[agent327]

As a thought experiment, is it realistic to get every tax payer to pay for funny cat videos? Because that will be a reality in your non-capitalist utopia.

Or maybe there just won't be any cat videos, because the state has decreed them unnecessary or even harmful? How about political messages, is the state going to allow those to be posted on its platform? There are bound to be a few that go against state policy...

You could argue that the same is true for broadcast TV, and I would 100% agree. The state has no business running or even funding public television.

[fc417fc802]

If it followed the USPS model there would be a retention fee for the uploader and a transfer fee for the downloader, both based on size. There would also likely be a stipulation that fees not dip below the actual costs incurred which would protect private entities that might wish to compete. (Such fee minimums can be seen with some municipal internet service regulations.)

[PurestGuava]

> If it followed the USPS model there would be a retention fee for the uploader and a transfer fee for the downloader, both based on size.

The problem here is that we're already only having this debate because people refuse to pay, even when what they're paying with is functionally intangible (i.e. their letting an ad play on their PC for 30 seconds.

So any model which relies on people physically paying real actual money* is doomed to fail to begin with because you're not solving the issue.

[fc417fc802]

I kind of but kind of don't agree. Arguably BigTech dumping free product is the only reason we ended up here. Of course the average consumer isn't going to pay if someone else offers the full featured product fee of charge.

There's also an issue with the payment model. Creating an account, sharing a bunch of personal info, and subscribing on a recurring basis is entirely different from the USPS model where I walk into the post office and pay a one time fee in cash to get my letter where it needs to go. I suppose an analogous service might charge $/gb/mo paid up front without requiring an account. Like catbox.moe except paid.

[TheOtherHobbes]

You're literally describing how content censorship already works on YouTube and Meta. Both companies curate content and have selective - opaque - policies about what gets boosted and what gets deboosted.

Also remember that legitimate creators keep being demonetised for no reason because AI moderation has a brainfart and no human is in charge.

And then there's the clusterfuck around malicious copyright strikes made for bad faith reasons by non-owners.

With public infrastructure there's at least some nominal possibility of democratic accountability - not so much in the US, large parts of which are pathologically delusional about public infrastructure as a concept, but it should be an option in countries with saner and more reality-based policies.