Should social media be nationalized?

[Cain]

So it looks like you found a "nothing", and took a lot of work to get there.

We should have our "nothings" free and easy to waste our time watching on. 10 x 0 + 5 x 0 should equal more!

By all means, a great investment for our tax dollars.

Well, it wasn't as bad as, say, Entertainment Tonight. One of the cool things about Youtube is that you can search for crazy stuff, and then it'll recommend other crazy **** you never would've thought of. But I could never get to this particular forbidden part of Youtube if I didn't have a ****** up friend in real life.

Nationalizing these companies is a stupid idea, but I'm not completely opposed to the idea of prohibiting them from discriminating -- like a kind of net neutrality. I'm also sympathetic to unpopular views and ideas. People talking about the first amendment as only applying to the government ignore the importance of a culture of free expression.

It's funny how for years libertarians have said that markets can express our morality: just communicate your preferences to businesses (and have buying power). Now that's happening a lot more, and former libertarians (self-described "libertardians") are moving to the alt-right. Corporations are also increasingly multi-national, so waving Old Glory might not be as profitable as in the past.

 

[Bob001]

Exactly how would you regulate Facebook or Google? Limit the number of customers the can have?
I think this one area where I think the best solution would be to let the market decide. It's not like there is not pleny of room for completion from new social media companies.
I an not a Libertarian who hates all regulatation, but I find it hard not to feel that some progressives want to regulate just for the sake of regulation because they don't like large businesses, frankly.

How is any business regulated? You limit what they're allowed to get away with. In this case the first step would be to give users full ownership of their personal information. Default settings would always be for maximum privacy, and users would have to explicitly and knowingly authorize the distribution and use of their personal data in all forms, and such authorizations could be limited, restricted or revoked by the user. Another step would be to make a stronger effort to separate legitimate news reports from opinions, something every major newspaper does every day.

One of Facebook's founding investors has some ideas:
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magaz...-2018/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ory.html?utm_term=.1fac38d7221a&noredirect=on