Well actually it can, and the solution is already there online, yet not many people are using it. (search hint: distributed social network)
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Why reinvent the wheel? There is already a network in existence connecting nearly a third of the worldās people. Why not use that one?
Because itās privately owned and centralized. Even if you will make it state owned, it will still be centralised, and entirely controlled by some governtment or other entity.
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So what? The whole point of a global-scale network like that is to aggregate a bunch of stuff together in one place, with a universal system for logging in, managing content, finding others and interacting with them. Thatās what users want.
The problem with it as it is now, is that itās easy to manipulate centrally, especially what content will be shown to which users etc. Distributed networks donāt give such power to anyone - they are technologically superior in every way.
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8 years ago
Nice article in todayās Guardian 
I clicked on the Google links they have and itās all blank. Yay me! I must have opted out of their data collection at some point, although TBH I canāt even remember doing it. Anyway, I donāt really think that means Google has nothing on me, but I guess at least it sends a message.
I couldnāt check the FB data as you have to log in and, well, I deleted my account.
These days I use Duck-Duck-Go for most search, and Firefox for most browsing. Proton Mail is great for email, but it misses the killer feature of gmail: search. Everything on Proton Mail is encrypted, which means you canāt search it at all. 
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[Facebook Gave Device
Makers Deep Access to
Data on Users and Friends][//www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/facebook-device-partners-users-friends-data.html?hpw&rref=technology&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well)
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The Age of Weaponized Narrative, or, Where Have You Gone, Walter Cronkite?
Myth and stories structure reality, create and maintain identity, and provided meaning to people, institutions, and cultures.
[In the 1970s] Political organizers, activists, and others learned to use narratives of oppression and marginalization to attack dominant cultural narratives of elites, while companies learned to generate narratives that supported their brands. Eventually, nations began to see narrative as a tool of foreign policy that they could use to undermine their enemies: weaponized narrative.
ā¦A second example involves the political consulting group Cambridge Analytica, a big data mining and analytics firm that among other jobs worked on President Trumpās election campaign; similar firms worked on the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom. Based on the enormous amounts of data that can be accumulated on each voter, some people claim that such firms have the ability to target select voters with customized individual narratives based on their personal data profiles in order to manipulate their political choices and their decision whether to vote or stay home. Experts disagree on whether these techniques were decisive in the Brexit vote or the US election, but that is beside the point. Technological evolution, in this case involving big data and analytics fed by social media and online data aggregation techniques, is rapidly developing the ability to custom-design narratives that can effectively manipulate political behavior on an individual basis. If it isnāt already here, it will be soon.
Story is power
Weaponized narrative is the use of information and communication technologies, services, and tools to create and spread stories intended to subvert and undermine an adversaryās institutions, identity, and civilization, and it operates by sowing and exacerbating complexity, confusion, and political and social schisms. It is an emerging domain of asymmetric warfare that attacks the shared beliefs and values that support an adversaryās culture and resiliency. It builds on previous practices, including disinformation, information warfare, psychological operations (psyops), fake news, social media, software bots, propaganda, and other practices and tools, and it draws on advances in fields such as evolutionary psychology, behavioral economics, cognitive science, and modern marketing and media studies, as well as on technological advances in domains such as social media and artificial intelligence.
ā The Age of Weaponized Narrative
Issues in Science and Technology
Volume XXXIII Issue 4, Summer 2017
Published by the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine
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More bad press for Facebook:
With an anti-Russian narrative:
With a pro-Russian narrative:
In any case, Facebook could tag you as someone interested in treasonā¦ 
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Hereās something amusing that just poped-up on-line:
https://www.rt.com/usa/434532-deep-state-sm-meddling-dotcom/
("āDeep State social media meddles in US electionsā ā Kim Dotcom slams āZuckerspy & Jack the Ripperā" ā ā.ā¦ā100 timesā more damage to democracy than all foreign meddlers combined.ā)
The āZuckerspyā references is self-evident; with āJack the Ripperā I donāt catch the association, at least in modern terms.
btw: rt.com (formerly āRussia Todayā) offers often quite interesting perspectives, allowing for the obvious bias. I regularly follow many on-line international web news sites (e.g. BBC, DeutscheWelle, Al Jazeera, CBC (Canada), France24, The Local it (Italy), as well as the local (USA) ABC/CBS/NBC and CNN as well as Fox news). RT, Al Jazeera and DeutscheWelle especially have noteworthy investigative / interpretative offerings not found elsewhere. Triangulating from these multiple perspectives helps avoid over-identifying with any one sort of āviewā.
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I blame Doctor Evil. 
" Iām leading a bipartisan coalition of 48 attorneys general in a lawsuit against Facebook to end its illegal monopoly."
https://twitter.com/newyorkstateag/status/1336755231946846208?s=21
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At last. This is NY AG Letitia James taking much needed if belated action.
Watch NY AG Letitia James explain the sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Facebook: pic.twitter.com/6qISYzGkLV
ā The Recount (@therecount) December 9, 2020
Itās worth bearing in mind that what James calls ābuy and buryā is the same strategy that was pioneered in the tech field by Microsoft in the 90s, then known as āembrace, extend, and extinguishā, and resulting in the then-largest anti-trust lawsuit in US history. It is the defining market strategy of the tech world: achieve monopoly first, then print money.
As James points out, this is not only responsible for the arrogant, privacy denying, and user-hostile practices of virtually all the tech giants, it guarantees the stifling of the one thing that these companies should be good at: innovation. We kind of get used to it, but it is really astonishing. For the past decade, none of the tech giants have produced any major innovations. Remember how in the 90s and the 00s, it seemed like there was a major change every year or so? Hey USBs, we can plug any device anywhere! Hey, phones, tablets, laptops, watches! Hey Gmail, we can do our email on the web! Hey Youtube, we can just upload any video and chat about with people! Hey Skype, we can do free video chats! Hey Google, we can find any information we want! Hey Siri, we can talk to our phones! Hey Facebook, we can ā¦ I dunno, do whatever people do on Facebook.
Now what we have is somewhat better versions of the same things we had then. In the noughts, Google was all about space elevators and solving climate change. Now theyāre about hanging on to market dominance in advertising.
This is all a direct, straight line result from the tech monopolies. So long as we allow this predatory business model to persist, the same thing will happen in every new field that tech colonizes (see Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, and the rest). By establishing this kind of scale, companies become too big to regulate or control, and they can more efficiently externalize costs onto their workers, the environment, the future, and the poor. Thereās only one way to stop this practice: break up the tech giants and take away their money.
Oh, and while Iām at it: ban TikTok. Sorry to be a wowser, but itās not worth it.
Hereās an analysis for geeks.
Iāve reversed the Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter apps. They donāt collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikTok does, and they sure as hell arenāt outright trying to hide exactly whats being sent like TikTok is. Itās like comparing a cup of water to the ocean - they just donāt compare.
tl;dr; Iām a nerd who figures out how apps work for a job. Calling it an advertising platform is an understatement. TikTok is essentially malware that is targeting children. Donāt use TikTok. Donāt let your friends and family use it.
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Hi Bhante,
Big fan of your work here. Iāve downloaded and browsed at least two of your books, plus the authenticity one you wrote with Ven Brahmali.
Iām not sure if breaking up tech giants and banning TikTok is a realistic target to aim for. It sounds like a pipe dream. And if that actually happens, some other shenanigans will rise to fill the void. Itās just how capitalism works.
What I do think would work is educating the populace. If people knew what happens in the background when you install an app, if people knew that the information and pictures uploaded to your Facebook account are never truly deleted when you press delete, they would be more cautious in the first place. If the lottery is a tax on the mathematically illiterate, then Facebook et al are a tax on the technologically illiterate. Tech literacy is the only long-term inoculation against this and future online threats.
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The laws that govern a market economy in various countries are written by very real people, and so they are subject to change. This has happened many times in the past, so itās not unrealistic to think that advocacy in the present can lead to positive reforms in the future.
One of my takeaways from the Buddhist theory of karma is that everything matters (at least a little bit). Nothing is completely without meaning or significance, and every change has some effect(s).
Weāve seen what happens when people stop caring and stop trying, and itās not positive change. We really need people to help to improve the world. All the little rumblings about Facebook and the other tech giants have slowly built up to finally generate some real scrutiny.
Iām going to (again) push back on this assumption of the publicās incompetence.
Not saying that the Chinese governmentās regulation of its tech sector is morally good, but at least theyāve proved that governments can regulate even huge technology companies effectively.
The problem in the West is that weāre still not sure what we want from the media. Do we want cheap entertainment? Reliable information? Profitable marketplaces? Calling to ābreak upā e.g. Facebook is just a scapegoat if you ask me: a convenient way for politicians to avoid the really hard policy tradeoffs.
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I fear there is little more chance for us deciding what this is than of us agreeing on any other matter. 
I guess we want a media and an intertnet that are all things to all people ā¦ and are hence in a jumble.
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