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Universally necessary services like communication, healthcare, and social media (the digital plaza) can never be justly managed by private companies. It is an i

Universally necessary services like communication, healthcare, and social media (the digital plaza) can never be justly managed by private companies. It is an inherent structural contradiction that has failed and will continue to fail our society until we are willing to organize resistance beyond the realm of consumer choice.

emteycz 5y ago
Facebook page is not necessary communication. That's telephone and mobile networks. Healthcare is successfully managed by private companies all around the world - even in Europe (the funding is organized by law but still the hospitals are private companies and half of EU countries have private health insurance companies). The horrors of publicly managed social media were already tested here in Europe too and we never want to go back.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Social media is just a basic telecom utility service. Most of societal communication takes place on it. It’s fundamental enough that most individuals, businesses, celebrities, and government officials participate in it. I don’t understand the distinction you’re making - to me it seems fairly fundamental and it also seems like social media depends on network effects, which justifies regulating the biggest ones.
  - adventured 5y ago
    > Social media is just a basic telecom utility service. No it's not, not even close. Facebook is very different from TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit and Snapchat. They're quite obviously not some manner of the equivalent of an universal pipe or utility. If your premise were correct, you'd be able to swap them out for eachother; you'd be able to just run TikTok on Facebook and nobody would care about the difference. Instead, none of them fulfills that premise of basic utility, none of them makes all of the other social media platforms possible or irrelevant (Facebook can't do what Pinterest does; Facebook can't actually do what TikTok does, even if it would like to; and everybody would notice if all the other social networks vanished, precisely because Facebook can't do what they do). Facebook is less important thank people have been hyping it to be (for their own ideological agenda reasons). TikTok has more than demonstrated that, and the thriving nature of all the rest of the social media landscape has also nicely demonstrated that. In fact the only real problem is that Facebook owns Instagram, otherwise it'd be out there as another separate mega platform. Facebook also can't do what Instagram does, which is why they had to buy them and are terrified of having to spin it off (another case where Facebook is clearly not a utility). Just because Facebook can potentially store the same bits that Instagram does, doesn't mean it can provide the same service (first of all, you can't get users to go along with that for all sorts of reasons). Those are two very different things. Otherwise Google would have successfully built a juggernaut social platform, instead of failing repeatedly at it.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    Most individuals and celebrities also eat sushi, but that doesn't make sushi a "fundamental right".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ed25519FUUU 5y ago
Plenty of absolutely horrible kafkaesque experiences with the state. This is definitely not exclusively a “private company” problem.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  I think it's a 'large bureaucracies in general' problem, there seems to be a critical mass in any kind of organisation beyond which dealing with them in any capacity becomes like pulling teeth. I don't think public services are necessarily flawed because it's the state providing them, I think it's more that the state is also an enormous bureaucratic organisation and subject to the same issues. When the state creates groups that are enpowered to cut through the internal politicking it can be very effective, for example the gov.uk site that's been praised a lot on HN. Just look at rail in the UK, it was the butt of contemporary comedy when it was nationalised and it's still a dog's breakfast thirty years after privatisation. It's not the ownership that's the problem, it's the nature of the organisations responsible for providing that particular service. I think the public/private dichotomy is a bit of a false one when it comes to quality of service a lot of the time.
bko 5y ago
You're assuming that public organizations would run a more secure responsive network. My interactions with public institutions makes me doubt this assumption, especially for something as vast and complicated as facebook's network.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Exactly. Imagine your DMV experiences but applied to this. Then again, based on stories like this, private seems to be even worse. Even the DMV has human interaction possible after demoralizing wait times unlike shouting into blackholes that is FAANG support
  - _jal 5y ago
    Tangent, but using the DMV as a horror-cliche anchor is very state-specific. I have experience with DMVs in six states. Five of those have always been perfectly fine, nothing to complain about. If I'm competent enough to get my paperwork right, it is just a 15 minute process. New York and California even take appointments, no waiting. I got my license way back when in Tennessee, and they were incompetent jerks, and that's because Tennessee's entrenched political class goes out of its way to make sure government services suck.
    - JJMcJ 5y ago
      California used to be bad, but the appointments have really helped. Also, the people who actually work at the DMV are pretty helpful, but they are way overworked. Once again, this is in California.
    - oauea 5y ago
      > Tangent, but using the DMV as a horror-cliche anchor is very state-specific. And very America-focused. Never had any issues at all with our local equivalent.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        assuming "our" is non-American, but non-American is a really large place. ;-) care to narrow it down?
dokem 5y ago
Construction is private and buildings don't fall down and are incredibly safe. Food production is private and people don't get spoiled or poisonous products. I think this is reductive.
- user_7832 5y ago
  Both have regulations written in blood, though. Lives have been lost which is why rules exist in these fields.
  - adventured 5y ago
    The argument by the parent is clearly not against regulations in a market economy, they didn't say anything implying that. The argument is against the necessity of government ownership and operation.
    - user_7832 5y ago
      Yeah that's a fair point.
- chrisBob 5y ago
  Construction and food are great examples of how the government keeps us safe. Building codes and food regulations are wonderful things.
- scarface74 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse
- throwaway946513 5y ago
  > People don't get spoiled or poisoned products. I'm quite sure that this still happens only to lesser extents. Compare European food regulations to U.S. food regulations. American food while not explicitly killing people outright still has some ghosts in its past that are present in today's foods. See the Coca-Cola, Sugar companies, and 'fat-free' corporate lobbying of the FDA, as well as the huge advertising for terrible food has affected Americans. The U.S. has food deserts, where fresh produce and food is either too expensive or impossible to find with substitutes being boxed goods laden with sugar and grains from the whale of corporations like General Mills and Kellogs.
adventured 5y ago
Facebook pages are no more important today than the yellow pages were yesterday, or classified ads, or newspapers. Very little of which was publicly operated. If your local newspaper blockaded you out of their advertising section 50 years ago (eg they dislike you), it could have been devastating too. There are a lot of scenarios like that. You can't get around those potential problems by saying everything should be run under National Socialism; instead of dealing with Verizon you'll be dealing with a board of vicious bureaucrats with direct political power - they can have you shot or imprisoned at will in a more developed Socialist system - that will eventually want bribed to let you continue to exist.
- Jolter 5y ago
  The yellow pages were absolutely run by state-owned telecom operators, less than 25 years ago, all over Europe.
  - emteycz 5y ago
    Only because of the communist past. Most states privatized these operators and the yellow pages continued to be published by them as private companies without any need for regulation.
    - Jolter 5y ago
      Ah, yes, the famously communist France. (Pages Jaunes are operated by Orange, previously state monopoly France Telecom.) Just as you say, these monopolies are all deregulated and sold off. But they were all developed and operated by monopolies for many decades, successfully. Your attempt to call non-communist things communist is a bit annoying. You could benefit from using the same terminology as the rest of the world when you discuss politics. It would help your arguments. Anyway, I was pointing out that the paragraph I responded to was a falsehood: “Facebook pages are no more important today than the yellow pages were yesterday, or classified ads, or newspapers. Very little of which was publicly operated.”
      - 5y ago
cousin_it 5y ago
It's not about private companies. I have an account at a private bank and am not afraid of something like this happening at all. Because to the bank I'm not just an abstract "username and password": the account is tied to my real world identity, so in the last resort I'll prove to the bank that I'm me using state provided means. I'm getting more and more convinced that online accounts important to people's livelihood (like gmail where you have tons of important stuff) should work the same way, as a contract tied to your real world identity, and in doubt resolve things by webcam call or personal appointment.
- pchangr 5y ago
  That is until the bank happens to be 100% online.. they can’t verify your identity so they close your account and you can’t access your account nor contact the bank because you don’t have an account so you try to create an account to inquiry about your other account and they tell you you already have an account so they can’t open you an account and now you’re stuck with no way to contact the bank and no funds and noone able to help you. This is an extremely common scenario with banks in Germany.
- 650REDHAIR 5y ago
  I see you haven't been a victim of identity theft yet. It doesn't take much to hijack a bank account and eventually you will regain access, but it isn't as simple as you might imagine and a fair amount of damage can be done in a short period of time.
  - bduerst 5y ago
    Most banks/CUs/payment processors automatically have insurance for these types of bad actors, even if it takes months to claw back your identity. Credit reporting typically takes much longer to fix but GP was referring to their bank.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  All of these things work well for the rich, but the number of unbanked working Americans is astronomical. They cash their checks for fees. Try visiting the customer service counter at a rural Walmart in the U.S. on a Friday and you will see what I mean. The line snakes back to the rear of the store.
scarface74 5y ago
Social media is not a “necessity”. He could have used his Facebook page to steer his community to his own hosted site and forum. Do you really trust giving more power to the government?
maxbond 5y ago
I'd like to point out something my sibling commenters seem to be missing; nopenopenopeno never suggested that the _government_ run these services instead. They said that private companies were incapable of doing this, and that competition was not a suitable mechanism for achieving the necessary outcomes. It is quite possible that neither the state nor private industry can do this, and that we need _something else_. I don't know what this is, it seems apparent to me that Mastodon-style, self hosted solutions are not tenable either, or perhaps their time has simply not come yet. But let us not limit our imagination to two broken options.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  Non profit organisations could fill that gap. If proper financed directly by its users, otherwise they will go down the same path, if they get their money directly or indirectly from advertisement.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  I appreciate your comment and I don’t mind putting my cards on the table: I am a Marxist. I believe in democratic institutions by the people and for the people. Capitalist states will never suffice. Social democracy is good, but unsustainable. Soviet Communism was a failure, but a single failure. Capitalism is a necessary step in human progress, but it cannot last. Libertarian solutions, as you propose, are no more idealistic than mine, but I don’t put my faith in them because ultimately we are social beings. We all live in a society, and we must attend to it as such. We need institutions by the people and for the people, and the great leaps in technological developments made by capitalist state funded programs in the past century (private companies did very little in comparison) give us a chance to reimagine a new future, but that can only happen by acknowledging the old one is dying, and already dead for for an increasing proportion of the working class. My only issue with Mastadon is that regular busy working people with families to raise on depressingly low wages cannot justify the effort to participate. If if can’t work for all of our society, it can’t work for our society. Period. So, if we can figure out how to make it work for everybody, then it sounds like the answer to me. I suggest we start by fighting for a national universal healthcare program to undermine the first of the private interests that control our public goods. It will also incentivize development of democratic institutions of the working class and save millions of lives.
TameAntelope 5y ago
Social media is in no way on the same level as healthcare, are you kidding me? You do not need Facebook to survive, nor do you need Facebook to participate in your community. Unreal. Just… unreal.
NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
I would say it's another one of those things like private health insurance and no public option. It's not failing, it's working exactly as intended for our domestic oligarchy. Much like having two parties that are mostly the same on major foreign and economic policy, having the digital plaza be managed by mostly a few big companies that are all politically aligned, and cozy with the government is a great way to pretend to have free and open discourse when the reality is we have no idea what's happening behind the scenes and it's all a-okay according to some because they're "private businesses". While it's true that the first amendment only applies to the US government, the concept of free speech predates the US constitution by about 2200 years and is still important.
tomcooks 5y ago
The "digital plaza" ownership and total control on one's own community is a literal 2.99 euro/month VPS running mastodon away. Shitposting one's thoughts by arranging pixels on a public forum is NOT a necessity, it's a luxury. If you value it as a necessity consider funding your own for yourself and others you care about, it would end up costing about 7 euro/year if you find even just 4 other like-minded persons.
quickthrower2 5y ago
The problem is the expectation that these services are gratis to users. If users are prepared to pay, this metal community for example would be on its own domain with a PHPBB or similar. Many people do this by the way. Even for non technical topics. People pay a lot for internet access both through mobile and land connections but are less willing to pay for things on the internet or maybe its the hassle of setting up a site (comparable to the hassle of say buying a car: a hassle but not insurmountable for anyone).

emteycz 5y ago

Facebook page is not necessary communication. That's telephone and mobile networks. Healthcare is successfully managed by private companies all around the world - even in Europe (the funding is organized by law but still the hospitals are private companies and half of EU countries have private health insurance companies). The horrors of publicly managed social media were already tested here in Europe too and we never want to go back.

throwawaysea 5y ago
Social media is just a basic telecom utility service. Most of societal communication takes place on it. It’s fundamental enough that most individuals, businesses, celebrities, and government officials participate in it. I don’t understand the distinction you’re making - to me it seems fairly fundamental and it also seems like social media depends on network effects, which justifies regulating the biggest ones.
- adventured 5y ago
  > Social media is just a basic telecom utility service. No it's not, not even close. Facebook is very different from TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit and Snapchat. They're quite obviously not some manner of the equivalent of an universal pipe or utility. If your premise were correct, you'd be able to swap them out for eachother; you'd be able to just run TikTok on Facebook and nobody would care about the difference. Instead, none of them fulfills that premise of basic utility, none of them makes all of the other social media platforms possible or irrelevant (Facebook can't do what Pinterest does; Facebook can't actually do what TikTok does, even if it would like to; and everybody would notice if all the other social networks vanished, precisely because Facebook can't do what they do). Facebook is less important thank people have been hyping it to be (for their own ideological agenda reasons). TikTok has more than demonstrated that, and the thriving nature of all the rest of the social media landscape has also nicely demonstrated that. In fact the only real problem is that Facebook owns Instagram, otherwise it'd be out there as another separate mega platform. Facebook also can't do what Instagram does, which is why they had to buy them and are terrified of having to spin it off (another case where Facebook is clearly not a utility). Just because Facebook can potentially store the same bits that Instagram does, doesn't mean it can provide the same service (first of all, you can't get users to go along with that for all sorts of reasons). Those are two very different things. Otherwise Google would have successfully built a juggernaut social platform, instead of failing repeatedly at it.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  Most individuals and celebrities also eat sushi, but that doesn't make sushi a "fundamental right".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

ed25519FUUU 5y ago

Plenty of absolutely horrible kafkaesque experiences with the state. This is definitely not exclusively a “private company” problem.

BoxOfRain 5y ago
I think it's a 'large bureaucracies in general' problem, there seems to be a critical mass in any kind of organisation beyond which dealing with them in any capacity becomes like pulling teeth. I don't think public services are necessarily flawed because it's the state providing them, I think it's more that the state is also an enormous bureaucratic organisation and subject to the same issues. When the state creates groups that are enpowered to cut through the internal politicking it can be very effective, for example the gov.uk site that's been praised a lot on HN. Just look at rail in the UK, it was the butt of contemporary comedy when it was nationalised and it's still a dog's breakfast thirty years after privatisation. It's not the ownership that's the problem, it's the nature of the organisations responsible for providing that particular service. I think the public/private dichotomy is a bit of a false one when it comes to quality of service a lot of the time.

bko 5y ago

You're assuming that public organizations would run a more secure responsive network. My interactions with public institutions makes me doubt this assumption, especially for something as vast and complicated as facebook's network.

dylan604 5y ago
Exactly. Imagine your DMV experiences but applied to this. Then again, based on stories like this, private seems to be even worse. Even the DMV has human interaction possible after demoralizing wait times unlike shouting into blackholes that is FAANG support
- _jal 5y ago
  Tangent, but using the DMV as a horror-cliche anchor is very state-specific. I have experience with DMVs in six states. Five of those have always been perfectly fine, nothing to complain about. If I'm competent enough to get my paperwork right, it is just a 15 minute process. New York and California even take appointments, no waiting. I got my license way back when in Tennessee, and they were incompetent jerks, and that's because Tennessee's entrenched political class goes out of its way to make sure government services suck.
  - JJMcJ 5y ago
    California used to be bad, but the appointments have really helped. Also, the people who actually work at the DMV are pretty helpful, but they are way overworked. Once again, this is in California.
  - oauea 5y ago
    > Tangent, but using the DMV as a horror-cliche anchor is very state-specific. And very America-focused. Never had any issues at all with our local equivalent.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      assuming "our" is non-American, but non-American is a really large place. ;-) care to narrow it down?

dokem 5y ago

Construction is private and buildings don't fall down and are incredibly safe. Food production is private and people don't get spoiled or poisonous products. I think this is reductive.

user_7832 5y ago
Both have regulations written in blood, though. Lives have been lost which is why rules exist in these fields.
- adventured 5y ago
  The argument by the parent is clearly not against regulations in a market economy, they didn't say anything implying that. The argument is against the necessity of government ownership and operation.
  - user_7832 5y ago
    Yeah that's a fair point.
chrisBob 5y ago
Construction and food are great examples of how the government keeps us safe. Building codes and food regulations are wonderful things.
scarface74 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse
throwaway946513 5y ago
> People don't get spoiled or poisoned products. I'm quite sure that this still happens only to lesser extents. Compare European food regulations to U.S. food regulations. American food while not explicitly killing people outright still has some ghosts in its past that are present in today's foods. See the Coca-Cola, Sugar companies, and 'fat-free' corporate lobbying of the FDA, as well as the huge advertising for terrible food has affected Americans. The U.S. has food deserts, where fresh produce and food is either too expensive or impossible to find with substitutes being boxed goods laden with sugar and grains from the whale of corporations like General Mills and Kellogs.

adventured 5y ago

Facebook pages are no more important today than the yellow pages were yesterday, or classified ads, or newspapers. Very little of which was publicly operated. If your local newspaper blockaded you out of their advertising section 50 years ago (eg they dislike you), it could have been devastating too. There are a lot of scenarios like that. You can't get around those potential problems by saying everything should be run under National Socialism; instead of dealing with Verizon you'll be dealing with a board of vicious bureaucrats with direct political power - they can have you shot or imprisoned at will in a more developed Socialist system - that will eventually want bribed to let you continue to exist.

Jolter 5y ago
The yellow pages were absolutely run by state-owned telecom operators, less than 25 years ago, all over Europe.
- emteycz 5y ago
  Only because of the communist past. Most states privatized these operators and the yellow pages continued to be published by them as private companies without any need for regulation.
  - Jolter 5y ago
    Ah, yes, the famously communist France. (Pages Jaunes are operated by Orange, previously state monopoly France Telecom.) Just as you say, these monopolies are all deregulated and sold off. But they were all developed and operated by monopolies for many decades, successfully. Your attempt to call non-communist things communist is a bit annoying. You could benefit from using the same terminology as the rest of the world when you discuss politics. It would help your arguments. Anyway, I was pointing out that the paragraph I responded to was a falsehood: “Facebook pages are no more important today than the yellow pages were yesterday, or classified ads, or newspapers. Very little of which was publicly operated.”
    - 5y ago

cousin_it 5y ago

It's not about private companies. I have an account at a private bank and am not afraid of something like this happening at all. Because to the bank I'm not just an abstract "username and password": the account is tied to my real world identity, so in the last resort I'll prove to the bank that I'm me using state provided means. I'm getting more and more convinced that online accounts important to people's livelihood (like gmail where you have tons of important stuff) should work the same way, as a contract tied to your real world identity, and in doubt resolve things by webcam call or personal appointment.

pchangr 5y ago
That is until the bank happens to be 100% online.. they can’t verify your identity so they close your account and you can’t access your account nor contact the bank because you don’t have an account so you try to create an account to inquiry about your other account and they tell you you already have an account so they can’t open you an account and now you’re stuck with no way to contact the bank and no funds and noone able to help you. This is an extremely common scenario with banks in Germany.
650REDHAIR 5y ago
I see you haven't been a victim of identity theft yet. It doesn't take much to hijack a bank account and eventually you will regain access, but it isn't as simple as you might imagine and a fair amount of damage can be done in a short period of time.
- bduerst 5y ago
  Most banks/CUs/payment processors automatically have insurance for these types of bad actors, even if it takes months to claw back your identity. Credit reporting typically takes much longer to fix but GP was referring to their bank.
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
All of these things work well for the rich, but the number of unbanked working Americans is astronomical. They cash their checks for fees. Try visiting the customer service counter at a rural Walmart in the U.S. on a Friday and you will see what I mean. The line snakes back to the rear of the store.

scarface74 5y ago

Social media is not a “necessity”. He could have used his Facebook page to steer his community to his own hosted site and forum. Do you really trust giving more power to the government?

maxbond 5y ago

I'd like to point out something my sibling commenters seem to be missing; nopenopenopeno never suggested that the _government_ run these services instead. They said that private companies were incapable of doing this, and that competition was not a suitable mechanism for achieving the necessary outcomes. It is quite possible that neither the state nor private industry can do this, and that we need _something else_. I don't know what this is, it seems apparent to me that Mastodon-style, self hosted solutions are not tenable either, or perhaps their time has simply not come yet. But let us not limit our imagination to two broken options.

hutzlibu 5y ago
Non profit organisations could fill that gap. If proper financed directly by its users, otherwise they will go down the same path, if they get their money directly or indirectly from advertisement.
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
I appreciate your comment and I don’t mind putting my cards on the table: I am a Marxist. I believe in democratic institutions by the people and for the people. Capitalist states will never suffice. Social democracy is good, but unsustainable. Soviet Communism was a failure, but a single failure. Capitalism is a necessary step in human progress, but it cannot last. Libertarian solutions, as you propose, are no more idealistic than mine, but I don’t put my faith in them because ultimately we are social beings. We all live in a society, and we must attend to it as such. We need institutions by the people and for the people, and the great leaps in technological developments made by capitalist state funded programs in the past century (private companies did very little in comparison) give us a chance to reimagine a new future, but that can only happen by acknowledging the old one is dying, and already dead for for an increasing proportion of the working class. My only issue with Mastadon is that regular busy working people with families to raise on depressingly low wages cannot justify the effort to participate. If if can’t work for all of our society, it can’t work for our society. Period. So, if we can figure out how to make it work for everybody, then it sounds like the answer to me. I suggest we start by fighting for a national universal healthcare program to undermine the first of the private interests that control our public goods. It will also incentivize development of democratic institutions of the working class and save millions of lives.

TameAntelope 5y ago

Social media is in no way on the same level as healthcare, are you kidding me? You do not need Facebook to survive, nor do you need Facebook to participate in your community. Unreal. Just… unreal.

NaturalPhallacy 5y ago

I would say it's another one of those things like private health insurance and no public option. It's not failing, it's working exactly as intended for our domestic oligarchy. Much like having two parties that are mostly the same on major foreign and economic policy, having the digital plaza be managed by mostly a few big companies that are all politically aligned, and cozy with the government is a great way to pretend to have free and open discourse when the reality is we have no idea what's happening behind the scenes and it's all a-okay according to some because they're "private businesses". While it's true that the first amendment only applies to the US government, the concept of free speech predates the US constitution by about 2200 years and is still important.

tomcooks 5y ago

The "digital plaza" ownership and total control on one's own community is a literal 2.99 euro/month VPS running mastodon away. Shitposting one's thoughts by arranging pixels on a public forum is NOT a necessity, it's a luxury. If you value it as a necessity consider funding your own for yourself and others you care about, it would end up costing about 7 euro/year if you find even just 4 other like-minded persons.

quickthrower2 5y ago

The problem is the expectation that these services are gratis to users. If users are prepared to pay, this metal community for example would be on its own domain with a PHPBB or similar. Many people do this by the way. Even for non technical topics. People pay a lot for internet access both through mobile and land connections but are less willing to pay for things on the internet or maybe its the hassle of setting up a site (comparable to the hassle of say buying a car: a hassle but not insurmountable for anyone).