Comment by ibejoeb
3 months ago
When I hear this argument ("better the government do it than a private company") I recoil. The government is sovereign, only accepts lawsuits at its discretion, and can use violence to get its way. We also know for a fact that it abuses its powers and conducts surreptitious unlawful campaigns against its citizens.
I'm not on board with any of it, but the last thing I want is the government to control it.
The government is also, at least theoretically, democratic and accountable to the population.
Meta on the other hand is a dictatorship run by Zuck that's only marginally accountable to stockholders (which are only a small subset of the population).
They're still accountable to customers/users. If you don't like their products, don't use them. I don't.
The unfortunate thing about this lobbying effort is that it's making the government accountable to Meta, which is the worst of all worlds.
You know meta keeps a shadow profile on every person who is know to every one of their customers, right? So even if you don't use it, they almost certainly have you in their system.
At least when the government is working, there are controls around what they can collect, what they can do with it, and who they share it with. And what they cannot do with it.
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Right. It's theoretical. We have hard proof that it's not, though. The second part is that the government can compel it. I am free to ignore Zuck.
When the government is working as intended, and have not abdicated their duties to the people, the government at least has controls over what they can and cannot do. Yes, they have a monopoly on violence, but they also in theory have lots of controls.
For example, the government cannot silence your speech, but a private company can. The government cannot share your data with others, a private company can.
Unfortunately the government has abdicated their duties and so you think they are worse than a private company.
I get all of these hypotheticals, but, again, we know that it's not true. The government routinely collects and shares information that it shouldn't. We can't talk about it like it doesn't because it was designed not to. We have to contend with reality.
But we also know that Meta routinely collects and shares information that it shouldn't.
At least the government shouldn't on a theoretical level?
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