So there's that `Social Dilemma` documentary, and the ever-cheesy The Hated One has a pretty good criticism. In fact, I'll probably largely re-make a lot of the points he does. Basically what he says is we shouldn't just 'regulate' them... because that sounds like saying nothing if you don't regulate properly. We should use open-source technology to power social networks, and pursue federated technology. As a witness of cap-and-trade, 'taxing data collection' also sounds like a stupid idea, along with what THO says - it will hyper-concentrate power into big corporations. These are treatments for symptoms, not the disease. The ultimate solution is to federate them, but for now (as I'll add at the end), one transition plan is interoperability.
There are some things the government should take over (local, or state, or federal), like water treatment, or roads, or healthcare - things where 'profit motive drives innovation' doesn't make much sense, and the public good is at stake. It's not always the case to 'nationalize' (or 'localize'? If it's the county government? Isn't that word taken?), and social media is one of them. The problem here is the government will de facto be the police of speech and socialization. The problem here is you centralize power - in this case, the power over speech/digital socialization by the government. It institutionalizes a lever of power that can be abused, and if you're gonna sign up for that, you better be sure that every other option is absolutely untenable. Is this the only option?
No. Instead, a federated social web would decentralize control. There is no one who can censor or call the shots. This raises the issue of the alt right gaining strong footholds here... and my obvious solution is that this is not a technology problem - this is a socio-economic problem; poverty, loss-of-jobs, etc. exacerbates peoples prejudices, makes things uglier, etc. However, technology does play a role - targeting advertising and all that, it acts as a centrifuge which concentrates people into echo chambers. These large tech companies profit off of the madness. One solution is to 'regulate' - the idea being that if we just don't let them do that, then the centrifuge turns off, and the madness dies down. But wait - why do we even need a few centralized dictators, who we have to keep in check like a King with a weak Magna Carta, calling the important shots? Why not decentralize?
The technology to make a federated web exists - for example, the Matrix protocol for a Discord-like application, which is free and open source software (FOSS). The design of Matrix is oriented towards bridging different social media together - they have written bridges for Slack, Twitter, and Discord, for example, so that a user in Slack can talk to a user in a Matrix server. This design means it is great for transitioning from a closed-source, centralized social web to an open source, decentralized web. Their flagship server, Element, has around 40,000 people using it, and so far has had no issues. The only thing that justifies these large companies and there spying and incessant adware is that this torrent of money to the top is necessary to keep the innovation going. Frankly, that's wrong (Linux + Matrix + more shows that), and that money doesn't pay innovators nearly as much as it pays people that do nothing.
The beauty of Matrix is it also kills the networking argument for large corporations - 'if we split up Facebook, it would ruin the whole point of Facebook - being able to contact all of your friends anywhere in the world'. But there's no reason we need a single company running the show - the Matrix protocol allows people on one server to talk with anyone else on any other server, and they wouldn't even notice. It also means no one single entity has control.
What's even more beautiful is that because there isn't a monopoly on the social web then, users are no longer forced to accept being spied on. In this system, if you don't like how a server handles ads, for example, you could just go to a different server - yes, it might be a little annoying, but you'll still be in the same ecosystem. With Twitter, for example, even if you hate how they run things, you're kinda stuck with them, because if you want to use 'the Twitter protocol', you have to deal with Twitter. Same with Youtube. I mean, imagine, in a decentralized world, the Youtube 'adpocalype' wouldn't have happened, because advertisers would just choose not to advertise on questionable servers.
This gets to another point. There is still power. If you run a server, you can still set rules, terms of service, kick people out, etc. But no one person can set the rules for ANYONE using the protocol. You could build a reputation for being a server with good, reasonable rules. YOU get to decide this - you don't have to deal with the weird annoying rules of the Twitch (Amazon) or Youtube (Google) or Twitter or Facebook leaders. You also get to decide how you run ads. Because in this world, a server pretty much only means (A) rules and limits for what you can/can't do and (B) what set of ads rotate when looking at someones page. For example, if I went to Joe Smith's page, if he is on Server X, I might get Coke ads, and he might not post about how great restricting voting rights are. Or I might go to Susan Jones' page (who is on Server Y) and they may not do ads at all, and she might post about socialism and all that. Or they may do ads still, but just from a select few companies. But here, Susan Jones and Joe Smith are not responsible for determining what specific ads show up on their page (although maybe that's an option on some servers) - that is the responsibility of the server provider. There may even be collectively owned servers - that would be great! The real kicker is that even if you are on Server X or Server Y, anyone on any Server can still interact with you (if you want); the server just dictates the rules you follow, the ads you get, and the ownership structure you want.
This is all to say, fixing social networks does not mean we have to abandon the benefits of networking, or that we need to give the government control of social networks. We need to decentralize them by federating them, so that there isn't power that can be abused. When you centralize power, when you create an abusable resource, that makes things controversial, that's when people do things that make people mad. That's how you create situations where abusive ad systems can be implemented, and no one can do anything about it. Decentralize the web.
Also, I'm not necessarily an advocate of blockchain stuff right now, or heavy-duty peer-to-peer. It seems pretty resource intensive, and federated networks seems like it both gets the benefits of client-server efficiency, but avoids the pitfalls of centralizing that under one umbrella.
And if you're wondering, the Matrix protocol is free and open source. So even the Matrix devs, and all the contributors, can't abuse it, because everyone would see it. And if they did abuse it, people would just make a fork of it (because it's open source), and switch to that. It's nearly impossible to abuse free and open source software (although it is possible, granted), because someone can always fork it if it goes off the rails, and everyone can see what you're doing.
This part is still a work in progres...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a leading nonprofit for digital competition, privacy and free speech advocacy, published a post, alluding to these same problems addressed by federating, saying that:
'Today, big platforms are ecosystems unto themselves. Companies create accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in order to interact with consumers. Platforms maintain suites of business-facing APIs that let other companies build apps to work within the boundaries of those platforms. And since they control the infrastructure that others rely on, the platforms have unilateral authority to decide who gets to use it.'
'This is a problem for competition. It means that users of one platform have no easy way of interacting with friends on other services unless the platform’s owners decide to allow it. It means that network effects create enormous barriers to entry for upstart communications and social networking companies. And it means that the next generation of apps that would work on top of the new ecosystems can only exist at big tech’s pleasure.'
Their solution is interoperability, and if that word sounds like what the Matrix protocol does, that's pretty much correct. But simply calling for federating social networks is alone insufficient - legislative action to break down the barriers that digital giants maintain is also necessary to open this path, and that is an issue that the EFF is concerned with.
'Big Tech’s largely successful war on competitive compatibility reveals one of the greatest dangers presented by market concentration: its monopoly rents produce so much surplus that firms can afford to pursue the maintenance of their monopolies through the legal system, rather than by making the best products at the best prices.'