I suspect trying to apply industrial-era antitrust and common carrier ideas to internet tech will break the idea of a liberal democracy. The “public utility” endgame only makes sense in an illiberal nondemocracy like China, and even then requires extreme cultural homogeneity.
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This is one of my opinions that people suspect is insincere tech shilling but really is not. I just don’t think antitrust logic works at all on distribution aggregation. It works in production and buying (monopoly, monopsony) because of rivalrous physical goods.
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Aggregated attention really isn’t anything like a commons.
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The reduction ad absurdum is really absurdum. Attention in a way is created by whoever commands it. The macro is limited at 18h/day * 7.5b, but that’s potential, not actual. If all media magically shuts down, local conversation claims it all.
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It’s simpler to see when the attention-pool creator is an individual rather than a platform. Remember when people were arguing Trump shouldn’t be allowed to block people from reading his tweets because freedom of information around public statements? What happened there btw?
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I agree, I don't want Facebook or Twitter considered a public good, that's how you end up with laws requiring their use
Make Facebook a utility and get ready to have an account assigned along with your SSN
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I think we need new models for designing game-rules for winner-take-most markets. Who's doing that thinking well? I had a list 15yrs ago, but those folks don't seem current...
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