> Socialism, as with capitalism refers to ownership, not payment mechanism:
From your link:
> any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
The distinction in this case being the distribution of goods. When you have the ability to say that you don't want something and you're not going to pay for it (and then go buy as much as you want from someone else), it's not socialism.
> Ad-funded media is indirectly paid just as tax-funded healthcare is, though side effects differ.
The difference again being that you have a choice. You're not trading cash for access to YouTube, but you're trading something, and if you prefer not to make that trade then there is no law requiring you to make it.
> I agree that scale affects accountability, but again, that's orthogonal to ownership.
Nobody said otherwise. The point wasn't that nationalizing an industry doesn't imply government ownership, it was that it does imply national rather than local control, which is generally neither necessary nor beneficial.
> And locally owned (or operated) services can be extraordinarily unresponsive to (at least some) local needs:
Even in that case, the local government was responsive to the local majority, the problem was that what the local majority wanted was dastardly.
But even that case proves why local control is better -- if one locality wants something you don't, you patronize another one. You buy from the Sears catalog instead of local racists, or move to the North.
What do you do in prior years when the national government is overtly protecting slavery and passing things like the Fugitive Slave Act?
The best case for nationalizing is a little better but the worst case is much worse.