[adventured]

Facebook pages are no more important today than the yellow pages were yesterday, or classified ads, or newspapers. Very little of which was publicly operated.

If your local newspaper blockaded you out of their advertising section 50 years ago (eg they dislike you), it could have been devastating too. There are a lot of scenarios like that. You can't get around those potential problems by saying everything should be run under National Socialism; instead of dealing with Verizon you'll be dealing with a board of vicious bureaucrats with direct political power - they can have you shot or imprisoned at will in a more developed Socialist system - that will eventually want bribed to let you continue to exist.

[Jolter]

The yellow pages were absolutely run by state-owned telecom operators, less than 25 years ago, all over Europe.

[emteycz]

Only because of the communist past. Most states privatized these operators and the yellow pages continued to be published by them as private companies without any need for regulation.

[Jolter]

Ah, yes, the famously communist France. (Pages Jaunes are operated by Orange, previously state monopoly France Telecom.)

Just as you say, these monopolies are all deregulated and sold off. But they were all developed and operated by monopolies for many decades, successfully.

Your attempt to call non-communist things communist is a bit annoying. You could benefit from using the same terminology as the rest of the world when you discuss politics. It would help your arguments.

Anyway, I was pointing out that the paragraph I responded to was a falsehood: “Facebook pages are no more important today than the yellow pages were yesterday, or classified ads, or newspapers. Very little of which was publicly operated.”

[emteycz]

You picked one example where it doesn't fit while there are at least 8 EU countries that did exactly what I said. BTW yes here in Central/Eastern EU we deem France very very leftist, just few small steps away from full-on socialism.

[MrsPeaches]

Famously communist UK as well. BT (British Telecom) was the state owned telecom provider that also ran the phone books.

And famously communist Germany with Deutsche Telekom (Formerly part of the national post system, privatised in 1995) that also made telephone books. Also worth noting that the German government still has a significant stake in Deutsche Telekom.

Oh and famously communist Netherlands with KPN the state run post and telecoms provider.

And famously communist Spain with Telefonica being previously majority owned by the state (under Franco no less).

I mean most of European telecoms seem to have been state owned until the early 90s.

[emteycz]

I never said only communist states could own/owned telecoms. A lot of these changes - even in the west - came to be after communism in Europe has fallen.