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> The bar for restricting what you can access, and for what reasons your service can be cancelled, becomes much higher when it's governed by the constitution in
by _greim_ 6y ago
> The bar for restricting what you can access, and for what reasons your service can be cancelled, becomes much higher when it's governed by the constitution instead of the whims of a private media company with a massive conflict of interest.
Just to note: the government has whims and conflicts of interest also, as demonstrated over the last decade or two with recent wild swings in high-level elected office and shifts in the courts.
- grecy 6y agoSure, but irrelevant of who or which party is in charge, they can't mess with the constitution.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoThey just ignore it in different ways.
- _greim_ 6y agoYour outcome will be decided by judges who are selected by politicians, and who interpret and emphasize the constitution in different ways.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoWhich are also elected for life and are independent of said politicians
- dfxm12 6y agoThat doesn't really follow. People vote for who is in elected office and for some judges. Elected officials also have to re-earn their job every 2-6 years, or thereabouts. People have no say in who runs a private media company or how.
- _greim_ 6y agoThe populace has different levers for different controllers. Votes for politicians and dollars for private firms. In both cases the lever is imperfect and we don't always get optimal results.
- newen 6y agoThey don't get any say once local monopolies happen, which is the case with broadband for most areas in the US.
- adamsea 6y ago“The populace” doesn’t really have dollars as leverage for private firms. Certainly not in a fashion similar to voting, however imperfect voting may be. Especially not for monopolies. Plus, as folks in tech from the days of IBM/Microsoft dominance can attest to, simply having multiple options doesn’t necessarily create the same kind of level playing field that we (imperfectly) inspire to in the electoral process. Plus of course there are the non-customers of said private firm, who, in the case of massive companies like Amazon, Google, telecoms, etc. While with voting the only barrier is (ideally) being a citizen of voting age.