I'm likewise British. I've been doing "tech stuff" professionally since 1988, and I've been an activist for most of that time lobbying for open source and full disclosure and privacy and encryption. And I can say: Matthew proposes the fastest way to a dystopia I've heard. bsky.app/profile/matt...
I must have missed that bit from Orwell's 1984 where he said that corporate tax evasion is good, tech companies should be able to hide stuff that you've explicitly said you want to view, and that open source software should be used over proprietary alternatives where possible. You alright mate?
My name is Matthew and I shall fix all of these ills of society by taxing billionaires, for that is easy and simple and popular, rather than talking about money we've got - and possibly industry surcharges we could make - and the social change that is necessary.
I'm getting the vibe that you're not a big fan of the social safety net! Also, to be clear, it's not about taxing billionaires. It's about taxing companies with annual worldwide profits (profits, not revenues! profits!) greater than some OECD nations.
You're projecting criticism: I married into an NHS family and approve of the state sweeping people off the floor. But I also don't think that the state is my friend when it comes to deciding what code I - or anyone else - is allowed to use; aside from anything else it fucks up open source.
I mean, that's an opinion I guess -- but would you apply the same principle to something like, say, a car? If we accept that software is integral to modern life, and it can be used to harm/manipulate people, do you want it to be a free-for-all with no government oversight?
I've spent years dealing with metaphor like "Speech is like a car & mows down little children who prance across the information super highway" Or: "Giving away hacking tools is like throwing guns into a preschool" It's bullshit. Regulate people & intent, not code. alecmuffett.com/article/11135
Which, to be clear, what I proposed would do. It would simply require social platforms to show a minimum percentage of content from the person's own immediate network. It wouldn't make any requirements of the remaining percentage.
Also, yes we absolutely should regulate code, in the same way that we regulate other things for public protection. You don't like the car analogy. Fine. Let's do food! We have rules about food safety. People can go to prison for violating them! Those rules exist to protect people.
Yes, we do, but this is an old and busted metaphor as well. In a couple of ways. 1/ Code is not food, nor aircraft, which is the other popular go to metaphor. People die as a result of bad user interfaces driving medical equipment (or, stupidly, cars) but they kill or suicide because they are ill.
2/ People eat stupid shit like pufferfish and all you have to do is Google chlorinated chicken to see that there is no harmonisation with food either. 3/ coding is more like journalism/speech, and should journalists need a "fitness to practise" certificate?