Hacker News Reader

>or we empower some individuals and companies to control and govern communications etc

We've been down this route in several countries during the 20th century and it doesn't pan out well.

Every nation did this until the internet. Those companies were collectively called “the press” in the western world.

Which kinda worked until the press worked out that favouring contentious topics and maintaining two viewpoints was more profitable.

You’re really going to throw the press in Britain, along with independent anti-establishment papers like Socialist Worker and Marxism Today alongside the Times and the Guardian, into the same bucket as that of Soviet Russia, Maoist China and North Korea?

Given my point is that you don’t need to be a dictatorship to do it, yes.

Not that being free from government influence frees you from the political preferences of your owner, as this recent non-sequitur headline from the Express should demonstrate: “EU BLACKMAIL: Brussels threatens FOOD AID to UK in 'last throw of dice of Project Fear'”.

Like I said, we're probably screwed anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com