- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Ahead of the election, anti-government militias are using Facebook to recruit, coordinate training, and promote ballot box stakeouts. Meta isn’t shutting their groups down and is even auto-generating pages.
i wonder when megacorporations start openly governing countries, pushing the local government to sidelines
I really wonder what that may look like too and how likely of an outcome it is. I mean we’ve seen versions of it with “banana republics”, but that wasn’t quite the modern era and wasn’t sophisticated tech companies. I also think most tech companies today would not want that responsibility, just the rewards, it’s a bit hard for me to imagine them actually attempting to provide a government. I think what we’ll see is increasingly hollowed out public institutions matched with ascending power and control of the corps, but leaving the govt in place (largely for a target people can point to when they’re mad) and stopping short of overtly seizing power. Best of both worlds for the corps.
I think they would increase their control over the politicans and law making system while more critical systems like taxation and police are outsourced. Like, collection corporations can buy the rights to collect taxes and police becomes private, protecting primarily corporations interests while regular people can buy some kind of protection package. We are just discardable tools to them so why would they care for people’s wellbeing beyond maybe not causing revolt due to too much suffering.
That seems pretty plausible to me, yeah, because it’s being attempted already and we seem to be sliding that direction. Privatizing those public services sounds like precisely the way to usher in a fresh new hell like this, completely agree.