cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/11136426
Goodbye twitter I guess. There’s no longer any way to see twitter things people send you without an account
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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First off, I think you are being very rude. I didn’t call you names or make assumptions, so please treat this with more respect than a Twitter thread.
Olvid, a French alternative to WhatsApp, was made in 2019. It took a law passing last month banning all ministers from using non in-house messaging services to stop people from using WhatsApp. I wouldn’t consider that “trivially easy”.
You didn’t mention Internet access and so neither did I. I’m happy we both agree it should be a utility.
I already said this is a “government problem”. I said this in reference to the US government, because this isn’t really an issue for most countries :/
I’ll think about it… …Okay, I thought about it. No.
Except in your own example, a viable alternative was immediately available. Users didn’t switch because they didn’t have other options or were physically limited from using anything else. They just preferred to use WhatsApp. Switching to an alternative was trivially easy. People just didn’t want to because of personal preference. It would be trivially easy for me to stop drinking coffee every morning and only drink water - there’s nobody pointing a gun at my head to make me drink coffee - but I like coffee and would be annoyed by giving it up and probably have a hard time quitting. The same is probably true for many people. Should access to coffee be considered a utility? Probably not.
You mentioned WhatsApp. Several times. WhatsApp is owned by Meta, an American company. If you want it to be a public utility and its owned by an American company, which country is going to be the one to make that happen? Also, calling “completely eradicating the first amendment in order to make it so that the American government can forcibly seize and censor people on its new state run social media websites” a “government problem” is an atomic bomb level of understatement.
It’s not about personal preference. It’s about momentum. If I stop drinking coffee, only I am being affected. If I stop using Whatsapp, I now have to convince everyone I’m in contact with to also use the alternative when msging me before I can actually stop using WhatsApp.
I am confident the EU could do it. A complete transfer of ownership isn’t necessary for other countries to use exported services as public utilities. Public-private partnerships exist.
“American freedom of speech = Nazis get to speak” was your stance before. Now it’s "Anything but American freedom of speech = government censorship". What am I even supposed to say here?
Once again, the popularity of something is not what defines its status as a utility.
Yes, that would be devastating, wouldn’t it? “Hey, I’m not on WhatsApp anymore. If you want to reach me, please send me a text message or an email.” Wow. So difficult. \s
Could do it and “has a reason to do it” are very different things. There is no motivation there because WhatsApp and other, similar services, are ubiquitously available. It would be a largely pointless endeavor. Also, the EU has the same style of media freedom laws as the United States. If they ran a service, they wouldn’t be able to censor the content on it. Like, legally speaking it couldn’t. Hope you like a state-run platform for European Nazis…because that’s what you’d get.
You implied America’s first amendment was a “government problem.” I described what would happen if the United States got rid of it. I don’t know if you need to say anything, but you might want to brush up on your reading comprehension skills.