Comment by prewett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by prewett | Hacker News Reader

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Regulation, e.g. of utilities, in the in U.S. is sort of a form of nationalization. Technically they are not nationalized, but since they have all kinds of requirements, including needing to apply for rate changes, they aren't exactly normal, either. And if you don't have control of your prices, do you really have a capitalistic business?

But aside from that, 3 people at Google get to effectively dictate what the world will see on the Internet via the top 10 on the search. 1 guy at Facebook gets to dictate what is on my Facebook page. (I certainly don't get any choice in the matter, beyond banning people) This sounds a lot like a dictatorship, and is this what a free society does? Might a free society decide that it is in the society's best interest to have social media be governed by elected officials, and to not be scientifically designed (via A/B testing) to be addictive?

> Regulation, e.g. of utilities, in the in U.S. is sort of a form of nationalization.

That's the example I had in mind when writing my comment. The utilities WERE nationalized, however they were de-regulated in recent years, and the market has not really recovered from when they were handed government endorsed monopolies.

>This sounds a lot like a dictatorship, and is this what a free society does?

Rediculous, nobody is forcing you to use Google or Facebook.

It's extremely difficult for a regular user to use the web without bouncing into something provided by one of those two groups.

Nobody's forcing in the sense of directly threatening you if you don't use Google or Facebook, that is true.

But: (a) particularly with regards to social networking, the social pressure to use walled-garden sites like Facebook can be very, very strong (b) if you're a Normal Person(tm), it can be hard to know what else to do other than use the same services that everyone else uses and that are being actively marketed to you.

Sure, at the individual level, using Google and Facebook services (as I myself do) is still a voluntary, consensual transaction, but there may well be societal-level effects that look fairly close to those of traditional monopolies.

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