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Comment by EggsOnToast | Hacker News Reader

This is just me soapboxing, but I would argue that situations like this illustrate a need for online social platforms run by the state. I realize the obvious vulnerabilities of such a setup, but if we believe free speech to be an essential element of our societies then we need social platforms beholden only to our own laws even if they simply exist in parallel to private platforms. The internet, and social media in this context, have become just as fundamentally important to discussions and grassroots politics as the street corner once was.

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Perhaps this is me being overly cynical, but a state-run social media platform seems like a recipe for massive, invisible, unchecked government surveillance and/or censorship. The last several years have made it abundantly clear that many parts of the US government do not consider privacy a right, and while our rights to free speech remain intact, I do not believe it is safe to assume this will remain the case across future administrations. In the worst case, a sufficiently popular administration could abuse state-run social platforms to locate, silence, and/or arrest dissidents, paving the way towards China-esque authoritarianism.

While such an extreme scenario is, needless to say, unlikely, the idea of centralizing the majority of social media under the control of a government that has shown increasing interest in mass surveillance remains something I am exceedingly dubious about.

I agree and this is why I would argue in favor of parallelism rather than replacement with regard to private social media platforms. I think it's important that there is a platform insulated from domestic intervention, but I think it's just as important to have a platform that isn't vulnerable to outside economic influence. Right now the best solution I can think of is to do both separately and just accept that one will probably be redundant to the other most of the time.

Such a platform is desperately hard to argue for, but I suspect that a trusted, basic platform provided by governments will become defacto in many nations within our lifetimes. We do have component precedent cases to build upon in Estonia, with the (failed) British ID cards etc, but I do wish a nation somewhere was further along. Perhaps small countries Luxembourg, Belgium, principities and Estonia are the places to keep an eye on rather than China, USA et al?

I also believe that such a platform is the quickest path towards incorruptible technocracies, slowly but surely through referendums being opened up through the platform (small, local decisions at first).

If this does not occur in the public sector, then I view governments as the taxi industry to capitalism's uber, and it will be the free market (controlled by increasingly intelligent public demand more than lagging legsislation) that starts to provide more 'pure democracy' behaviors. (As an aside, I wonder whether we shall start to see more interestingly structured IPOs)

The cynic in me sadly suspects that socialism just isn't fast enough, and that the free market will be the dominant tool for change - But that slowly but surely, public voice will become a more ethical one - In this era we are in which is surely a second age of enlightenment. Hopefully this will sculpt the free market to be more aligned with the commons, and less brutally and bluntly aimed at collecting $.

> socialism just isn't fast enough

the "Best Korea" has the fastest socialism in the world - heck it even has its own "social networking platform"

...and it's also "democratic" (in its own way, of course)

Conversely, it's arguable that we need social platforms that are immune to censorship by any state or private party. Such as properly implemented Tor onion services. But readily accessible from the open Internet.

I don't think these ideas need to be a binary choice. Some amount of redundancy may be beneficial. Strong anonymous communication is desirable when trying to defend against the state but at the same time if it's accessible and anonymous I'd argue it has the same vulnerabilities as Facebook or Twitter currently do with regard to being a non-obvious (to the layperson) propaganda tool. On the other hand, a state sponsored system runs the risk of being used to suppress dissidence. It could be argued that having both and simply paying the cost of redundancy might be a good idea. I don't know if it's the direction I'd argue for, but it's the first thing to come to mind as an off the cuff solution.

You're posting this comment on Hacker News and not 4Chan for a reason. Censorship is absolutely essential to make an internet community tolerable to people outside a tiny cohort of edgelords.

The important distinction is censorship of citizen-vs-citizen aggression, and censorship of political dissent. (If Hacker News unconditionally deleted all criticism of YC companies, I'd visit 4chan instead.)

And that implies we can't solve the issue with technology alone. Moderation needs to be possible, but we have to figure out a way to prevent abuse.

That's true. But that's mostly about different userbases. HN is actually not all that censored. It's largely community moderated. Very little gets completely deleted, just downvoted and flagged to oblivion.

Disruptive users do get shadow-banned, but it's trivial to create new ones. With accumulating karma, there is some pressure to self-censor. But overall, I like it better than StackExchange or reddit, for example.

Edit: I just noticed that this submission about Bitcoin energy use has been raised from the dead: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16498776

I disagree. The notion of inserting the state as the primary social intermediary in our society scares the living daylights out of me.

I do agree with your thesis that we need social platforms immune to arbitrary censorship, however.

I think the solution is some sort of trustless P2P system, where no one entity exercises ultimate control, and censorship is impossible, or at least very difficult. Of course that means that the platform won't be beholden to any nation's laws, irrespective of whether those laws are, in my opinion, just (criminalizing distribution of child pornography, for example) or not (criminalizing open political dissent, for example).

However, if I have to choose between absolute free speech and government- or megacorp-controlled, surveilled, and mediated social interaction, I choose absolute free speech.

You have those in China and Russia. Only they're run by private companies that dance to the state's tune.

>This is just me soapboxing, but I would argue that situations like this illustrate a need for online social platforms run by the state.

Most major social media collaborate so well with their country's elites, governments and national interests, that they might as well be run by their state.

You'd then have different social platforms for different countries.

Instead of run by the state, governments could choose to give out vouchers redeemable only at social platforms that charge users directly for their services instead of relying on the advertising and data-sales game.

I think your criticism is valid but I don't see it as unsolvable. Interconnectivity and decisions around how to facilitate it can be added later. While they are important elements for global dialogue, the first and foremost goal should be cultivating a domestic product that is suffiently feature rich to be a valid alternative to the current offerings. Interconnectivity with other social networks is a secondary goal that can be pursued as things progress.

I think there is a serious national security argument to be made against having the U.S. internet connect freely to Russian, Chinese, and other geopolitical adversary's internet.

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