In a hypothetical socialist utopia with rigorously defined and enforced guarantees of rights and liberties, government-owned platforms can and should replace corporate-owned ones.

Imagine a concept like facebook/instagram/twitter, except it’s open-source and transparent, and its users are in control of its governance through direct democracy and collective ownership. Plus a set of rules defining explicitly what they can’t do, including all predatory, coercive, manipulative, and profiteering practices that are the industry standard now.

Obviously it’s not a simple solution. Government control ≠ fair, equitable, and transparent. That’s why I framed this as a hypothetical. It requires that socialist utopia, collective ownership, direct democracy, and open-source format. But it is possible, and we shouldn’t let our imaginations be hampered by what exists today, in this system.

So many things could be done better with centralized planning, but that depends on who is in charge of that planning. And that’s why we need direct democracy and collective ownership. Those things can actually be enabled by technology, despite the fact that technology is currently being used to hamper it.

Like, report a pothole on your maps app, and the state repairs it within a week. Go to the open forum section of your social media, and discuss the items on the upcoming bill proposal with the members of your community. Start a citizen’s initiative by filling out a simple form that’s accessible to everyone and posting it in the right section of the platform. Audit your local government’s budget/expenses as easily as navigating to the right tab.

There’s a better way of doing the things we’re already doing. We just have to dare to imagine, to believe, and to persevere until our vision becomes a reality.

dw, your data is also still sent to the oppressive, kleptocratic surveillance state

Oh thank God. You had me worried for a second there that Daddy Freedom and Mommy Liberty didn’t care about me anymore.

dw, your data is also still sent to the oppressive, kleptocratic surveillance state

But the good news is the government has to pay them our tax dollars to spy on us instead of getting it for free or using that money to benefit the populace. Yay dystopia!

On my first day at a new job in 1998, I watched a guy get escorted out of his office and the building carrying his stuff in a cardboard box. My use of the verb “escort” is ironic because it turned out that the guy had been running a prostitution ring. He’d gotten an 800 number that redirected to his office phone number, and he kept track of everything (names and phone numbers of his clients and girls and records of every arrangement) in a spreadsheet on his work computer. He only got busted because the company upgraded everybody’s PC and had techs look through all the old PCs to make sure nothing important was going to get deleted; this dude had named his spreadsheet something like “call girls.xls” and had it on his Windows desktop.

This seemed amazing to me, but after working there a few months I realized how somebody could get that sloppy. IT Security at this place was fucking lax. None of us programmers had an identifiable boss or anything like clearly-defined responsibilities, or even rigid work hours. I remember one stretch for about a month where in a room with 50 people in it, all everybody did all day was call into the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? hotline and try to get onto the show.

Dude, seriously. Work phone/personal phone. The two never touch in any way, not even for so much as alternate contact method. I don’t want my bank calling my work phone. I don’t want my clients calling my personal. When Im not working the work phone gets set down next to the bed and doesn’t get picked up again until the next time Im getting up and ready for work.

I truly do not understand how people can even tolerate having both of these parts of their lives on the same device. Is the hardship of two phones really that insurmountable for people when the benefits are so readily apparent?