I like this pair of analogies a lot. I'm highly in favour of public transport and mass transit of many kinds, but owning an (electric) car is still far too convenient to give up.
I'm curious about footnote 3. How do you propose we prevent social media platforms being owned by hostile nations? LiveJournal got bought out by Russia, but only after it was already in decline. But what exactly do you propose "we" (the West?) should do about TikTok? Buy it from China at huge expense? Firewall it so nobody in Britain can use it? Would seem rather ironic...
Re (3): the simplest approach and best approach is to require them to sell it to an operator that is not a hostile state (most likely a private company), which is what (as I understand it) the US is doing currently. If they refuse, it can be firewalled/prevent any legitimate British companies advertising on it, etc. I'm sure some determined people could still access it, but far fewer than currently and it is almost certainly not hard to make operating it in the country unprofitable, given this is a social network rather than e.g. a site selling drugs. And if there is a demand for this sort of form/content (which there appears to be) a domestic/western country will quickly step into the gap, create a similar product, and then dominate by network effect.
I like this pair of analogies a lot. I'm highly in favour of public transport and mass transit of many kinds, but owning an (electric) car is still far too convenient to give up.
I'm curious about footnote 3. How do you propose we prevent social media platforms being owned by hostile nations? LiveJournal got bought out by Russia, but only after it was already in decline. But what exactly do you propose "we" (the West?) should do about TikTok? Buy it from China at huge expense? Firewall it so nobody in Britain can use it? Would seem rather ironic...
Thank you - I'm glad you liked it!
Re (3): the simplest approach and best approach is to require them to sell it to an operator that is not a hostile state (most likely a private company), which is what (as I understand it) the US is doing currently. If they refuse, it can be firewalled/prevent any legitimate British companies advertising on it, etc. I'm sure some determined people could still access it, but far fewer than currently and it is almost certainly not hard to make operating it in the country unprofitable, given this is a social network rather than e.g. a site selling drugs. And if there is a demand for this sort of form/content (which there appears to be) a domestic/western country will quickly step into the gap, create a similar product, and then dominate by network effect.