Genuine question: given that running a platform like that costs money, and that money must come from somewhere, what would you actually do if you were in charge of running it? You either take money from advertisers, or you charge users directly, and I’d hazard to guess that if you’d nuke your account upon seeing ads, you probably wouldn’t pay actual money to use it.
Not the person you were speaking to, but get nationalised or run on donations as a non-profit.
But I do pay more than my share for most fediverse instances that I use (which reminds me, I use this one enough - should probably make my donation regular)
Honestly, I would love to see a Wikipedia-style social media platform take off, but I really don’t know if the finances could work out. Wikipedia already struggles, and it’s obscenely useful. I don’t think nationalization is really feasible for social media - at least in an American context - because it would be subject to the government’s legal limitations on regulating free speech, which are extremely minimal. A federally run platform would not be able to remove literal unironic Nazism, which is probably going to be a bit of a turn-off to normal people.
Not really, no. Freedom of speech is very strongly ingrained in our Constitution. The only legal restrictions on it are essentially direct threats or incitement of violence.
“Go kill this Jew” - Absolutely illegal.
“Go kill the Jews” - Illegal
“The Jews should be killed” - Borderline based on circumstances
“The Jews deserve to die” - Borderline, but probably protected by the Constitution
“The Jews deserved the Holocaust” - Almost certainly protected by the Constitution
Thank you for the breakdown. I had some vague conception of American free speech protections being pretty intense, but this illustrates the individual distinctions well
Genuine question: given that running a platform like that costs money, and that money must come from somewhere, what would you actually do if you were in charge of running it? You either take money from advertisers, or you charge users directly, and I’d hazard to guess that if you’d nuke your account upon seeing ads, you probably wouldn’t pay actual money to use it.
So what do you do?
Not the person you were speaking to, but get nationalised or run on donations as a non-profit.
But I do pay more than my share for most fediverse instances that I use (which reminds me, I use this one enough - should probably make my donation regular)
Honestly, I would love to see a Wikipedia-style social media platform take off, but I really don’t know if the finances could work out. Wikipedia already struggles, and it’s obscenely useful. I don’t think nationalization is really feasible for social media - at least in an American context - because it would be subject to the government’s legal limitations on regulating free speech, which are extremely minimal. A federally run platform would not be able to remove literal unironic Nazism, which is probably going to be a bit of a turn-off to normal people.
Wait what, I thought the US had hate speech laws.
If Nazi gum flapping isn’t that, then I don’t know what is
Not really, no. Freedom of speech is very strongly ingrained in our Constitution. The only legal restrictions on it are essentially direct threats or incitement of violence.
“Go kill this Jew” - Absolutely illegal.
“Go kill the Jews” - Illegal
“The Jews should be killed” - Borderline based on circumstances
“The Jews deserve to die” - Borderline, but probably protected by the Constitution
“The Jews deserved the Holocaust” - Almost certainly protected by the Constitution
Thank you for the breakdown. I had some vague conception of American free speech protections being pretty intense, but this illustrates the individual distinctions well