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>>I posit that the problem is that an overwhelming volume of our national speech (and indeed international speech) is completely at the mercy of a tiny handful

>>I posit that the problem is that an overwhelming volume of our national speech (and indeed international speech) is completely at the mercy of a tiny handful of corporations. Further, these corporations have demonstrated an ability to steer public opinion and credibly even unilaterally influence elections. How is any of this fundamentally different from how television operates? Anyone with a camera and a broadcast license can do same things (and already have). On TV, if you don't like what your seeing, the solution has been to change the channel. On the Internet, if you don't like a website, find another one. >>This is simply too much power and these companies' rights to regulate their own platforms must yield to the greater need to secure our democracy. Effectively, I think it's an antitrust problem in that the power of these corporations is so great that it threatens our national sovereignty, as the large trusts of the 20s did (although I don't think the large social media companies have flexed that power as egregiously). Anyone can start a forum or website for near-zero in seed money. In the 1920's, the same couldn't be said for an oil company. Facebook's privacy violations threaten personal liberty but I fail to see how you reconcile that issue with antitrust law. Making them utilities or breaking them up doesn't solve the underlying issues of what you're trying to accomplish. In other words, it's wrong tool for the wrong job.

throwaway894345 6y ago
> How is any of this fundamentally different from how television operates? Anyone with a camera and a broadcast license can do same things (and already have). On TV, if you don't like what your seeing, the solution has been to change the channel. On the Internet, if you don't like a website, find another one. My grievance wasn't "I don't like what I'm seeing" for any value of "I", it was that social media companies have too much influence by virtue of the volume of speech subject to their control. All television companies combined don't control as much speech as Twitter alone (1 broadcaster x millions of viewers versus millions of broadcasters x millions of viewers). > Anyone can start a forum or website for near-zero in seed money. In the 1920's, the same couldn't be said for an oil company. Obviously this is a falsehood. You could easily start an oil company in the 1920s, but it wasn't going to compete with the giants of the time, just like a website that I might start tomorrow isn't going to compete with Facebook or Twitter. But I'm not very interested in whether the cabal of social media giants amassed their influence legitimately versus the anticompetitive practices of the 19th century trusts; I'm more interested in the fact that the problem is the same: too much concentrated influence threatens democracy. If you oppose the Citizens United ruling, you almost certainly agree with me, at least in principle (you might disagree about whether social media giants have amassed so much influence as to threaten democracy, and that's fine). > Making them utilities or breaking them up doesn't solve the underlying issues of what you're trying to accomplish How would you know? Per your first paragraph, you think I'm trying to solve for "I don't like some website". :) I'm solving for "they have too much influence" which is what antitrust legislation is about (you might take some narrower perspective that it's exclusively about preventing certain kinds of business practices
- gremlinsinc 6y ago
  The telecommunications act of 1996 basically allowed for media conglomerates and non-media companies to buy up and basically propagandize media orgs. Like for instance: Comcast buying NBC. It took us from > 500 nationwide media orgs to < 6 that control 95% of the media on the web or tv. That's all on the "free market" and "unregulated capitalism" the right "loves" so much. Maybe the answer is end that bill, split up all the media, and maybe have a max # of "users" per social media company so that they need to basically "spin" out other companies for the next 10 million users, and each block of 10 million users have their own group so that no groups have max control... seems like the equivalent of 500 media orgs with different agendas at least they have some differing opinions. Now Sinclair Broadcast group basically sends the exact same word-for-word script to thousands of local tv stations, and we just accept it as truth. Twitter and Facebook are the least of our problems... media is broken in America period, and that's because of lack of anti-trust against media conglomerates as well as repealing the fairness doctrine. Not sure what a good solution is, but twitter/fb/etc are small wheels. If there's no newsweek, fox, brietbart, cnbc, nbc, msnbc, cnn to post news stories there'd be no sharing of news period on these platforms, of course then htere's just no news online... Ideally it'd be nice if media ads were overhauled to guarantee that media doesn't get blind-sided by special interests... like Humana pulling ads if they're too supportive of medicare for all, it'd be nice also if we ended lobbying in congress and enacted anti-corruption laws at every level of government to ensure money stays out of politics and the the U.S. government self-funded all elections and at an "equal" level. If I ran against Bernie Sanders, we'd get equal $$ and that's that, no donations etc. At least then how far someone gets is more on merit, organization, and how well they can budget -- things that are admirable in an elected official. Ability to fundraise has no bearing on how you can govern because you don't hold fundraisers for social projects, the military, etc - you tax the people or print new cash.

throwaway894345 6y ago

> How is any of this fundamentally different from how television operates? Anyone with a camera and a broadcast license can do same things (and already have). On TV, if you don't like what your seeing, the solution has been to change the channel. On the Internet, if you don't like a website, find another one. My grievance wasn't "I don't like what I'm seeing" for any value of "I", it was that social media companies have too much influence by virtue of the volume of speech subject to their control. All television companies combined don't control as much speech as Twitter alone (1 broadcaster x millions of viewers versus millions of broadcasters x millions of viewers). > Anyone can start a forum or website for near-zero in seed money. In the 1920's, the same couldn't be said for an oil company. Obviously this is a falsehood. You could easily start an oil company in the 1920s, but it wasn't going to compete with the giants of the time, just like a website that I might start tomorrow isn't going to compete with Facebook or Twitter. But I'm not very interested in whether the cabal of social media giants amassed their influence legitimately versus the anticompetitive practices of the 19th century trusts; I'm more interested in the fact that the problem is the same: too much concentrated influence threatens democracy. If you oppose the Citizens United ruling, you almost certainly agree with me, at least in principle (you might disagree about whether social media giants have amassed so much influence as to threaten democracy, and that's fine). > Making them utilities or breaking them up doesn't solve the underlying issues of what you're trying to accomplish How would you know? Per your first paragraph, you think I'm trying to solve for "I don't like some website". :) I'm solving for "they have too much influence" which is what antitrust legislation is about (you might take some narrower perspective that it's exclusively about preventing certain kinds of business practices

gremlinsinc 6y ago
The telecommunications act of 1996 basically allowed for media conglomerates and non-media companies to buy up and basically propagandize media orgs. Like for instance: Comcast buying NBC. It took us from > 500 nationwide media orgs to < 6 that control 95% of the media on the web or tv. That's all on the "free market" and "unregulated capitalism" the right "loves" so much. Maybe the answer is end that bill, split up all the media, and maybe have a max # of "users" per social media company so that they need to basically "spin" out other companies for the next 10 million users, and each block of 10 million users have their own group so that no groups have max control... seems like the equivalent of 500 media orgs with different agendas at least they have some differing opinions. Now Sinclair Broadcast group basically sends the exact same word-for-word script to thousands of local tv stations, and we just accept it as truth. Twitter and Facebook are the least of our problems... media is broken in America period, and that's because of lack of anti-trust against media conglomerates as well as repealing the fairness doctrine. Not sure what a good solution is, but twitter/fb/etc are small wheels. If there's no newsweek, fox, brietbart, cnbc, nbc, msnbc, cnn to post news stories there'd be no sharing of news period on these platforms, of course then htere's just no news online... Ideally it'd be nice if media ads were overhauled to guarantee that media doesn't get blind-sided by special interests... like Humana pulling ads if they're too supportive of medicare for all, it'd be nice also if we ended lobbying in congress and enacted anti-corruption laws at every level of government to ensure money stays out of politics and the the U.S. government self-funded all elections and at an "equal" level. If I ran against Bernie Sanders, we'd get equal $$ and that's that, no donations etc. At least then how far someone gets is more on merit, organization, and how well they can budget -- things that are admirable in an elected official. Ability to fundraise has no bearing on how you can govern because you don't hold fundraisers for social projects, the military, etc - you tax the people or print new cash.