People all over the world are very frustrated with the internet these days. New platforms keep opening up, but which offer no solution to the basic problems and usually make them worse. The whole system seems to be getting ever more unusable and unstable.
There are infinite things which could be said about the problems of the internet. Saying them will have no effect on the deluge of information, most of it very low quality, roaring along the information highway. What I could do is cut right to the root problem with the net, and what could be done about it, at least for Canada.
The basic problem is that there can be only one internet. There can be only one platform for each particular purpose, at least for each particular polity. Having multiple competing platforms for each particular function just does not work.
You can see this in the case of search engines. If you have ever tried to research something without using Google, you quickly discover that you keep ending up back at Google. You can have some independence if you know another language than English; Baidu and Yandex are there, but otherwise Google has you trapped.
The problem is, all search engines ultimately work off Google because that is where the main pile of links is. You really cannot have two main repositories of information competing with each other. That would be like an organization having two duplicate filing systems.
Likewise, finding videos anywhere but on Youtube is difficult or impossible. If, for example, you want to sit back and listen to sixties folk music for free, Youtube is all there is. Vimeo is no option; it is for video creators trying to market their work.
I do not understand Instagram or TikTok because I do not use them. They seem to serve somewhat different markets and to have control of those markets. They are both very limited.
Zoom and Slack are for different kinds of video conferencing. Zoom is for one off events and Slack is for ongoing discussions. Some people keep trying to use alternatives to these, but it never works out.
The problem here is that for these types of apps to work, they have to be installed on the user’s home computer, which requires a procedure to set up. It becomes very annoying when someone calls a video conference and then wants to use some alternative platform, thus requiring everyone to download it, set it up, and learn to use it. Especially so, because most of the participants will only ever use it this once.
Facebook is for people who want to “hang out” and be entertained online. It is also the perfect vehicle for mining people’s data. The point is not to sell the data, but to use it for directed advertising on Facebook.
Twitter is a very important piece of the net. Everyone hates it, everyone wants an alternative to it, there are endless attempts to create an alternative to it, but few understand why Twitter is so successful. Its real problem is that it is not so conducive to advertising, and so is economically shaky.
Twitter is where things are announced, and where people find each other. Thus there can be no other Twitter but Twitter. All attempts at an alternative to Twitter will fail.
Mastodon is popular with people who merely want to talk within their small, curated communities. New ‘instances’ keep rising up and disappearing as hosts get tired of the expense and effort of maintaining them. You cannot really find new people or broadcast anything on it.
Gab is the biggest joke on the internet. The North American Honkie types launched it as an alternative to Twitter, which was ‘censoring’ them. There are very good reasons why Twitter choked them. Now they are sitting on Gab, with no one to annoy but each other, and most do not find this appealing.
Telegram is really awful. It is from Russia and the western secret services keep trying to restrict or sabotage it. But technical support is very poor.
You have to download a poorly designed app. It creates security problems and instabilities on home computers. It works very poorly on Mac computers.
Telegram has the usual issue with how people find each other. If you are already a big gun on social media you can start your Telegram channel and invite your followers to go through the rigmarole of signing up for Telegram. Then you can fill up their hard drive with your 10 MB a day of content.
Facebook has recently come up with something called “Threads”. Facebook keeps coming up with its own version of any successful application out there. They are always bad imitations.
Substack has its own “Alternative to Twitter” now, called “Notes”. It is useful for Substack bloggers who want to follow other Substack bloggers. Substack is a useful platform for bloggers who want to make some money from their today’s work but want to just throw away their yesterday’s work.
The “Alternative to Twitter” impulse has increased since Elon Musk bought up Twitter. People complain about Twitter but keep coming back to it because there is no real alternative to it. They are afraid that Musk will bankrupt it or make it really unusable with his bizarre decisions.
All this is why there will be no alternative to Twitter, only a replacement. There are two potential candidates under development for replacing Twitter; Panquake and Bluesky. At this point the latter seems more promising.
Bluesky is something Jack Dorsey began developing when he was still chief of Twitter. He is the co creator of Twitter and would have a very good idea of what Twitter users actually need. When he was forced out of Twitter, apparently because it was not making enough money, he kept the Bluesky project to himself.
Panquake is something thought up over two years ago by a New Zealander living in Russia, Suzie Dawson. Suzie and Panquake have had a very interesting history. There is speculation that Panquake is Suzi’s scam or self delusion.
Panquake does seem like a real thing. These things do take time to develop, especially if you are doing it on a shoe string. Suzi and her crew do seem to understand what core Twitter users really need.
A big concern with Panquake is the Left Libertarian mentality of Suzi and crew. It slows funding and development of the platform. However, Panquake will be funded by fees, not by selling advertising, a very big advantage.
It is important to note that any successful alternative to Twitter will be a temporary solution. As with almost everything else on the net, it must eventually be made public, and in most cases nationalized.
The idea of the internet as a public utility will send libertarian types into conniptions. These types are still very active on the net and as commentators about it. However, the whole anti government thing, coming from left or right, has never led to anything good and never will.
Humanity keeps going through the same thing whenever new forms of public utility come along. It was thus with natural gas, with water and sewer systems, with electricity, with streetcars, with the telephone, with radio, with television, and with the optic cable. The field crowds with opportunists who all want a piece of the action, with little or no government regulation.
All these things are natural monopolies or oligopolies. We do not want private businesses to control monopolies over vital public services. These things must be publicly owned.
There are many tales from ye olden days of streetcar tracks or power lines crossing over each other, interfering with each other’s operation and creating a big problem for the public. Local governments had to recognize that where a physical infrastructure must be laid down, there can be only one provider. Granting a private firm a monopoly led to exploitation of the public until government finally did what it should have in the first place, owning and running the service itself.
Things which are natural oligopolies must be closely regulated by a government which is able to govern and not open to capture by private interest lobbyists. Long ago, city governments had to intervene in the taxi business, to impose standards and to limit the numbers of units on the road. Later, radio and television stations had to be limited and spaced out, and given rules of operation.
In recent times there is a trend for aggressive terminal stage capitalism to try to break up and privatize public utilities, and to neutralize government regulation. The aim is not merely to maximize profits, but to impose new services which the public does not really want or need. The telecommunications industry has been most effected by this trend.
The internet requires telecommunications in order to operate. A public internet will first require a public telecommunications system. The main thing so far defeating most local attempts to create Public Internet Service providers, and from that universal internet access, has been private control of telecommunications.
Thus the first two steps in reestablishing a free and open internet will be reestablishing public control over the physical infrastructure. This is followed by a public internet access provider. After this it is a matter of reorganizing the internet itself.
It has long been noted that the big problem with the net is the lack of a return address. This has left the public open to all manner of abuse. If all messages could be immediately traced back to their origins, most of the spamming, scamming, phishing, hacking, dark net operations and so on would end.
In ye olden days, yea before Facebook, most serious internet users had their own simple webpage. They were simple and cheap to set up. Many people set up chat rooms or bulletin boards on various topics and most internet discussion took place on these.
Who gets onto the net should be tightly controlled. Everyone should have a personal home page connected with their e-mail address. Commercial web sites must be licensed and pay some sort of fee or tax.
Any new service on the net should be licensed, taxed, and regulated. No one must be allowed to dream up some half baked new platform and just it throw it out there. Anything new must meet a valid need or demand, and be built and tested by qualified engineers.
The final step in building a public internet would be to create platforms which people really want and need. I have mentioned the three pillars of the net, natural monopolies really essential to the net’s functioning; Twitter, Google, and Youtube.
I should also mention Amazon. It I said that Amazon has swallowed the economy, meaning the productive and retail economies. If government swallowed Amazon it could then regurgitate the economy in a form much fairer to consumers than what existed even before it.
This brings us to the deep problem with the net. It is owned and run in the United States and has become a tool of the American system of control and world domination. These platforms may not sell your personal profile, but they do give it away to the CIA. Platforms whose proprietors were resistant to becoming extensions of the surveillance state have been taken over, shut down, or pushed out of certain markets.
Many countries have dealt with this problem by creating, in whole or part, their own internet in their own languages and on their own territories. China in particular is famous for its ‘great wall’. Inside this wall, China has created its own separate internet, which seems much more usable than the western internet, and with the second fastest downloads in the world.
The upshot is that, until there is a regime change in the United States, a country like Canada which would want to build a truly public internet would also want to restrict foreign access. Some foreign platforms could obtain Canadian licenses and sell merchandise, or distribute things like games, online education, or software. They could be encouraged to create Canadian local versions of their services, complying with Canadian rules.
Some key pieces of the American based internet would be highly resistant to such local adaptation. Canadian equivalents would have to be developed. This would definitely include Google, and likely Twitter and Youtube as well.
Describing what good, Canadian versions of these services would be like would be a difficult task. If they are really good, they may attract interest outside Canada. There is a world wide hunger for something better than the net that is.
In a neo Google, the first thing is that the shadow banning must end. Real censoring on valid premises must intensify. A neo Google must be split into categories, so that we do not have to get through twenty sales sites to get to an information query.
With a neo Youtube, again the shadow banning and invalidly grounded censorship must end. People need to “monetize” their work by gaining paid subscribers, not by selling advertising. Much of the objection to Youtube is really about the misuse of copyright law.
As for a neo Twitter, again the shadow banning must stop. If something is “influencing” or misinforming, it needs to be simply banned. As Suzi Dawson put it, the platform must not interfere with people’s personal relationships.
A public, non profit neoTwitter would not have the incentives of Twitter to encourage the negative behavior so harmful to useful discussion. That is, encouraging people to spend hours on the platform, posting endlessly. It could be serious about providing intelligent, mature monitoring of discussions, which is what makes discussion forums really valuable.
The real purpose of a neoTwitter, by whatever name, is to be the great announcement forum. The ability to get something trending, or to build followings, must be restored. People should be able to have and keep the followings they have earned.
Finally, all these services could be funded by a small, flat fee for users, plus some government subsidy if needed. Perhaps these fees could be rolled into the cost of a connection. Advertising and harvesting of data would be eliminated.
As for the current fight between the Canadian government, and Facebook and Google, over the use of Artificial Intelligence to expropriate output from other platforms, there is not much to say here. Private businesses should not be challenging governments. The subject of just compensation for content creators, and honest curation of information platforms, is worth an article of its own.
The simple fact is that public ownership plus regulation of the net is the only thing which will solve its problems. It alone will insure everyone has access to the net. It alone will protect the privacy of internet users.
It will be impossible to organize this internationally. As American influence declines and we move to a multipolar world, we are also, inevitably, moving to a multipolar internet.