• IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    Honestly … government should just nationalize all social media … it holds way too much power over government and society and depending on its design and delivery can become addictive to the point of severely affecting the mental health of people.

    It should be a system that is highly regulated like highways, waste water, fresh water, food safety or air traffic. It’s critical to civilization at this point and it is a system that either has the power to help society or destroy it.

    This isn’t to say that government would do a great job of handling it either … it will all depend on who wants the power and who wants to deregulate it all at any given moment. But I’d rather have this entire system bound up under the complicated control of government systems than in the hands of a private company or companies that only want to manipulate people to turn a profit.

    Think of the examples I just presented … if highways were completely privatized by one or two companies, owning and driving a car would be prohibitively expensive … it all waste water and fresh water were completely privatized in the hands of corporations, how safe do you think your water would be? … if all food safety was handed over to private corporations, what do you think they would feed us? … if private companies were completely put in charge without much regulation on air traffic, how often do you think we’d have air accidents around our airports.

    I know government isn’t the answer to everything … but it’s the best we got … if we have a community of organizations and people in place to watch one another, there’s less likely to be a problem or a serious one anyway … just look at how our highways, water and food safety function … sure it isn’t the best, it could be better but it’s a hell of a lot better than letting some greedy corporate head decide on how to let things go or let people get hurt or die just to squeeze a bit more profit out of everything and everyone.

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      Nationalizing social media wouldn’t work the same though. It’s an inherently international thing. Nobody will use “Canada Twitter” if their friends from other countries aren’t on it. Also, speaking as a federal IT worker, the government is just about the last entity you want working on software projects. Our project management rules mean that we have to run IT projects like it’s the 90’s, even though more effective project management approaches have been adopted by all tech companies in the last couple of decades.

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        Under funded and unsupported programs or services is not an indication of an idea not working … it’s a symptom that it isn’t appreciated or supported.

        If an idea is to be given a chance to succeed, it has to be properly supported and given enough resources to achieve full potential.

        Social Media is big business and it has the power to make it break other big businesses and even governments.

        It’s like giving the keys to democratic institutions to private companies … and once that happens, what do you think they’ll do with that.

        No one wants any third party, or government institution have any control over social media because it will affect who makes money. This is the main reason why no one would want to support the idea.