| > Facebook and Twitter are a blip in history. Their relevance today pales in comparison to their historic and future relevance. All 233M, scratch that, all billion or two billion or however many of those users have other things to do with their time besides Facebook all day. Facebook in that case is a part of their lives, it is not a replacement for their lives nor what ultimately determines their lives and choices, meaning it does not absolve anyone of personal responsibility for the choices they make. Why does the past or future matter? Their decisions can impact our democracy now. The fact is, they own the market now and they can impact our democracy now. Are you in favor of a completely "free" market? You really believe that competition alone will ensure consumers have the final say? What about standard oil? Did that go well? Monopolies and oligopolies strangle out competition and harm the consumer. That is why laws were put in place to prevent those types of things from happening. That is why facebook is being sued by the FTC right now. Their business practices are unfair to competition and are not in the best interest of our society. > That is correct. We’re not just one big unified hunky dory family all marching towards the same ends and the same future. We’re a bunch of people, with our own interests, and mostly unconcerned with the government and the State until we need to be. Facebook is concerned with making money, I’m concerned with my own affairs, and you are also concerned with your own affairs. That’s life, and if we see each other on the street, let’s get along. So are you saying we just let facebook do whatever they want until they are replaced by competition? What if that impacts our society negatively for a year? A decade? 100 years? At what point do we step in and enact laws to protect our society from negative consequences? The point of the government is to be a steward of our society and to ensure it is fair, healthy and prosperous. Laws are put in place to do just that. The content moderation practices of facebook can impact our society. It seems logical to me that the government should enact laws to do the same in this case as it would in other activities detrimental to society (e.g. murder, drunk driving, etc). |
This is your understanding of government, and it is a paternalistic understanding of government. I do not share this view and that is a source of contention between us.
> Why does the past or future matter? Their decisions can impact our democracy now. The fact is, they own the market now and they can impact our democracy now.
They own some of the servers people spend some of their time and do some of their communication on. Everything from Netflix to POTS is their competition, and Facebook does not have a monopoly on community.
> So are you saying we just let facebook do whatever they want until they are replaced by competition? What if that impacts our society negatively for a year? A decade? 100 years? At what point do we step in and enact laws to protect our society from negative consequences?
At what point do we charge people with the responsibility of managing their own time and making their own choices independent of where they choose to spend it and how they choose to socialize and communicate? Our democracy is the countless choices people make every day, at the ballot box, in the courts, and how we live with our communities. Facebook is an option.
Whatever relative power Facebook holds today, has held in the past and will hold in the future is a consequence of the choices of billions of individuals, but power has its own economy that competes against power for varying outcomes. Power, no matter how concentrated, does not exist in a vacuum.