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I think we're encountering a fundamental conflict between an unregulated free market and a digital economy that doesn't have any notion of scarcity or cost. The

I think we're encountering a fundamental conflict between an unregulated free market and a digital economy that doesn't have any notion of scarcity or cost. The old paradigm just doesn't fit. And the result is that a handful of tech employees and billionaires can wield outsized influence over the dominant media channels and public forums of the entire world without any democratic input or regulatory oversight. The fact that anyone on the so-called Left supports the rights of these corporations to wield that influence by appealing to laissez-faire principles -- ("they're private companies, they can do what the want!", "If you don't like Twitter's policies you can go start your own site!") -- is mind-boggling. I think we need social media to operate as a non-profit like Wikipedia, and I think drastic action is the only way to do so. Building alternatives won't work. A for-profit model is just not compatible with the nature of social media.

briefcomment 6y ago
Lots of worthwhile points here. > And the result is that a handful of tech employees and billionaires can wield outsized influence over the dominant media channels and public forums of the entire world without any democratic input or regulatory oversight. This is probably the biggest threat to democracy, and to 90% of the population
Hoasi 6y ago
> A for-profit model is just not compatible with the nature of social media. I agree and would add that the same argument stands for the traditional press as well.
- salmonfamine 6y ago
  I think before the advent of mass-media it probably worked reasonably well. A subscription-based revenue model seems to work ok. I think a reliance on advertising is what has pushed things to the degenerated state we have now. And social media has practically dictated that reliance.
  - Hoasi 6y ago
    > I think a reliance on advertising is what has pushed things to the degenerated state we have now. And social media has practically dictated that reliance. True, but the press relied on an advertising-based business model right from the start. That, in hindsight, was not such a sensible choice.
ferzul 6y ago
so how does that work? i cannot think of a workable solution short of an end to the world wide web, and the beginning of a system of national internets and data ports (as in, places you send your data to to export them from one country and import them to another). otherwise, the democratic oversight will just be whatever the u.s can manage. the internet is already falling apart; i notice many u.s media sites are inaccessible from europe. i guess national internets are less painful in europe, where almost every country has its own language, than in the anglosphere, where there are many smaller countries that use english. it solves many problems - it puts an end to cyberattacks, for instance. but is it right? i doubt it.
- salmonfamine 6y ago
  Yeah, good questions. I'm not advocating an end to global platforms. And I don't think the democratic oversight should come from the US government. The end goal should be a website like Wikipedia -- non-profit, maintained and perhaps even funded by users. In fact, I think a lot of the fragmentation of the internet you see abroad is a reaction against the powerlessness of users and governments against the unassailable power of these corporations. Maybe, if we are able to give users some degree of control over the design and policies of these platforms, we might be able to preserve the global internet. Some of that fragmentation -- as you see in the OP article -- is simply a result of governmental authoritarianism, which is a problem either way. I think the first step would be to re-align some economic incentives by creating digital rights laws. GDPR is a good first step. So establishing something similar in the US. This itself is a hugely complicated step that could go very wrong, and due to the corrupt nature of US politics and the desire for large tech companies for regulatory capture, the potential pitfalls are many. Then, if we manage to get that right, I think we need to find a way to create legislation that requires these platforms to give their users control regarding how content is presented to them -- essentially, the ability to control their feeds. I don't know how we would manage to transition these companies to a true non-profit model. As long as they remain for-profit, they will fight and subvert these efforts every step of the way, even after they became law. However, I think we are increasingly seeing how dangerous and unsustainable the current model is. Perhaps the best way to accelerate data rights is accelerationism -- making the exploits and faults in these platforms as visible as possible by "hacking" them.
nickik 6y ago
So what? You want to ban all websites with a comment section that are for profit? What about non-profits that make the founders rich by simply paying out a huge wage? Do you mean it should only be allowed to run on donations? What if the US bans them, and Britain does not. Do you want the US government to systematically control the internet to prevent US citizens from using that British websites? The things you say are easy to say, but hard to actually make in the real world without running into many more complications.
- salmonfamine 6y ago
  > So what? You want to ban all websites with a comment section that are for profit? What about non-profits that make the founders rich by simply paying out a huge wage? Do you mean it should only be allowed to run on donations? No, I'm just pointing out that a for-profit structure necessarily clashes with the public value that these platforms produce. The only platform that escapes this conflict and functions quite well is Wikipedia. I don't think that's an accident. > The things you say are easy to say, but hard to actually make in the real world without running into many more complications. Yes, of course. My point is that we need to start thinking of solutions. If doing nothing had no consequences, I would be heavily in favor of doing nothing. But I believe it's clear that things are going quite wrong. > What if the US bans them, and Britain does not. Do you want the US government to systematically control the internet to prevent US citizens from using that British websites? I don't want anything to get banned. I don't want any government to unilaterally control the internet. I just want people from every country to have some democratic input into the massive tech platforms that heavily impact their daily lives. Perhaps international data rights legislation is the solution. I don't know. But we need to start taking these problems seriously and discussing real solutions -- not just creating federated Twitter clones that offer an unwieldy UX that the average user will never adopt.
rorykoehler 6y ago
Convert them into utilities
closeparen 6y ago
Democratic input and regulatory oversight over discourse is in the same category as total surveillance: a perfectly benevolent operator would certainly be able to produce a better world with it, but we cannot trust anyone with that kind of power.
- salmonfamine 6y ago
  But we have before, at least in the US. It worked pretty well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine Just because there would be some democratic input doesn't mean there would be total democratic control. I think that's a pretty un-substantiated slippery slope.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - closeparen 6y ago
    The allocation of RF spectrum is unavoidable. It can be done in either time domain or frequency domain; the FCC opts for both. Similar issues appear for the internet with respect to backbone capacity and video streaming, but political speech mostly doesn't encounter the kinds of scarcity problems that justify such a heavy hand.
closeparen 6y ago
>I think drastic action is the only way to do so. Building alternatives won't work It sounds like you're calling for jackbooted thugs to go and shut down newspapers. This has historically not been a sign of a society headed in a good direction.
- salmonfamine 6y ago
  I am not. Thanks though.
  - closeparen 6y ago
    Then what kind of drastic action against for profit media are we talking about?
    - austhrow743 6y ago
      My reading is that they're calling for jackbooted thugs to go and shut down the advertising driven parts of the software industry.
TimJRobinson 6y ago
> A for-profit model is just not compatible with the nature of social media. Agreed. I think we need to transition to something like Scuttlebutt, where no one controls the network. It solves the problems of profit incentives, government intervention and policing of content all at once. I've been writing about this a lot recently at https://adecentralizedworld.com https://adecentralizedworld.com

briefcomment 6y ago

Lots of worthwhile points here. > And the result is that a handful of tech employees and billionaires can wield outsized influence over the dominant media channels and public forums of the entire world without any democratic input or regulatory oversight. This is probably the biggest threat to democracy, and to 90% of the population

Hoasi 6y ago

> A for-profit model is just not compatible with the nature of social media. I agree and would add that the same argument stands for the traditional press as well.

salmonfamine 6y ago
I think before the advent of mass-media it probably worked reasonably well. A subscription-based revenue model seems to work ok. I think a reliance on advertising is what has pushed things to the degenerated state we have now. And social media has practically dictated that reliance.
- Hoasi 6y ago
  > I think a reliance on advertising is what has pushed things to the degenerated state we have now. And social media has practically dictated that reliance. True, but the press relied on an advertising-based business model right from the start. That, in hindsight, was not such a sensible choice.

ferzul 6y ago

so how does that work? i cannot think of a workable solution short of an end to the world wide web, and the beginning of a system of national internets and data ports (as in, places you send your data to to export them from one country and import them to another). otherwise, the democratic oversight will just be whatever the u.s can manage. the internet is already falling apart; i notice many u.s media sites are inaccessible from europe. i guess national internets are less painful in europe, where almost every country has its own language, than in the anglosphere, where there are many smaller countries that use english. it solves many problems - it puts an end to cyberattacks, for instance. but is it right? i doubt it.

salmonfamine 6y ago
Yeah, good questions. I'm not advocating an end to global platforms. And I don't think the democratic oversight should come from the US government. The end goal should be a website like Wikipedia -- non-profit, maintained and perhaps even funded by users. In fact, I think a lot of the fragmentation of the internet you see abroad is a reaction against the powerlessness of users and governments against the unassailable power of these corporations. Maybe, if we are able to give users some degree of control over the design and policies of these platforms, we might be able to preserve the global internet. Some of that fragmentation -- as you see in the OP article -- is simply a result of governmental authoritarianism, which is a problem either way. I think the first step would be to re-align some economic incentives by creating digital rights laws. GDPR is a good first step. So establishing something similar in the US. This itself is a hugely complicated step that could go very wrong, and due to the corrupt nature of US politics and the desire for large tech companies for regulatory capture, the potential pitfalls are many. Then, if we manage to get that right, I think we need to find a way to create legislation that requires these platforms to give their users control regarding how content is presented to them -- essentially, the ability to control their feeds. I don't know how we would manage to transition these companies to a true non-profit model. As long as they remain for-profit, they will fight and subvert these efforts every step of the way, even after they became law. However, I think we are increasingly seeing how dangerous and unsustainable the current model is. Perhaps the best way to accelerate data rights is accelerationism -- making the exploits and faults in these platforms as visible as possible by "hacking" them.

nickik 6y ago

So what? You want to ban all websites with a comment section that are for profit? What about non-profits that make the founders rich by simply paying out a huge wage? Do you mean it should only be allowed to run on donations? What if the US bans them, and Britain does not. Do you want the US government to systematically control the internet to prevent US citizens from using that British websites? The things you say are easy to say, but hard to actually make in the real world without running into many more complications.

salmonfamine 6y ago
> So what? You want to ban all websites with a comment section that are for profit? What about non-profits that make the founders rich by simply paying out a huge wage? Do you mean it should only be allowed to run on donations? No, I'm just pointing out that a for-profit structure necessarily clashes with the public value that these platforms produce. The only platform that escapes this conflict and functions quite well is Wikipedia. I don't think that's an accident. > The things you say are easy to say, but hard to actually make in the real world without running into many more complications. Yes, of course. My point is that we need to start thinking of solutions. If doing nothing had no consequences, I would be heavily in favor of doing nothing. But I believe it's clear that things are going quite wrong. > What if the US bans them, and Britain does not. Do you want the US government to systematically control the internet to prevent US citizens from using that British websites? I don't want anything to get banned. I don't want any government to unilaterally control the internet. I just want people from every country to have some democratic input into the massive tech platforms that heavily impact their daily lives. Perhaps international data rights legislation is the solution. I don't know. But we need to start taking these problems seriously and discussing real solutions -- not just creating federated Twitter clones that offer an unwieldy UX that the average user will never adopt.

rorykoehler 6y ago

Convert them into utilities

closeparen 6y ago

Democratic input and regulatory oversight over discourse is in the same category as total surveillance: a perfectly benevolent operator would certainly be able to produce a better world with it, but we cannot trust anyone with that kind of power.

salmonfamine 6y ago
But we have before, at least in the US. It worked pretty well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine Just because there would be some democratic input doesn't mean there would be total democratic control. I think that's a pretty un-substantiated slippery slope.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- closeparen 6y ago
  The allocation of RF spectrum is unavoidable. It can be done in either time domain or frequency domain; the FCC opts for both. Similar issues appear for the internet with respect to backbone capacity and video streaming, but political speech mostly doesn't encounter the kinds of scarcity problems that justify such a heavy hand.

closeparen 6y ago

>I think drastic action is the only way to do so. Building alternatives won't work It sounds like you're calling for jackbooted thugs to go and shut down newspapers. This has historically not been a sign of a society headed in a good direction.

salmonfamine 6y ago
I am not. Thanks though.
- closeparen 6y ago
  Then what kind of drastic action against for profit media are we talking about?
  - austhrow743 6y ago
    My reading is that they're calling for jackbooted thugs to go and shut down the advertising driven parts of the software industry.

TimJRobinson 6y ago

> A for-profit model is just not compatible with the nature of social media. Agreed. I think we need to transition to something like Scuttlebutt, where no one controls the network. It solves the problems of profit incentives, government intervention and policing of content all at once. I've been writing about this a lot recently at https://adecentralizedworld.com https://adecentralizedworld.com