this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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Privacy
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Probably lukewarm take: Social media shouldn't be a utility because it provides no social value or improvement of quality of life in the same way other genuine public utilities like electricity, water, sewer services, or general access to the internet, might. It's also putting the government in a position in which it functionally would have to provide a platform for everyone equally, Neo-Nazis, climate deniers, anti-vaccers, and every other person with "insert terrible belief here" included.
Ultimately, saying social media should be a public utility is like saying casinos and strip clubs should be public utilities. Just because it's fun to use doesn't mean it's good for society or come anywhere close to meeting the definition for the level of necessity typically attached to something as a public utility.
When businesses ask you to contact their help-desk via WhatsApp, it's a utility. When people call and message friends, family, and colleagues almost exclusively on WhatsApp or Messenger, it's a utility.
Godwin's Law People preaching [insert terrible belief] on a government platform would be removed and charged for hate speech just as much as they would be if preaching these things in public spaces. If your government gives people with terrible_belief.jpg the chance to preach on public property, that's not a public property issue, that's a government issue.
No, it isn't. If anything, turning certain popular social media apps into public utilities would limit them from being pure dopamine hits. Let other websites exist to fill the cesspool void. Not the one my grandma uses.
Except...no, it's not. That's an extremely naive understanding of what a "public utility" is. A public utility is not defined by how many people use something. Public utilities are essential services that typically operate on economies of scale. That is to say services without realistic replacement and which have large upfront creation and maintenance costs and which only make sense to provide access to a large number of people. You can't replace electricity with some alternate source of power. It's electricity. Same for water. They're fundamental services that are required for other services to exist. Without electricity you don't have phone or internet. Without water you can't have sewer systems or indoor plumbing.
WhatsApp, by comparison, is trivially easy to replace. A business chooses to use WhatsApp for customer service. They could just as easily setup a Discord server or just establish an 800 number for you to call. They have immediate drop-in replacements. Arguing otherwise is sort of like arguing that Coke should be considered a public utility because a business serves Coke products. They don't have to serve Coke. They could serve Pepsi. Or anything else.
Also, your reasoning is kind of skewed, because in order to even use something like WhatsApp, you need other, already existing services. Namely internet access. It makes literally no sense to say "WhatsApp should be a utility" without first arguing that "internet access for all individuals at a national level should be a public utility." Which I would personally argue is something that does qualify as a utility, far more than any specific social media services or app, and the fact that it isn't is a huge problem for the United States.
Oh, okay, "Godwin's Law" is it? Cool. Here's an actual law. Like a literal piece of legislation that exists: it's called the First Amendment. I don't know if you're just speaking from a non-American context, or just don't know how "freedom of speech" is codified into law in the United States. Maybe you're a kid or something and just haven't learned that in school yet. But freedom of speech in public places is universally protected under the constitution. Like, there are still public Klan rallies in certain parts of the country. This is what allows those to happen. If the United States government maintained its own social media service, it would functionally not have the power to moderate any content that was not explicitly illegal. Bigotry and hate speech are not illegal under the constitution.
First off, I think you are being very rude. I didn't call you names or make assumptions, so please treat this with more respect than a Twitter thread.
Olvid, a French alternative to WhatsApp, was made in 2019. It took a law passing last month banning all ministers from using non in-house messaging services to stop people from using WhatsApp. I wouldn't consider that "trivially easy".
You didn't mention Internet access and so neither did I. I'm happy we both agree it should be a utility.
I already said this is a "government problem". I said this in reference to the US government, because this isn't really an issue for most countries :/
I'll think about it... ...Okay, I thought about it. No.
Except in your own example, a viable alternative was immediately available. Users didn't switch because they didn't have other options or were physically limited from using anything else. They just preferred to use WhatsApp. Switching to an alternative was trivially easy. People just didn't want to because of personal preference. It would be trivially easy for me to stop drinking coffee every morning and only drink water - there's nobody pointing a gun at my head to make me drink coffee - but I like coffee and would be annoyed by giving it up and probably have a hard time quitting. The same is probably true for many people. Should access to coffee be considered a utility? Probably not.
You mentioned WhatsApp. Several times. WhatsApp is owned by Meta, an American company. If you want it to be a public utility and its owned by an American company, which country is going to be the one to make that happen? Also, calling "completely eradicating the first amendment in order to make it so that the American government can forcibly seize and censor people on its new state run social media websites" a "government problem" is an atomic bomb level of understatement.
It's not about personal preference. It's about momentum. If I stop drinking coffee, only I am being affected. If I stop using Whatsapp, I now have to convince everyone I'm in contact with to also use the alternative when msging me before I can actually stop using WhatsApp.
I am confident the EU could do it. A complete transfer of ownership isn't necessary for other countries to use exported services as public utilities. Public-private partnerships exist.
"American freedom of speech = Nazis get to speak" was your stance before. Now it's "Anything but American freedom of speech = government censorship". What am I even supposed to say here?
Once again, the popularity of something is not what defines its status as a utility.
Yes, that would be devastating, wouldn't it? "Hey, I'm not on WhatsApp anymore. If you want to reach me, please send me a text message or an email." Wow. So difficult. \s
Could do it and "has a reason to do it" are very different things. There is no motivation there because WhatsApp and other, similar services, are ubiquitously available. It would be a largely pointless endeavor. Also, the EU has the same style of media freedom laws as the United States. If they ran a service, they wouldn't be able to censor the content on it. Like, legally speaking it couldn't. Hope you like a state-run platform for European Nazis....because that's what you'd get.
You implied America's first amendment was a "government problem." I described what would happen if the United States got rid of it. I don't know if you need to say anything, but you might want to brush up on your reading comprehension skills.