Item — HN Reader

> Do you actually understand what you're asking for? Those sorts of regulations exist as consumer protections, because you're paying for a service ...

Yes, I do understand what I am asking for - these should indeed be paid services (subsidised by the government through a common national communication infrastructure, to make it cheaper for ordinary people). This gives three benefits - (1) strong consumer rights (no grey areas about who owns your data, better privacy, better recourse on poor service, mandated inter-connection between networks etc.), (2) creates a more competitive market (right now, the biggest problem with "free" services are that you need a lot of money, for a very long period, to compete with them, thus giving rich, foreign corporates a natural advantage) and (3) reduces surveillance capitalism and protects national security.

> You don't pay for WhatsApp, Telegram, Matrix, etc.

We do pay for it with our personal data that is mined to create profiles which is then used to manipulate us with advertisement. This data is also sold to (foreign) intelligence agencies thereby endangering a country's national security.

> First, social media platforms are not journalistic outlets.

If you speak publicly, to a mass audience, you need to care about what you say, just as newspapers / news channels are obliged to do so. If you create content for a mass audience, you should abide by the content regulation that the television and movies do too.

> if your country has free speech in its constitution, it doesn't have regulation of journalists.

My country (India) doesn't prescribe absolute free speech for individuals, like the US does (for various reasons, which we indians are comfortable with). Indian courts however uphold a higher threshold for restricting free speech in the media, to prevent governments from abusing their power.

By regulation for editors and journalists, I was talking about a different kind of regulation - in the old media (newspapers) once you appointed an editor or a journalist, there is a very high bar to fire them. This kind of job security allowed editors and journalists more freedom to resist editorial interferences from their employees, thus empowering the fourth estate in our democracy. There is also a high restriction to hiring foreigners for such jobs. (This is no longer the case for newer media and we can already see the crap it has become). A similar kind of setup can be enforced for social media reviewers too, ensuring platform owners and algorithm don't control the flow of info on it, and local people (and not foreigners) do.

1 comments

>these should indeed be paid services

Okay... But they're not. I don't think it's possible to force someone to accept payment for something they want to give away for free.

>subsidised by the government through a common national communication infrastructure, to make it cheaper for ordinary people

So you want to make a free service paid, and then make it cheaper? Are you a politician? I can't imagine anyone else saying something like this. You could have said anything here. You could have said that the service should be paid by the state, which would legitimize intervention. Instead you went the preposterous, populist route.

>creates a more competitive market (right now, the biggest problem with "free" services are that you need a lot of money, for a very long period, to compete with them, thus giving rich, foreign corporates a natural advantage)

I have an XMPP server running at home, facing the Internet. I could tell my friends to install any XMPP client and hit me up there. Or we could use Tox. The problem is not investment, it's network effect and convenience.

>We do pay for it with our personal data

In other words, you don't pay for it.

>This data is also sold to (foreign) intelligence agencies thereby endangering a country's national security.

You always have the option not to use those services.

>If you speak publicly, to a mass audience, you need to care about what you say

Generally speaking, yes, I agree. I don't agree that the government should be regulating this. All it would do is harm small content creators.

>just as newspapers / news channels are obliged to do so. If you create content for a mass audience, you should abide by the content regulation that the television and movies do too.

Why, though? There's something about newspapers, TV, and cinema that legitimizes regulation. Newspapers are sold out in the open, so you can't print tits on the front cover. TV used to be sent over public airwaves, so it used a common resource. With cinema, there's a monetary exchange, so there's some expectation of standards.

With user-generated content, like with chat platforms, there's no such thing. When you watch a YouTube video, you're connecting to a server owned by a foreign company that stores a file created and uploaded probably by a foreign national and you're allowed to view that content for free. Other than your ISP ensuring a minimum QoS, what would legitimize the government stepping in in that scenario?

>A similar kind of setup can be enforced for social media reviewers too, ensuring platform owners and algorithm don't control the flow of info on it, and local people (and not foreigners) do.

What do you mean? You're just talking about worker's rights. What does that have to do journalism? You don't have an employer-employee relationship with either social media platforms or the users who post on them. Please, what kind of setup you have in mind, because I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.

To summarise - I want my democratically elected government to have a strong influence and control over foreign corporates when they operate in my country, to protect my country's national interest and enforce my rights as a citizen. I do not trust a foreign company or a foreign government to do so, whether they are American or Chinese. What I've suggested are some of the ways we can regulate foreign online corporates to (1) to create a competitive market (2) to protect consumer rights (3) to protect national interests. If you still do not understand or appreciate that, let's just realise that we have different political values.

What our values are is not even a concern in this discussion. I just think you have no fucking clue how the real world works, or how these ridiculous ideas of yours could possibly be implemented.