by any chance? Uh oh. Corporate surveillance.
Government subsidies? Also, Uh oh. Govenment surveillance.
DONT LOOK AT ME! I'm not going to pay.
Also, I wouldn't use one, btw.
But nobody wants to pay for anything digital, we've been trained on freemium, and we won't go back.
So now we have an idea that won't get funded, methinks.
I'm getting vague images of a documentary I once saw abo
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If I had a choice between government and business, it would be a tough choice. At least government tends to not sell the info it slurps up on its citizens, and because business sells the info to government for law enforcement reasons anyway, might as well go with only one layer of surveillance. Government also generally doesn't have a profit motive, which ensures some level.
Plus, governments can be shamed if they have a leak. Businesses can lose all their data to hackers, and if they do some PR tap-danci
so... big brother? (Score:2)
Re:so... big brother vs blackmail? (Score:3)
Government doesn't need to own the network to know about those things. And no one is suggesting that a government network would be exclusive. I am far more concerned about Facebook or Google having that information. I have zero control over what they choose to do with it and they have no interest in telling me. Unless they think its in their interest. They certainly have no interest in me knowing what they do with it that is contrary to my interest.
I am unclear why I should fear big government more than bi
Nobody read TFS (Score:4, Insightful)
Proof that nobody even bothered to read the fucking summary.
"it makes much more sense for the state to invest in, or collaborate with, decentralized social media networks based on free and interoperable software"
Yeah, the government investing in this would so totally be "big brother watching" heh....
I have altered the deal (Score:2)
Yeah, the government investing in this would so totally be "big brother watching" heh....
Can't tell if sarcasm.
Step 1: Provide funding for free and interoperable social networks.
Step 2: Wait for those networks to become dependent on said funding.
Step 3: Attach strings to funding, or cut it off if they don't comply with government demands.
See "Corporation for Public Broadcasting" and "Harvard".
Worth a shot (Score:4, Interesting)
We need user-owned social media (Score:3)
The problem with all social media right now is that someone or some entity owns it. That entity censors according to whatever guidelines suit their principles, and they also coincidentally run pretty vast botnets to make sure that what can't be removed outright, gets modded to oblivion. None of it represents the interests of actual users.
What we need is a social media funded by the people who use it, where we all have input into what is and is not considered OK. It should probably not be for profit, probably run by a committee of paid elected members with the technical expertise to ensure it remains viable. Accounts should be entirely anonymous, VPN usage should be encouraged not forbidden, but accounts would be *paid* via some form of electronic currency. Accounts that have not paid for many months should be forbidden from posting.
The value of social media is to allow us peons to gather and discuss things that matter to us. The horror of existing social media is the enforced echo-chamber that Musk and Zuck have made.
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I could see a hosting company (or AWS or MS Azure, etc) come up with an app that allows you to launch your own Mastodon server but completely configured and maybe a simple setup script to customize it. If each person had their own personal server that can talk with everyone else's servers but you can control what you see as opposed to Meta controlling what you see.
You would need to find a way to make the above user friendly and free to start but once you grow past a certain point, you'll have to start payin
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There are Docker images out there for Mastodon. Probably for other platforms too. The barrier wouldn't be getting a personal server running, it would be the cost. Running a VM on AWS/Azure/GCP 24/7 is likely way out of the price range of anyone used to getting similar services for only the price of their data.
Yes (Score:3)
No (Score:4, Interesting)
We don't need a publicly-owned social media platform (though I wouldn't be all that opposed to a society deciding to start one up.)
What we do need is changes to the incentives that cause social media platforms to have shitty business models, and I outlined those in an earlier comment on another story:
In my opinion, any social media platform with more than 5 million users (say) must be forced to follow the following rules:
These rules are draconian, but IMO are needed to protect our health and our society. They'll let us keep using Facebook for good purposes like keeping in touch with family and friends, or joining groups related to our interests, without opening up the floodgates for disinformation.
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Users must pay a nominal amount for an account, let's say $3/month. (This will make using massive swarms of AI bots infeasible.)
I don't think $36 per person per year would come anywhere close to the cost of even building the thing, much less paying the staff and the power bills and leaving a profit for investors. So if we were still going to have social media, it would need to be built and run by governments. That's the course I've been advocating for a long time now.
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I'm pretty $36 would be more then enough. Let's go with the 50% of citizens pay taxes. We have about 330 million citizens, so 165 million of them will pay taxes. Simple Math shows up that $36*165,000,000 = $5,940,000,000
If you can't run a social network for nearly 6 trillion dollars, well, I don't know what to say.
P.S. Then again, inflation? :)
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I'm pretty $36 would be more then enough. Let's go with the 50% of citizens pay taxes. We have about 330 million citizens, so 165 million of them will pay taxes. Simple Math shows up that $36*165,000,000 = $5,940,000,000
Slashdot user dskoll - to whom I was replying - said "We don't need a publicly-owned social media platform". Therefore my working assumption involved a private company, in competition with other private companies. So the paying base would be a probably-small fraction of the population - not enough to build the server farms, hire the people, and develop the software and the ecosystem.
Of course a government could do it - and in earlier arguments I maintained that they should do it.
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I'm not sure what Meta's per-user revenue is, but I doubt it's all that much more than $3/month. Maybe double or triple that, but certainly not an order of magnitude more. And Meta is insanely profitable.
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Stop letting it be free. Don't allow people to sell their privacy for access. Wanna use social media, pick your platform and pay the fee. Flirt with the price but of course you are selling an addiction so people will pay and you can slow boil them and they tolerate it.
Or maybe give the user a choice. An option to use a free, ad-driven experience or a subscription service where you get significant control over the algorithms and no ads. That seems ideal.
If you think no... (Score:1)
If you think that there should not be a government run social media (and there should not be)...
That ALSO means we should not be funding any government media, like PBS or NPR.
If you disagree you have to distinguish what is the difference between social media and other media outlets.
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The difference is that PBS and NPR are (supposed) to be run by professionals who adhere to journalistic standards, and are supposed to be non-partisan. I think this has actually been the case for the most part so far.
Social media is the Wild West with no oversight, standards, or accountability.
Betteridge but more... (Score:3)
The questions presumes the choice is between corporate and government, but there was never any reason for social media to be owned by large companies in the first place.
What's actually needed is it needs to be easier for every person to own their corner of the Internet. That means the whole ISP silliness that designates private family links as "consumer" with the implicit and unnecessary suggestion consumers shouldn't have full Internet access needs to end. Ports should not be blocked, IPv6 should be two way, contracts should not come with "No servers" agreements, IPv6 prefixes should be static. And people should be able to stand up a blog or an ActivityPub node (the latter being an excellent way to provide social media and is the underlying protocol used by most community social media systems) or a ATProto PDS (the thing Bluesky is trying to popularize) with cheap commodity hardware, ideally built into consumer routers. For
That takes social media control away from corporations AND government.
The people who always claim they're being censored will doubtless find reasons to continue to make those claims - oh, some indexing service refuses to index my n-word posts! The horror! - but the bottom line is everything is too centralized right now. We need decentralization. And not any old decentralization, but decentralization that gives ownership of what people post to those people. Arguing the issue is that it should be owned by Governments - especially in an age where Fascism is making a come-back - rather than psychotic corporations trying to pit us against each over for clicks is... dumb. We can regulate this ourselves, but only if we ourselves are given control. And until the ISPs are brought to heel, we won't have that control.
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I love your ideas. I'll subscribe to your newsletter. However, in the opinions section, I'm going to post that the real owners of the Internet, at least on a practical level, are going to be IANA (root dns), Cloudflare (ddos protection), Hosting companies, and of course, ISPs at different levels.
I posted above that someone that's social, not I, should create an app totally configures and deploys a personal Mastadon server and make it Fisher Price easy to tinker with for "Joe" average. It's not free though,
BBC (Score:1)
Yeah, great idea ... "publicly" owned (Score:2)
that limit or prevent surveillance capitalism.
Congratulations; you've proposed the one thing worse than surveillance capitalism - surveillance communism!
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I don't understand the instinctive distrust of government and instinctive trust of private enterprise. There are risks with any organisation holding the reins of a social network, but in a democracy, if that organisation is the government, at least you have the option of voting them out.
Take media as an example, for all its faults, the BBC is generally regarded as a trustworthy news source, placed near the centre of the political spectrum.
I do realise that a distrust of government is woven into the culture
What the world needs now (Score:2)
Is love, sweet love.
It's the only thing that there's just too little of.
How about Scuttlebutt? (Score:2)
Any thoughts?
We have lemmy and mastadon which are better (Score:2)
No, but responsible networks (Score:2)
Public parks already exist. (Score:2)
If only because people really can't get along even in small groups; a one world society simply can't work. Throw in everyone wanting to get rich by throwing advertisements in your face, it isn't sustainable as currently constructed.
Discord is popular precisely because most of the groups are small and manageable so it can keep out the trolls, scammers, and political shits.
In a word, "Yes" (Score:4, Interesting)
I started arguing about a decade ago that social media were effectively societal infrastructure, insofar as even then it was nearly impossible to apply for and land a job without using it. Social media fulfill functions which are now part of the commons, both culturally and business-wise. So yes, there should be publicly-owned social media.
No Reason for Proprietary Social Media - Protocols (Score:2)
There is literally no reason for youtube, facebook, X, tictoc, instagram, netflix, etc.
All of these could be better replaced with open protocols for which you use your own choice of client applications or make new ones.
For streaming movies, for example, imagine where movie studios just make their movies available and set their prices and conditions. Similarly, consumers specify the prices and conditions they are interested in and the matches are made automatic. For example, I want to pay $30 per month for
Sounds like China/Russia (Score:2)
They want the government to control the social media.
I can see it being a non-profit but not anything controlled by the government.
Can't you see a rogue/felon president deciding to fire the people in charge of the Social Network and replace them with his own people?
Not publicly owned. decentralized. (Score:2)
Facebook used to mostly show posts from friends and family on its timeliness. That hasn't been the case for a long time. It's 99% clickbait headlines on my feed now. Which is why I mostly use messenger now, to get in touch, and not the feed.
There is value in connecting with friends and family online. It can be done in ways that are not controlled by for profit large multinationals. That's why we still have open standards email 50+ years later, though it is inefficient, mostly insecure, and lacks good direct
Maybe (Score:3)
But preferably we should reach a state where the ownership of the social network does not matter. And for that we need strong privacy laws that owners have to abide by, or otherwise do jail time. Make the "convenient addictive service in exchange for personal data" business model illegal.
No need for social networks of any sort.. (Score:2)
"publicly"? (Score:2)
Most social networks are publicly owned, in the normal business usage in the US, which means they are companies that sell their stock publicly and are subject to SEC regulation.
What the authors seem to want is *state-owned* social networks. Or do they mean non-profit owned?
We already have it? (Score:2)
Re:There's a word for publicly owned social media (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, wait until you see the propaganda on the corporate-owned social media...
If you're head's still intact after that, try this one: The government is owned by the same corporations who own the social media.
Re: (Score:3)
it literally cannot be anything but propaganda for that government
Trivially false. See: Public TV stations in most of Europe.
There are plenty of ways to provide money and means to independently and morally operating institutions. We do it all the time in many different areas of society.
I'm sorry you've lived for so long in a shithole country that you cannot imagine something other than blatant corruption.
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Show your work on what percentage of their funding is from the government.
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Both do rely on licenses issued by the government to operate. Which they are being reminded of right now.
Re:There's a word for publicly owned social media (Score:4, Insightful)
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Funding doesn't matter if the FCC pulls your broadcast license.
Let's discuss that, since Trump has specifically been threatening that.
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Fuck it and keep broadcasting. The courts blinked and don’t enforce shit.
Re: (Score:2)
So does QVC, what's your point?
Re: There's a word for publicly owned social media (Score:1)
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Like I said, if it belongs to the government, it's a branch of it, and its sole purpose is propaganda for it. And like I said, all governments.
Re: (Score:2)