No, I don’t. I remember when the internet would (it did!) and Usenet would (it did!) and irc and open source and the web (they did!) but social media was always about entertainment and (one way or another) monetization of those technologies. It’s the cancer of our collective mind and achievements.
Why did you trust what The Atlantic and Foreign Policy had to say at the time? Anyone can tell you anything ; that's no reason to take them so seriously you're disappointed if events years later show their claims to be wrong.
There's some "they" or another that makes all sorts of claims, including obviously stupid or self-serving ones; and with no requirement that different "they" s be consistent about what claims they make.
The rhetorical device "Remember when they told us that ____" is meant to imply that there was some legitimate, trustworthy authority that made a claim about the world that people should have been willing to trust, that turned out not to be true. And what I'm disputing is that the specific authorities - prestige English-language news and opinion organizations like The Atlantic - should ever have been particularly trustworthy, or even authoritative. The Atlantic writing an article in 2010 arguing that social media is bringing democracy to Iran by facilitating the Green Revolution should not even at the time have been considered to be a trustworthy, authoritative voice that people should put much creedence in. Indeed the actual text of that article is someone challenging the claims that (Western) social media were particularly important to what was happening at the time, presumably in response to other, more pro-social-media voices also speaking at the time.
My point is not necessarily to litigate what specific people writing for specific publications about then-current geopolitical events, and how good their analysis was in hindsight; it's to argue that any analysis of this sort is simply not a promise that anyone should feel betrayed about not being consistent with real events years later.
Social media was about staying in touch. Whether that was about your friends and family (Facebook) or your city / neighborhood (Twitter). Algorithmic feeds are what poisoned the well.
Email was about staying in touch. IRC, AIM, ytalk, phone were about staying in touch. Social media was about addicting you and your children for money at any cost to you and your children.
At some point societies are going to have to reckon with the fact that democracy, free speech, and unrestricted capitalism simply aren't a sustainable mix. A system that allows people to amass incredible fortunes and use those fortunes to influence other people's beliefs and votes is simply a system that will eventually fall under the control of those ultrawealthy people.
The "proven track record" part of your question is shortsighted. We shouldn't restrict future political thought by past political thoughts. We'd never see any progress that way.
If you're asking which one of the three I think we should focus our attention for change, I think the obvious answer from both a moral and logical standpoint is capitalism. The combination of democracy and free speech means money is political power. Allowing individuals to amass this much political power is both unjust and destabilizing. That goes for companies as well. If companies are going to be amorally motivated purely by money, we need to do a better job of pricing in externalities to put reins on that amorality.
Someone smarter than me can weight on this part, but I don't think it was/is capitalism per se. Moving off the gold standard, and allowing the Dodge Brothers to win the case saying stock holders were more important than paying workers were a 1-2 gut punch to capitalism. I don't believe our forefathers would be very proud of us if they saw this mess.
Dodge v. Ford was both a landmark case and a very narrow excuse that holds no jurisdiction outside of Massachusetts. I hope someone challenges it one day, but it seems like any potential challengers benefit from pretending it's precedent.
I don't understand your intended distinction with the rolls royces analogy. Would you expand?
Also, I may not have as robust understanding of anarchism... Does anarchism incorporate game theory and account for tensions between competition and cooperation?
Capitalism is fully compatible with anarchism. (Though certainly it functions better under a system where your neighbor can't just kill you and take your stuff.)
Basically any system other than anarchy? In every civilized country I know of if your neighbor kills you then afterwards they'll be on the run from the law, not selling your house on Facebook marketplace the next day.
Anarchism as "an extension of nature" certainly does mean that, as least assuming you've got more guns/muscle than the other guy.
If you want to use a different definition of anarchism that includes a legal system and police force then that's not the kind of anarchism being discussed here.
High captial tax rates, strong labor protections, and banned stock buybacks as a start. So much hubub over "make america great again" but we seem very coy about looking at fiscal policy back in the "great" days.
And I don't even think these are the best ideas. But they have "a proven track record".
It's not an either/or situation... we can improve on the capitalist system we have today (in the US) through government policy (taxes, whatever). I fear we're actually too late, and ceded too ,much influence to the billionaire class, but that's not totally proven out yet.
Marginal tax rates on income and wealth that make being a billionaire impossible? The US was prosperous with much higher marginal tax rates for instance.
We should treat existing fortunes as bugs and correct them.
Good, let them leave, then. I'm tired of this excuse of "but the parasites are crucial to our way of life". As if the invisible hand won't have dozens of other companies to compete and fill the void should the monopoly man walk away with his money.
They've had decades to move to Dubai or New Zealand or whatever other magical country doesn't tax its residents. I wonder why they choose to stay in one of the richest countries in the world instead?
The Islamic system does not permit uncontrolled capitalism, requires fair financial transactions, is pro rights for both rulers and the population, enforces Zakat (alms tax / a form of wealth tax).
If you're being sarcastic, yes lots of westerners are in the region because of lower taxes and other benefits. Otherwise, correlation is not causation, much of the situation there is because of the fallout of western colonization, including Islamic principles being not fully applied there (the west is behind a lot of it), and the usurious financial system.
The middle east has the largest concentration of billionaires outside of US/China and huge poverty alongside. It is so grotesque that the rich will often just kill people and casually pay blood money.
Begin a billionaire is not inherently unethical. It's about how the money was acquired and how it is spent. This notion that it is evil is mainly a western one.
The slavery it permits (yet heavily restricts) is different than the one in your head that europeans and americans engaged in, so that's a straw man. Sex slavery is not permitted.
When you read history, you would see that many Mawali were scholars, and you can read about the Mamluki empire. This was never seen anywhere in human history.
As discussed elsewhere in this thread, the slavery that you're thinking of is still permitted in capitalist america, not to mention other forms that exist today in broad daylight, but are more subtle, so people don't say anything (and those are prohibited by Islam).
The west is practically fully secular, and they have relegated religion to individualistic practice, so to your point, there aren't any "christian nations". This is on purpose so those in power are able to do whatever they want.
They're trying to do the same with Islam, enormous amounts of money are being spent, but Islam has the advantage of an extremely strict and rigorous scholarly heritage and preservation, thank God. We are under no illusion that the battle will be an easy one. Much of what's happening today has been foretold in our texts.
I'm pro-Islamic government, one where it is correctly applied, not what we see today in much of the Islamic world (due to many factors, not the least of which is western intervention).
Neither does democracy nor free speech. It's interesting that you felt the need to quibble over only one of those three definitions.
I used those words in the context of the rise of companies like Meta and people like Zuckerberg. I trusted the people reading what I wrote to know that. A response telling me the US is a republic adds nothing to the conversation but allowing an individual to bask in their own pedantry.
The idea that democracy doesn't exist in the world is not something that I currently agree with. Did you mean to say direct democracy?
Very similar take on free speech vs absolute free speech. Did your definition mean to include exceptions for libel, fraud, child exploitation? Etc.?
You seem to be insinuating something about me by saying "it's interesting you felt..." But you are the one who put the "unrestricted" qualifier next to capitalism and no such extreme anchors on the other two concepts.
It's also interesting that you chose to imply something about my character instead of reflect on your own choice of words and their objective meanings.
Like I said, I don't think quibbling over specific word choices is productive. So what are you hoping to accomplish with your comments here? Because you're coming off like someone trying to score points in a high school debate rather than someone trying to have a conversation. I would consider that interpretation as giving you the benefit of the doubt, because the only alternative is a judgment of your intellect.
To end any possible confusion, "unrestricted capitalism" meant capitalism without enough restrictions. It was used to cover a range of related concepts and ideologies such as laissez-faire, Anglo-Saxon, and neoliberalism. It was used to indicate that my problem was not with more basic capitalistic ideals like private property and competitive markets.
A balance between democracy, free speech and capitalism are worth fighting for, protecting, and are an engine for prosperity. They aren't any less sustainable than life itself or any other framework societies have run on. I am all for continuous improvement, but to throw any of those three pillars out seems like a terrible idea, and only an extremely well laid argument could convince me otherwise. I have never seen such an argument.
In your original comment you made the specific point "societies are going to have to reckon with the fact that democracy, free speech, and unrestricted capitalism simply aren't a sustainable mix". I then pointed out that "unrestricted capitalism" isn't actually being practiced anywhere, which is true. The reason I pointed this out can be reframed as a question: "What society actually thinks that unrestricted capitalism is sustainable?" or alternatively... "No societies are practicing unrestricted capitalism, so why would a reckoning be necessary?".
Your response was to then claim "Neither does democracy nor free speech [exist anywhere in the world]" which is clearly false.
Where I think we stand now: My opinion is that the reason these problems are mounting in the USA is due to when it exists in the money-government-power-system-life-cycle. There are surely lessons to learn here, but "unrestricted capitalism" is a misnomer and not relevant, and therefore a balance between it and other factors is by extension irrelevant. The core problem is corruption and a shift in government from prioritizing the wants of individuals to the wants of corporations. This is manifesting as both too many bad laws and not enough good laws, and a breakdown in how laws are written and maintained. There are several critical regressions, but a big one was citizens united. Overall, this particular instance of the system is at the end of its life, and requires substantial renewal. It's a messy and complex problem, and in many ways probably inevitable. It has nothing to do with unrestricted capitalism.
I admit that my original comment was insufficiently clear in representing my point and it would have been better if I had elaborated.
I am also disappointed by your continued Ad Hominem. It's exchanges like this that turn me off HN for a while.
Let me be as straightforward as I can be. You are debating a straw man that arose out of you inserting your own adverb into my first comment. You saw "unrestricted" as "completely unrestricted" rather than the "relatively unrestricted" I intended. That intention should have been clear because I was talking in a thread about Meta so my comments can be assumed to be about the systems in which Meta operates. Everyone else here seems to have understood my intention. Your refusal or inability to recognize that original misreading is causing you to misread my other comments.
Shame on me for assuming the words you wrote were the words you meant.
I assumed that by "unrestricted capitalism" you meant laissez faire, or in alignment with how it's defined in textbooks, Google, or any modern LLM model, etc...
Depending on your definition, it may actually exist in many places around the world. As long as criminal CEOs/executives/engineers are not prosecuted under the laws they break everyday, one could argue "unrestricted" is the norm here in France, or in the USA. Two small examples out of a widespread issue:
- fascist-owned CNews keeps spreading illegal (under french law) fake news yet noone is jailed, the fines barely make a dent in the profits, and their nationwide TV channel continues to receive license despite breaking all regulations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNews#Warnings_and_sanctions
It can and does. The power of social media to spread ideas and accelerate political action is why fascists took it over and co-opted it. That's why we're fed the narrative that social media is evil and needs to be regulated or banned at all costs.
> That's why we're fed the narrative that social media is evil and needs to be regulated or banned at all costs.
Social media prioritizing algorithms that feed off division and anger is evil.
If Facebook & Twitter were still ways to simply keep in touch with friends, family, and interest groups, I don't think anyone would care (other than the ads).
I think Facebook is still that for most people. I think the narrative of widespread social addiction and "mind control" through social media is intentionally overstated to serve a political agenda. These problems to exist, social media can be addictive, misinformation does spread like wildfire, but I fear focusing on "algorithms" as a whole rather than the sources of misinformation or the companies running the big platforms is an attempt to make information and communication (and by extension political organization and action) more difficult in the long run.
Most people's proposed solutions seem counterproductive. Making social media illegal and banning it entirety removes a valuable means of communication and networking for people. Forcing all social media platforms with n> users to be nationalized means all platforms that might be useful for activism will be controlled by the government. Forcing them to only use strictly alphabetic or chronological listings makes access more difficult, but doesn't necessarily remove polarizing or false information. Repealing Section 230 would cripple speech across the internet and make it impossible for platform owners to police minsinformation and hate speech without taking on legal liability for themselves. All of these solutions at least implicitly serve the interests of authoritarians and all of them only seem reasonable because of the current moral panic around social media.
There have been plenty. Surely you aren't arguing that social media has never done so. Arguably social media has been one of the most catalyzing political forces in human history. And bearing in mind that "political action" can be in any direction, I found some examples. I didn't work very hard because this could have literally been a Google search on your part.
