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A Socialist Plan to Fix the Internet

22 points by viburnum 7y ago

wilsonrocks 7y ago
It's good to see this perspective.
buboard 7y ago
Great story. Next they should describe how to privatize the government
nyxtom 7y ago
> In this case, a state entity takes responsibility for operating a service. This absolutely terrifies me that someone thinks this is a good idea.
- mc32 7y ago
  They have to gaze no further than to Havana to see how it pans out. If further interested they can go to Beijing and figure out how it's used to promote values and such. I'm sure it's can be a satisfying view to some. While FB and Google do have some problems due to their monopolies, the answer is not in state control.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    >While FB and Google do have some problems due to their monopolies, the answer is not in state control. Although I am not a proponent of state control of the net, I'm curious as to why not. If it's that the state can't be trusted, this doesn't seem to match our existing institutions; we regularly place our lives in control of the state every day, from food regulation rules to the social safety net, to defence of the country, etc. - why should something the net, which seems to hold much less in stakes than the things I listed, be an exception?
    - nyxtom 7y ago
      The question you're asking depends on the formulation of the problem you're trying to solve and who is best suited to efficiently solve that problem under limited resources and constraints. It depends on what you're trying to solve, and who is most capable of solving that problem efficiently. Sometimes this is a public/private partnership/solution where the govt provides the right/or sometimes wrong incentives for the market. Sometimes it's too much regulation, sometimes it's govt over-dependence, sometimes it works out as supplemental where the govt picks up where the market is non-existent.
      - claudiawerner 7y ago
        True, it does depend on "what", but a question of trust doesn't relate to "what"; I think one either trusts the government to regulate a certain "what", at least potentially (this is true for most people), or one doesn't trust the government at all (anarchists). So the argument that the government can't be trusted should be better reformulated as saying that the government can potentially be trusted - that potential manifests itself in its successes in food regulation, for instance. But it also removes the force of the argument, because now the non-anarchist has to answer why the government can be trusted on some things but not others. I haven't seen the justification that here's anything that makes the Internet (or, more broadly, speech) particularly special.
        nyxtom 7y ago
        I prefer much to lean on the evidence than the potential of trust. Where govt is effective at regulation as a result of public and private agreed upon standards, I have a hard time extending this beyond that (apart from areas where govt has proven to be better at funneling resources to the right places, to a fault), it is not the same as arguing wholesale for blanket trust. One example is not evidence that one should be blind fully trustful of an entity (who at plenty of occasions) has also broken that trust with mass warrantless surveillance (issue of broken trust) Or in other cases where the welfare system itself has produced artificial disincentives to get higher paying work (issue of trust due to inefficiencies or failure of common goods) Thoughtful discussions aside, the people most suited to both care about and solve the problem set are the ones I would most likely lean on. This isn’t necessarily an anarchist position, it’s one of cautious skepticism over blanket trust without industry specific evidence to prove that the govt is in fact better at handling time, money, and increasingly efficient gains. I haven’t seen a lot of evidence to prove that the govt is particularly good at handling the first two. That all being said, I don’t see it as an all or nothing. Follow the evidence and the data.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
throwawaysea 7y ago
It’s hard to trust the intent behind this Jacobin piece, especially because the article is unclear on what problems it is trying to solve and therefore comes off as purely ideologically motivated. It seems like this is walking exactly the path of past socialist authoritarian regimes, where eventual total public control (AKA party or ideological control) comes into being in the name of empowering the common man and “Democratizing”. But how long before public control starts limiting the freedom of the internet by imposing rules on what’s allowed and not allowed in even more heavy-handed ways? Given that the far left (like Jacobin) have been rallying _against_ free speech and mocking it online with “freeze peach” memes, I am terrified at the possibility of them eventually ceasing control of speech platforms. Mind you, I’m not a big fan of the current state either, with a few companies controlling everything. But we have tools for that - namely anti-trust law. So let’s take incremental steps for change rather than entertaining dangerously radical changes.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  >Given that the far left (like Jacobin) have been rallying _against_ free speech and mocking it online with “freeze peach” memes, I am terrified at the possibility of them eventually ceasing control of speech platforms. Two points on this thought: there are a variety of viewpoints on the value of freedom of speech within "the left" - needless to say, opinions range from libertarian to unlibertarian. You shouldn't get your views of leftist philosophy from Internet memes. The second point is that you should consider reading the arguments on freedom of speech, those for and against it. Most people only seem to know of the arguments for it. On that point I'd recommend checking out Susan Brison's work for starters.
cmdshiftf4 7y ago
To not even begin to poke at the obvious holes in this proposal, in this supposed utopia the government fully owns and runs the entire backbone, ISPs via municipalities, and any service that scales to serve a certain number, including hosting platforms such as AWS? There's people out there who believe this would be a good thing? Really? If we accept this as naive, then we accept the proposer as modernly blinkered and historically blind and can likely be dismissed as such. However, if we accept the proposal as being made with full knowledge of the eventual consequences and outcomes in mind, then we can only label those making such proposals as a danger.

22 points by viburnum 7y ago

wilsonrocks 7y ago

It's good to see this perspective.

buboard 7y ago

Great story. Next they should describe how to privatize the government

nyxtom 7y ago

> In this case, a state entity takes responsibility for operating a service. This absolutely terrifies me that someone thinks this is a good idea.

mc32 7y ago
They have to gaze no further than to Havana to see how it pans out. If further interested they can go to Beijing and figure out how it's used to promote values and such. I'm sure it's can be a satisfying view to some. While FB and Google do have some problems due to their monopolies, the answer is not in state control.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  >While FB and Google do have some problems due to their monopolies, the answer is not in state control. Although I am not a proponent of state control of the net, I'm curious as to why not. If it's that the state can't be trusted, this doesn't seem to match our existing institutions; we regularly place our lives in control of the state every day, from food regulation rules to the social safety net, to defence of the country, etc. - why should something the net, which seems to hold much less in stakes than the things I listed, be an exception?
  - nyxtom 7y ago
    The question you're asking depends on the formulation of the problem you're trying to solve and who is best suited to efficiently solve that problem under limited resources and constraints. It depends on what you're trying to solve, and who is most capable of solving that problem efficiently. Sometimes this is a public/private partnership/solution where the govt provides the right/or sometimes wrong incentives for the market. Sometimes it's too much regulation, sometimes it's govt over-dependence, sometimes it works out as supplemental where the govt picks up where the market is non-existent.
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      True, it does depend on "what", but a question of trust doesn't relate to "what"; I think one either trusts the government to regulate a certain "what", at least potentially (this is true for most people), or one doesn't trust the government at all (anarchists). So the argument that the government can't be trusted should be better reformulated as saying that the government can potentially be trusted - that potential manifests itself in its successes in food regulation, for instance. But it also removes the force of the argument, because now the non-anarchist has to answer why the government can be trusted on some things but not others. I haven't seen the justification that here's anything that makes the Internet (or, more broadly, speech) particularly special.
      - nyxtom 7y ago
        I prefer much to lean on the evidence than the potential of trust. Where govt is effective at regulation as a result of public and private agreed upon standards, I have a hard time extending this beyond that (apart from areas where govt has proven to be better at funneling resources to the right places, to a fault), it is not the same as arguing wholesale for blanket trust. One example is not evidence that one should be blind fully trustful of an entity (who at plenty of occasions) has also broken that trust with mass warrantless surveillance (issue of broken trust) Or in other cases where the welfare system itself has produced artificial disincentives to get higher paying work (issue of trust due to inefficiencies or failure of common goods) Thoughtful discussions aside, the people most suited to both care about and solve the problem set are the ones I would most likely lean on. This isn’t necessarily an anarchist position, it’s one of cautious skepticism over blanket trust without industry specific evidence to prove that the govt is in fact better at handling time, money, and increasingly efficient gains. I haven’t seen a lot of evidence to prove that the govt is particularly good at handling the first two. That all being said, I don’t see it as an all or nothing. Follow the evidence and the data.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

throwawaysea 7y ago

It’s hard to trust the intent behind this Jacobin piece, especially because the article is unclear on what problems it is trying to solve and therefore comes off as purely ideologically motivated. It seems like this is walking exactly the path of past socialist authoritarian regimes, where eventual total public control (AKA party or ideological control) comes into being in the name of empowering the common man and “Democratizing”. But how long before public control starts limiting the freedom of the internet by imposing rules on what’s allowed and not allowed in even more heavy-handed ways? Given that the far left (like Jacobin) have been rallying _against_ free speech and mocking it online with “freeze peach” memes, I am terrified at the possibility of them eventually ceasing control of speech platforms. Mind you, I’m not a big fan of the current state either, with a few companies controlling everything. But we have tools for that - namely anti-trust law. So let’s take incremental steps for change rather than entertaining dangerously radical changes.

claudiawerner 7y ago
>Given that the far left (like Jacobin) have been rallying _against_ free speech and mocking it online with “freeze peach” memes, I am terrified at the possibility of them eventually ceasing control of speech platforms. Two points on this thought: there are a variety of viewpoints on the value of freedom of speech within "the left" - needless to say, opinions range from libertarian to unlibertarian. You shouldn't get your views of leftist philosophy from Internet memes. The second point is that you should consider reading the arguments on freedom of speech, those for and against it. Most people only seem to know of the arguments for it. On that point I'd recommend checking out Susan Brison's work for starters.

cmdshiftf4 7y ago

To not even begin to poke at the obvious holes in this proposal, in this supposed utopia the government fully owns and runs the entire backbone, ISPs via municipalities, and any service that scales to serve a certain number, including hosting platforms such as AWS? There's people out there who believe this would be a good thing? Really? If we accept this as naive, then we accept the proposer as modernly blinkered and historically blind and can likely be dismissed as such. However, if we accept the proposal as being made with full knowledge of the eventual consequences and outcomes in mind, then we can only label those making such proposals as a danger.