5 ms·

I don't pay taxes to Google and Facebook. I don't own them anything and they don't own me anything.

• gumby 5y ago
  I basically agree but it’s worth using some of what they do as a cautionary example when considering public administration. We willingly embrace inefficiency in government for some of these very reasons. I wrote “basically” because large companies that are deeply integrated into public life (nationally or locally — consider free speech requirements in shopping malls) reasonably deserve extra scrutiny at the very least. You don’t, in theory, pay taxes to your local electricity utility yet hey are far more controlled by public policy than, say, your local fruit stand. Unfortunately most discussions in government about FB or Google can most charitably be described as incoherent.
• grishka 5y ago
  Though this does happen to paying customers as well, for example Android app developers who pay 30% on their in-app purchases to Google. To a lesser extent this also happens to YouTube creators who get their videos wrongly removed because copyright and who are paid by Google for ads that appear on their videos.