Most just see it as a get rich quick scheme.

It sucks, I don’t see how it could ever get past this.

I thought Monero solves this issue, with a level of effort large enough that it’s almost impossible to crack.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

“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?

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.

WhatsApp, by comparison, is trivially easy to replace.

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”.

Also, your reasoning is kind of skewed, because in order to even use something like WhatsApp, you need other, already existing services. Namely internet access.

You didn’t mention Internet access and so neither did I. I’m happy we both agree it should be a utility.

I don’t know if you’re just speaking from a non-American context, or just don’t know how “freedom of speech” is codified into law in the United States.

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 :/

When businesses ask you to contact their help-desk via WhatsApp, it’s a utility. When people call and message friends, family, and colleagues almost exclusively on WhatsApp or Messenger, it’s a utility.

It’s also putting the government in a position in which it functionally would have to provide a platform for everyone equally, Neo-Nazis […]

Godwin’s Law People preaching [insert terrible belief] on a government platform would be removed and charged for hate speech just as much as they would be if preaching these things in public spaces. If your government gives people with terrible_belief.jpg the chance to preach on public property, that’s not a public property issue, that’s a government issue.

Ultimately, saying social media should be a public utility is like saying casinos and strip clubs should be public utilities.

No, it isn’t. If anything, turning certain popular social media apps into public utilities would limit them from being pure dopamine hits. Let other websites exist to fill the cesspool void. Not the one my grandma uses.