The Case for a Public Internet

If platforms on the internet tend towards monopoly, would we not prefer a government monopoly over a private monopoly?

Over the course of the 1900’s states in Europe and across the world realised that there are basic needs all citizens have, and that the best way to accommodate those needs is through a public system. Education, healthcare, childcare, inter-city transportation, intra-city transportation, post, telephony, and tv and radio broadcasting are all examples of public goods the state provides in one form or another in most developed countries. The reasons for doing so are obvious, life without these things would be poorer, and letting the market handle it leads to undesirable outcomes. Since the 1990’s we have invented new technologies and ways of doing things which have become de facto standards, needs even, for daily functioning. But instead of giving the public a role in designing and delivering those systems we have left the private sector to handle them, even when the private sector has been shown to abuse their power and create anti-social outcomes.

Foreign social media tycoons effectively have the power to banish interlocutors from the public square where political, social, and cultural debates take place without even needing to provide a rationale for why.  By outsourcing curation duties to opaque algorithms, whose own designers are unsure of exactly how they work and why they do what they do, social media firms exert a lot of power over public conversations. How much better might social media become if the current platforms had to compete with a public alternative designed to be genuinely pro-social, instead of profit seeking above all else?

The point of a public service social media platform would be to nudge private alternatives towards more user friendly design rather than usurping them as the primary social platforms. Social media is structured by network effects like the solar system is structured by gravity. Any upstart social media faces an almost insurmountable challenge in matching or overtaking an established rival’s user count as each user gets more value from a social platform if there are more users on the platform, meaning that there is no diminishing returns on uptake; indeed there may even be increasing returns to scale. Statebook will therefore never have a chance at overtaking Facebook, but it could still make Facebook less unbearable by showing enthusiasts what a less toxic platform looks like, which could put pressure on Facebook to improve.

A public service platform would not need to optimise for engagement or stuff as many ads as possible down the throat of users. Obviously useful for getting a better debate climate when ragebaiting, context collapse, and deliberate misunderstandings are not rewarded in terms of views and likes. But it could also improve commercial and informational internet services too. For example, it is widely acknowledged that Google’s search has been going downhill for years with worse results due to companies gaming the search engine optimisation criteria, companies being able to buy the top spots for search terms, and AI overviews. What if we had a state provided alternative whose only priority is accurate results? Again, maybe Google is too entrenched to be unseated from its search throne, but competition is not just good but necessary in a well-functioning market economy, and if the private sector is unwilling or unable to provide that competition then the state will have to.

And there are plenty of instances where the private sector is unwilling or unable to provide sufficient competition. Companies like Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple have for the last two decades spent much of their time and vast fortunes trying to engineer digital markets to be monopolies where they have unfair levels of power and data. Amazon is building and maintaining one of the world’s largest shopping platforms while simultaneously making their own products to sell on that very same centralised platform. Alphabet runs a massive advertising business where it has interests in both selling and buying ads, while running one of the biggest ad exchanges on the web. Apple has tried to maintain a monopoly on app distribution on its smart phone operating system (while not allowing customers to install other operating systems nor allow rival phone makers to run IOS on non-Apple hardware) while designing their own apps. These are but a few examples of the blatant unfair trade practices which define the modern internet. The fact that Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple are unwilling to allow real competition means that all the companies operating downstream in their walled gardens are unable to provide real competition.

The irony is that internet platforms are uniquely well suited to enabling robust and fair competition, if competently and independently managed. If Amazon did not have proprietary products and books to hawk on its platform – or better yet, if it was barred from doing so – it would be a great way to shop on the internet. If only the platform spent its time and energy on making comparisons easier, faster, and simpler. Similarly, if Uber operated as a platform for booking taxi journeys where many local independent taxi services competed for each fare then it would be a boon to cities rather than a bane. Imagine if a search engine like Google was a place of competition where it was not possible to buy your way to the top. Again, platforms are more or less inevitable and not always bad, if they are held to account.

The EU has made efforts to regulate the internet better, and it has focused on the power of platforms to exert undue power over their users. My proposal of publicly owned alternatives with an eye towards maxmising social gain rather than private profits does not solve the core issue with large concentrated platforms with wide ranging powers over their users. But those problems are not that different from the problems with other services the state provides. Public healthcare systems, public education systems, and most of all a centralised national military imbues the state with an inordinate amount of avenues for abusing its power over the individual and to engineer outcomes to the benefit of itself rather than those being treated, educated, or protected. But through a system of governance, management, and transparency the fact that we have given the state those functions is completely unremarkable in the developed world. Silicon Valley will try to convince you that giving the state any role in regulating the internet is tantamount to Orwellian control, but the reality is less terrifying and more mundane. The reality is that a better internet is possible but that entrenched interests and monopolists are standing in its way.

If you liked this post you can read a previous post about here or the rest of my writings here. I also have a section for longer reads I call essays here, I particularly recommend my essay on Silicon Valley and AI called 'No Acoustic Guitars in Silicon Valley'. It'd mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Come back next Monday for a new post!

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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.

Written by Karl Johansson

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Cover photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson