[betteryet]

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.

[jMyles]

> 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.

[betteryet]

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.

[kazen44]

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.

[eddythompson80]

> I think (I hope!) we all agree with this sentiment.

As long as it's not farming, defense or healthcare of course. Historically speaking at least.

[thegrimmest]

> 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.

[jMyles]

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?

[thegrimmest]

> 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.

[immibis]

Is this a new technique where you put COVID denialism into an otherwise good comment? Does it have a name?

[jMyles]

I think you may have misunderstood my comment - or perhaps misunderstood the consequences of the censorship regime.

If anything, it seemed like the denialism was amplified by the censorship. What fell by the wayside were the serious, rigorous dialogue that had previously been the best thinking on epidemiology and public health.

I was a moderator and frequent contributor to /r/ebola during the 2014 outbreak; during that time I reached out and began to form relationships with (and respect spectrums for) various epidemiologists and academic departments. And it was really hard during the COVID19 pandemic to watch people like John Ioannidis, David Katz, Sunetra Gupta, Michael Levitt, etc. be totally cut out of the conversation while a group of second-stringers who were willing to toe the corporate line took their place.

Was it your experience that the censorship worked to _stem_ denialism? It seemed to me that it made it much louder and much worse, muddying the water of genuine discussion and research.

[mullingitover]

The idea that real, serious scientific debate was stymied by social media platform policies doesn't pass the smell test for me. Facebook/twitter/et al were making good faith efforts to stop the flood of downright harmful misinformation, and government didn't force them to do it. None of even the most questionable scientists were ever silenced. Those folks had the right wing press broadcasting their worst ideas to the world, the didn't even need social media when they could get on Fox News every day of the week.

It was the final attempt of social media even trying to be something more than a cancer. Now? Every social media platform (especially Facebook and twitter) would have zero problems being the driver of modern day pogroms, complete with running betting markets on the outcomes, if it would keep their share prices up.

[immibis]

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.

[jMyles]

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.

[mullingitover]

I mean, it's good prose but it's just sort of hand-waving away all the history of how we ended up with modern states. States solve a lot of problems, they're not perfect but I'm pretty passionate about not living in walled cities because there are hordes of raiders who go around enslaving everyone.

[immibis]

I think you both may have misunderstood my comment. It's not about history. It's simply a rebuttal to the idea that something which "only convinces" is less influential than a state. States themselves also fall into that category, and therefore we can see that things in that category can be so influential they need forceful restraint.

[thegrimmest]

> States have a monopoly on violence

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?

[immibis]

No, states can't do violence because they don't have hands, so they can't hold guns or bats. The violence is done on behalf of the state by some of the people it convinces, mostly police officers and soldiers.

[thegrimmest]

You didn’t answer the question. What does the word “legitimate” mean to you?