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What third avenue for protecting the public interest do you recommend between corporate control and government regulation? In a democracy, government is theore

• XorNot 6y ago
  There's a difference between ensuring competition and effectively nationalizing a company's business practices because they happen to be successful. Declaring Google search results a "public space" is the latter and leads us down a pretty obvious path as to what's actually going to happen with that. If we wanted to encourage competition it would be an idea to start thinking more carefully about which bits of infrastructure should be in competition: i.e. stop letting social media companys buy out other social media companies (there's no reason Facebook should've been allowed to acquire WhatsApp given that they also had Messenger), and maybe require Google to run Chrome as an open-source project to prevent them vertically integrating the experience of "web browsing" under related technologies. This can, and probably should include, public funding for alternative open-source products under the foundation model for different web technologies and vital services.
  • wffurr 6y ago
    The utility model seems like a potentially promising third way between a breakup and nationalization. All of the above, though, require government action, as the current status amply demonstrates. So back to my question, how do you do this without government? Or is that not what you were suggesting in your original comment?