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Comment by sbarre | Hacker News Reader

So while this one-liner comment seems to be drawing ire, I do think it brings up a difficult point.

As more and more of our civic discourse moves online, there are no "public spaces" online where the rule of law and public interest comes first.

There is no town square, no soapbox in the park, no public access TV, or the ability for masses to organize and march or protest (or whatever the online equivalent is), with only the government's laws as written to contend with.

Everything (that has meaningful reach and impact) is private, and all these meeting and communication spaces have a company with shareholders and therefore goals and motivations that override public interest.

I certainly don't have the answer to this problem but this erosion is a problem that will need to be reckoned with at some point.

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I think we do, it's called the DNS. Buy a domain and put whatever you like on it. It does get hard/expensive if you get a truly massive audience, but that has always been true. You are not and have never been owed the benefits of someone else's platform, but it's still easier now to have a truly public discussion than ever before.

We have never had a public town square larger than a literal town square, excepting maybe ham radio. Every other space has in some way been moderated or fashioned to purpose. Even public TV, news and radio are groomed to certain standards.

And yet we've had demonstrations and protests that have drawn hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, into the streets around the world to demand change or rally around causes.

Where does that happen online, with the guarantees afforded by only the rule of law?

Various governments have ways to petition online. Change.org or whatever is reasonably open to things covered by the first amendment, though of course it is privately controlled without real guarantees.

A government-controlled way to protest is not a protest, is it?

Nor is funnelling your voice through a private corporation, regardless of whether it is for profit or not.

Thanks for re-making my point for me I guess?

Yup, we actually need public twitters. Nothing fancy, no recommendations, not even sophisticated antispam, just simple follow list like rss with feedback. People can learn the self-curate

Sure but who owns and runs that? Who is responsible for the infrastructure costs, the operations of it, the uptime, etc..

The government? Which government? The Internet is global, so would you have a public Twitter for every country? How do you geo-restrict this then? Whose laws apply? How is it reported or enforced? Do we need "Twitter cops"?

You can throw out easy answers all you want but it's actually a really complex issue.

The govt, municipalities etc. Public spaces are public and the whole thing can be decentralized so it s not compute and bw heavy. It should be very cheap compared to e.g. roads

You are grossly oversimplifying the technical and governance effort required to do something like this.

In 1955 if I wanted to have a flamebait war with someone across the country, I'd have to write them a letter. We should go back to that.

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