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While I don't use FB, I absolutely, 100% would not use any government social networks, out of both principal and pragmatism, period. Money would be better spen
by anoncoward111 8y ago
While I don't use FB, I absolutely, 100% would not use any government social networks, out of both principal and pragmatism, period.
Money would be better spent on building statues of Ed Miliband. And that's saying something.
- mirajshah 8y agoWould you consume news from the BBC, a government news network?
- afandian 8y agoI don't want to get into a political argument, but just for the record, the BBC is not a government news network. It is funded via tax, but it is independent.
- comice 8y agoaside from the fact that for a variety of reasons, the BBC is not truly independent, if it's possible to build such an independent media company "funded via tax" then why isn't it possible to do the same for a social media company?
- afandian 8y agoThere's a continuum of infrastructure from electricity, telephone, ISP, email, social media and beyond. If we can run national utilities at the start of that scale, not necessarily nationalized, but nationally regulated, I don't see why we can't run them at the other end of the scale. I think the real problem is that current models of social media are dreadful, although I don't know of anything better.
- conatus 8y agoLike the mooted BDC is?
- afandian 8y agoI was replying to a narrow point that the BBC is a state broadcaster. If these things go uncorrected, misinformation can spread, especially given the global perspective. I've not read the proposal. But some things, like telephone common carriers, ISPs should be regulated to the gills. Do I trust British Telecom Open Reach now they've been privatised? No, not really, but that's the way natural monopolies work. I don't trust them any more or less than I would have done pre privatisation.
- comice 8y agoand it's worth looking at what effect just the existence of the BBC has on other news and media here in the UK. Take the childrens television the BBC produces - extremely high quality and very low cost. Raises the bar for all other (private) childrens television production.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- anoncoward111 8y agoDoes the BBC have all of my personal info and chat logs with my friends?
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoWell quite apart from the BBC being very much NOT a government news network[0]. I think one of the more constant features of UK politics has been every single government criticising the BBC. [0] One very specific aspect has been greyed. The Tory party, who supposedly should care more for independence, required the BBC to take on funding of the World Service. Previously Foreign Office funded, now in the budget of the BBC.
- basch 8y agoWould you use a publicly owned, municipal, isp or telephone company? I might be in the minority to think this is a great idea, if it were basically "pump government money into developing and hosting instances of the Fediverse (GNU Social, Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, or Pleroma) AND building those data centers in collaboration with the Open Compute Project (Facebook is publishing the blueprint on how to build a facebook datacenter, take advantage of it.)
- anoncoward111 8y agoIs all of my traffic encrypted? Can they shut off my access if I do something they don't like? How much will they charge? How frequent are the black outs? Are they a monopoly? Would you accept wages paid to you in Venezuela's cryptocurrency?
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoWater, gas, and electricity have provided no benefit to the consumer from privatisation. The spare capacity in the grid has markedly reduced, safety is no better, leaks are still ignored far too long, and consumers are often price-gouged with some pretty regressive pricing schemes that penalise all except those who supplier hop every single month. "Competition" appears to have provided benefit for shareholders and no one else in those industries. It has provided opportunity to expand for one or two other nation's nationalised utilities to benefit their consumers.
- conatus 8y agoIts important to note that when Corbyn talks about nationalisation he is talking about something more similar to this than top down state control. There is a partial critique of the post-1945 wave of nationalisation in John McDonnell's speeches where he recognises that they were undemocratic and far too centralised and inefficient. There was a conference on this in London this year.