6 ms·

A bunch of companies took hold of a distributed system of information and centralized it under their control. Now those companies are claiming they cannot cont

A bunch of companies took hold of a distributed system of information and centralized it under their control. Now those companies are claiming they cannot control disinformation, adversial content and whatnot because they have too much content. At the same time they are saying they would be the best in place to currate and control it because of market dynamics. I'm not advocating for a total ban of content unless it's "government" approved. But what's the difference between a government setting the rules and a corporation deciding the rules? We can vote out a government, but we can't vote out a corporation. This isn't new and we've dealt with this in the past. The technology is different but the tactics are the same.

Matticus_Rex 7y ago
You as an individual can stop using a corporation's products way more easily than you as an individual can vote out a government. My personal success with voting out governments is zero, but my success in boycotting corporations is pretty high. Occasionally others have stopped using them as well and they've stopped having a large effect on my life.
- rtikulit 7y ago
  The issue is the Internet has provided bad actors (including rent-seeking entrenched interests) with the ability to anonymously, cheaply and pervasively spread lies and propaganda. They can precisely manipulate emotionally vulnerable segments, bury informed discussion, manipulate Overton windows, and subvert law and policy making for their own purposes. Individual choice is of almost no help in managing the problem.
  - Matticus_Rex 7y ago
    If that's your critique of the private sector, what about governments? I agree that those things are problems, but we're not comparing to an ideal state -- we're comparing to another deeply flawed thing. At least individual choice gets me something in the private sector.
    - rtikulit 7y ago
      For me “bad actors” includes all bad actors—-whether commercial, governmental or otherwise. They are all potential snake pits and they need to be scrutinized. :-) But they are what we have to work with. To me it is irrational to refuse to use part of the toolkit (laws and regulation) because ideology. Mandatory radical transparency is probably a part of any effective mitigation strategy. We have to be realistic. The “system” cannot be perfected, and trying will cause horrible unintended consequences. It will always be gamed. There will always be charismatic sociopaths and selfish assholes. There will always be injustice and suffering. But we can try to use the available tools judiciously to keep their negative impact down to an acceptable level.
- naniwaduni 7y ago
  > My personal success with voting out governments is zero, but my success in boycotting corporations is pretty high. Occasionally others have stopped using them as well and they've stopped having a large effect on my life. This isn't even close to an apples-to-apples comparison. You interact with many more corporations than governments. Most of the corporations you interact with have some competition; most of the governments you interact with don't. And voting out a government is hardly the analogue of boycotting a corporation: what's your success rate with voting at all vs your success rate in getting a corporation's board replaced?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- smt88 7y ago
  It is extremely difficult to opt out of Facebook and Google. I have no beef with Microsoft, but many workers can't boycott them because they're required to use them for work.
  - walleeee 7y ago
    Being forced to use a product at work is one thing, but is it really that difficult to opt out of Facebook and Google in one's personal life? Unless one needs to advertise a personal business or something, the former is as easy as deleting your account, and you can drop most of the latter's services in minutes (just use DDG/protonmail/openstreetmap/etc instead). Obviously if you have an Android phone that's another step. All I'm saying is it can be done, and it needn't be all or nothing: one can proceed in whichever increments make the most sense.
    - smt88 7y ago
      Both companies track you unless you're extreme with ad and tracking blockers.
      - walleeee 7y ago
        Yeah, they do. But it can still be meaningful to boycott the services.
- enumjorge 7y ago
  But how many of the companies that you’ve boycotted are conducting business as usual? Isn’t that the real analog of voting out a government? A single person’s boycott is a drop in the bucket in the same way that a single person’s vote is.
  - Matticus_Rex 7y ago
    A single person's vote has zero real impact whatsoever unless it's the one that changes the outcome, while each additional business boycotter increases the impact to the company.
- Seenso 7y ago
  >> But what's the difference between a government setting the rules and a corporation deciding the rules? We can vote out a government, but we can't vote out a corporation. > You as an individual can stop using a corporation's products way more easily than you as an individual can vote out a government. My personal success with voting out governments is zero, but my success in boycotting corporations is pretty high. That presumes your main interaction with a corporation is by the consumption of its products as a customer. However, that's so often not the case that it might as well be assumed to be false. For instance, you can't boycott Equifax or an industrial chemicals factory that's polluting the air in your city because you're not their customer, but you're still affected by their decisions and rules. The main difference between a government and a corporation setting the rules is that, in democracies, the government is theoretically accountable to the interests of all citizens while the corporation is only accountable to the interests of its shareholders and (depending on market conditions) its customers.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    For example, Facebook creates accounts for people who don't even use the site.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  The word all your respondents are looking for to explain the flaw in your reasoning is "externality".
  - Matticus_Rex 7y ago
    Governments impose negative externalities as well, and in a way that has just as little accountability (often on behalf of corporations).
- arrosenberg 7y ago
  I don't think a consumer can successfully opt out the way you claim. Maybe for an individual company, but how would one opt out of high-fructose corn syrup being in the market? You can drive yourself nuts trying to find only products without it, but the second you eat out or go to a friends' house you will be consuming it. On the other hand, as a citizen, I can vote in politicians who will heavily tax or ban HFCS. In this (and many other) cases, government is a far more effective lever for change.
  - Matticus_Rex 7y ago
    I have several friends who successfully don't consume HCFS, even when traveling or at friends' houses. On the other hand, your vote for those politicians has near-zero effect. And if it does have an effect and they ban HFCS, then you've just imposed your will on people who wanted cheap sweeteners more than they wanted to avoid the health consequences of HCFS.
    - arrosenberg 7y ago
      > I have several friends who successfully don't consume HCFS, even when traveling or at friends' houses. If you say so. Are they able to avoid plastic waste, palm oil, and soy-based products? How many hoops should consumers have to jump through before we are allowed to have a healthy market? > On the other hand, your vote for those politicians has near-zero effect. Says you. I know a bunch of people who have healthcare because we voted for a certain President and a Congress who could get it done. It had a near-100 effect for all of those people. > And if it does have an effect and they ban HFCS, then you've just imposed your will on people who wanted cheap sweeteners more than they wanted to avoid the health consequences of HFCS. I'm not a Republican, I don't care about corporate profits over human well-being. Removing HCFS and similar products from the market is a net good. We already decided that tobacco products should be handled this way, and HFCS specifically is just as unhealthy. Furthermore, the product choices available to ME are severely distorted by the presence of subsidized, unhealthy corn syrup. By removing it from the market, the American people will get better choices, with minimal medium or long term disruption to the number of choices available.
openfuture 7y ago
Exactly, there was a dude in the 18th century that came up with distributing power into three monoliths (writing code, executing code and catching exceptions[0]) and at a similar time the bones of the modern education and corporate system was created[1]. Since then we've been refining these structures without really changing the underlying assumptions. Blabla.. The way I see forward is to build a social network that is local first (kind of like these ideas with having a "revolution of the personal server" a la urbit). We need to realize that "voting" and "money" and "shares" or "securities" etc. are all the same thing. Compositional game theory and interesting models of MPC like statebox are steps on the road towards solving "fake news" and other trust-topology based problems but I think even if we don't solve these things theoretically we can still get closer to the ideal by just relying on some heuristics (like maidsafe and parity are doing). Anyway the key idea is: if we can create a "democratic" form of governance - for corporations (or startups) - that outcompetes traditional forms of organizing such organizations then that form of organization will take over everything. The key idea for this to happen is for the organizational scheme to be compositional so that organizations can be assembled ad-hoc to compete with a google or an amazon, then we'll have something more flexible and that thing will win in the long run. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Typical_branches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Typical_b... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Prussian_Army_of_the_Napoleonic_Wars#Organisation_of_the_Royal_Prussian_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Prussian_Army_of_the_Nap...
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  I've reached pretty much the same conclusions, but you do make novel points that I think make tremendous sense. > We need to realize that "voting" and "money" and "shares" or "securities" etc. are all the same thing This blew my mind said like that. I can now see how this is all but 'materialistic vectors' in a 'phase space' taking us from now to "change" (however small/big). Conceptually you may reduce it to a particular instanciation of information theory, sort of a "memetic" signal (a "meme" is a "cultural gene" in anthropology, unrelated to the internet-thingy) that spreads onto and influences civilization(s), big groups of individual vectors. It's an interesting model, "tensors" of civilization so to speak, which we are increasingly able to estimate with actual data — whether numbers for votes and money, shares; whether principles or sentiment reduced to political/investment choices; I mean there's a way to model that thing, framed like that. Great food for thought, thank you so much. About a "social network that is local first": I think eventually we need to get together with like-minded people (from all fields) and design something, a spec. Solutions are aplently, what lacks is imho some common standards to iterate deeper, more focus. About a "democratic" form of governance: that's next step, I see the network as a pre-requisite of sorts (not necessarily in theory, but in practice very much so, to "warm up minds" to the paradigm shift in coherent ways, to "teach" by example). However I'd caution against forcing a type of "regime" so to speak in the protocol, the spec itself: let some be dictatorial or in anarchy if they so wish, let all forms of governance emerge from first-principle-inspired bricks. (I guess this would speak to the "expressivity" of the spec, the topologies allowed/defined by it). Fascinating topics which have occupied my mind for decades now (only 37 though...), that I think will define civilization throughout this century and beyond. It's our time to innovate politically in ways that go back 250 years, and in a deeper slower move some 2500 years. Grand cycles, eh!
seppin 7y ago
> But what's the difference between a government setting the rules and a corporation deciding the rules? We can vote out a government, but we can't vote out a corporation. Governments can take away your freedom and life, corporations can not.
- arrosenberg 7y ago
  > Governments can take away your freedom and life, corporations can not. I guess that depends on how you define freedom. If it merely means to exist outside of a prison, then sure. On the other hand, if freedom means the freedom to live, to gain autonomy and mastery over ones' self, etc. then corporations are affecting your freedom and life every day through manipulation, pollution, lobbying, and anti-competitive behavior. The government is the only bulwark we have to effectively check social manipulation.
  - seppin 7y ago
    I meant the first thing, physically holding someone in prison.
    - arrosenberg 7y ago
      Sure, but even then I wouldn't agree with you. Ke$ha was a hostage of Sony Records and her rapist, enforced by the US court system. Corporations will do whatever amount of damage they are allowed by law, including stripping a person of her economic and social freedom.
      - seppin 7y ago
        I see your point but you're reaching

Matticus_Rex 7y ago

You as an individual can stop using a corporation's products way more easily than you as an individual can vote out a government. My personal success with voting out governments is zero, but my success in boycotting corporations is pretty high. Occasionally others have stopped using them as well and they've stopped having a large effect on my life.

rtikulit 7y ago
The issue is the Internet has provided bad actors (including rent-seeking entrenched interests) with the ability to anonymously, cheaply and pervasively spread lies and propaganda. They can precisely manipulate emotionally vulnerable segments, bury informed discussion, manipulate Overton windows, and subvert law and policy making for their own purposes. Individual choice is of almost no help in managing the problem.
- Matticus_Rex 7y ago
  If that's your critique of the private sector, what about governments? I agree that those things are problems, but we're not comparing to an ideal state -- we're comparing to another deeply flawed thing. At least individual choice gets me something in the private sector.
  - rtikulit 7y ago
    For me “bad actors” includes all bad actors—-whether commercial, governmental or otherwise. They are all potential snake pits and they need to be scrutinized. :-) But they are what we have to work with. To me it is irrational to refuse to use part of the toolkit (laws and regulation) because ideology. Mandatory radical transparency is probably a part of any effective mitigation strategy. We have to be realistic. The “system” cannot be perfected, and trying will cause horrible unintended consequences. It will always be gamed. There will always be charismatic sociopaths and selfish assholes. There will always be injustice and suffering. But we can try to use the available tools judiciously to keep their negative impact down to an acceptable level.
naniwaduni 7y ago
> My personal success with voting out governments is zero, but my success in boycotting corporations is pretty high. Occasionally others have stopped using them as well and they've stopped having a large effect on my life. This isn't even close to an apples-to-apples comparison. You interact with many more corporations than governments. Most of the corporations you interact with have some competition; most of the governments you interact with don't. And voting out a government is hardly the analogue of boycotting a corporation: what's your success rate with voting at all vs your success rate in getting a corporation's board replaced?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
smt88 7y ago
It is extremely difficult to opt out of Facebook and Google. I have no beef with Microsoft, but many workers can't boycott them because they're required to use them for work.
- walleeee 7y ago
  Being forced to use a product at work is one thing, but is it really that difficult to opt out of Facebook and Google in one's personal life? Unless one needs to advertise a personal business or something, the former is as easy as deleting your account, and you can drop most of the latter's services in minutes (just use DDG/protonmail/openstreetmap/etc instead). Obviously if you have an Android phone that's another step. All I'm saying is it can be done, and it needn't be all or nothing: one can proceed in whichever increments make the most sense.
  - smt88 7y ago
    Both companies track you unless you're extreme with ad and tracking blockers.
    - walleeee 7y ago
      Yeah, they do. But it can still be meaningful to boycott the services.
enumjorge 7y ago
But how many of the companies that you’ve boycotted are conducting business as usual? Isn’t that the real analog of voting out a government? A single person’s boycott is a drop in the bucket in the same way that a single person’s vote is.
- Matticus_Rex 7y ago
  A single person's vote has zero real impact whatsoever unless it's the one that changes the outcome, while each additional business boycotter increases the impact to the company.
Seenso 7y ago
>> But what's the difference between a government setting the rules and a corporation deciding the rules? We can vote out a government, but we can't vote out a corporation. > You as an individual can stop using a corporation's products way more easily than you as an individual can vote out a government. My personal success with voting out governments is zero, but my success in boycotting corporations is pretty high. That presumes your main interaction with a corporation is by the consumption of its products as a customer. However, that's so often not the case that it might as well be assumed to be false. For instance, you can't boycott Equifax or an industrial chemicals factory that's polluting the air in your city because you're not their customer, but you're still affected by their decisions and rules. The main difference between a government and a corporation setting the rules is that, in democracies, the government is theoretically accountable to the interests of all citizens while the corporation is only accountable to the interests of its shareholders and (depending on market conditions) its customers.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  For example, Facebook creates accounts for people who don't even use the site.
lonelappde 7y ago
The word all your respondents are looking for to explain the flaw in your reasoning is "externality".
- Matticus_Rex 7y ago
  Governments impose negative externalities as well, and in a way that has just as little accountability (often on behalf of corporations).
arrosenberg 7y ago
I don't think a consumer can successfully opt out the way you claim. Maybe for an individual company, but how would one opt out of high-fructose corn syrup being in the market? You can drive yourself nuts trying to find only products without it, but the second you eat out or go to a friends' house you will be consuming it. On the other hand, as a citizen, I can vote in politicians who will heavily tax or ban HFCS. In this (and many other) cases, government is a far more effective lever for change.
- Matticus_Rex 7y ago
  I have several friends who successfully don't consume HCFS, even when traveling or at friends' houses. On the other hand, your vote for those politicians has near-zero effect. And if it does have an effect and they ban HFCS, then you've just imposed your will on people who wanted cheap sweeteners more than they wanted to avoid the health consequences of HCFS.
  - arrosenberg 7y ago
    > I have several friends who successfully don't consume HCFS, even when traveling or at friends' houses. If you say so. Are they able to avoid plastic waste, palm oil, and soy-based products? How many hoops should consumers have to jump through before we are allowed to have a healthy market? > On the other hand, your vote for those politicians has near-zero effect. Says you. I know a bunch of people who have healthcare because we voted for a certain President and a Congress who could get it done. It had a near-100 effect for all of those people. > And if it does have an effect and they ban HFCS, then you've just imposed your will on people who wanted cheap sweeteners more than they wanted to avoid the health consequences of HFCS. I'm not a Republican, I don't care about corporate profits over human well-being. Removing HCFS and similar products from the market is a net good. We already decided that tobacco products should be handled this way, and HFCS specifically is just as unhealthy. Furthermore, the product choices available to ME are severely distorted by the presence of subsidized, unhealthy corn syrup. By removing it from the market, the American people will get better choices, with minimal medium or long term disruption to the number of choices available.

openfuture 7y ago

Exactly, there was a dude in the 18th century that came up with distributing power into three monoliths (writing code, executing code and catching exceptions[0]) and at a similar time the bones of the modern education and corporate system was created[1]. Since then we've been refining these structures without really changing the underlying assumptions. Blabla.. The way I see forward is to build a social network that is local first (kind of like these ideas with having a "revolution of the personal server" a la urbit). We need to realize that "voting" and "money" and "shares" or "securities" etc. are all the same thing. Compositional game theory and interesting models of MPC like statebox are steps on the road towards solving "fake news" and other trust-topology based problems but I think even if we don't solve these things theoretically we can still get closer to the ideal by just relying on some heuristics (like maidsafe and parity are doing). Anyway the key idea is: if we can create a "democratic" form of governance - for corporations (or startups) - that outcompetes traditional forms of organizing such organizations then that form of organization will take over everything. The key idea for this to happen is for the organizational scheme to be compositional so that organizations can be assembled ad-hoc to compete with a google or an amazon, then we'll have something more flexible and that thing will win in the long run. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Typical_branches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Typical_b... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Prussian_Army_of_the_Napoleonic_Wars#Organisation_of_the_Royal_Prussian_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Prussian_Army_of_the_Nap...

K0SM0S 7y ago
I've reached pretty much the same conclusions, but you do make novel points that I think make tremendous sense. > We need to realize that "voting" and "money" and "shares" or "securities" etc. are all the same thing This blew my mind said like that. I can now see how this is all but 'materialistic vectors' in a 'phase space' taking us from now to "change" (however small/big). Conceptually you may reduce it to a particular instanciation of information theory, sort of a "memetic" signal (a "meme" is a "cultural gene" in anthropology, unrelated to the internet-thingy) that spreads onto and influences civilization(s), big groups of individual vectors. It's an interesting model, "tensors" of civilization so to speak, which we are increasingly able to estimate with actual data — whether numbers for votes and money, shares; whether principles or sentiment reduced to political/investment choices; I mean there's a way to model that thing, framed like that. Great food for thought, thank you so much. About a "social network that is local first": I think eventually we need to get together with like-minded people (from all fields) and design something, a spec. Solutions are aplently, what lacks is imho some common standards to iterate deeper, more focus. About a "democratic" form of governance: that's next step, I see the network as a pre-requisite of sorts (not necessarily in theory, but in practice very much so, to "warm up minds" to the paradigm shift in coherent ways, to "teach" by example). However I'd caution against forcing a type of "regime" so to speak in the protocol, the spec itself: let some be dictatorial or in anarchy if they so wish, let all forms of governance emerge from first-principle-inspired bricks. (I guess this would speak to the "expressivity" of the spec, the topologies allowed/defined by it). Fascinating topics which have occupied my mind for decades now (only 37 though...), that I think will define civilization throughout this century and beyond. It's our time to innovate politically in ways that go back 250 years, and in a deeper slower move some 2500 years. Grand cycles, eh!

seppin 7y ago

> But what's the difference between a government setting the rules and a corporation deciding the rules? We can vote out a government, but we can't vote out a corporation. Governments can take away your freedom and life, corporations can not.

arrosenberg 7y ago
> Governments can take away your freedom and life, corporations can not. I guess that depends on how you define freedom. If it merely means to exist outside of a prison, then sure. On the other hand, if freedom means the freedom to live, to gain autonomy and mastery over ones' self, etc. then corporations are affecting your freedom and life every day through manipulation, pollution, lobbying, and anti-competitive behavior. The government is the only bulwark we have to effectively check social manipulation.
- seppin 7y ago
  I meant the first thing, physically holding someone in prison.
  - arrosenberg 7y ago
    Sure, but even then I wouldn't agree with you. Ke$ha was a hostage of Sony Records and her rapist, enforced by the US court system. Corporations will do whatever amount of damage they are allowed by law, including stripping a person of her economic and social freedom.
    - seppin 7y ago
      I see your point but you're reaching