Is the assumption that non "tech industry" communities (e.g: voat, parler, ovaries, gab, truth, lemmy, mastodon, 4chan, 8chan, etc) are less likely to be a problem or to negatively impact teens than the mainstream "big tech" ones (e.g: facebook, twitter, youtube, tiktok, reddit, etc)?
I think if you run a website as a main source of your business profitable or not you’re in the tech industry. It’s a question of scale not industry classification or purpose classification.
The thing with those alternative communities is that they sort of orbit around the larger tech platforms. Their agenda is set by the news-of-the-day within certain X/FB/YouTube subcommunities. Its sort of analogous to wire services in traditional media.
Additionally, people that post on those platforms originally gained notoriety on the bigger tech platforms, and took their audience with them.
Not my point. The original comment said the tech industry can decide to break up the federal government because they don't want to be forced to clean up their act. Societies should be stronger than any industry and fight to maintain freedom, health, peace, and prosperity. If the tech industry is against that, then they should be the ones broken up.
> Societies should be stronger than any industry and fight to maintain freedom, health, peace, and prosperity.
I think (I hope!) we all agree with this sentiment.
But societies also need to be stronger than states, especially in an age of connection and sharing.
States are the main source of uncertainty and violence in the world right now, and I think it's reasonable to hope that the internet will bring the age of peace we pray for.
Obviously the social media giants are not it. They are closer to states than they are to algorithms.
But I'm wary of siding with states over web apps. What we need are healthier (meaning, chiefly, more decentralized and less rent-seeking) web apps.
Exactly, societies need to be stronger than states too and really need to act early. States can become one person or party and it's game over for a long time. Actually, the American Constitution is pretty great at preventing this exact outcome and I still have a lot of faith in it.
but the constitution is just a piece of paper with some words written on it.
Without an active civic society protection what is enshrined in the document, it is all but powerless.
> They are closer to states than they are to algorithms
This seems like nonsense. All the tech industry does is convince people. It doesn't force anyone to do anything. States have a monopoly on violence. No one holds a gun to anyone's head forcing them to consume <insert content you disagree with>. In a country of equals, everyone's opinion, including <position you disagree with>, should hold equal sway, and be resolved via democratic due process.
Just because many people hold <position you disagree with> and vote for <politician you find repugnant> doesn't give you any sort of reasonable justification to limit the freedom of others to advocate (including on social media) for it.
I agree with everything you've said with regard to the justice of the matter, but I don't think that there is a free market at work in social media.
* So-called "intellectual property" laws dramatically skew what can and cannot be shared
* Censorship at the behest of world governments is rampant, and completely overran anything representing a nonviolent scientific dialogue during the recent COVID19 pandemic
* States, with their monopoly on the legitimate initiation of force, pick winners and losers at every level of the experience, from chip makers to the duopolistic mobile OS vendors to their app stores to the social media offerings. Sure, network effect may describe the reason people join and stay, but the availability of places to join and stay is in no sense a market phenomenon
Consider: the major social media barons meet with POTUS all the freakin' time. Do you suppose that's just because they enjoy his company?
> So-called "intellectual property" laws dramatically skew what can and cannot be shared
Agree! let's get rid of these :)
> Censorship at the behest of world governments is rampant
Agree! States have always pursued censorship to maintain power. That doesn't contradict the point that social media companies themselves are not state actors, and are not the problem.
> States ... pick winners and losers
I'm not sure I'm 100% on board here. States may thumb the scales, but the fact of the existence of FAANG/MANGO seems much more like a market phenomenon than an interventionist project.
> social media barons meet with POTUS all the freakin' time
There is almost no clearer display of corporate self-preservation than social media vendors kowtowing to the president.
Much of what you're outlining is standard run of the mill corruption. The US Government (and others) is acting in contradiction to its stated principles. This is not a new phenomenon, and seems in the category of core human governance challenges.
All that a state does is convince people. States don't really exist. They're fictional constructs that sometimes convince a police officer to break into a murderer's home and kidnap him. And most of us agree that's a good thing. However sometimes they convince a police officer to break into a protestor's home and kidnap him. And some of us agree that's a bad thing. Other times they convince bomb makers to make bombs and convince aircraft mechanics to attach them to airplanes and convince pilots to fly over hospitals and press the release button. That's bad too - sadly not everyone agrees on that.
You've written this with a certain sardonic tone, seemingly in efforts to show the person to whom you're responding that their view necessarily leads to the particular brand of anarchism you're espousing.
And I must say, I find your argument and phraseology very convincing. I agree with everything you've said here; states are not imbued with any particular magic. They simply convince people to do things that, if people weren't filled with the mindset of exceptions that seem to come when engaging in public services, they'd never ever do.
I have a degree in political science, and I wish that the reading material required to get that degree displayed more of the technique you've used here.
This could be amended to "States have a monopoly legitimate on violence". Your comment seems to deny the existence of "legitimacy" as a concept. How do you distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate use of force?
I agree. It’s just there has not been a pro-EU vote in any form or capacity by any EU population. So the stopped doing referendums but the EU grew only even more unpopular- and lately with VDL and KK, its as if its a cruel joke we all expect for it to end soon.
EU is holding, but the fact that every authoritarian (US, China, Russia) is trying to break it apart should tell you something. It's like the only one remaining, and they don't like it.
You may not agree, but VDL and KK have more balls than most men who have run the EU in recent history.
Just to make myself clear: I don’t think the UK made the right move. But if you ask most countries in referendums they will choose to leave.
Ps. I know HN likes the EU very much because they see it as an opposing power to their home issues but it’s not that. The EU, in its current form, has many structural problems. That doesn’t mean that Europeans like Musk, Trump or Biden.
Can you name a referendum of a country within the EU that has to do with the EU in some form or capacity and received a positive vote? Netherlands, France, Italy and Greece all voted at a certain point in time. The result was always a “no”.
The EU is not popular, within Europe, at all. Maybe the idea is great, but the implementation is certainly not.
what are you on about?
this idea of a referendum is a straw man. Member states joined the EU through mechanisms of their state. (Acts of parlements, referendum or something else).
Also, the votes you are described are all about the implementation of certain ideas/legislation inside the context of the EU, not about the organisation itself?
I'm a European citizen, stating the obvious. Happens to be the contrary of what most ppl in here think it is.
> Member states joined the EU through mechanisms of their state. (Acts of parlements, referendum or something else).
They did. That was a long time ago. When the EU was created the expectation was to align salaries, social welfare networks through access to cheap lending through the common currency, even though politicians like Margaret Thatcher understood the role of the ECB the moment it was proposed. Indeed her last speech as a PM in the house of commons is legendary[^1].
> Also, the votes you are described are all about the implementation of certain ideas/legislation inside the context of the EU, not about the organisation itself?
Most voters don't make that distinction. The fact that every time a government wants to implement an unpopular idea uses the EU as an excuse doesn't help ofc.
To recap: given the opportunity, the majority of countries in Europe would choose to live the EU today, if you ask them. It was much easier for the UK to do so, because they were not part of the monetary union.
[^1]: "[...] the point of that kind of Europe with a central bank is no democracy, taking powers away from every single Parliament, and having a single currency, a monetary policy and interest rates which take all political power away from us.", M. Thatcher, Excerpt from her last speeh as UK's PM (1990).