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It's abundantly clear that markets aren't self-regulating. We need government regulation to counteract harmful actions of businesses.

sodality2 5y ago
Not self regulating in a way that benefits the average user, sure. It is absolutely self regulating in a way that benefits corporations.
- strogonoff 5y ago
  Imagine a parallel universe where social network’s interests and the interests of its users were actually aligned—all because paid social was seen as the norm from get go. Fully featured APIs? Multi-platform third-party messaging clients? Ethical privacy policies? Once the end user is able to vote with their money, so many possibilities suddenly open. The status quo is much more preferable to social networks and their shareholders, of course. Charging advertisers arbitrary amounts based on eyeball count no one can actually verify, while not having to worry about losing paying customers due to ignoring requests of locked-in users, is a nice position to be in. To the point about market regulation, IMO there may be a place for a limited, surgically precise yet not targeting any specific companies intervention (for example, “you are obligated to provide an API covering the entirety of your GUI features if you serve more than N users”) that would, a few causal links down the line, break such shockingly dysfunctional customer-provider relationships, normalize paid social and let the market do its thing.
zo1 5y ago
If you peel back the layers and sequence of causation, I think you'll always find that there is some government intervention that has a hand in these "market" failures. Unfortunately, I don't think capitalism can function properly in an environment that has government fiddling, which is what we're seeing. And I say that as a full free-market advocate. Either way, government is too blame. Both for not regulating these bad things away, and also for having some hand in causing them N-levels back (you just can't see or prove this one easily). It's a nice sweet spot for governments and their officials and advocates, because they can always absolve themselves by blaming the free-market in one way or another. They do too much or do the wrong regulation, causing something "bad" in the market, and boom they blame "the market". Likewise, they put some half-assed regulations that don't do much and yet again they blame "not enough regulation". The entire thing is ridiculously circular and self-reinforcing. Almost as if it's been designed for argumentative deadlock.
- rrose 5y ago
  i would be interested in hearing how you think the government is at fault for this

sodality2 5y ago

Not self regulating in a way that benefits the average user, sure. It is absolutely self regulating in a way that benefits corporations.

strogonoff 5y ago
Imagine a parallel universe where social network’s interests and the interests of its users were actually aligned—all because paid social was seen as the norm from get go. Fully featured APIs? Multi-platform third-party messaging clients? Ethical privacy policies? Once the end user is able to vote with their money, so many possibilities suddenly open. The status quo is much more preferable to social networks and their shareholders, of course. Charging advertisers arbitrary amounts based on eyeball count no one can actually verify, while not having to worry about losing paying customers due to ignoring requests of locked-in users, is a nice position to be in. To the point about market regulation, IMO there may be a place for a limited, surgically precise yet not targeting any specific companies intervention (for example, “you are obligated to provide an API covering the entirety of your GUI features if you serve more than N users”) that would, a few causal links down the line, break such shockingly dysfunctional customer-provider relationships, normalize paid social and let the market do its thing.

zo1 5y ago

If you peel back the layers and sequence of causation, I think you'll always find that there is some government intervention that has a hand in these "market" failures. Unfortunately, I don't think capitalism can function properly in an environment that has government fiddling, which is what we're seeing. And I say that as a full free-market advocate. Either way, government is too blame. Both for not regulating these bad things away, and also for having some hand in causing them N-levels back (you just can't see or prove this one easily). It's a nice sweet spot for governments and their officials and advocates, because they can always absolve themselves by blaming the free-market in one way or another. They do too much or do the wrong regulation, causing something "bad" in the market, and boom they blame "the market". Likewise, they put some half-assed regulations that don't do much and yet again they blame "not enough regulation". The entire thing is ridiculously circular and self-reinforcing. Almost as if it's been designed for argumentative deadlock.

rrose 5y ago
i would be interested in hearing how you think the government is at fault for this