8 ms·

Actually, I think behind the nationalisation idea, which doesn't seem workable given the circumstances, there's an interesting thought: these companies are sitt

• lucb1e 9y ago
  This would also make me a lot happier about sharing info with said companies. Right now I avoid their products (the non-open source ones) because they just have too much market share and power, but if a site like Facebook turned non-profit I'd be much happier to use it. It just sounds like a great idea all around.
  • 2bitencryption 9y ago
    Facebook goes "non-profit" -> becomes regulated in terms of privacy/earnings -> competing social network springs up -> is able to advertise and boast features that the "non-profit public" Facebook cannot have due to cost or regulations -> new social network is now the de-facto Facebook, and you're right where you started. and this is assuming that the whole "lets beg Mr. Zuck to pretty pretty please stop doing that whole business thing and start serving us for free, we'd appreciate it" thing works out.
    • int_19h 9y ago
      I'm not at all convinced that there are any substantial new features that would overcome the inertia of lock-in (via one's existing connections). I mean, G+ couldn't do it, and Google tried damn hard. If they can't do it at their scale, who can?
  • hnlmorg 9y ago
    Honestly I'd be more worried about nation states having access to the information held on Facebook and Google than I would private corporations.
    • mozumder 9y ago
      It's a perfectly fine situation for nation-states to have access to such data, because nation-states already have access to everything inside Facebook and Google. In the US, you only need a warrant to access anything inside those companies.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • hna99 9y ago
        Indeed but at least with a warrant all access is documented on public record. Which has got to be better than already having access to all that data in private. Plus private companies can (and sometimes do) challenge a warrant.
    • lucb1e 9y ago
      Nobody said anything about a nation state (in this subthread). Just non-profit and tightly regulated.
      • hna99 9y ago
        The topic is about nationalisation.
      • hnlmorg 9y ago
        True but the topic is about nationalisation so I still felt my point was relevant even if it was tangential to the GPs tangent
    • Asdfbla 9y ago
      They can force Facebook etc. to hand over the data anyway, so it does not seem like much would change in terms of the threat posed by governments.
• jpttsn 9y ago
  Do you think we should have regulated AltaVista and MySpace as utilities, way back when? If so, what would this have done to Facebook and Google's prospects? If not, what makes something a utility?
  • majewsky 9y ago
    There's not a clear boundary, but it's basically the same as when electric power turned from something-only-a-few-rich-could-afford to a utility. At some point, electric power was important enough that it was deemed necessary to impose tight regulation that ensures its availability under fair prices to all citizens (which is what being a utility means to me).
    • jpttsn 9y ago
      That analogy makes sense. So the discussion should be around what makes Facebook as important as e.g. electric power. Personally, I think Facebook is more like a lottery or a tabloid than it is like electric power. Citizens are fine, nay, better off without it. Most arguments e.g. ITT fail to convince me on the critical-ness of Facebook/Google. Instead, the possible harm they cause is brought forward. That's a serious issue, but I don't think it has bearing on the utility analogy.
      • kiliantics 9y ago
        Google is undeniably important to people. And mainly because they've squeezed themselves into every part of our online lives. Facebook is less so, though it has become a platform that many businesses rely on.
        • jpttsn 9y ago
          It becomes less clearly undeniable once we separate Google into its constituent parts, though. Is search a utility? How about email? Webmaster tools for SEM? WiFi thermostats? It seems unfair to blanket classify Google's offerings as utilities, if many of their products and services are just also-rans. Again, the concentration of power and the strong competitive position of Google can be problems in themselves, whether or not the products are utilities.
• mozumder 9y ago
  If you want to turn these into utilities, you start with a standardization process that allows the public to utilize them as infrastructure. Like there is an HTML standard, there would likely be a search standard and a social-network/photo-sharing/messaging-platform standard. People would run their own servers that host their own data that connects to these standards, with other companies creating apps that people can use to connect to them. And make the standards UX friendly, so that it becomes obvious and intuitive enough to use.
  • KGIII 9y ago
    The trouble is that nobody follows the standards. Well, very few do. Not even the browsers are standards compliant.
• peoplewindow 9y ago
  The Guardian is based in the UK where energy, water, transport and communication are all handled by the private sector.
  • noir_lord 9y ago
    Sort of. The underlying infrastructure is quasi-nationalised in many cases and the private companies sit on top. For an example look at the big six (largest electricity providers) they all buy electricity from the same place at the effectively the same price, they don't even maintain large parts of their own infrastructure. The way it was privatised was the worst of all options. Same with the railways. The companies Joe public interact with don't own the track etc. It's a truly British solution, what's the worst way? Let's do that.
• igravious 9y ago
  Perhaps it's the online identity part that needs public infrastructure protected by legal constraints? Let the free market piggy-back on top of that platform then. Same thing goes for loyalty cards.
• pdkl95 9y ago
  > we should treat them like utilities. As these are large organizations involved in a variety of activities, it might be possible to separate the infrastructure parts into a strictly regulated utility. Google Search becoming a utility doesn't have to involve stuff like their hosting services or their hardware products. It will be hard to get buy-in for an all-or-nothing plan like "Nationalize/Utilitize ${BUSINESS}", because it groups together too much into a single proposition. We "just" need to figure whatever minimum change is needed to protect the infrastructure. I realize this, like most important political problems, doesn't have a trivial solution. It will end up with imperfect compromises that everybody is annoyed with. I'm just suggesting there must be a better, more nuanced way to fix this problem than a Boolean "Convert to utility? (Y/N)".
• amelius 9y ago
  I think we should move back to the model we had at the beginning of the internet era: 1. Universities and government agencies create the protocols and the software. 2. Companies create just the hardware. 3. Infrastructure is run and maintained by the government with the help of companies.
  • mattacular 9y ago
    Universities and the government providing all the software doesn't sound like a great situation.
• amelius 9y ago
  A simple solution is to treat these companies as telcos. We could learn something from history. See e.g. the Mann-Elkins Act (1910), [1]. And the telecommunications acts, [2], [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann%E2%80%93Elkins_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann%E2%80%93Elkins_Act [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
  • rayiner 9y ago
    What we should learn from history is that ICC regulation was crippling (nearly destroying the rail industry in the US: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-nation-derailed http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-nation-der...) and the county has been a lot better off since railroads, air freight, airlines, and yes telcos were deregulated. That is not to say that we can't regulate things we care about (data privacy, competition, etc). But looking with rose-colored lenses at ICC regulation is foolish. It's the worst sort of regulatory regime: where government bureaucrats are in charge of approving/denying the rail ties that go in the ground and how much can be charged for a ride.
    • kiliantics 9y ago
      Definitely no bias in the take you linked... Whatever you wanna say about how regulation worked out for trains in the US, the situation in the early era of US rail was not a good one. It was one of the worst monopolies we've seen and was terrible for the workers.
      • rayiner 9y ago
        What bias? As far as I can tell, the author has no connection to the rail industry.[1] As to your other point, the fact that early rail monopolies were bad doesn't mean that ICC-style regulation was good. You can have labor protections, antitrust enforcement, and safety regulations without having the government be involved in deciding how much a trip from Chicago to Milwaukee should cost. There is a reason there was a bipartisan effort to get rid of those regulatory regimes in the 1960s-1990s, and why Europe copied those reforms in the 1980s-2000s. [1] If you're referring to the fact that the article appears in the American Conservative, merely being conservative is not a "bias." In any event, left-leaning organizations like the Brookings Institute have featured similar coverage: https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-success-of-the-staggers-rail-act-of-1980 https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-success-of-the-stagge....
• aneutron 9y ago
  Good luck with the legal work required to patch up Google's physical infrastructure than spans, literally, worldwide. For example, if it owns a cable (or just wavelengths) that connect Asia to Europe, how would you handle that ? It certainly doesn't comply to US territory regulations. Unless of course I'm mistaken which is very likely.
  • majewsky 9y ago
    An undersea cable will have to comply with the regulations of the connected countries. A regulator can just come and disconnect the part that runs through their jurisdiction if laws are broken.
  • quirkot 9y ago
    You do realize a cable that connects Asia to Europe could be like 6cm long, right?
    • aneutron 9y ago
      It's a stupid example I gave, also sometimes the connection has to take the not shortest route due to legal restrictions. So no, not always.
• rayiner 9y ago
  > but I'm of the impression that in many European countries, basic infrastructure like energy or transportation or communication links is either very tightly regulated or owned by a non-profit organisation that in turn is owned by either the local consumers, the local authorities, or by the state. "Europe" is a big place so it's hard to talk in generalities, but this is mostly not true. Europe followed the US's deregulation trend and in many cases European utilities are less regulated than American ones. The EU electric market is similar to the U.S. As in the US, it is split up into distribution, transmission, and generation components. Distribution tends to be handled through regulated local monopolies or municipal entities, while generation happens in a competitive market: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/593519/EPRS_BRI(2016)593519_EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/59351.... Telecom market structure is roughly similar too. Big telecom companies that were previously state-owned were privatized in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g. British Telecom and Deutsche Telecom). The biggest difference probably is that the EU has strong rules requiring wholesale access of "local loops" (the wires into peoples' houses). However, this is a smaller difference in practice than in theory. In the big EU countries, unbundling doesn't apply to cable, http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf. In many EU countries (notably Sweden and Spain, which have among the highest fiber deployment), unbundling doesn't apply to fiber either.
• harryh 9y ago
  > DNS operates in this way, as far as I'm aware. Your awareness is wrong. DNS is, by and large, operated by for profit enterprises. Y combinator, for example, uses Amazon Web Services as their DNS provider.