Good analysis of Musk--yes, good comparison to Berlusconi. The one disagreement I have is calling pre-Musk Twitter a "slightly left of center" platform. It was a platform where if you said that a man is not a woman you were called a "fascist." I wouldn't call that "slightly left of center."
You were both called a fascist and facing a significant risk of having your account suspended. It went beyond mere name-calling, the platform itself regulated disfavored views.
I agree with your analysis of social media companies wielding too much power and "capturing" a market. I ask if the answer to this is getting the FCC to require a Federated model, like Mastadon and Bluesky, where there can be lots of "focused" servers rallying around political causes, but single social media companies are effectively broken up. In effect, call it a "standards-based" approach to social networking and require interoperability between companies. Take away their exclusivity. The result is to make each of them a "common carrier" to one huge Social Media Cloud, where no one company owns too much of it.
When I read the New York Times this morning it is clear they are terrified. Every article dripping with contempt for those who voted for Trump and of course for Trump too. They have seen the handwriting on the wall: "mene, mene, tekel, parsin ... God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end." Will they change? I doubt it. And that is the problem. Not that billionaires have purchased the news outlets, but that reporters have failed to uphold their professional and moral duty to report the news without bias. The New York Times is a wasteland of immoral haughty arrogant buffoons who have abandoned their duty. And now they leave us all in danger: Billionaires manufacturing a false reality. We are all in the cave now, and Musk et al are controlling the shadow projector.
The thing is that the main alternative to Twitter is not, for example, BlueSky. It is in decentralized social media (desoc), and it also exists on the basis of blockchains and cryptocurrencies. I enable humans to co-create new solutions that are more cooperative and global. Fukuyama and other liberal thinkers should search for new ideas instead of just defending liberalism or democracy.
But there is no "Western civilization". No rational ground nor science backs the myths that humans are divided into civilizations. One reason is globalization and interconnectedness, plus global problems and challenges. Also, even the political term The West is often ambiguous and contested since it includes contractionary behaviors and values. Both Musk and Trump are "Western" just as Biden and Bezos.
Good analysis of Musk--yes, good comparison to Berlusconi. The one disagreement I have is calling pre-Musk Twitter a "slightly left of center" platform. It was a platform where if you said that a man is not a woman you were called a "fascist." I wouldn't call that "slightly left of center."
You were both called a fascist and facing a significant risk of having your account suspended. It went beyond mere name-calling, the platform itself regulated disfavored views.
I agree with your analysis of social media companies wielding too much power and "capturing" a market. I ask if the answer to this is getting the FCC to require a Federated model, like Mastadon and Bluesky, where there can be lots of "focused" servers rallying around political causes, but single social media companies are effectively broken up. In effect, call it a "standards-based" approach to social networking and require interoperability between companies. Take away their exclusivity. The result is to make each of them a "common carrier" to one huge Social Media Cloud, where no one company owns too much of it.
When I read the New York Times this morning it is clear they are terrified. Every article dripping with contempt for those who voted for Trump and of course for Trump too. They have seen the handwriting on the wall: "mene, mene, tekel, parsin ... God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end." Will they change? I doubt it. And that is the problem. Not that billionaires have purchased the news outlets, but that reporters have failed to uphold their professional and moral duty to report the news without bias. The New York Times is a wasteland of immoral haughty arrogant buffoons who have abandoned their duty. And now they leave us all in danger: Billionaires manufacturing a false reality. We are all in the cave now, and Musk et al are controlling the shadow projector.
The thing is that the main alternative to Twitter is not, for example, BlueSky. It is in decentralized social media (desoc), and it also exists on the basis of blockchains and cryptocurrencies. I enable humans to co-create new solutions that are more cooperative and global. Fukuyama and other liberal thinkers should search for new ideas instead of just defending liberalism or democracy.
Oh yes, like ingsoc?
I am not familiar with it but there is for example hive.io
But there is no "Western civilization". No rational ground nor science backs the myths that humans are divided into civilizations. One reason is globalization and interconnectedness, plus global problems and challenges. Also, even the political term The West is often ambiguous and contested since it includes contractionary behaviors and values. Both Musk and Trump are "Western" just as Biden and Bezos.