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This is a significant misunderstanding of what shareholder oversight does. All the biggest shareholders were humongous asset managers; hard to call that "democr

This is a significant misunderstanding of what shareholder oversight does. All the biggest shareholders were humongous asset managers; hard to call that "democratic" governance. Shareholder oversight is limited to addressing the agency problem (i.e., by firing executives if they egregiously harm profits). It's simply not a "democratic structure of governance", and has nothing whatsoever to do with content or moderation decisions. Even "activist investors" focus on things like dividends and buybacks, not content moderation. Twitter's stock tanked 12% after Trump was permabanned; shareholders clearly had no say in it, or he would never have been banned. Since shareholders' main impact is to incentivize management to maximize long-term value, and Musk will now own the majority of Twitter stock himself, the incentive has not changed. Even if Twitter was still public, shareholders would have no say in Musk's decision to reinstate (or not) Trump, for example. And importantly, a company being private doesn't mean it has no shareholders; it just means shares are not traded on public exchanges.

jerojero 4y ago
I don't think I ever called it a democratic governance? I think you might have misunderstood my point. I think these platforms need to be more democratic, I don't think they're democratic at all as publicly owned companies. However, I do think control is now even more centralized residing in just one person. Which, imo, is an even worse state of affairs. To me, democracy in these platforms is not about what speech is moderated but about taking the decision, in the first place, to do so. How is that decision taken, who is responsible for such decisions? It's about who is deciding rather than what is decided. Democracies will not always favor our personal points of view, but that wouldn't make them less democratic (think for example of the swiss people voting against face coverings, a democratic decision that goes against what I personally consider is correct). I do consider a public company to have a more democratic structure of governance compared to a privately owned company simply by the fact that people could gain access. Of course, with such concentration of wealth it is a bit of a pipe dream. But think for example of Norway and their wealth fund; this is a country that invests in companies and steers influences them. They can't really do that with a private corporation. In any case, this is not really a hill i would be willing to die on in any case. I want more democracy in platform governance.

jerojero 4y ago

I don't think I ever called it a democratic governance? I think you might have misunderstood my point. I think these platforms need to be more democratic, I don't think they're democratic at all as publicly owned companies. However, I do think control is now even more centralized residing in just one person. Which, imo, is an even worse state of affairs. To me, democracy in these platforms is not about what speech is moderated but about taking the decision, in the first place, to do so. How is that decision taken, who is responsible for such decisions? It's about who is deciding rather than what is decided. Democracies will not always favor our personal points of view, but that wouldn't make them less democratic (think for example of the swiss people voting against face coverings, a democratic decision that goes against what I personally consider is correct). I do consider a public company to have a more democratic structure of governance compared to a privately owned company simply by the fact that people could gain access. Of course, with such concentration of wealth it is a bit of a pipe dream. But think for example of Norway and their wealth fund; this is a country that invests in companies and steers influences them. They can't really do that with a private corporation. In any case, this is not really a hill i would be willing to die on in any case. I want more democracy in platform governance.