I think this binary view is itself problematic, and indeed not really valid: > "At root, the big question for the future of powerful technologies is this: whet

I think this binary view is itself problematic, and indeed not really valid: > "At root, the big question for the future of powerful technologies is this: whether they are ultimately economic entities which should be governed according to market principles, or whether they are in fact political in nature, and so should be governed by democratic norms and principles." First, why not democratize the economic entities to some extent? It's been proposed before: let the employees of Twitter have as much net voting power as shareholders or private owners do when it comes to major corporate decisions (like, say, who to appoint to upper management). There can perhaps be some degree of hierarchical voting power (more experienced people might make better decisions), but the notion that economic entities should be absolute dictatorships run from the top down like private feudal outfits makes little sense in today's world. Second, everyone should recognize that 'market principles' have at least as much power when it comes to who gets to hold political power as these 'democratic norms and principles' do. See the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling: everyone knows politicians need large sums of money to gain electoral office, and more often than not, that money comes from major players in economic markets. Indeed, there are reports that the two major US political parties demand that elected politicians who seek powerful committee positions deliver >$1M to party coffers as a minimal condition of appointment. Is that a democratic norm or a market principle? One thing is fairly certain: both state and private entities have a great interest in controlling what information and opinions are delivered to the general public, as the past 100 years of radio and TV broadcasting makes clear. The internet opened the floodgates to a much broader range of information and opinions, and now the very same interests who worked so hard to control what got onto TV and radio are trying as hard as they can to do the same with the internet. Blocking them from doing so is certainly in the interest of the vast majority of human beings on this planet.