We need to nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon. Here’s why

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨drd@lemmy.ml⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/30/nationalise-google-facebook-amazon-data-monopoly-platform-public-interest

With Google’s recent monopoly status being a topic a discussion recently. This article from 2017 argues that we should nationalize these platforms in the age of platform capitalism. Ahead of its time, in fact the author predicted the downfall of Ello.

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MediaSensationalism@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The government doesn’t need a warrant to browse data that it’s already in possession of. Food for thought.

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- Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This
  
  Exactly this
  
  The government doesn’t need to know my search habits without a warrant
  
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- qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Maybe not a warrant, and IANAL, but government agencies aren’t necessarily at liberty to share information amongst themselves. For instance, IRS needs a court order to share returns with law enforcement (IRC Section 6103(i)(1)).
  
  But yeah…this seems like maybe not a super great solution…
  
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- cheese_greater@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Sounds like it really shouldn’t have possession of that, although my sympathy is limited for fools who post their crimes on the Facebook
  
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  - Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s not the kind of data they’re looking for, if you post it somewhere publicly available they already have that without a warrant or anything. The kind of data to be worried about is the kind that those companies collect about where you travel and when, and what kind of people you talk to through email or private messages. Even if you don’t think there’s anything incriminating in there, law enforcement loves to collect evidence that they think can be used to pin any crime on anybody, even if they don’t know what that crime is exactly.
    
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- WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Good thing they already possess it all via realtime backdoors into every major tech company. The only thing that would change, is the (im)plausible deniability.
  
  I agree, though. We’re all in danger.
  
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- pmc@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They also don’t need a warrant to browse data that companies just give them freely. The government can often easily get your data without a warrant if it’s stored by a megacorporation.
  
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bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Fuck nationalization of social media. Honestly, this is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard.

The idea that giving the government a monopoly on the biggest data hoarders is somehow better than having the capitalists own it is mind-boggling.

The government doesn’t need a warrant to search through its own data.

The last thing we need is to give the state more power over our lives, more insight into our lives, and more control over the narratives we learn.

Every time humans have centralized more power into fewer and fewer hands, nothing good comes from it. We need more decentralized forms of media, not more centralized forms.

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- Snapz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If the government owns it, isn’t it subject to FOIA and public records laws/disclosures?
  
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  - bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    FOIA is great and all, and so are public records laws and disclosure laws.
    
    But the state is gonna state, and when push comes to shove, social media will be another tool to manufacture consent, break up movements, and preserve itself over the interest of the governed.
    
    I’m not concerned about the ability to FOIA shit about Twitter or Facebook’s algorithm, as much as I’d like to know about how it targets the content slop to its users. I’m concerned about how it will consolidate power into fewer hands, and how state sponsored social media will be abused. And I don’t think FOIA would ever reveal that if it happened.
    
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- rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes, but since most people for whatever reason believe that you can fight the state only by the rules the state makes, you won’t be able to do anything about it.
  
  They are doing this pretty intentionally. Tomorrow is always different from today. People have been complacent, while some other people perceptive of the future in a bad way have made plans for taking unprecedented power over societies.
  
  You are saying this
  
  Every time humans have centralized more power into fewer and fewer hands, nothing good comes from it. We need more decentralized forms of media, not more centralized forms.
  
  as part of discussion, but they are not discussing this with us. Public opinion won’t stop them. Only force will.
  
  French political tradition and all that.
  
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tal@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Note:

This article is more than 6 years old

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D_Air1@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Let’s just break them up like we should have done a long time ago.

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- wrekone@lemmyf.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Or both!
  
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- whotookkarl@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah I don’t want government or private monopolies. Competition in an open, well regulated market seems better.
  
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crank0271@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Okay, which nation gets them?

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- Peffse@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Can we go with Egypt? I feel like they should get some more time in the history books.
  
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BelatedPeacock@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The only thing worse than a monopoly is a government owned monopoly

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- jabjoe@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You prefer your monopolies to not be democratically accountable?
  
  I prefer no monopolies, but if it’s something that is a natural monopoly, I certainly don’t want it by a for profit foreign company.
  
  Maybe the answer is to split these guys up by country and each government decides what they do with their chunk. We’ll see which works best.
  
  Independent not for profits, straight up nationalised, private still(baby Bell), publicly owned and privately run, etc etc.
  
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  - BelatedPeacock@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Best case it’s gonna get bloated and beurocratic (any monopoly, but especially state run ones) and if it’s government owned they’ll use the power of the government to prevent competition (more than a private monopoly which will still try but won’t have as much power to do so).
    
    Worst case it goes off the rails and the service is unavailable/unusable. If it’s anything important - say the Soviet’s food production - anybody who needs that service doesn’t get it.
    
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Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Nationalizing Facebook is a terrible idea. 1a would turn it into an almost unmoderatable hellhole Twitter would pale in comparison to.

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- gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Ever seen the discussion on a government Facebook page where they’re not legally allowed to block trolls?
  
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- gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  [deleted]
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  - phlegmy@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Oops
    
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  - phlegmy@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Oops
    
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rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
We need to split them, kill them, do whatever it takes to scatter the power they’ve accumulated.

They , as in people holding that power, want to nationalize them, because it simplifies the system they have already built for themselves.

Both Harris’ program and such articles are all in the same direction. “Corps are fine, they just should be state-controlled and their services affordable”.

No. People who want this are power-hungry fools, and despite their feeling of victory factually achieved and only waiting to be formalized, they will get fucked and this will fail.

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- SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yup. It’s time for some trust-busting. Amazon’s logistics is great (though there is need for unionization of the employees) but their shopping site sucks. Kill the vertical integration so there can be different websites that use their logistics to deliver stuff. Many shopping portals competing with each other to allow people to quickly find products that don’t suck and have those products be delivered within days.
  
  Pull out the Cloud services from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Probably should have some standard APIs for cloud services so to make it easier to switch between them which means they will have to compete instead of just locking people in to their particular service.
  
  Social media just needs to be regulated like the phone companies are. Required to interoperate. Don’t like what Elon Musk has done with Twitter? Move to Mastodon, Threads, or whatever and still be able to communicate with your friends that are still on Twitter. Create a common social media API standard that the biggies are required to implement so they can’t use the network effect as a barrier to entry. Moving to a different social media platforms should be like changing to a different phone company. You don’t have to be on the same phone company that your friends use, so why should you have to be on the same social media platform that your friends use?
  
  Maybe update the CDA so that if their algorithm recommends something, they face the same liability as traditional media does when they publish something. Sure they shouldn’t be liable whenever a random user posts something, but if their algorithm is recommending that post to millions of people, it doesn’t seem any different from a newspaper printing an article saying some bullshit.
  
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mlg@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
~~Using anti trust laws to ensure a free market~~

Giving ownership of the monopolies to the government… whose leaders are funded by said monopolies…

This is a dumb idea even for politicians.

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- And009@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  How is democratizing dumb again?
  
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  - paf0@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Government bureaucracy. Social networks should be as close to direct representation of the people as we can get, like the fediverse.
    
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- rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  This is a dumb idea even for politicians.
  
  Politicians are usually smart, just parasitic and destructive.
  
  Giving ownership of the monopolies to the government… whose leaders are funded by said monopolies…
  
  So this idea gets promoted by people from that loop you are describing here. What’s dumb? It makes sense that they are doing this. It’s in their interest. They are stronger than you and are forcing you into that bent over position. It’ll only be dumb if you can prevent them from succeeding.
  
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Jackthelad@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Lol. What a ludicrous idea.

How high do you want your taxes to be, for a start?

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- Grippler@feddit.dk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  How high do you want your taxes to be, for a start?
  
  High enough to cover proper healthcare and education (including higher education) for everyone. Personal wealth should never be a factor when it comes to education and healthcare.
  
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  - Jackthelad@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Right. But do you realise how high they would have to be to nationalise multiple trillion dollar companies?
    
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Isa@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon? If somebody posted that on Google, Facebook and Amazon, I’d say, “well, they seem to not know better”. But posting that in the noncommercial Fediverse? Why?

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- drd@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I found the idea interesting, just something to think about as these platforms continue to develop.
  
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gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Seems like it would be better to have government buy-in to federated platforms. There are some governments that have moved their official announcements to Mastodon, which is a good start.

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Jolteon@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yeah, putting the government in charge of media is always a good idea and never results in any problems.

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- xenoclast@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  And the current system is working so well too!
  
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hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Ahem, No. We need something better. And nations should respect their citizens' privacy and digital security. Not exploit it. 99% of any of those companies is about harvesting people's personal data and show them ads. We need the other 1% offer some useful services.

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- realitista@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Best would be if they nationalized these systems and then migrated them to their FOSS alternatives over time.
  
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  - hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I'd say that's overly expensive and complex. Since almost everything with these companies is about the ad selling, harvesting and using the data and tieing the users attention. The state would adopt somthing that is mostly concerned with that. And they'd struggle with their role influencing political views with the algorithms that now belog to them. And it'd be pretty much an Orwellian dystopia once the state starts getting into the advertisement business. What we consider a "product", the social media platform or mail service is just a means to have users. It's a tiny fraction of what these companies do. And it's an expense to them, not what they make money with.
    
    I think it's far easier and quicker to start fresh. Have something that has good features baked in from the start. And not adapt a business, settle >90% of what it's about and change the product 180 degrees so it's about something entirely different. And I mean we already have some good alternatives to some things. And the EU for example already funds some Free Software. I think if we were to educate people, regulate online services in a good way and offer proper alternatives, the rest follows automatically. IMO nationalising an ad selling business comes with severe issues, as I lined out earlier. And if we did it over, we could also learn from the past and address issues like filter bubbles, unhealthy behaviour, being overly addictive and whatever is baked in to the current generation of social media and almost impossible to get rid of.
    
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arran4@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Back before the media decided it wasn’t a competitor but rather a potential profit source. I do think the government does need to have it’s own alternatives (obviously not identical more on this one day) for other reasons, such as for it’s own media releases, but more internationally coordinated appropriate & considered legislation is probably better.

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DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The genuises on PCM supported this and would try to push it occasionally because it would make YouTube be universally covered by the 1st Amendment so they could spread Nazi propaganda to children even more easily.

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bionicjoey@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
How about just making them actually pay an amount of taxes commensurate with the burdens they apply on society?

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Vanth@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not Ello!

Jk, I was the only person I knew with an Ello account. I know more people on lemmy and mastodon and fediverse stuff than I did on Ello. It didn’t take much to predict it wouldn’t work out.

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schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Google: plenty of other search engines exist right now, if this argument had been about gmail or Android, I could have understood it better

Facebook: yeah we can tell this was written before the rise of the fediverse because the solution there is completely obvious to anyone reading this…

Amazon: maybe because of its cloud services? In terms of e-commerce Amazon is literally just one online shop out of many, I at least do not buy from Amazon especially more often than other online shops.
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BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Nationalize Google search circa 2008 (or whenever it actually was good pre-SEO), kill off everything else.

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umbrella@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
lol that wouldnt happen though

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96VXb9ktTjFnRi@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
What people think when they haven’t heard of the Fediverse.

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probableprotogen@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Alternative Title: Here’s why we need to give the government more reach into people’s daily lives (and how it will make you wealthier because fuck logic)

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wrekone@lemmyf.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Or both!

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