Does the World Need Publicly-Owned Social Networks? (elpais.com)
- Reference: 0177751289
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/05/25/175204/does-the-world-need-publicly-owned-social-networks
- Source link: https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2025-05-25/do-we-need-publicly-owned-social-networks-to-escape-silicon-valley.html
It argues it's necessary because social media platforms "have consolidated themselves as [2]quasi-monopolies , with a business model that consists of violating our privacy in search of data to sell ads..."
> Among the proposals and alternatives to these platforms, the idea of public social media networks has often been mentioned. Imagine, for example, a Twitter for the European Union, or a Facebook managed by media outlets like the BBC. In February, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for "the development of our own browsers, European public and private social networks and messaging services that use transparent protocols." Former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — who governed from 2004 until 2011 — and the left-wing Sumar bloc in the Spanish Parliament have also proposed this. And, back in 2021, former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn [3]made a similar suggestion .
>
> At first glance, this may seem like a good idea: a public platform wouldn't require algorithms — which are designed to stimulate addiction and confrontation — nor would it have to collect private information to sell ads. Such a platform could even facilitate public conversations, as pointed out by James Muldoon, a professor at Essex Business School and author of Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim our Digital Future from Big Tech (2022)... This could be an alternative that would contribute to platform pluralism and ensure we're not [4]dependent on a handful of billionaires . This is especially important at a time when we're increasingly aware that technology isn't neutral and that private platforms respond to both economic and political interests.
There's other possibilities. Further down they write that "it makes much more sense for the state to invest in, or collaborate with, decentralized social media networks based on free and interoperable software" that "allow for the portability of information and content." They even spoke to Cory Doctorow, who they say "proposes that the state cooperate with the software systems, developers, or servers for existing open-source platforms, such as the U.S. network Bluesky or the German firm Mastodon." (Doctorow adds that reclaiming digital independence "is incredibly important, it's incredibly difficult, and it's incredibly urgent."
The article also acknowledges the option of "legislative initiatives — such as antitrust laws, or even stricter regulations than those imposed in Europe — that limit or prevent surveillance capitalism." (Though they also figures showing U.S. tech giants have one of the largest lobbying groups in the EU, with Meta being the top spender...)
[1] https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2025-05-25/do-we-need-publicly-owned-social-networks-to-escape-silicon-valley.html
[2] https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2024-05-05/tech-companies-break-earnings-records-despite-regulatory-battle.html
[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-facebook-state-owned-social-media-bbc-iplayer-privacy-labour-public-ownership-a8504151.html
[4] https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2025-04-27/tech-oligarchs-impose-their-prophetic-visions.html
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Having corps in charge of speech on their platforms is bad enough, do we really want to straight up hand it to governments? It's inevitable that you end up with one extreme or another when it comes to moderation. Do we want to trade corporate surveillance for actual surveillance? How will government access to data work? It might be somewhat protected in the EU but in out areas? That's a scary thought.
Also who is going to use it? Or do the governments find ways to force you to use it?
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter is owned by vice-president Musk. The rest of the social media owner-donors are falling all over themselves to demonstrate their loyalty. Whatever kind of separation you imagine between big tech and big government, there isn't anymore. If there ever was.
> Also who is going to use it? Or do the governments find ways to force you to use it?
You're using it, and you signed up voluntarily.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course you are right, let's just cut out the middle man and let the governments run it. That will be awesome! It will fix everything!
Public Access wouldn't be a bad idea (Score:2, Interesting)
You could have everything be open source along with the algorithms used to promote content. You could also allow people to post absolutely anything to a common site as long as it was legal and not have to fear getting banned for upsetting a rich asshole who can drop $45 billion dollars buying a social network worth at best $6 billion.
You could also keep everything pretty open without things like how Facebook basically shut down all the companies making games on their platform because they wanted to stea
Re: (Score:2)
You don't need a government to run/approve of a new social network. Indeed, probably not a good idea to have the government involved.
There are models for open source distributed social platforms (similar to BlueSky) that should work fine and keep government and big business out of it.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
> It's inevitable that you end up with one extreme or another when it comes to moderation
Sounds like one of those Enlightened Centrism complaints. Or a variant - in this case, implying there's only two options, and then guiding people towards the wrong one. Others might call it JAQing off (or "just asking questions" as a means to artifically inflate doubt.)
If something is owned by a democracy-based government, anything that is problematic can be corrected by voting in a different person or party. Likewise, it means you personally should avoid voting for problematic parties, as demonstrated by what happened in the USA.
> Do we want to trade corporate surveillance for actual surveillance?
It's a stereotype that governments must do surveillance on every interaction. Even then, a government will immense amounts of data would know not to allow it to lea
But more importantly, that complaint is irrelevant. With social media, it's likely going to be viewable by anyone, which puts the difficulty of surveillance as easy as watching someone's twitter feed. In case of governments, simply tell a private social media to provide access.
> Also who is going to use it?
For one, the government can, simply by making it their official social media contact point.
In case the government is using a type of Mastodon/Fediverse node, then users of Mastodon/Fediverse would also be using it as well, simply because another user would boost a statement by a government worker.
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
> For one, the government can, simply by making it their official social media contact point.
Which would be immensely useful. I frequently see people on /. refer to social media as the "public square", but the current dominant networks simply are not, which was brought home to me forcefully last year. Shortly after the flooding in Valencia on the 29th of October, I was trying to create a map of aid distribution points and to get reliable information rather than rumours I wanted official sources. But most town halls were posting information on Facebook, Instagram or Xitter rather than on their own websites, and none of those three allow you to simply scroll through someone's posts without creating an account and logging in. I would love a genuine public square to supplant the current members' clubs which if you're lucky let a non-member peek through the windows.
Re: (Score:2)
This one thousand percent. Government should post authoritative info about disasters on their websites, because they own them. It is a train wreck that now people believe the best place to go for info in an emergency is shitter.
Re: (Score:2)
They have websites for that. They don't need to require citizens to use a government controlled social media platform for it.
Re: (Score:2)
You know you can just say your a government boot-licker and save us all time. I'm not sure what fantasy world you think you live in but it's not the real one. But you keep blindly trusting the government, it suits you I guess. The rest of us will keep working to try to keep our privacy and liberties intact.
Shovel (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like a good black-hole project to shovel money in to. I'm sure a well-connected company will make boatloads of cash out of such a project, and it will be widely used by government workers and not many others.
There's a word for publicly owned social media (Score:3, Insightful)
That word is "propaganda." Not matter what government owns it, it literally cannot be anything but propaganda for that government, protecting the interests of the individuals in charge. US? Yes. China? Yes. West Bumfuck, where the highest technology is the south end of a camel going north? Yes. All propaganda.
If the government owns it, it's a branch of that government.
Re: (Score:3)
Show your work on what percentage of their funding is from the government.
Re: (Score:2)
Both do rely on licenses issued by the government to operate. Which they are being reminded of right now.
Re: (Score:2)
The number that you don't want to say is around 10%. And really a good bit of that is for rural area subsidy which has far fewer members and lower support levels than urban. [1]https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15... [npr.org] And what they are being reminded of is the separation of powers has weakened substantially. Congress has the power of the purse, but donnie seems to believe he does. And unfortunately the courts are giving him a pass as well. None of this can be news to you though, unless you live in a cave.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5352827/npr-pbs-public-media-trump-rescission-funding
Re: There's a word for publicly owned social media (Score:1)
And how much money does China, Russia, Canada, put in to fox news?
Re: (Score:3)
Man, wait until you see the propaganda on the corporate-owned social media...
If you're head's still intact after that, try this one: The government is owned by the same corporations who own the social media.
Re: (Score:3)
> it literally cannot be anything but propaganda for that government
> Trivially false. See: Public TV stations in most of Europe.
> There are plenty of ways to provide money and means to independently and morally operating institutions. We do it all the time in many different areas of society.
> I'm sorry you've lived for so long in a shithole country that you cannot imagine something other than blatant corruption.
Who'd pay for it. (Score:2)
Let's say such a network exists. It would still need millions of dollars to run - servers, storage, technicians, etc. Who'd pay for it?
Unfortunately, the core businesses model on the internet is ads and sooner or later this new network would succumb to this model, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Your tax dollars will pay for it. Consider it a paid online service that you have no choice but to pay for, at threat of incarceration.
Re: (Score:2)
> Consider it a paid online service that you have no choice but to pay for, at threat of incarceration.
Unlike advertising which you pay for if you buy the product, whether you ever saw the ad or not. There is no free lunch. Someone has to pay for it and it isn't the actual users based on their use. Which is why internet use is so popular.
Public Networks (Score:4, Interesting)
What we actually need is public networks without anonymity where people's identity is established.
For instance, imagine a public network where to participate you had to be a registered voter. And it was divided by jurisdiction. So only people who lived in the town or school district or legislative district or congressional district or state could participate in discussions for that jurisdiction. Where the people participating were identifiable to everyone. In other words, a truly "public" network with no expectation of privacy.
Beyond registered voters, establishing a legally protected online identity system would allow similar "public" forums to be created for any topic. And any information attached to that public identity belongs to the person identified and can't be used without their permission even by the managers of the forum.
You might even make it illegal to attach that public identity to non-public ones. So someone can only keep information based on your ip address or phone number if that information itself is anonymous. Companies would be allowed to track your online activity but only if it cannot be connected to your legally protected identity.
That's a terrible and stupid idea (Score:4, Interesting)
All that does is let ultra wealthy people abuse their power by crushing anyone who speaks out.
If you're going to give literally trillions of dollars to about 2,000 people in your country out of 350 million then you are going to need anonymity so the people can speak out about their kings without getting their heads lopped off.
My experience with people who want everyone to be identifiable on the Internet is that they are all in on the ruling class and they think that they will never need the protection of anonymity.
And for some of the old farts maybe you'll die before the shit hits the fan. Good for you. Like the old saying goes I got mine fuck you.
They even spoke to Cory Doctorow (Score:2)
"even" ... Actually I think he has some good ideas, we need ideas....
Ok, moving on... So who pays for this ? Advertising supported by any chance? Uh oh. Corporate surveillance.
Government subsidies? Also, Uh oh. Govenment surveillance.
DONT LOOK AT ME! I'm not going to pay.
Also, I wouldn't use one, btw.
But nobody wants to pay for anything digital, we've been trained on freemium, and we won't go back.
So now we have an idea that won't get funded, methinks.
I'm getting vague images of a documentary I once saw abo
so... big brother? (Score:2)
so the government or city should know about my date with my wife? should have my selfies? should see my searches? how does this not just become total dommy big brother
Re:so... big brother vs blackmail? (Score:3)
Government doesn't need to own the network to know about those things. And no one is suggesting that a government network would be exclusive. I am far more concerned about Facebook or Google having that information. I have zero control over what they choose to do with it and they have no interest in telling me. Unless they think its in their interest. They certainly have no interest in me knowing what they do with it that is contrary to my interest.
I am unclear why I should fear big government more than bi
Nobody read TFS (Score:4, Insightful)
Proof that nobody even bothered to read the fucking summary.
"it makes much more sense for the state to invest in, or collaborate with, decentralized social media networks based on free and interoperable software"
Yeah, the government investing in this would so totally be "big brother watching" heh....
I have altered the deal (Score:2)
> Yeah, the government investing in this would so totally be "big brother watching" heh....
Can't tell if sarcasm.
Step 1: Provide funding for free and interoperable social networks.
Step 2: Wait for those networks to become dependent on said funding.
Step 3: Attach strings to funding, or cut it off if they don't comply with government demands.
See "Corporation for Public Broadcasting" and "Harvard".
Worth a shot (Score:3)
It would be an interesting experiment for a government somewhere in the free world to take a shot at this. Have all government agencies run through a single mastodon instance. Only government spokespeople and elected officials get accounts there, so it is clear that any posts are official. You can choose to follow just a specific agency (public emergencies), or the whole feed could be monitored by news agencies and journalists.
We need user-owned social media (Score:3)
The problem with all social media right now is that someone or some entity owns it. That entity censors according to whatever guidelines suit their principles, and they also coincidentally run pretty vast botnets to make sure that what can't be removed outright, gets modded to oblivion. None of it represents the interests of actual users.
What we need is a social media funded by the people who use it, where we all have input into what is and is not considered OK. It should probably not be for profit, probably run by a committee of paid elected members with the technical expertise to ensure it remains viable. Accounts should be entirely anonymous, VPN usage should be encouraged not forbidden, but accounts would be *paid* via some form of electronic currency. Accounts that have not paid for many months should be forbidden from posting.
The value of social media is to allow us peons to gather and discuss things that matter to us. The horror of existing social media is the enforced echo-chamber that Musk and Zuck have made.
Yes (Score:3)
Though it should be funded by something like the UN to ensure impartiality
No (Score:3)
We don't need a publicly-owned social media platform (though I wouldn't be all that opposed to a society deciding to start one up.)
What we do need is changes to the incentives that cause social media platforms to have shitty business models, and I outlined those in an earlier comment on another story:
In my opinion, any social media platform with more than 5 million users (say) must be forced to follow the following rules:
1. It may not derive revenue from advertising.
2. It may not show users content unless they have specifically asked to see it (for example, by following an account or joining a group.) It may not accept money from anyone to promote content to people who haven't explicitly asked for it.
3. Content must be shown to users in strictly reverse-chronological order.
4. Users must pay a nominal amount for an account, let's say $3/month. (This will make using massive swarms of AI bots infeasible.)
5. Users must verify their identity with valid government-issued identity documents. They may post anonymously, but the platform must know who they really are and be able to tie their online identity to their real identity if necessary.
These rules are draconian, but IMO are needed to protect our health and our society. They'll let us keep using Facebook for good purposes like keeping in touch with family and friends, or joining groups related to our interests, without opening up the floodgates for disinformation.
Re: (Score:2)
> Users must pay a nominal amount for an account, let's say $3/month. (This will make using massive swarms of AI bots infeasible.)
I don't think $36 per person per year would come anywhere close to the cost of even building the thing, much less paying the staff and the power bills and leaving a profit for investors. So if we were still going to have social media, it would need to be built and run by governments. That's the course I've been advocating for a long time now.
If you think no... (Score:1)
If you think that there should not be a government run social media (and there should not be)...
That ALSO means we should not be funding any government media, like PBS or NPR.
If you disagree you have to distinguish what is the difference between social media and other media outlets.
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is that PBS and NPR are (supposed) to be run by professionals who adhere to journalistic standards, and are supposed to be non-partisan. I think this has actually been the case for the most part so far.
Social media is the Wild West with no oversight, standards, or accountability.
Betteridge but more... (Score:3)
The questions presumes the choice is between corporate and government, but there was never any reason for social media to be owned by large companies in the first place.
What's actually needed is it needs to be easier for every person to own their corner of the Internet. That means the whole ISP silliness that designates private family links as "consumer" with the implicit and unnecessary suggestion consumers shouldn't have full Internet access needs to end. Ports should not be blocked, IPv6 should be two way, contracts should not come with "No servers" agreements, IPv6 prefixes should be static. And people should be able to stand up a blog or an ActivityPub node (the latter being an excellent way to provide social media and is the underlying protocol used by most community social media systems) or a ATProto PDS (the thing Bluesky is trying to popularize) with cheap commodity hardware, ideally built into consumer routers. For
That takes social media control away from corporations AND government.
The people who always claim they're being censored will doubtless find reasons to continue to make those claims - oh, some indexing service refuses to index my n-word posts! The horror! - but the bottom line is everything is too centralized right now. We need decentralization. And not any old decentralization, but decentralization that gives ownership of what people post to those people. Arguing the issue is that it should be owned by Governments - especially in an age where Fascism is making a come-back - rather than psychotic corporations trying to pit us against each over for clicks is... dumb. We can regulate this ourselves, but only if we ourselves are given control. And until the ISPs are brought to heel, we won't have that control.
BBC (Score:1)
Honestly with the advertising of youtube I do wish the BBC ran some sort of platform similar to it for the public But we have too proud sensibilities to let BBC allow people to be free to speak their mind
Yeah, great idea ... "publicly" owned (Score:2)
> that limit or prevent surveillance capitalism.
Congratulations; you've proposed the one thing worse than surveillance capitalism - surveillance communism!
What the world needs now (Score:2)
Is love, sweet love.
It's the only thing that there's just too little of.
How about Scuttlebutt? (Score:2)
Any thoughts?
We have lemmy and mastadon which are better (Score:2)
We need a network protocol for social discourse that allows for many server owned by many people. Lemmy works like that. Its user base at this time is weighted heavily toward the tech savey. Any server on the network can isolate itself from any other server. Any user can do the same. Personally I block three servers on there. None of this will work without more visibility.
No, but responsible networks (Score:2)
Online media shall have fully editorial responsibility as other medias. That would mean the death of user generated stuff, but I wouldn't care. Infrastructure providers on the other hand, shall be neutral and only cut the line if ordered by a legal authority in the country they operate. Then everyone, who has something to publish can rent infrastructure to do so, but the infrastructure provider shall be able to find you if you publish illegal stuff. The social medias in-between status must be stopped: Eithe
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Score:1)
Their website disables commenting on articles they believe are contentious or will anger the public.
Just, lol. That's how I imagine publicly-owned social media would end up working. Nothing contentious will be allowed.
IIRC Mozilla blocked an extension from the addons store that let people leave comments on arbitrary webpages. I think the usual excuse to block something like that is a lack of moderatation - even though viewing comments is entirely voluntary. Too many people said naughty things I guess.
Public parks already exist. (Score:2)
This internet thing is just a fad.
If only because people really can't get along even in small groups; a one world society simply can't work. Throw in everyone wanting to get rich by throwing advertisements in your face, it isn't sustainable as currently constructed.
Discord is popular precisely because most of the groups are small and manageable so it can keep out the trolls, scammers, and political shits.
In a word, "Yes" (Score:2)
I started arguing about a decade ago that social media were effectively societal infrastructure, insofar as even then it was nearly impossible to apply for and land a job without using it. Social media fulfill functions which are now part of the commons, both culturally and business-wise. So yes, there should be publicly-owned social media.
More importantly. (Score:5, Interesting)
Does the world even need social networks?
Bettridge says NO!
Re: (Score:1)
Thread done in the frosty piss by an AC.
Re: (Score:3)
100% NO, they cause more harm than good.
Re: (Score:3)
The way you formulate that immediately shows how stupid the question is.
Nothing about the term 'social network' dictates that it is one of the Twitter and Facebook-like incarnations we have today (or even anything digital). Of course the world needs social networks. We are social animals and will seek out communication with others of our species. There is nothing inherently wrong with facilitating that in a healthy way.
Re:More importantly. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Of course the world needs social networks. We are social animals and will seek out communication with others of our species. There is nothing inherently wrong with facilitating that in a healthy way."
Social Networks are NOT healthy, that's kinda the point.
Re: (Score:2)
We need communities of people working together.
We don't need to be glued to our phones reading divisive rants.