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.
Conversation
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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Replying to
They won: nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/
If twitter blocks were remotely effective at blocking the flow of info, this would be obviously correct, I think. Only because they're worthless it seems silly.
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