I was watching the news this morning and they were talking about the latest company that's boycotting Russia in response to the social media storm. It occurred to me that governments are becoming increasingly irrelevant. They don't have to impose sanctions (and their own rules make it difficult to do so) - the Twitter mob is deciding who to banish. It's a form of democracy, I guess - but one without any checks or balances or regulations.
I mean, sure... getting banned from Twitter is momentarily annoying but Twitter having far more power to regulate speech than the entity that writes the laws that define Twitter's existence, that claims a monopoly on violence, and that in many cases directly controls the media and censors the internet? No.
It's a common argument but I've never really found it a compelling one.
You can literally make your own twitter any time you want. My charitable view is that people are actually complaining about a monopoly on attention. It's an interesting subject but doesn't have anything to do with speech.
Until cloud companies decide to stop hosting you and registrars refuse to register your domain.
But of course you can also make your own cloud company and your own domain registrar as well.
Until your upstream network provider decides to drop you (this happened to Epik, temporarily killing the whole company until they dropped 8chan).
But of course you could also make your own backbone ISP.
It's not a problem even most garden variety racist assholes on the internet are likely to have, though.
Also, 8chan is doing fine.
America decided 231 years ago that private actors would have more power over speech than the government.
Is it really companies boycotting Russia? Or is it that they're no longer doing business with people in Russia due to the sanctions (and therefore the likelihood that there would be no way to get paid), with some pretty marketing speak wrapped around it?
It's not much different than the old historical mobs with pitch forks and torches, only there's a slightly lower potential to physical harm.
I've been thinking this for quite a few years now.
>the Twitter mob is deciding who to banish. It's a form of democracy, I guess - but one without any checks or balances or regulations.
Or swarms of bots shaping public opinion run by just a few people? As long as Govt's allow encryption, over the telecoms networks in their countries, the sooner govts become irrelevant.