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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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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But does the “common” in common carrier have any connection to the “commons” as in the tragedy of the commons?
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I hear what you’re saying but it’s a little more subtle than that.
*Synchronized* attention is way more valuable than merely aggregated attention.
The synchronous (or, as I’ve termed it, “joint attention”) of a society or group is scarce, and should be treated as a Commons.
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The power of viral, attention commanding software like Twitter/FB/Tiktok is that they can *mint* that synchronicity.
Much like a concentrated laser pulse can blind you, a synchronous memetic pulse is infinitely more powerful than the same amt of attention smeared out over days.
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I think this may be rooted in the whole "data is the new oil" and information as commodity view, which is so off base.
data isn't data isn't data isn't data
A bucket of information is not equivalent to another
But this "data as oil" and "behavioral exhaust" meme is rampant
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Yep, discuses this in aggregation theory & antitrust: A Framework for Regulating Competition on the Internet
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