Should social media be nationalized?

Travis

Misanthrope of the Mountains
Travis
Joined
Mar 31, 2007
Messages
24,133
Ah the free market. The invisible hand of which can not steer one wrong. Let us all gather round the Ayn Rand statue and give a blessing of thanks to the concept that private industry makes the best decisions always. Just ask the people of Bhopal or Love Canal...or Cardin, Oklahoma...umm



Except when it comes to social media. Then we add quotation marks to "free market" and go into a digression that capitalism works in theory it just has to have all the right conditions. Social media is apparently where Monopoly Jesus goes to die.


And that is where we stand when Laura Ingraham decided to opine on Fox News that social media needs to be nationalized to ensure that right wing idiots that scream death threats at school shooting survivors don't get their right to spread misery taken away.



https://www.rawstory.com/2018/08/fo...-take-facebook-twitter-like-public-utilities/


There's a thought that given the enormity of these corporations, and this is a public square today. This is the equivalent of what we used to see in the old town square was people with a bull horn. And so could there be a movement to treat them more like public utilities, so they have some quasi-government oversight of these entities?
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Strangely such people actually don't go to their downtown to yell through bullhorns that the Sandy Hook parents need to be harassed. Instead they do that through social media. Then they get banned for doing so which then causes bloviating gas bags on Fox News to cry tears of sad.
 
Anything that has a de facto monopoly needs to have government regulation - otherwise you might as well not bother having a Democracy.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Anything that has a de facto monopoly needs to have government regulation - otherwise you might as well not bother having a Democracy.
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When you are talking about something that is an International platform, which Government gets to decide on the regulation?
 
PhantomWolf said:
When you are talking about something that is an International platform, which Government gets to decide on the regulation?
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Every government for their own country. That's already happening. As an example, Belgium has decided that certain types of downloadable content in games constitute gambling and are banned. Companies now has to take that into account when serving Belgian customers.
 
There's a case for stronger moderation to prevent so much hatred and abuse. Maybe social media should be subject to the same constraints as the rest of the media? Though who does it and how it works would be a good question.
 
Diablo said:
There's a case for stronger moderation to prevent so much hatred and abuse. Maybe social media should be subject to the same constraints as the rest of the media? Though who does it and how it works would be a good question.
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I'm going with "individual countries". If FB and Twitter get shut out of sufficient markets because they won't rein in the excesses, then they commence losing markets. When/if those markets are China, Korea, Russia, maybe India, then they are missing the boat on three billion potential users. They've already kinda learned that the hard way in China.

My thought is that most FB users, for instance, really don't give a rat's ass about being free to read scurrilous lies masked behind a logo and masthead pretending to be "news".

I see no starting point for the conversations they need to have but they do need to have them. I'd be willing to guess that WeChat has more in common with FB and Twitter and vice-versa than any of the three have with their own nominal governments (China and USA respectively).
 
Problems with the idea:

There's already competition. Don't like Youtube? THere's Vimeo. Hate Twitter? There's that awful neo-nazi hangout called Gab. (Oddly, the White nationalists generally hate Gab, because there's nobody there to torment).

In this analogy, isn't "Youtube" closer to the Sears catalog or some other specific number, while the ISPs are similar to Ma Bell or the babies? So isn't what we're looking for "net neutrality"?

Having said all that, I can, in theory, see Twitter, Facebook, and the like being treated like Utilities - nationalising them according to the whims of any political group, much less loudmouthed white supremacists like Laura Ingham or Dinesh D'Souza (don't bother telling me he's not white, that's not the point). I can also see them being regulated to the extent where it's clear that, say, what the line for copyright infringement is, what they absolutely cannot be sued for showing, and so forth.

What I absolutely can't see, say, Youtube, being regulated for is "who gets de-monetized" which is a function of who is willing to pay for advertisements. And, as always, comments that have specific threats should be handled by law enforcement - and the FBI and the like do not do a good job here, which is why the people targeted by, say, Gamergate were ignored even when people listed their families, showed pictures of their homes, and threatened to rape and murder them. Threats like that, SWATing, and the like should, simply put, be federally enforced crimes in the US - and we can consider what to do about rogue countries at the international level as well.

(And to think that this is actually about piles of crap like Alex Jones or Gavin McGinnis! How about we look at what happens to LGBT people instead of conspiracy theorists or street gang leaders...)
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Then I guess you wouldn't mind having only a single car manufacturer, since you can always walk.
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I wouldn't but that is beside the point.

A monopoly is a single producer of a product or service. Facebook's product is eyeballs for advertisement. Facebook is only 9% of US advertisement spending. The majority of US ad spending (though it is approaching 50%) is in meatspace.

Users are not Facebook's market. They are the product being sold. That is why I said talking to people with your voice. They are competing against physical advertisement.
 
BobTheCoward said:
I wouldn't but that is beside the point.

A monopoly is a single producer of a product or service. Facebook's product is eyeballs for advertisement. Facebook is only 9% of US advertisement spending. The majority of US ad spending (though it is approaching 50%) is in meatspace.

Users are not Facebook's market. They are the product being sold. That is why I said talking to people with your voice. They are competing against physical advertisement.
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Facebook has a de facto monopoly on targeted advertising on social media.
The old adage that half of advertising money is wasted doesn't hold for social media, where A/B testing can tell you exactly what does and what doesn't work.
So even if FB is only 9% of spending, it's effectiveness is much higher, and there is no real alternative: companies cannot afford to ignore this channel, which is why FB has a de facto monopoly.
And because of the nature of social networks, it is incredibly hard for a competitor to gain market share against an established platform.
FB needs regulation, no question about it.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Facebook has a de facto monopoly on targeted advertising on social media.
The old adage that half of advertising money is wasted doesn't hold for social media, where A/B testing can tell you exactly what does and what doesn't work.
So even if FB is only 9% of spending, it's effectiveness is much higher, and there is no real alternative: companies cannot afford to ignore this channel, which is why FB has a de facto monopoly.
And because of the nature of social networks, it is incredibly hard for a competitor to gain market share against an established platform.
FB needs regulation, no question about it.
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9% is not a monopoly, no matter how many arbitrary qualifiers you put on it.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Anything that has a de facto monopoly needs to have government regulation - otherwise you might as well not bother having a Democracy.
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I guess it depends on what you mean by "government regulation", but every patent holder has a monopoly for a couple decades or so. Now, that monopoly is in some sense regulated by the government (it's a limited term, for instance, and the invention must be publicly disclosed), but that's a very different thing than nationalized.

I don't buy that Facebook ought to be regulated. In particular, the regulation we're talking about involves both rights of free speech (for the controversial posters) and rights of association (for Facebook). It just doesn't seem like a proper role for the government to step in.

Of course, I'm not a social media user (unless this forum counts), so I don't much buy that this is a necessary service that ought to be nationalized. I could buy that internet service generally could be nationalized, if the consumer is commonly locked into only one provider. It's not true here in the Boston area, but in less metropolitan areas, sure might be.

Nothing would be simpler were the government to get into social media. The controversy here is over what speech ought to be allowed, and in the US that's mighty tricky for the government to decide.

ETA: There's an additional issue. Part of what makes Facebook attractive is its ability to discover friends and associates that you would like to add to your network. Frankly, I find it appalling that a private company knows so much about me, but it would be even more ludicrous if the government did.
 
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Travis said:
Should social media be nationalized?
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governmentdemotivator.jpeg
 
Should Fox News be nationalized and turned into a darker version of the BBC?
 
Mumbles said:
Problems with the idea:

There's already competition. Don't like Youtube? THere's Vimeo.
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That's like saying "Don't like Walmart? There's Jerry's on the side of the street."

There's competition, but the competition is far from being as large as the most popular site, and has much, much less content.
 
Does anyone want Trump to have authority over social media?

I would love to see the cable companies treated like utilities. Comcast is out of control nickel and diming customers.
 
It is beyond belief that the side thinking that ISP sevices should not be treated as public utilities wants individual sites to be treated as public utilities.
 
Beeyon said:
It is beyond belief that the side thinking that ISP sevices should not be treated as public utilities wants individual sites to be treated as public utilities.
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We can leave healthcare to the mercy of the markets, but Facebook is too important!
 
LSSBB said:
If you do either, folks will stampede to the black-market, underground version.

I know, because I will be one of the stampede, possibly leading the way or even setting up the underground version.
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Will it be free?
 
I'm a fan of publicly funded and run alternatives with ISPs and social media, I think.
 
Ziggurat said:
[qimg]https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/governmentdemotivator.jpeg[/qimg]
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Are you seriously suggesting that the government oversight of everything makes it worse?

I like interstates. I mostly like the phone system. I think these things benefited from government oversight.

Not everything, mind, but the EPA back in the day did a decent job. The National Parks System is a treasure. The military is perhaps not always used properly, but I have no doubt that they are the best defense of these shores we could have. I'm not thrilled with how ICE has been used recently, but I do think it's a necessary department, though with perhaps some changes in focus.

You're opposed to all that? Or was this just another little joke which you won't defend?

ETA: Any defense, as well as this post, might oughta be moved to an appropriate thread.

ETA2: I'd just as soon my neighbor doesn't have a nuke. You?
 
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phiwum said:
Are you seriously suggesting that the government oversight of everything makes it worse?
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Everything? No, not everything. Though I fully expect social media to be included in what it makes worse, if it ever tried.

You're opposed to all that? Or was this just another little joke which you won't defend?
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It's obviously a joke. And it's funny. That's all the defense a joke needs. And if humorless scolds can't take a joke, well, that just makes it funnier.
 
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