[digging]

> The moment you try to define a singular "common good", you wind up with a variety of competing factions all putting forth their own wildly divergent and often contradictory notions of what that common good consists of.

Yes, that's called compromise. It's basically one of the foundations of society and civilization. It's not a blocker for public-interest projects.

[cheeseomlit]

'Compromise' paints an idealistic picture, its often just a euphemism for 'the more powerful/entrenched party gets what they want by default, but they'll let the other side vocally express their frustration to maintain the veneer of an actual conversation.' What you're describing sounds like a top-down restructuring of the internet at large, which is a golden opportunity for any interested party to restructure it in their favor. Whoever has the means will do so, and it will not be motivated by public interest since the public are not the ones with the means. When I hear "an internet that works in support of a credible, pragmatic definition of the common good", to me that translates to "we're going to turn the surveillance up to 11 and ban encryption to combat CSAM", because that's how such projects pan out in reality

[mistermann]

> which is a golden opportunity for any interested party to restructure it in their favor. Whoever has the means will do so, and it will not be motivated by public interest

What if the interested party is clever and defines "in my favor" to be equal to "the common good"? ;)

[digging]

Honestly, I can't even finish reading through this comment. This is the opposite of idealism - is there a word for it? You seem to be complaining that something is impossible because it can't be implemented in a perfect utopian way. Well, guess what, we already have an implementation of the internet that imperfectly respects "the public good", and it sucks. Let's imagine something better.

[Gormo]

> This is the opposite of idealism - is there a word for it?

Far from being the opposite of idealism, this approach is in fact the only one by which high ideals can be approximated in reality.

> You seem to be complaining that something is impossible because it can't be implemented in a perfect utopian way.

Quite to the contrary, the complaint is not merely that the pursuit of these goals would fall short of perfection, but rather that the consequences would largely be the inverse of the intentions.

In essence, idealism is its own opposite -- if you're looking for a single word to describe this critique, some good options might be "correctness", "efficacy", and "reasonableness".

[cheeseomlit]

>You seem to be complaining that something is impossible because it can't be implemented in a perfect utopian way.

That's not what I'm saying, in fact 'perfect utopian' projects are exactly what I'm expressing skepticism towards. The problems we have with the internet are mostly just symptoms of deeper societal issues, and they arent infrastructure problems that can be easily fixed like a road or bridge with some massive spending bill. If the US actually enforced anti-trust laws and broke up the tech cartels it would solve a whole lot of problems with the internet, but I doubt that idea would get much traction with whoever ends up on the 'new internet committee'. And I dont see it as a lack of idealism, its just plain pragmatism

[Karrot_Kream]

Just take a look at the schism between Japanese Mastodon instances vs Western Mastodon instances and their vehement disagreement on what constitutes pornography and CSAM. These are userbases composed of mostly developed country users with liberal values, high incomes, and varying degrees of social infrastructure. If you can't even get these entities to agree, how do you think you'll get NATO countries onboard, let alone BRICS?

[jujube3]

> Honestly, I can't even finish reading through this comment. This is the opposite of idealism - is there a word for it?

realism

[digging]

No, it's more like defeatism.

[Gormo]

Nah, idealism is itself defeatism -- nothing sustains the status quo greater than people wallowing in speculation unmoored from reality instead of taking practical measures to address the problems before them.

[Gormo]

No, compromise is when a variety of people with different interests and values try to find a middle-ground solution that's sufficiently acceptable to everyone involved, each according to their own particular criteria. Proposing solutions that can only be pursued if everyone adopts a single set of criteria does not encourage compromise, it encourages conflict.

Societies are not monolithic blobs with a singular "common good" -- they're complex networks of relations among different people with fundamentally varying worldviews and value systems. Making public-interests projects work entails respecting pluralism and individual autonomy. There's no alternative: projects that depend on conformity will inevitably fail.