-They enjoy a de facto monopoly and are protected by the extreme cost, risk and time involved in building competing services.
-Finally, they have a potential for abuse (say, with selective censorship or politically biased algorithms) that could essentially curb the Constitutional rights of individuals
If these points sound familiar it's because they're frequently used when arguing for the nationalization of a private company. Since I think that's (currently) out of reach, I believe regulating Facebook, Google, et al as public utilities to be the next best thing.
Some people really do have a naïve trust in government. Free markets are the answer. Who has actually made a legitimate attempt to compete with Google or Facebook? What VCs are investing in Facebook alternatives?
MySpace was unstoppable – until it wasn’t. Yahoo owned search – until it didn’t. Perhaps there ought to be more bold entrepreneurship rather than calls for regulation.
Sounds to me that people are ok with just giving up and giving Facebook the win.
Don’t like Facebook’s dominance? Then challenge it. Don’t cop out and just let the government take control.
History is littered with great companies toppled by better ideas and execution.
It's naive to think that any one form of human organization, be it governmental or corporate, is somehow less corruptible than another. You're right to be on your guard against governmental abuses, but don't take your eye off the other balls in play.
History is littered with great companies toppled by better ideas and execution.
What we've seen lately are instances where one company topples another and proceeds to commit the same abuses, only more effectively and at wider scale. When Facebook replaced MySpace, were its users really that much better off? Which company had fewer rules and enforced fewer content guidelines? When one company dominates the market and locks it up with network effects, what incentive does that leave them to play well with others?
You don't think any organizations have ever been any more corruptible than any other organizations?
None of these organizations should have been trusted implicitly to do the right thing for society at large. The burden of proof rests decisively with those who want us to believe that Google and Facebook are somehow different.
Are you really claiming that very government that tries to regulate corporations is going to wind up like China?
You know there are lots of governments around the world that regulate corporations, and most aren't anything like China.
"Some people really do have a naïve trust in government. Free markets are the answer."
Some people really do have a naive trust in free markets.
What are you actually proposing?
I'm with you. I don't want that, but at some point I expect to lose the argument. Google will cut their own throats with their smug "We investigated our decision and found it to be correct" pronunciations.
The fact is, any sufficiently dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a government. The more a company like Google behaves like a bureaucratically-hidebound public utility, the harder it will be to argue that it shouldn't be regulated like one.
An alternative is to classify Google as a common carrier, exempting them from the DMCA, but preventing them from censoring or even throttling traffic, however given their business model is around sponsorship, it is unclear how to also protect the advertisers' interests. Trying to get government shackles onto Google simply seems too tricky;
It seems much easier to simply run Google with tax dollars and no advertising.
Google and Facebook combined have a total market cap (sum of all shares) is around 1.2 trillion dollars, which would represent only a 5% increase in tax revenue for America to simply buy all the shares.
However, the Government doesn't need to turn a profit: Google and Facebook combined spend only around $200 million dollars per year on R&D and operating expenses, which would be a rounding error on the tax budget.
I for one would welcome my files being hosted by the government if we lived in a world where democracy isn't more utopian than flying pink unicorns; as a citizen I would have a slight chance of being respected and listened to because I'd be a part of that, albeit a very small one, whilst with a company you have zero chances unless you're a stock holder or work there in some high rank. That's something to keep in mind next time they want to brainwash people about how good is privatization of public property.
We're slowly but steadily going towards a future where governments will first be owned by corporations, then will cease to exist or be relegated to a purely PR role (think about the royal families in nations still having them). That will likely mark the start of the worst period humanity will ever live in.
Let us simply label Google (search, yt, news) and FB as utilities and regulate them too.