Item — HN Reader

Being a public utility is not binary. Facebook is not as much a public utility than water, but more or a public utility than just being "an entertainment site".

Many social groups use Facebook to organize on. If an individual weren't on Facebook, they'd be much more socially isolated in the same way that if they didn't use a phone (considered a public utility), they'd also be more isolated. I suspect for some people, Facebook/Messenger/Whatsapp is more important than a telephone number.

Some services now require Facebook to use their service. For example, for people who can't afford to own a car, GetAround lets you rent neighbors cars, but they don't accept a government issued ID, only Facebook.

1 comments

I am not a fan of calling FB a utility. Are you ready to pay the taxes for a 5x buyout of FB when the government attempts to nationalize it? And what do you think its going to happen after the state has reins on it. Only bad things.

> And what do you think its going to happen after the state has reins on it. Only bad things.

This meme has to stop. In many countries universities are state-run, and they provide more value than most companies.

Sure, some state-run universities are good. But that's just one example. There's many examples of things that govt's fail badly at. And many examples of things they manage OK, sometimes better than the private sector. It's not an closed case either way. I actually would be very worried if the US government were to run Facebook.

> There's many examples of things that govt's fail badly at

There are also countless examples of privatisation disasters. Source: am British.

It's almost as if boiling something complicated down to "government vs private companies" and saying "one is good and the other is evil" is wrong and stupid.

Yes, obviously. Although those often are to some degree a result of corruption. But I am not claiming the government is universally worse at all things.

    Although those often are to some degree a result of corruption.

It's not clear that this is a useful distinction to make.

My preferred solution would therefore be along these lines:

- Universities develop social media algorithms that are provenly secure and respectful of privacy. "Federation" should handle issues of trust over network partitions.

- Governments (not a single one) decide if they want to provide computing infrastructure for said algorithms. Alternatively, users could host their own social networks or partitions thereof.

- Big companies provide hardware and maintenance. (And that's all they do. I.e., hands off of our valuable data).

Basically, that's a lot like how the internet functioned when it just started (Universities and DARPA developing the concepts, and companies doing just hardware).

As someone who spent a (wasted) decade in academia finding out a lot of published research was faked, keep your academic hands off of my business models. And keep your government hands off of my algorithms. FB stupidity and greed aside, I still trust the free market over its less-appealing alternatives.

Facebook is media, not a college. Its like the gov buying Fox News. Completely different cases.

Efficiency is out of the question as well. You cant argue the State will do it better. It wont. And in this case, it can even be harmful.

I don't think it has to _stop_ per se. It's a political opinion and should be treated as such. Whether it is an opinion that has a place on Hackernews is another question.