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1525 points garyclarke27 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.257s | source
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heinrichhartman ◴[] No.23221288[source]
This is the result of out-sourcing juristic work to private companies:

If we treat Android, Window, Twitter, Facebook, as public spaces/goods, then private companies should not have a say in what is allowed/not-allowed on their platforms. This is work for the courts and police to decide and enforce.

If we treat those platforms as private. Then we are playing in s/o's backyard. You are totally at their mercy. They have every right to kick you out if they don't like your face. It's their property. You are a guest.

I think we need constituted digital public spaces and platforms with:

- democratic footing (users are in charge)

- public ownership

- division of power (politicians =!= judges =!= police)

- effective policing

In such a system it would be for independent courts to decide which Apps can be distributed and which not. Those courts would be bound to a constitution/body of law, which applies to all parties a like.

Yes, this will be expensive. Yes, you will have to give up some privacy. But you will be a citizen in a society, and not a stranger playing in a backyard.

Maybe the current platforms can be coerced into a system which approximates the above. But I have my doubts. I hope in 200years people will have figured this out, and will look back to this age as the digital dark ages.

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1. SAI_Peregrinus ◴[] No.23224123[source]
In (US) law there are two sets for rights and responsibilities: public (government) and private (individuals and organizations). But when it comes to responsibilities individuals can suffer consequences that organizations can't. And organizations can have power vastly greater than that of any individual. In some ways they should be subject to restrictions like governments, in others they shouldn't.

Really we need a third group. Corporations aren't individual people, and the legal simplification of modeling corporations as people is problematic. Unfortunately this probably requires a constitutional amendment for the US to change.