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Web platforms are governments. "Facebook is a government. Facebook's users are citizens, and Facebook's applications developers are the private companie
by rememberlenny 9y ago
Web platforms are governments.
"Facebook is a government. Facebook's users are citizens,
and Facebook's applications developers are the private
companies that drive much of the economy. Apple. Twitter,
Myspace, Craigslist, Foursquare, Tumblr and every other
large network of engaged users (including some services of
Google) plays a similar role. We have always tacitly
acknowledged this. We talk about these networks as
communities, communities have governments."
"Once you start thinking about large web platforms as
governments, the logical question is what kind of government
are they. One thing is for sure - none of these platforms
are democracies. They are oligarchies controlled by
founders, investors or shareholders. That may not be at all
bad. As long as citizens (users) can move freely from one
government to another with little switching cost, there is
no reason to burden these polities with the inherent
inefficiencies of popular democracy. But that does put a
special premium on emigration policies and property rights.
Do I own my data, can I export it freely? It also suggests
that large networks that have strong network effects may
someday need other incentives to act in the best interests
of their citizens."
http://www.usv.com/blog/web-services-as-governments http://www.usv.com/blog/web-services-as-governments
- suyash 9y agoGreat analogy that makes a lot of sense, never thought about it like that before.
- laythea 9y agoIn my opinion it is ridiculous to equate a web platform to a government, regardless of scale. One is a web-platform, the other is a government. The difference is clear to me.
- ASalazarMX 9y agoExcept governments should watch the interests of their citizens, not only those of their shareholders.
- gm-conspiracy 9y agoYet, we have governments watching the interest of the corporations.
- ASalazarMX 9y agoSadly, that's why I said "should". Imagine those same governments being actual corporations... maybe your standing as a citizen would be measured by how many shares you own.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> we have governments watching the interest of the corporations Supplanting institutions with popular will is populism, an ideology that has a habit of bee lining towards authoritarianism. "Corporations" are employers, pension fund holdings, tax payers and instruments of foreign influence. The "people versus corporations" narrative is absurd.
- vkou 9y agoIf populism is a bee-line towards authoritarianism, corporatism is a charter flight towards it. The overwhelming majority of Americans do not have a meaningful stake in the proceeds of capital. They are labour, and will benefit from gains for labour, more then they will from gains for capitalism. If 80% of your life-time earnings will come from wages, as opposed to capital gains, your interests are not aligned with those of your employer, especially when they treat their relationship with you as zero-sum. Most of them do.
- lovich 9y agoI've seen this view stated several times this week on hackernews. Ive always seen it stated with no evidence. How is it not the people vs the corporations? Take any environmental disaster, BP in the gulf for instance. They cut costs on construction which caused a disaster and ruined the environment and livelihoods for thousands of people. They did this to put more money in their pockets. It's not like they were trying to save money that would be dispersed among the citizenry and the gamble didn't pay off. It's not like they even planned on the extra profit to have taxes taken out as we've seen every large corporation try to avoid every cent of tax possible. If the corporations are sharing their externalities and privatizing the profits, how is it anything but the people vs corporations? Because they pay wages? It's not like they won't stop doing that the second it's possible, all Uber's plan to rely on drivers until they have autonomous cars and plan to drop all of the drivers. If someone has hurt you before, is openly planning to hurt you again, and openly states they don't see a problem with their actions, you don't have to wait for them to hurt you again before you call it a confrontation
- diegoperini 9y agoThis reminds me this talk from GDC by Raph Koster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgw8RLHv1j4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgw8RLHv1j4 Quite enlightening.
- pitaj 9y agoWhether or not they are governments is a question of definition. Definitions are important, and social networks don't fit very well into it. They are fundamentally different from modern governments as they do not have a monopoly on coercion. If social media are governments, then every corporation - no, every association of people - on Earth is a government.
- rememberlenny 9y agoThe key here is governance. ------------ I think if you click into the linked post, you get the analogy regarding governments and governance. Web platforms have to concern themselves with governance of their users and the respective eco-system that their users operate on. The point is less to be abstract or symbolic, and instead look at the concrete decisions they have to make. Corporations or general relationships do not have to consider these points to the same degree for survival. In the past, governments would create policies, laws, and make decisions that would determine the well being of a citizen. Now, web platforms are more commonly making decisions of regulation, censorship, interoperability, which all fall in the realm of governments. "So as you watch the large web services evolve, think about how they are balancing the relationship between the state and the private sector? What does Facebook's introduction of Facebook Credits say about its monetary policy? What is Apples foreign policy? Do they act unilaterally promoting their own proprietary standards or do they act multilaterally embracing international standards? What is Twitter's industrial policy? Do they invest in state owned services or encourage decentralized economic development? The choices these platforms make reveal a lot about who they are, and ultimately how well they serve the companies operating in their economies and the citizens who live there." Companies or corporations in general may have a degree of these problems, but not in a way that their survival depends on.
- specialist 9y agoEmphatic agreement. Governance is the final frontier. By that I mean "How are grievances adjudicated?" Any one struggling with the "platforms as government" analogy might think of MMORPGs instead.
- pluto9 9y agoBy that definition, every conceivable grouping of human beings that has any sort of leadership has a government, but that definition is so broad as to be useless. An after-work football club is governed by its rules, organizers, customs, etc, but the idea that it has a government is laughable.
- manjushri 9y ago>By that definition, every conceivable grouping of human beings that has any sort of leadership has a government, but that definition is so broad as to be useless. Well, that is in accordance with the dictionary definition. The bigger and more powerful the grouping becomes, the more practical the definition becomes. Which is why it could be a useful designation for an entity with psychological control over 2,000,000,000+ people, but not so much for a football league with ~100 people (though technically it still can be called a governing body).
- pluto9 9y agoYou quoted that dictionary definition in another comment: >Government: the governing body of a nation, state, or community. Just because something purports to be a dictionary doesn't mean its definitions are useful or correct. That's a poor definition because it covers a large number of things that nobody ever uses the word "government" to describe, such as the football club. This is much more precise (from Webster): "the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it"
- philwelch 9y agoThey have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force?
- Retra 9y agoWhatever meme you learned that phrase from does not deserve the respect you think it does. A government is not synonymous with a monopoly on anything, in any sense. One can very easily imagine governments that share responsibilities with any number of arbitrary organizations.
- cies 9y agoFacebook is a "gov't" for its user-citizens, the same way dairy farmers are a "gov't" for their cows. In other words, FB is not a gov't, it's a company that sells the product it creates from interaction with its users and sells to it's customers (other companies that want to advertise and/or analyze data). Main difference with dairy farmers is that cows are property of of the farm, they're forcefully made pregnant, have their babies taken short after birth, and get killed, all at the whims of the farmer. FB has less control over it's, much more vocal users. That's why FB's farmer, Mark, needs help writing speeches and and dealing with the "real gov't" (which to some extend represents the people, a.k.a. FB users). Full circle.
- salawat 9y agoNo. They aren't. They may make decisions that impact millions of people, but they aren't a government. They may 'govern' the technical details of their implementations... But they are not governments. They have no sovereignty, no expectation to the rights thereof. They do not answer to everyone that their decisions affect. They are social constructs that happen to shuffle around information, own assets, and generate revenue. It is CRITICAL that no one makes the mistake that these businesses are anything more than the path of least innovation to solving problems. The tech industry has a major hubris problem. They don't need people mistaking them for legitimate governments to make it even worse. Every person needs to understand that no software product is really a big thing. The reason they SEEM big is the sheer data magnitudes involved. Most of which the layman has no real concept of.
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago> No. They aren't. They may make decisions that impact millions of people, but they aren't a government. They may 'govern' the technical details of their implementations... But they are not governments. They have rules (jurisprudence). They make rules(congressional). And they mete out punishment for not following said rules (executive). They have a standing military to enforce (lawyers in the countries of presence). Sure seems like a government to me. They certainly aren't ones I approve of. > It is CRITICAL that no one makes the mistake that these businesses are anything more than the path of least innovation to solving problems. The answer is, that some of these entities are past "businesses". When an organization resides within 20 countries, and their computing cloud and business infrastructure is everywhere, what exactly do you call that? If anything, it seems like a meta-government. Or a virtualized government over local governments. > The tech industry has a major hubris problem. They don't need people mistaking them for legitimate governments to make it even worse. You are adding "legitimized". Nobody would say that Duterte's government is legitimate. Or the large handful of tin-pot dictators. The Googles, Amazons, Microsofts of the world are indeed governments. But they are amoral capitalist dictators. > Every person needs to understand that no software product is really a big thing. The reason they SEEM big is the sheer data magnitudes involved. Most of which the layman has no real concept of. It's because software is a multiplier of work that we've never seen the likes before. What better use can be had with software, than controlling the proletariat? We need look no further than the degradation of ownership (IP), rental versus purchase of hardware and virtual goods, and the "Gig-ifying" of low end workers.
- wdr1 9y ago> Web platforms are governments. No. Governments are authorized to use force. They have military. The have a police force. Web platforms are not governments.