No. Giving this additional power to the government will not have the outcome you want. When something becomes too powerful, the solution is not to further concentrate that power into less accountable hands.
While I'm not totally behind "nationalize all the things", do you really think the government is less accountable than Meta? (or Alphabet etc?)
I guess that raises the question "accountable to whom", but in general, for all it's problems with accountability (and there are many), and acknolwedging that different US governments can stack up differently (say local vs federal) -- I'd still say that the government is in general definitely more accountable to "society", or the population at large, than giant corporations are.
If I were king of the world, maybe I'd try having 1/3rd of board members appointed by government, 1/3rd elected by users, 1/3rd elected by employees. Oh, right, there's stockholders too I guess... ok, 1/4th all around. I know this is only my utopian fantasy.
Companies are held accountable via market pressure, public relations pressure, investor pressure, and government/regulatory pressure. Governments, just via voters. Given that authoritarians of various stripes are working hard to neutralize or delegitimize voting and election results, yes, I think that giving Facebook to governments that are or may soon become authoritarian is absolutely at risk of reducing total accountability.
I still find it shocking to think that Meta is more accountable (to society?) than government. It seems to be arguing over how low the bar can be, since Meta has very very little accountability. Like, as in the thread we are actually on, they can decide to ruin someone else's business with no notice or consequences or even acknowledgement there's any reason they ought not to. "Market pressure" and "investor pressure" don't seem to be doing much good in accountability to society, do they?
And you mention "government pressure" as something making them accountable to society right after arguing that government is less accountable than Meta is without government control, which seems odd.
That is not something I said. I'm not even sure it's quantifiable enough to say "more" or "less", as the kinds and mechanisms of accountability are so different.
> arguing that government is less accountable than Meta
I did not say that either. My point is that an authoritarian government nationalizing Facebook is even worse in accountability terms that either one on its own.
> "Market pressure" and "investor pressure" don't seem to be doing much good in accountability to society, do they?
I think your baseline is off. The social media platforms have made huge strides since their early days. Could they do more? Yes. Could they be worse? Incredibly so.
Yes. Absolutely, and without any qualification whatsoever and in every jurisdiction at every level.
Government enjoys sovereign immunity, qualified immunity, direct statutory immunity (laws that prevent suing the government) and operates the forum where they are held to account (be it a regulator or a court). It is very difficult to sue the government, and even more difficult to mount a campaign to change a law in a non-corrupt country. This applies to a tiny sanitation district,
Private companies are easily sued, regulated, and if their behavior is bad enough, reputation damage alone suffices to hold them to account.
You are doing a good job of calling them out here. Last I looked, Meta's stock has taken a beating this year, to the point that their largest shareholder has lost roughly half of his wealth. Facebook's loss of users is having a huge effect.
> Good luck passing pro consumer regulation when industry is allowed to lobby, fund political advertisements, and donate money to campaigns.
Yes, getting the government to do anything is very hard, especially when they own a company or a service. You'd have to do all of the same things you have to do to regulate a private business, but with limited rights for redress. Government can incarcerate, take your property or kill you if they want to silence you. Meta can only shut off your account.
The employees work for a paycheck of course, but I suppose there needs to be sufficient incentive to start a company. It probably doesn't need to be multi-billion-dollar payout possible to incentivize though. And talking about an already existing company like facebook, I think founders and early investors have already received quite enough reward to incentivize, being able to make as much money as they've made off meta up to this point is plenty of incentive to start a company.
(There are also other incentives than money to start a company).
Anyway, I was mostly responding to the suggestion that the government is "less accountable hands" than Meta -- I really don't think so, if we're talking about accountability to society at large. I think it's actually a problem that an entity with so much power over society isn't accountable to it; the first step is admitting we have a problem.
Giving more power to the government on INFRASTRUCTURE at this scale always gives the desired outcome everywhere arount the world except the US.
I stressed the word infrastructure. Because at this level, these companies are literally the gatekeepers of the Internet. Who control literally 70%-80% of what we see, hear and do among themselves. Especially when doing business as a small business, there is no way to avoid them. And they can make or break their business within a day with their arbitrary decisions.
Imagine that your local road network was owned by a private, unaccountable company that was able to change the traffic flow within one day at a whim. Literally breaking all the logistics of your small shop by causing it to be much more expensive. Or your local power company doing the same thing.
To avoid such things, we keep infrastructure in the hands of public companies or we VERY tightly regulate them. Allowing a society's infrastructure to be controlled by private actors is as crazy as it gets.
Governments are always more accountable than private companies, because the only way an ordinary citizen can force a private entity to cease its abuse is... through the government. (No, "voting with your wallet" isn't a thing, especially when the abuse is profitable.)
That might be the funniest thing I've read in weeks, actually.
Well, it depends on the governance obviously. If you talk some autocratic regime, where the king proclaimed "I am the state", that fits your description for sure.
On the other hand, if you are looking at a direct democracy regime, you could hardly make the power more pervasive, and every citizen has to carry its part of accountability on every social matter.
Three reasons why nationalization is a bad idea:
* Power disparity. As it is, Facebook is destroying people and business without any accountability. Now we hand that to the state who:
* Has all the incentive to destroy anything that competes, and the government has the ultimate way to do it: just outlaw the competition. If you think the product is bad today, imagine how fantastic it will be in 10 years of no competition.
* Has all the incentive to make people use it. So, it becomes oppressive and horrible and the government decides, hey, let's make everyone use this thing for essential services like payments and democracy!
All in all, nationalization of a social network is one of the worst directions we can take, regardless of politics. It's just a bad idea.
> So, it becomes oppressive and horrible and the government decides, hey, let's make everyone use this thing for essential services like payments and democracy
These things can only fly in a non functioning democracy, which, while the US is coming dangerously close to, is not there yet.
Most functioning democracies outlaw competing with the postal service - as the US has for centuries.
Any examples of this? The USPS doesn't seem to have much power and other shipping companiea do alright.
Last I looked UPS and Fedex are legally barred from competing for letter postage and can only ship parcels (so the hack is the overnight envelope which packages your letter in a parcel.
Bonus: The postal service can arrest you and prosecute you. Last I looked, UPS and FedEx cannot.
And uh... I can count on 0 hands the number of times I've heard of the USPS arresting anyone. Bet you can too.
The USPS is a bit of an anomaly in that its responsibilities are carved out in the constitution! Still interested to hear of other real world examples.
You have other options. One is the following:
- 1/3 government (adapted to the size of the business: federal for Facebook, but local for a sawmill)
- 1/3 workers (including the owner if he's working his business)
- 1/3 investors (owner or shareholders).
That would makes the owner who also work at the company the final decision maker for stuff that doesn't involve the government (like investment), but allows more balanced power balance.