by joey jojo 17 Replies latest social current
I disagree, SBF. I think that online platforms need to be appropriately regulated, and not allowed to buy up potential rivals and create monopolies. (Eg Facebook should never have been allowed to buy Instagram or WhatsApp.)
Oh, and pay for the content they steal from others.
To give an idea about how much Aust Govt is now at odds with Facebook and how there will be no backdown:
- The current Aust fed Govt is Centre-Right.
- What do their arch enemies in the Centre-Left and far left think? The following gives a hint. This is an image I have just received (ironically via Facebook) from Adam Bandt of the Greens:
"Online platforms should be held in common ownership, democratically run, and financial dividends distributed to all users, rather than digital rent seekers who arrive at policy on the basis of whims and personal enrichment."
My mom used to say that they should be regulated like public utilities. That makes sense to me.
To be fair, if you relying on social media platforms for emergency warnings, you probably need to re-assess your emergency plans.
There’s nothing wrong with the technology and its fantastic potential to enable people to coordinate reactions to events like fires and natural disasters, in addition to many other beneficial features.
The problem is we have got off on the wrong foot by allowing a small group of people to claim ownership of our online space to suit their own wishes and their own enrichment. This technology should be democratically organised to benefit everyone, not in the ownership of a small minority of rent seekers with unpredictable and self interested political and business agendas.
It goes beyond facebook and google. Yahoo, AOL and any number of others promote a political agenda rather than news. Yahoo generates 'fake news' and outrage using twitter feeds as 'proof.' They all need regulation.
I find it interesting that Australian media has been practically the only mainstream media in the western world talking sense about the likely lab origin of the coronavirus.
Meanwhile the liar Fauci has incredibly won some award worth hundreds of thousands of pounds for “service to public science”. This the guy who has admitted to lying about masks nor working and lying about the levels needed to achieve herd immunity. And those are just the lies that he has admitted! It’s a scary crazy world.
I agree, Sky News seems to be the only sensible media outlet, but often blocked by Facebook and Google as fake news.
I disagree that content platforms should be regulated, unless ran by the government. If they advertise to be open, then block conservative outlets like Facebook/Google does on the regular, they should be held to truth in advertising laws. If they want to admit their bias, then that would be totally fine with me, as long as they are honest.
Governments however should not be allowed to do business with companies that admit their biases to avoid government truth in advertising laws, if you say you are a left-wing oriented site, you get no money. This would put a damper on Amazon and Google cloud products if they wanted to block eg. Parler from their systems, then no government contracts for you.
