Do you have monopoly laws over there? There’s been talk of breaking up alphabet I know but I have no idea of what is and is not possible legally.
We do, but both parties have been kind of awful at actually doing any kind of trust busting for long enough that I'm not that optimistic. You're completely correct IMO that trust busting and reducing financial regulation is the solution to "muh private company" talking points. Common carrier regulation is an intriguing alternative but the past few years have shown me that relying on bureaucrats to actually follow the law doesn't work past a certain degree of polarization we've long since sailed past.
There is currently a market failure on non-left content, and part of it is caused by government regulation.
I also like the optics of Trump going this route, since it would simultaneously be a big "fuck you" to neocons and neolibs, and lead to hilarious alignments like Elizabeth Warren. It would help dismantle what is left of the Dems' mythology around standing up for the common man against big business.
To be honest, I think this is the reason the problem has gone on as long as it has.
No matter how much people cry about censorship on these giant corporate websites, many of them are hesitant to actually leave because leaving would reduce their audience. They don't want to just talk with other people or share their opinion, they want to preach to a crowd and get lots of asspats, and the draw of these big corporate sites is that just about everyone else is using them. Every so often a wave of bans results in a small exodus to somewhere else, but that exodus never lasts for long because there's not enough of an audience to hold most users' interest.
Having a return to small forums would ultimately solve a lot of issues, but people would have to be broken of their addiction to ego-stroking first.
There's also the problem of discoverability even aside from the barrier to use. How do niche forums find new users to grow to a good size, replace those that leave, etc? How do they cover the bills? How do their admins resist getting doxed and fired from their jobs? Look at all Null has had to endure and sacrifice to keep this place up.
I'm personally favoring more of the "get off the internet" approach, but I worry a lot that ceding it to the censors means cutting off our ability to prevent the next generation from getting radicalized into supporting the status quo (an absurd statement, but that's what it is). They've managed to give the appearance of normalizing this shit. The best chance to fight that is highlighting its contradictions, but I'm still worried they may get away with it, and then the history books will say that "popular attitudes just shifted".
The problem isn't a closed group communicating under the radar, they're terrified of opposition actually organizing, but that requires going out of stealth mode.
It's really a 1-2 punch of centralized sites being controlled by some authoritarian fuck and alternative tech stacks never being able to compete on on UX, and likely to be shut down as "terrorism" if they ever actually took off.
Honestly? I think porn is gonna be the next thing to get axed given how advertiser friendly reddit has become, then it's going to go the way of tumblr.
There's been a lot of 'reddit is dying' fear-mongering on the site for years, but in the event they end up doing that, along with recent policy changes and the ever-looming threat of the revocation of sec. 230, we're actively watching reddit actually die this time.
I disagree on the porn. The left is sex positive, trads have no power, and TERFs have been outlawed forever. It will be policed like any other form of consumption media (I will lmao at PornGate), but it's here to stay at this point, at least in some form, even if they decide to ban cis porn or something.
I know The Donald was huge compared to the rest of Reddit in its day, but even so, I'm skeptical enough people will care enough to stop using it to even make a dent in it in the short term. The damage from this, if any, will come when the monoculture is caught completely flatfooted by some cultural or technological shift (e.g., old media vs new), and unable to adapt, and that takes time.
The problem with salami slicing is that it works.
Hmph. It took 20 million dollars and sitting on the damn thing for 14 years, but Conde Nast is finally getting to flex their purchasing power and "shift the narrative" 4 months before the election. I'm sure it feels good, like firing that old hunting rifle that's been on the den wall for the first time in two decades. Problem is, they haven't been shooting regularly, and aren't going to hit their marks. All those right wingers are going to remember who to vote for in 4 months, all you've done is scare them into the brush.
Of course, but will they be able to organize to spread their message, counteract left wing propaganda, communicate new members, get out the vote, etc? These censorship pushes are entirely about preventing the spread, not stamping it out, whether because underground communities don't get bad press or the realization that they can just smother it with a pillow and it'll die in a generation.