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Problem is that states usually have constitutional safeguards that keep a safe balance of power between citizen and state. Not so with these companies. Step ou

Problem is that states usually have constitutional safeguards that keep a safe balance of power between citizen and state. Not so with these companies. Step out of line and they can unperson you like that, and you can't vote on their leadership. And increasingly entire livelihoods and social existences are tied into them. This is why you're seeing states start to get so aggressive with them. The EU fining billions out of them on an ongoing basis. Dragging them before Congress. Etc. They're not only starting to rival them in power, they're starting to flex power over them -- playing a kingmaker role as they form the platforms on which elections are being won and lost. If the tech giants win, we lose. They've already shown willingness to coordinate with each other. The non-poaching agreements and the Alex Jones case. Our defences from power have always been the existence of multiple states (e.g. refugees) and democracy. They would be beholden to neither. Able to destroy social lives and livelihoods at the click of a button, with no defence and no safeguards. "Computer says no", to your life.

mhb 7y ago
Problem is that states usually have constitutional safeguards that keep a safe balance of power between citizen and state. Not so with these companies. Step out of line and they can unperson you like that, and you can't vote on their leadership. And increasingly entire livelihoods and social existences are tied into them. The notional constitutional safeguards of states become eroded over time (n.b., interstate commerce, mass data collection) and the overreach of states is more potentially damaging to its citizens than getting locked out of a platform on which you built a business. Political power can be spent over and over. Dollars can only be spent once.
- missingpint 7y ago
  Corporations give private citizens power they should not have over their neighbors in a democracy. HR can filter at mass, keeping people from work they enjoy. Advertising has social agency warping effects. And at scale we spend our time prioritizing paid speech. Policing valid speech at scale is how authoritarian states work. “This is how you view the problem, how you design the solution, and how you speak to people. Or you don’t get to have shelter & eat.” Sir, yes sir. “Profits (or some other ideological target) must go up this quarter!” Sir, yes sir. Not allowed to truly question what happens if AI that can schedule hair appointments isn’t developed. Computing/engineering effort we know is destined for the bin as hardware changes. Seems economical. That’s hardly a behavioral model for a free society. Nah sorry. We have friendly oligarchs, and looking at Google’s shifting culture and the Amazon warehouse situation that’s been going on for years... very superficially friendly. Political power is emotional. It fades generationally as people retire, or we could term limit officials. A big enough pile of dollars means you can generate more faster than you can spend what you need to in order to stay on top. Ownership is the root of political theory in America. And a smaller and smaller group really own anything. And the powers that be know that: they’ve read it in academia’s papers and philosophers notes. If the public took ownership of the manner of production (IMO themselves not factories) and stayed home for a week, politics would be shifting real fast. We keep looking at history to learn about us. Is it any shock we keep developing top down authoritarian structures when we’re casually fetishizing their previous existence? What was becomes hard to look beyond when continually referencing the material. Wonder what humanity could look like if future people read about past people living differently.
- bsanr2 7y ago
  The notional constitutional safeguards of states become eroded over time (n.b., interstate commerce, mass data collection) and the overreach of states is more potentially damaging to its citizens than getting locked out of a platform on which you built a business. States are not meant to be corrupt in this way, and have several avenues for reform by will of the people. Companies benefit from a dictatorial stance, and therefore the only effective recourse against unjust treatment is partial or total destruction. >Political power can be spent over and over. Dollars can only be spent once. Credit is a thing.
christiansakai 7y ago
Forgive me for my naive thinking. But as long as country have a military power, isn’t that the ultimate deciding factor? Like, sure you can bully nations all you want, but as soon as they implement policies like “obey our rules or get out of our land or receive the end of the gunpowder” companies will just obey
- tasogare 7y ago
  In theory yes, but it takes a government with "balls" to take this kind of stance. Big companies owners and leaders are from the same schools, eat at the same table, are friends with the politician ruling class. One government might take action against a foreign company because it is foreign, yet allows the same behavior from a domestic company. Ultimately the people need to cut some heads to remember them what is the commoner interest. (ps: the last sentence is mostly a joke, based on France history)
  - bsanr2 7y ago
    What's worse: big company owners and big financiers are from the same schools, etc. It's not unheard of for a nation that's threatened an overreaching company with sanctions or nationalization to find itself facing a coup, or shut out of an advantageous (read: actually workable) stake in the world monetary establishment. In fact, that's basically the modern history of the southern hemisphere. You don't get to play unless the global oligarchs can skim off what they want, even if it breaks your economy (all the better! Who doesn't love an entire population in thrall to your whims?). The American government is currently part of that oligarchy, but see what happens if Bernie Sanders is elected.
    - Twixes 7y ago
      Well, American oligarchs can spend a lot of money and effort to prevent someone like Bernie Sanders from getting elected president
  - _0ffh 7y ago
    > One government might take action against a foreign company because it is foreign, yet allows the same behavior from a domestic company Yup, I think we have seen that with Monsanto. US courts mostly got the kid gloves out when dealing with their antics. Cue Monsanto gets acquired by Bayer, next thing you know it's convictions left and right.
SllX 7y ago
The difference between a sovereign nation-state and a corporation is that a nation-state has a legal monopoly on sanctioned violence within their jurisdiction. Those constitutional safeguards are necessary because otherwise they could search, seize, detain, arrest, imprison, torture and kill with impunity. A tech company can deplatform you with impunity, but they’re not inflicting any real violence in the process. Corporations are still agents of real people, and those people are still subject to the laws of nations.
- topologistics 7y ago
  Taking away somebody's right to make a living with their chosen profession or otherwise participate in commerce is economic violence. Say you have built up a following of people over many years and you are making thousands of dollars a month from YouTube, and they they decide to shut you down overnight, I bet it's going to feel like violence when it comes time to pay bills and you no longer have any of that income you have become accustomed to.
  - indigochill 7y ago
    >Taking away somebody's right to make a living with their chosen profession or otherwise participate in commerce is economic violence. The thing is, no company is taking away a creator's right to their living. They may take away the opportunity to make a living on that company's platform, but there's a distinct difference. YouTube (or Twitch, etc) are providing a service to content creators, that service being hosting and broadcasting their content. Service agreements come with clauses about termination of service. A content creator should never put all their eggs into a single basket lest that service cease to support them for whatever reason.
    - asdfeasdffwes 7y ago
      When I was at Google, a few people there posted on internal forums to celebrate how successfully the deplatforming was in causing financial troubles for the targets.
    - 7y ago
osb10 7y ago
Alex Jones is a bad example. I don't have any sympathy for what happened to him given the number of people whose heads he has filled with bullshit over the years. There aren't simple tools to clean up that kind of population scale mental pollution. In these early iterations of social networks, the power to deplatform people is required. Not everyone deserves to broadcast whatever is flitting through their minds, to the largest available susceptable population. Regulations and big tech itself will evolve as they and their kids and families aren't immune to the dangers. Most people in big tech have a much better sense of what's possible thanks to the Trump election, Brexit etc and the solution are not obvious so it's just taking time to figure out.
- epicgiga 7y ago
  People like that are precisely the best example. They're not going to start by banning a kid for calling someone the f word. They're going to pick nutters like him, because they can say to the free speech advocates "oh so you support him?". Look up Martin Niemöller's famous saying, "first they came for...". Those who forget (or don't care about) history are destined to repeat it. If big tech are willing and able to act politically in concert, we have a serious risk of dystopia.
matt123456789 7y ago
This argument severely underestimates the alternatives available to the current corporate tech hegemony. Put yourself in the position of Internet persona non grata and let’s look at your alternatives. Twitter doesn’t like you(or whoever “Big Tech“TM goes after next)? Yet you can still say whatever they want on their own website. YouTube doesn’t like you? You can self-host your videos. Facebook doesn’t like you? No access to FB products then. Nobody will look for the persona non grata there anyway. Google doesn’t like you? You can log your own traffic and use an alternative email provider, or self-host. Unranked in SRP? Advertise in the real world or via word of mouth. Microsoft doesn’t like you? Run Linux. Azure/AWS doesn’t like you? Use an alternative IaaS or buy your own hardware. Hardware vendors don’t like you? Secondhand market. Apple doesn’t like you? Flip phone! Linus Torvalds himself doesn’t like you!?!? OpenBSD! The weak point that I can see in living in a world in which the Internet itself doesn’t want you is your connection itself. While there will always be free speech-focused ISPs willing to connect anyone (within the law) the backbones might decide to drop traffic headed for their website. Not much you can do about that I guess. The internet was around before Larry Page and Sergei Brin, and Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs. These companies provide convenient tools which make it easy to do a few things but they are highly unnecessary for life itself, even online life. We have let them get too big. But we have not let them get too necessary.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > Linus Torvalds himself doesn’t like you!?!? OpenBSD! Actually, it doesn't matter if he likes you or not; you can still run Linux just as well. Unlike the other examples he has no power to stop you from doing this.
aj7 7y ago
Corporate governance mimics military juntas or dictatorships. I just throw my proxy ballots in the trash. They are worthless.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ElFitz 7y ago
> Problem is that states usually have constitutional safeguards that keep a safe balance of power between citizen and state. Seems to me constitutions being widespread is actually quite recent. Also, in many places 'constitutional safeguards' alone don't hold and often haven't held much value. The only actual safeguard is power. In companies' case - the law (as long as it is actually enforced by the state) - customers' choice on wether or not to buy the company's product - employees' ability to organize, strike or quit and find another job - shareholders votes and ability to invest / divest For states? - If they have fair and meaningful elections, votes. - Otherwise, well... One way or another, it usually doesn't end well.
BlueTemplar 7y ago
> states usually have constitutional safeguards that keep a safe balance of power between citizen and state I don't see much of that in China... which has too many people for that "usually" to work. Ironically, China's biggest companies are likely the ones on the tightest leach !

mhb 7y ago

missingpint 7y ago
Corporations give private citizens power they should not have over their neighbors in a democracy. HR can filter at mass, keeping people from work they enjoy. Advertising has social agency warping effects. And at scale we spend our time prioritizing paid speech. Policing valid speech at scale is how authoritarian states work. “This is how you view the problem, how you design the solution, and how you speak to people. Or you don’t get to have shelter & eat.” Sir, yes sir. “Profits (or some other ideological target) must go up this quarter!” Sir, yes sir. Not allowed to truly question what happens if AI that can schedule hair appointments isn’t developed. Computing/engineering effort we know is destined for the bin as hardware changes. Seems economical. That’s hardly a behavioral model for a free society. Nah sorry. We have friendly oligarchs, and looking at Google’s shifting culture and the Amazon warehouse situation that’s been going on for years... very superficially friendly. Political power is emotional. It fades generationally as people retire, or we could term limit officials. A big enough pile of dollars means you can generate more faster than you can spend what you need to in order to stay on top. Ownership is the root of political theory in America. And a smaller and smaller group really own anything. And the powers that be know that: they’ve read it in academia’s papers and philosophers notes. If the public took ownership of the manner of production (IMO themselves not factories) and stayed home for a week, politics would be shifting real fast. We keep looking at history to learn about us. Is it any shock we keep developing top down authoritarian structures when we’re casually fetishizing their previous existence? What was becomes hard to look beyond when continually referencing the material. Wonder what humanity could look like if future people read about past people living differently.
bsanr2 7y ago
The notional constitutional safeguards of states become eroded over time (n.b., interstate commerce, mass data collection) and the overreach of states is more potentially damaging to its citizens than getting locked out of a platform on which you built a business. States are not meant to be corrupt in this way, and have several avenues for reform by will of the people. Companies benefit from a dictatorial stance, and therefore the only effective recourse against unjust treatment is partial or total destruction. >Political power can be spent over and over. Dollars can only be spent once. Credit is a thing.

christiansakai 7y ago

Forgive me for my naive thinking. But as long as country have a military power, isn’t that the ultimate deciding factor? Like, sure you can bully nations all you want, but as soon as they implement policies like “obey our rules or get out of our land or receive the end of the gunpowder” companies will just obey

tasogare 7y ago
In theory yes, but it takes a government with "balls" to take this kind of stance. Big companies owners and leaders are from the same schools, eat at the same table, are friends with the politician ruling class. One government might take action against a foreign company because it is foreign, yet allows the same behavior from a domestic company. Ultimately the people need to cut some heads to remember them what is the commoner interest. (ps: the last sentence is mostly a joke, based on France history)
- bsanr2 7y ago
  What's worse: big company owners and big financiers are from the same schools, etc. It's not unheard of for a nation that's threatened an overreaching company with sanctions or nationalization to find itself facing a coup, or shut out of an advantageous (read: actually workable) stake in the world monetary establishment. In fact, that's basically the modern history of the southern hemisphere. You don't get to play unless the global oligarchs can skim off what they want, even if it breaks your economy (all the better! Who doesn't love an entire population in thrall to your whims?). The American government is currently part of that oligarchy, but see what happens if Bernie Sanders is elected.
  - Twixes 7y ago
    Well, American oligarchs can spend a lot of money and effort to prevent someone like Bernie Sanders from getting elected president
- _0ffh 7y ago
  > One government might take action against a foreign company because it is foreign, yet allows the same behavior from a domestic company Yup, I think we have seen that with Monsanto. US courts mostly got the kid gloves out when dealing with their antics. Cue Monsanto gets acquired by Bayer, next thing you know it's convictions left and right.

SllX 7y ago

The difference between a sovereign nation-state and a corporation is that a nation-state has a legal monopoly on sanctioned violence within their jurisdiction. Those constitutional safeguards are necessary because otherwise they could search, seize, detain, arrest, imprison, torture and kill with impunity. A tech company can deplatform you with impunity, but they’re not inflicting any real violence in the process. Corporations are still agents of real people, and those people are still subject to the laws of nations.

topologistics 7y ago
Taking away somebody's right to make a living with their chosen profession or otherwise participate in commerce is economic violence. Say you have built up a following of people over many years and you are making thousands of dollars a month from YouTube, and they they decide to shut you down overnight, I bet it's going to feel like violence when it comes time to pay bills and you no longer have any of that income you have become accustomed to.
- indigochill 7y ago
  >Taking away somebody's right to make a living with their chosen profession or otherwise participate in commerce is economic violence. The thing is, no company is taking away a creator's right to their living. They may take away the opportunity to make a living on that company's platform, but there's a distinct difference. YouTube (or Twitch, etc) are providing a service to content creators, that service being hosting and broadcasting their content. Service agreements come with clauses about termination of service. A content creator should never put all their eggs into a single basket lest that service cease to support them for whatever reason.
  - asdfeasdffwes 7y ago
    When I was at Google, a few people there posted on internal forums to celebrate how successfully the deplatforming was in causing financial troubles for the targets.
  - 7y ago

osb10 7y ago

Alex Jones is a bad example. I don't have any sympathy for what happened to him given the number of people whose heads he has filled with bullshit over the years. There aren't simple tools to clean up that kind of population scale mental pollution. In these early iterations of social networks, the power to deplatform people is required. Not everyone deserves to broadcast whatever is flitting through their minds, to the largest available susceptable population. Regulations and big tech itself will evolve as they and their kids and families aren't immune to the dangers. Most people in big tech have a much better sense of what's possible thanks to the Trump election, Brexit etc and the solution are not obvious so it's just taking time to figure out.

epicgiga 7y ago
People like that are precisely the best example. They're not going to start by banning a kid for calling someone the f word. They're going to pick nutters like him, because they can say to the free speech advocates "oh so you support him?". Look up Martin Niemöller's famous saying, "first they came for...". Those who forget (or don't care about) history are destined to repeat it. If big tech are willing and able to act politically in concert, we have a serious risk of dystopia.

matt123456789 7y ago

This argument severely underestimates the alternatives available to the current corporate tech hegemony. Put yourself in the position of Internet persona non grata and let’s look at your alternatives. Twitter doesn’t like you(or whoever “Big Tech“TM goes after next)? Yet you can still say whatever they want on their own website. YouTube doesn’t like you? You can self-host your videos. Facebook doesn’t like you? No access to FB products then. Nobody will look for the persona non grata there anyway. Google doesn’t like you? You can log your own traffic and use an alternative email provider, or self-host. Unranked in SRP? Advertise in the real world or via word of mouth. Microsoft doesn’t like you? Run Linux. Azure/AWS doesn’t like you? Use an alternative IaaS or buy your own hardware. Hardware vendors don’t like you? Secondhand market. Apple doesn’t like you? Flip phone! Linus Torvalds himself doesn’t like you!?!? OpenBSD! The weak point that I can see in living in a world in which the Internet itself doesn’t want you is your connection itself. While there will always be free speech-focused ISPs willing to connect anyone (within the law) the backbones might decide to drop traffic headed for their website. Not much you can do about that I guess. The internet was around before Larry Page and Sergei Brin, and Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs. These companies provide convenient tools which make it easy to do a few things but they are highly unnecessary for life itself, even online life. We have let them get too big. But we have not let them get too necessary.

saagarjha 7y ago
> Linus Torvalds himself doesn’t like you!?!? OpenBSD! Actually, it doesn't matter if he likes you or not; you can still run Linux just as well. Unlike the other examples he has no power to stop you from doing this.

aj7 7y ago

Corporate governance mimics military juntas or dictatorships. I just throw my proxy ballots in the trash. They are worthless.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ElFitz 7y ago

> Problem is that states usually have constitutional safeguards that keep a safe balance of power between citizen and state. Seems to me constitutions being widespread is actually quite recent. Also, in many places 'constitutional safeguards' alone don't hold and often haven't held much value. The only actual safeguard is power. In companies' case - the law (as long as it is actually enforced by the state) - customers' choice on wether or not to buy the company's product - employees' ability to organize, strike or quit and find another job - shareholders votes and ability to invest / divest For states? - If they have fair and meaningful elections, votes. - Otherwise, well... One way or another, it usually doesn't end well.

BlueTemplar 7y ago

> states usually have constitutional safeguards that keep a safe balance of power between citizen and state I don't see much of that in China... which has too many people for that "usually" to work. Ironically, China's biggest companies are likely the ones on the tightest leach !