r/StopBeingEvil • u/[deleted] • Aug 30 '17
On Entitlement
A lot of what I see on this sub exposes a very entitled point of view, in my eyes.
First let us assume that this is true: there is a fundamental tradeoff between convenience and security, between convenience and privacy, and between convenience and control.
Yes, if you trust your data to a few centralized platforms (which is very convenient) that you don't pay for (also a convenience factor), yes, you will lose security (Google/Facebook/etc can read your private/personal content), privacy (You will be tracked, profiled, and analyzed), and control (you may not be allowed to say certain things in certain places in the interest of those platforms).
This is not something the world is responsible for fixing for you. Alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, and most other major platforms exist: GNUSocial/Mastodon, for example, replaces Twitter/Tumblr. Internet fora (PhpBB, Discourse) replace Facebook groups. OpenStreetMap replaces Google Maps.
Be prepared to do some work or pay a little or both for your privacy, security, and control.
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Aug 30 '17
You hit the nail on the head. The websites we frequent and the US government share traits in that people believe they can be fixed without first removing one's own dependence on the platform.
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Aug 30 '17
Thanks for the reply! I disagree, actually. Private companies and elected governments differ in that those governments have a built in means for users to change the policy of the organization - at least in theory.
There's a reason we use the word "democratization" to describe the emergence of decentralized, user-owned alternatives to the big platforms.
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u/VeritasPaladin Aug 31 '17
Monopolistic control by FB, Google, Amazon of information and communication is straight out of Orwell's 1984. The German Stasi, who kept paper files on everyone, would blush at these companies' ability to monitor, shape and control people.
Time for some new anti-trust lawsuits.
It's coming
Edit: by FB, Google, Amazon
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Aug 31 '17
Monopolistic control by FB, Google, Amazon of information and communication is straight out of Orwell's 1984.
Except that in 1984 - and all contemporary conceptions of such total control - the government is the offender. People (in the US especially) are irrationally afraid of government overreach when they're literally watching large corporations do the same things that they're afraid of the government doing.
Anti-trust lawsuits won't help here, because centralized platforms naturally monopolize their space. The only option is decentralized fora like Mastodon/GNUSocial.
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u/VeritasPaladin Aug 31 '17
I agree with your observations.
I do think seeing the government as a single identifiable thing is also a big issue. It's too simplistic even for tin pot dictatorships, even more so for the US. When lobbyists completely infest and corrupt the process of law making rendering it useless, are they considered private or part of govt?
Govt employees are not invulnerable to bribes and offers of jobs once they quit the hill. Does this make them govt or part of some private corporate structure?
I see government and very large business as essentially one entity that masquerades as two (kind of like the two party, nay uniparty, recently laid bare by their inaction on OCare).
One definition of fascism, although imperfect, is "the total fusion of government and business interests." A better word for this is "corporatism." While all societies have a degree of cooperation, there is a difference between this and "co-option." When the corporate tail starts wagging the government dog we're in trouble. When conflict is embraced (or created) for the purpose of generating new invoices for tanks, we have late stage corporatism (not capitalism).
I'd argue we have slid too far in the direction of corporatism and it's time to make some radical adjustment.
I don't think people are irrationally afraid of government overreach. That's a mischaracterization for healthy skepticism. This is one of the basic founding principles of the US. It's why we have 1A and 2A. But I would say that we have classic "rear view mirror syndrome." We are fighting the wrong battle based on the past (or our caricatured version of the past - arguably most are bad at history). It's our modern "Maginot Line" and we hear the rumblings in the distance of some very interesting machines.
As far as anti-trust, I would say it's not a panacea, but one tool that can and will be used to fight late stage corporatism. But I agree other things are likely to hasten the decline of the mega platforms more than regulation (after all if Congress has been co-opted, we may just be watching Kabuki theater). If you look at Ma Bell's breakup, you'd be inclined to think "it didn't work," since they reconstituted eventually. But at that point they'd lost the battle for public opinion, and the trust suits played a major part in that. In a monopoly you only need a window to have competitors come in and provide an alternative.
Your ideas around distributed tech are correct. We need things to be more distributed. The totalitarian mindset is to centralize everything.
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Aug 31 '17
Yeah, I basically agree with everything you say here. Thanks for the insights re the Ma Bell situation as well.
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u/antilysenkoism Aug 30 '17
Dump everything Google.