this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Shouldn't renaming a social media really be up to the users? Shouldn't twitter users vote on that?
We just conceded that social media are owned by some corporate entity but the only values is in the users themselves. They build it. They should "own" and control the social media democratically, it should be accountable to them. It seems much more obvious than with traditional media that these should be democratic institutions.
Elon Musk behaving so blatantly stupid is unusual but the problem is really much larger.
No.
Users shouldn't have any say over how a social media company is run -- there would be utter chaos.
Take Twitter for example -- I would imagine there are 33% liberals, 33% conservatives, 5% neo-nazis, 5% neo-communists and 24% who don't give a crap about politics because they are bots from China.
(I am just using these figures for an example -- I have no idea about real figures).
So if you need a new name then there would be a huge fight to call it any number of things, none of which relate to a corporate brand.
And if you ask them about corporate policies? "Censorship"? "Should we allow free speech?" "Should we allow hate speech?" "What is hate speech?"
Can you imagine the chaos?
No. Social media should not be run by its users. It is just asking for it to implode within a day.
RIP democracy
Outside of companies with shareholders (who own part of the company) can you name any other companies where "users" get a say on how its run?
Well I doubt it exists. But your arguments should logically apply just as well to democracy in general. Not saying you're totally wrong because you'd get politics and misinformation, but the attitude to self determination of people is a bit worrying.
No offence, but you sound insane.
You sound like a fascist. Offense intended.
(grin) I can see how that could be the case.
But -- polite insults aside -- all I am saying is that I am not sure how companies and corporations can be democratically answerable to their customers. (Again -- I am excluding those companies/corporations that have shareholders).
If they want to listen to their customers, or customers want to stage boycotts to force companies to act in a specific way that's a different matter, but......... take Globodex.
Globodex is a fictional company that is a multinational company with branches in America, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia and Australia.
It doesn't have any shareholders -- it is run by a board of twelve men and women.
How could that be democratically run by its customers? Given that there are millions of customers across eight countries?
And why would you think that because I believe this -- that we shouldn't have a say in how companies we use are run -- that we shouldn't have a say in how our country is run? Because that seems like a very wild jump that is entirely unfounded by any evidence.
Well the argument that you shouldn't let people decide because it would be utter chaos (look at this riff raff!), that argument is as old as the idea of democracy. You might be right in case of twitter, but you used the same arguments that is very much in the hearts of the fascists trying to grab power right now. And the policies of social media are very much a factor in this too.
And why can't a company be run democratically? Either by the workers that are creating the actual wealth, or by the users, or some mixture of it? Why can't they elect representatives / managers and decide what to do with profits and where to invest?
The capital of a social media is really it's users and it's users private data. Otherwise it's a relatively simple software. This is quite different from many other companies and strikes me particularily as something that shouldn't be owned by capital, because it is so sensitive. And because it's more like a public utility.
If social media was run democratically, the first thing they'd vote for is more privacy. Then for less ads. Or maybe to invest more in bots and customer service checking on bots. They'd ask to institude a system to limit offensive shitposters and trolls, or paid for political misinformation. I'm pretty sure the actual developers would want very similar things because they want to create and offer a good product and are not fussed about increasing shareholders profit.
Instead some rich fuck comes along, buys it and changes the name? "Oh you're using X today because I think that sounds cool!". That strikes me as rather offensive and almost disparaging, like saying to millions of users "oh you don't get a say, I own this. I know best".
They can leave but they loose the connections they made. They can switch to mastadon or similar but it's far from sure if that will be successful and another thing if this is actually an overall benefit to humanity.
Or said in a different way: How can human civilization progress in positive ways when the means of communications are owned by those who have entirely selfish motivations? It might be possible to show through some mathematical modelling that it's actually impossible to reach desired outcomes with the current setup.
Overall democracy hasn't been improved but very much minmaxed by special interests who tweaked the rules and created institutions to control everything. Worst of all the minds. Why shouldn't we improve our democracy? It's clearly not working. And why shouldn't we have a fifth estate, separate from the executive and legislative, to control the economy?
But you're not even allowed to suggest any of this because the current status quo that everything should be owned is so ingrained in peoples minds. There is the left and the right and anything not on that spectrum is clearly insane.
That is somewhat of a logical fallacy.
I made a very specific argument -- users/customers of a company not being allowed to have a direct say in how the company is run -- and you expanded that into saying I don't support democracy at all? That is a HUGE misrepresentation of my position -- one that is not supported by ANYTHING I said in any of my posts.
Also you have a very idealistic view of what social media users would vote for. To think they would vote for "a perfect possible system" (which is what your fourth paragraph suggests) is (for me) somewhat naïve.
Me? I think that one political side or the other would vote for their ideology to take control -- they would vote for unfettered free speech, which would remove all hate speech policies and so forth. We've seen it on Twitter -- all the people who were banned under the previous regime were returned. All the people who were banned for very good reasons were returned, and the site has gone to shit.
But that wasn't my central point.
My central point was that just because I believe private corporations shouldn't answer to the myriad of users & customers they serve doesn't mean I don't believe in democracy on a wider scale. And nothing I said in any of my posts would suggest that.
Well replace "company" with "country" and the only arguments you bring forward is about democracy in general being bad. You later argued logistical difficulties with a multi national company, which is a different argument. And I'd concede that there are legitimate arguments against this, but your argument are just very general "demorcacy bad". Lol I'll leave that typo as it is.
You could replace "company" with "rabbit" and my argument would make no sense.
Does that make me a raving lunatic?
This is what I meant when I said "You sound insane" -- if you change someone's argument to something completely different then IT'S NOT THEIR ARGUMENT ANY MORE and you are entirely misquoting them.
It's called Reductio ad absurdum. If your logic is absurd about people voting in a democracy, then you'd have to provide some rationale why it's not absurd when applied to voting in economic systems. There are good arguments against this.
But your only point was that it would be utter chaos, like it was a given. And that is the same argument authoritarians, monarchists, dictators and plutocrats have been making forever - and are making right now. Right now they are spreading this propaganda around, everywhere. And you picked it up and used it. And that is how they maintain power. That is the actual mechanism of thought control in western "democracies".
My argument would be people don't own the companies.
They do -- from a certain point of view -- own their countries.
So while they have no right to have a say in the operation of the companies, they do have a right to have a say in the operation of their countries.