• Raul
    215
    Do we need to create governmental institutions at national and/or supranational levels to control speech and content within social-networks? Or are they and the GAFAMs a symptom of a society, the west, getting ready to be neo-liberal? Is the internet and new technologies bringing Milton-Friedman back?

    Looks like the GAFAMs are the ones that have delivered what governments were not able to deliver in the past. Few decades ago the governments were the ones delivering and controlling for example the telephone and the TV and postal services. Would you agree nowadays mobile telephony, smart phones, and the GAFAMs have demonstrated that a neo-liberal space is possible and that it delivers more efficient services than any state in history?

    The GAFAMs have something in common that makes them able to deliver freedom and well being to the populations as ever in the past. What is this?

    0 - First of all they take advantage of political stability and democracy, they work well in what we would call free-societies.
    1 - They take advantage of the new technologies, the global internet.
    2 - The actual focus on user-satisfaction brings to the population a unique high-standard in terms of quality of services they deliver.
    3 - High levels of transparency compare to politicians.
    4 - The speed and immediacy with which they deliver their services are outstanding.
    5 - The low monetary prices or even absence of monetary prices. Populations are more than happy to decrease their private space, share their private information if they keep getting this high quality of service. Who could have imagine services like google-maps for free? mobile telephone at such low monetary price.
    6 - They overcome and dissolve social frictions due to ideologies, identities, race, religion. Their services are politically agnostic at least referring to solid politics or solid ideologies. They are the product of a liquid society (Bauman). They are fully compatible with contemporary diverse societies. They serve and are accessible to majorities as well as minorities.
    7 - They use the new currency, the information, that shows being successful.
  • Raul
    215
    As looks like there is not much interest, I will post one of the major conclusions on this topic that me and my "contertulios" agreed a few days ago: M. Friedman as, of course, Keynes, are deeply anachronistic today's mainly because the States, military and private powers are deeply collusive and the GAFAMs are the best example as they received a lot of money from USA government and department of defense.
    Social powers are shifting to new forms that are not the traditional ones.
    But we still vote right or left, dems or reps thinking our states have any power... th is is an illusion, they don't have a lot of power anymore. They re just instrumental to the actual powers... I leave it here.
  • LuckyR
    527
    GFA (not A & M so much) are the equivalent of TV Networks in the 60's. Where are the networks today? Nowhere. What is social media going to be in 50 years? Potentially nowhere.
  • Raul
    215
    we still have TV networks.
    These technologies evolve, do not just disappear.
    Think about books, for example, still there as well.
    GAFAMs are something new a very powerful that is challenging our current politics, and accelerating change.
  • LuckyR
    527
    Exactly, TV networks and publishers exist, but are not the modern equivalent of the Illuminati (like some portray the GAFAMs)
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