The owner of Twitter is much richer than the CEO of Facebook.
But who needs “protection” from any social media company? Just don’t use social media.
Yes I know this is about the EU.
I’m more worried about a powerful government. Government has a “monopoly on violence”. Especially in the US between the electoral college, gerrymandering and the make up of Congress. It’s very much rule by the minority.
The extent to which poor people can appropriate a portion of that governmental "monopoly on violence" through democracy is the only real check on violence by the wealthy.
Otherwise, wealth always wins. And uses those wins to ensure it remains wealthy.
I don’t have to deal with any one private company except the ones that have a “natural monopoly” like utilities and they are already regulated and should be.
It can even be argued that smart phones should be calculated since they are necessary in today’s world and are a duopoly.
A powerful government can physically take away your freedoms.
And rule by billionaires or hedge funds is preferable? They don't need physical violence to enshittify societies, especially since so much of government already responds only to that class. They ARE the ruling minority and what's left of democratic government is the only (dying) check against them. Soon there won't be any checks left and you'll get your wish of direct rule by the rich.
This Twitter situation is one example. Many agencies/governments in the US use it as their primary or sole source of realtime public communications, even when they have email, texts, websites, etc. at their disposal. I would like that to be regulated (i.e. agencies required to post on public channels that don't require a proprietary login/account).
I don't think that sort of regulation should extend to private entities, however, who should be able to communicate with their stakeholders however they please, even if I find it annoying.
The argument isn't that they're free from corruption and ideology, but that they're the only real check the public has against powerful monopolies and duopolies, etc. At a certain scale, competition breaks down and entrenched enshittification happens.*
An average person has some (tiny) input in a representative democracy, where it's one person one vote (even if several layers removed, and only appointed by proxy etc.). They have no real say in a corporation that's usually one dollar one vote.
> Multinational governments should scare people far more than whatever Twitter is doing these days.
I will take potentially misguided trade/business regulations over a megaphone for spreading Nazi speech, thank you very much.
It'd be great if you expanded this argument though, just for the sake of making the conversation more interesting on what exactly you see that's scary.
Unfortunately in the US many important agencies chose to use it to publish announcements, even for important public safety things. I don't have an account and am thus prevented from seeing what the agencies are saying. I would like to see regulations preventing governments from doing this.
I can not use it as I do, the same with Facebook, but there are countless others taking disinformation spread on these platforms without bating an eye. Those countless others impact my life, they will vote, they will hate; stochastically it will affect me in some way even if I try to be as far away as I can from these platforms.
