If "vast troves of private information and sophisticated ad targeting tools" are too dangerous in the hands of government, then why aren't they too dangerous in the hands of a corporation?

The former is democratically elected. Facebook and Google aren't even controlled by their shareholders.

Because governments have a monopoly on violence, and can use your data against you to imprison you, bomb your village, defame you, etc. I can quit Facebook or Google much easier than I can quit the TSA database or DMV record system.

And I don't think too many people would disagree that the best software developers, machine learning people, and computer security people are going to tech companies rather than work at government offices.

And finally, governments are influenced by temporary forces of who's in power, like we are seeing now in the United States. And whoever is in power can replace departments with people to do what they want, which can be borderline illegal. They only have to worry about the next N years, where N is often a number less than 5.

The good news is that with the death of the profit motive, machine learning applications will become less important for the operation of Facebook's core mechanisms.

Yes, you are right about the government, but I think FB is being used by the government to get around the built-in legal protections. Moving it to the other side might make those tradeoffs more visible, but also more fair.

I think I have a much dimmer view of Facebook (16) and Google (22), and a much brighter view of American democracy (232), than you.

Time will tell.

Why infect the democracy by shackling one of these companies to it? Companies basically all die eventually, but they’re much more durable the more closely attached they are to governments.

Facebook proper is losing droves of users in the US. We might do well to keep the playing field level and let someone else beat them. More dominant market players from the past have misstepped and gone under.

News flash, the government already has it. They either siphon it off into the NSA database, they employ spooks at the companies, or they have data sharing relationships with law enforcement. If we nationalize them, we can also kill the profit motive and eliminate the advertising.

The ability of a spy agency to gain access while deeply troubling to me, is quite different than turning it over to politicians. Would you trust you own favorite political villain with access to all of that?

I trust the spy agencies far less than I do my elected officials. These guys' job is to lie, cheat, steal, and murder at a grand scale. At least it is in an elected politican's job description to represent me. Also, many of these villains are getting briefings from and giving direction to said agencies already.

I trust spy agencies far more than elected officials. Those employees get vetted, elected officials don't (and they most likely lie to get elected as well).

Try reading about Iran-Contra or the NSA Snowden disclosures sometime.

As opposed to the wars and "wars" that politicians have started?

> Would you trust you own favorite political villain with access to all of that?

Yes. Information asymmetry benefits those in power.

Better an even playing field, where everyone has access to everything.

Or, you know, don't use social spy platforms if you care about privacy?

You can avoid social media all you want and still end up with a shadow profile that’s quite info rich. I’d prefer these companies to eventually fade away like most companies do, rather than become permanent government appendages.