4 ms·

Corporations don't have a monopoly on violence.

• TeMPOraL 6y ago
  If you're an average citizen, your life doesn't revolve around serious cases where monopoly on violence comes directly into place. It revolves around trivial cases, for which the government's response is proportional. Meanwhile, corporations - particularly Internet ones - are more than happy to escalate minor things into termination of service. To use a concrete example, there was a case recently in which a streamer asked people to vote for things by posting red and green emojis on the livestream chat. YouTube's algorithms proceeded to ban people who posted too many emojis. A ban on YouTube means a ban on Google account, which means no more GMail and Google Docs in particular. For an average person - particularly average worker in a small company - this immediately turns one's life upside down and is likely to do permanent damage to employability. An equivalent situation with a government would boil down to getting a small fine - nobody is going to terminate your driving license if the police spots you blinking your lights a few times to a friend driving ahead of you.
  • andreilys 6y ago
    Compare that to certain countries where posting a meme will get you thrown into jail, or have the lives of your family threatened. If your whole digital life is invested into a single company, that's on you. There are plenty of ways to hedge that risk. Unfortunately for those without wealth, hedging government risk is near impossible.