4 ms·

I agree. But I'm not sure what the solution is. A lot of people will say "Hey, it's a private company", and as a libertarian minded person I tend to agree. But

I agree. But I'm not sure what the solution is. A lot of people will say "Hey, it's a private company", and as a libertarian minded person I tend to agree. But increasingly these private companies have more power of my life than my own government does, and it's accelerating further it seems.

amznthrwaway 5y ago
Candidly, these companies have far, far less power than the government does. The government has the ability to make literally _every_ company do this to you, simultaneously, and if they use an NSL, to do it secretly. The reason the government feels less impactful is because Google is much more likely to ban you than the government. Google has essentially no incentive to behave well.
cube00 5y ago
They only gain as much power as you allow them to have. You can still use your own domain. You can still back up to external drives in your house. You can still leave encrypted copies of those drives at a friend's house.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  You can still only get one or two, if you're lucky, high speed Internet service providers.
  - no_butterscotch 5y ago
    Right, in my apartment building I don't have a choice. It's all through Comcast.
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      I feel bad for you. Comcast recently accidentally disconnected my service twice now 2 weeks before my move because their internal systems are screwed up and then told me they couldn't fix their own issues because of their system, thus leaving me without Internet for multiple days.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      As a person residing in France, that's alien to me. We've had government regulations for ISP choice for almost two decades now. I'm very critical of them because they're actually not enforced (still very hard/impossible for smaller non-profit ISPs to use big corp fiber despite the law saying so), but at least they enable me to choose whatever xDSL provider i'd like, or even start my own for somewhat-reasonable prices.
Gigachad 5y ago
The solution is government regulation. It should not be legal for Google to host peoples important data and yank it without any way for the person to get their data back.' Google should be legally required to either provide a phone number to call, or make the Takeout feature always available regardless of account bans.
x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
If these private companies have such power, it's because you handed it to them.
ashtonkem 5y ago
This is where libertarianism ends up abutting to anarchism (or left libertarianism if you prefer); the recognition that governments are not the only power structure capable of trampling the individual. Fun fact! The word “libertarian” was self consciously co-opted by the libertarian right in the 1960s by Murray Rothbard, who viewed that co-option as an important part of his war with the left.
judge2020 5y ago
This is only true since the governments are ran by congress people that openly trade stocks based on insider info and take 'campaign gifts' from the companies. This isn't new, by the way. Companies have had their way since the advent of the telephone, it was just in the shadows since the internet wasn't around and we didn't have companies attaching their brand name to every consumer-unfriendly act committed.
southerntofu 5y ago
As a libertarian, you would surely agree that leveling the playing field (with regulations and technical solutions) is a good thing. What do you think about hosting coops such as those listed on libreho.st or chatons.org federations? Your capitalist reflex might be to dismiss self-organized, user-oriented coops... but they seem to provide better service and support than most commercial services i've dealt with.

amznthrwaway 5y ago

Candidly, these companies have far, far less power than the government does. The government has the ability to make literally _every_ company do this to you, simultaneously, and if they use an NSL, to do it secretly. The reason the government feels less impactful is because Google is much more likely to ban you than the government. Google has essentially no incentive to behave well.

cube00 5y ago

They only gain as much power as you allow them to have. You can still use your own domain. You can still back up to external drives in your house. You can still leave encrypted copies of those drives at a friend's house.

encryptluks2 5y ago
You can still only get one or two, if you're lucky, high speed Internet service providers.
- no_butterscotch 5y ago
  Right, in my apartment building I don't have a choice. It's all through Comcast.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    I feel bad for you. Comcast recently accidentally disconnected my service twice now 2 weeks before my move because their internal systems are screwed up and then told me they couldn't fix their own issues because of their system, thus leaving me without Internet for multiple days.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    As a person residing in France, that's alien to me. We've had government regulations for ISP choice for almost two decades now. I'm very critical of them because they're actually not enforced (still very hard/impossible for smaller non-profit ISPs to use big corp fiber despite the law saying so), but at least they enable me to choose whatever xDSL provider i'd like, or even start my own for somewhat-reasonable prices.

Gigachad 5y ago

The solution is government regulation. It should not be legal for Google to host peoples important data and yank it without any way for the person to get their data back.' Google should be legally required to either provide a phone number to call, or make the Takeout feature always available regardless of account bans.

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago

If these private companies have such power, it's because you handed it to them.

ashtonkem 5y ago

This is where libertarianism ends up abutting to anarchism (or left libertarianism if you prefer); the recognition that governments are not the only power structure capable of trampling the individual. Fun fact! The word “libertarian” was self consciously co-opted by the libertarian right in the 1960s by Murray Rothbard, who viewed that co-option as an important part of his war with the left.

judge2020 5y ago

This is only true since the governments are ran by congress people that openly trade stocks based on insider info and take 'campaign gifts' from the companies. This isn't new, by the way. Companies have had their way since the advent of the telephone, it was just in the shadows since the internet wasn't around and we didn't have companies attaching their brand name to every consumer-unfriendly act committed.

southerntofu 5y ago

As a libertarian, you would surely agree that leveling the playing field (with regulations and technical solutions) is a good thing. What do you think about hosting coops such as those listed on libreho.st or chatons.org federations? Your capitalist reflex might be to dismiss self-organized, user-oriented coops... but they seem to provide better service and support than most commercial services i've dealt with.