Sunday, July 19, 2020

Contra Schneier

Bruce Schneier, at The Atlantic:

Internet communications platforms -- such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube -- are crucial in today’s society. They’re how we communicate with one another. They’re how our elected leaders communicate with us. They are essential infrastructure. Yet they are run by for-profit companies with little government oversight. This is simply no longer sustainable. Twitter and companies like it are essential to our national dialogue, to our economy, and to our democracy. We need to start treating them that way, and that means both requiring them to do a better job on security and breaking them up.
Emphasis mine, on the only part that refers to any conceivably "legitimate" government interest whatsoever in how these platforms operate.

The fix for that is not government regulation of the platform, or "breaking up" the platforms.

The fix for that is restricting government actors' use of the platforms.

Create a government-financed, government-operated, and government-secured platform that 1) may only be published to by government officials, and 2) is the only platform government officials may publish to, with 3) harsh criminal penalties for e.g. presidents who get caught tweeting while in office.

The rest of us can read it, if we want to. And when it's not being brought down by hackers, as will be a frequent occurrence with any government-secured platform (which is one of a number of reasons to keep government's incompetent hands of the platforms Schneier wants those hands to fondle).

No comments: