The submitted title is: "Facebook and Google Are Actually Net States. And They Rule the World ".
The actual article title is: "Net States Rule The World; We Need To Recognize Their Power"
That 2nd clause after the semicolon is not a throwaway line -- it's the essence of her essay.
(EDIT: I originally thought the submitter editorialized the title but I now notice that the html meta tags have the same misleading title: "<title data-react-helmet="true">Facebook and Google Are Actually 'Net States.' And They Rule the World | WIRED</title>")
The editorialized title makes it sound like the author criticizes Google and Facebook like a million previous articles have already done.
However, if one actually reads the article, her main thesis is for governments to use Google/Facebook's influence as a force for positive change. She says a hearts & minds type of campaign by spreading ideas is more effective than military drones and missiles. Since Google/Facebook are the current rulers of information, governmenments should explicitly recognize their power and use them for winning the new battle of ideas. (E.g. she wrote: "The world needs net-states in order to defeat the non-states.")
(I also appreciate the sibling comment from adventured but author Alexis Wichowski's background[1] makes it looks like she's aware of the history of transnationals. Her essay is about proactively harnessing internet giants' power to spread ideas as opposed to overstating their power compared to historical transnationals.)
In my opinion the scarcest human resource is nuance. So many heated breaths of online guff would evaporate in the afternoon sunlight if every netizen took a little more care when editorialising.
A genuine follow-up question is, "What is statehood?" By any accepted definition transnational corporations are not states. Even if you modify the moniker with the prefix net- it still feels wrong to me.
There are very few senses in which the "citizens" of Facebook share a common identity purely because they inhabit Facebooklandia. If anything, the citizens of Facebook are its shareholders, bosses, and employees. We can see this because corporate decisions most often intersect the desires and intentions of those three stakeholders rather than the desires of the customers. Also, even though it is a cliché beaten to death, unless you are paying for a service you are not the customer, you are at best a "user", at worst a productised entity.
Advertisers hold much sway in what content gets shown and produced.
Having said that, I agree with the author's thesis. If you want to reach hearts and minds go to where their eyeballs are – go to where they are plugged into the information streams.
I think we should reserve the term net-state for online/virtual sovereign groups of individuals and potentially bots that have some form of self-governance.
Facebook is not a democratic net-state. Its users are nevertheless its netizens. Comparing it to a traditional state, you might say the shareholders are the nobility, employees are the privileged trade and crafts guilds, and users are the taxed serfs.
I like how you think but to my mind it is still a bit of a stretch.
Facebook can't raise taxes, monopolise the use of force, grant children of its netizens Facebook netizenship, and so forth.
I'm not saying that there never could exist a state that exists purely in the online realm – in fact, technologies like Ethereum makes me think we're not far off from net-states existing.
Facebook can in fact do most of the things you mention.
Their 'taxing' of netizens takes several forms, mainly displaying ads and collecting and selling information about them. Both of these are profitable to Facebook (or they wouldn't do them), and injurious to users (in lost privacy and attention). Facebook can choose how much of it they do; they balance taxation (profits) with user retention (emigration).
Facebook have a monopoly on many kinds of force on their platform. They and only they can remove or block content and ban accounts. And unlike other states, there are no courts, no constitution, and no way for rebels to gain these powers for themselves by force.
The question of granting netizenship is less important, because Facebook encourages immigration: they'd love all the world to be their netizens! But they can exile people they don't like, or block them from joining.
Facebook also have partial control of the presses in their country and of the commerce at its borders (in- and out-going links).
There may be an analogy here but I think you are just introducing confusion by trying to equate ad revenues with "taxes" and customer churn with "emigration".
Facebook's business practices aren't a "monopoly" in any usual sense of the word and so once again it is just making it difficult to discuss the associated concerns/problems by expanding the meaning of "monopoly".
While they may not be considered a state in that sense, they can be considered a nation of sorts. Instead of a common language or shared history, Facebook originally catered only to students of elite universities, who do have their own unique culture.
Facebook can't levy taxes on its citizens like a state, but it can raise revenues. They can't realistically monopolize the use of force, but that is due our current social climate. In the past, the Dutch/British east india companies, Belgian Congo and other early trading corps had their own standing armies. More recently, agricultural corps in Latin America employed their own paramilitary groups. If there was ever a need, they could create a PMC.
> "What is statehood?" By any accepted definition transnational corporations are not states. Even if you modify the moniker with the prefix net- it still feels wrong to me.
A childhood friend was exiled/expelled/told to fuck off from Zimbabwe for being white and his family had to move to Chile. He was a political refugee. I understand a lot of that was made possible by the international mining company his dad worked for.
> In my opinion the scarcest human resource is nuance.
Indeed. But our society is dominated by story-telling which has much to gain by underemphasizing the nuance of reality and overstating the choice elements that happen to fit a narrative.
I still wonder if the number of concepts the modern person has to deal with—due to our ever-complexifying society—mean that we are more easily drawn to mental shortcuts. As a kid, I remember being around farmers in my dad's village who never lived in a city and most of whom didn't have high-school level education. By our modern standards, their mental load was low, yet in the things that they dealt with, they were impressively thorough and appreciative of the nuances that existed in their life. And that often translated to a nuanced appreciation of their fellows.
> In my opinion the scarcest human resource is nuance. So many heated breaths of online guff would evaporate in the afternoon sunlight if every netizen took a little more care when editorialising.
The author literally gives a definition in paragraph 2. You're free to discuss the hypothesis, but it feels cheap to simply call it editorializing.
Hold on. I'm not accusing the author of editorialising. I'm talking about that general tendency humans have where they do not take care when reading what someone wrote and then do not take care when giving their interpretation of what that someone wrote.
In fact, if anything, I was praising jasode above who started this thread for writing such a balanced and measured post in response to other posters who were already misrepresenting the substance of the article.
No, they aren't, and no, they don't. Evidence: Facebook and Google cannot summon actual governments with compulsory process and subject them to inquiry, OTOH, the reverse can and does occur.
The EU doesn't submit to decisions of Google regulators, the reverse can and does happen.
Facebook and Google are multinational corporations with considerable influence, and moreover through which other (including state) actors exert considerable influence. But they aren't anything like states, and they don't do anything like ruling the world.
Also, the source headline doesbt mention Facebook and Google, and both the HN and source headline are clickbait because the actual article doesn't support the conclusion that what it identifies as “net states” rule the world. It mostly argues that they are a new significant kind of actor, by doesn't really provide a meaningful differentiation between them and international non-state actors of the past, nor a meaningful way in which Anonymous and Google are similar to each other. They've invented a nonsense category, attributed false attributes to it in the article, and overstated even that in the headline.
This article argues how many people’s lives are now depending on and living in these virtual online platforms such that we are forming a society there.
It doesn’t rule the world in the same sense as a government on earth. But every move FB and Google make can impact millions’ lives. They don’t invade your home and arrest you, but they can shut down your account. Google can disable your entire Google Account and then you lose years worth of data (this happened recently a few months ago).
Instead of marching on the street to protest, users are now sharing stories and their opinions through hashtags and sharing posts with their friends. They own your data now. They own your lives. They learn enough about you they can lure you into buying products. Instead of shaming another human being with a physical sign like Da Zi Bao (Big-character poster in the 50’s in China), we can gang up on an individual in the comment section. Keyboard warrior, huh? Their powerful algorithms can regulate and determine what we get to see and when we get to see. So many people are “being educated” on the Internet; there are the good stuff like Cousera and edX, and there are fake news outlets). We are grooming a whole new society in the cloud. Instead of taxing your money on a regular basis, they tax your time and then gets revenue back every time you are online and whenever you shop. Instead of sightseeing a new building, people are excited about new features rolling out.
How are the above not evidence of forming a new kind of civilization? Every organization is itself a “government”. Someone at the top is making decisions for you.
>, and they don't do anything like ruling the world. [...]
I guess people interpret it differently. Whenever I see the phrase "rule the world", it's just a common rhetorical device and not necessarily clickbait. E.g. it's common to see headlines like "the US dollar rules the world" or "Hollywood rules the world".
I don't think we have to take that phrase so literally since we know in the back of our minds that nothing really rules the whole world.
I do see that the "net state" label bothers many readers so she probably should have coined another neologism.
Interesting. Net-states is a useful term, but it might be useful to not make too strong a separation between them and all of the multinational corporations that came before. The Dutch East India Company, for example. Multinational corporations have always been little non-democratic kingdoms. It's my understanding that our modern view of sovereign states is due to the Peace of Westphalia, so maybe in some sense we are just reverting to the norm where states don't have all the power. Also, even with separate states, families like the Hapsburgs did really rule the world in ways Facebook never can.
Finally, the US (and other superpowers) have historically struggled in places where they don't have boots on the ground. It's too hard to uproot local traditions and you don't really have a base of support. These net-states have an even weaker claim to power. If ISIS can wage a guerrilla war with limited physical resources (and a much greater power differential vs the US), anyone can take down Facebook or Google. They are a massive, slow-moving target that is already under attack.
Agreed. The history of power is church->liberal democracies and republics->corporations.
The net-state is a great term! but it refers to the medium through which the corporate state is projecting power, akin to the social contracts and armies of the papal and liberal states.
We definitely need a bill of rights and constitution under the net-states. One that our liberal institutions can defend.
> We definitely need a bill of rights and constitution under the net-states. One that our liberal institutions can defend.
A constitution, and institutions that may uphold it, would be internal and specific to a particular net-state. Just like with real states, they can't be enforced on a net-state from outside except by extreme use of force.
This is a good thing: I don't want a single Net-wide constitution for all present and future net-states, because I don't trust any single body to write or enforce it! Variation between net-states is broadly good, as long as emigration is easy.
So I'm not sure what you mean by "our liberal institutions", but if you mean "our US non-net liberal institutions", then as someone who's not a US citizen I don't want them to have power over me.
They are corporations and we need to look at how corporations have too much influence on the world, and are increasingly concentrated centres of power, essentially unaccountable to the public.
Definitely. And it would also help "real" states if they started to play nice, by paying their taxes where they're due.
But I think the over-the-top tax optimisation is actually what will ultimately cause them to lose their power (aka boycott by users, huge financial penalties from "real" states, or break-into-pieces scenario a-la-Standard-Oil) someday.
I'll tell you why such a breakup will probably never happen. Break those companies up and the individual services they offer will probably end up being worse than what the combined entity could offer. Couple that with large companies who effectively do the same thing in protected markets (China) who'll use the opportunity expand into the rest of the world and you'll end up in a situation where you neutered the companies you have some control over in order to open the playing field to companies you don't.
These "net-states" are looking less and less like independent actors in the political sphere and more like arms by which nation-states can reach into the cultural sphere and influence conduct and opinion as well as put their finger on the pulse of the public sentiment, even targeting the communications of individual people regardless of whose citizens they happen to be. Net-states are unique compared to traditional media companies in that they have a far easier time crossing national boundaries. Where before Hollywood or the BBC needed a dominant share in the market of foreign countries to spread the ideals of their host countries, net-states act more like portals to any region with an internet connection with little holding it back.
It is much easier to opt out of the Facebook “Net State” than the Google one, IMO. I have never been on Facebook, family members email me, I still get invited to things, etc. I really don’t see what I’m missing by not being on it aside from some centralization of communication services that would hardly be much of an improvement for me.
Almost everyone I know feels the same way. The common refrain I hear from most people is, “I only use it for photos and to keep up with X distant relative(s)/friend(s).” This also seems to me, to be the general cultural attitude towards it.
It seems to me there is a subset of the population that are very active users and a further subset who are negatively influenced by its advertising reach. However, are we really to believe that a product that so many people claim holds so little away over their lives is really all that influential?
Conversely I have almost never heard anyone do anything, but admit the power Google products hold on their lives (myself included). Even of the odd tech people I know who have, with great dedication used something like DuckDuckGo, disavowed Google products in their lives at some point only a handful have ever really stuck with it.
Google’s reach seems far more ubiquitous and forceful then Facebook’s, IMO.
> because nation-states need a wake-up call: The world needs net-states in order to defeat the non-states.
Wait, what? Was this article written by a government, corporation, or other informational organism that has finally managed to achieve language? Why would an individual (ie a homo sapien) be interested in snuffing out the space of their own existence?
I do think that Google’s search results provide a potent lense. Primarily, if a result isn’t on the first page of Google’s search result, then it essentially doesn’t exist. That said, Google also doesn’t rule the world.
They may well be heading this route. Having so much power without an effective voting mechanism through which users (a.k.a. netizens) can influence decision-making is a known path of development that leads to nothing good.
The article attempts to pretend what's going on is new.
It's not at all. The article is just another emotional, absurd, fear mongering trial balloon.
Let's use logic and examine the facts.
Facebook and Google are not more powerful globally than Standard Oil, US Steel, or JP Morgan were at their zenith. Aramco is more powerful than Google by a dramatic margin. Much less The British East India Company (which had a lot more direct muscle behind it than other commercial giants). Norway's sovereign fund probably has more real power than Google or Facebook.
JP Morgan had incredible power at its peak. The man, JP Morgan, was the director of America's financial markets at a time when the US was the world's largest economy.
Standard Oil was so big vs the US Government, JD Rockefeller bailed out the government by pledging his assets as a stabilizing factor during one of the largest panics. Today that's so far away from feasible as to be comical to even consider. Google could bail out the US Government's operations for about a week, and would instantly vaporize in a small wave of a financial tsunami like 2009 (Google couldn't have even saved one tiny little corner of that mess such as AIG).
Now the power in all regards of the US Government is at least 10x what it was during the industrial revolution. It has a vast standing military capable of destroying nations at will. It has vast regulatory power that didn't exist 100 years ago. It has vastly increased taxing power that didn't exist 100 years ago. It has an extremely powerful central bank that has a financial strangle-hold over most things financial in the US (and partially globally). Just the SEC working with a few dozen FBI agents alone could destroy Facebook if unleashed with just a few new laws (not an exaggeration).
1) Facebook has no physical capabilities. Facebook is easily destroyed by the government. They can raid Facebook's offices any day of the week with guns and end the corporation forever. That's not an exaggeration, any day of the week - Facebook has no physical defense, it will never have that capability. It will always be subservient to the extreme might of the US Government. Any domestic challenge to the physical power of the US Government will be met with obvious consequences, see: all of US history.
2) Facebook has no meaningful power over global or domestic financial markets. It has $30b in cash and $16b in 2017 profit. A joke (x100+) compared to the power of the central bank of China; it's a joke (x30) compared to the Norway sovereign fund.
3) Facebook has no taxing authority (placing ads on your own web site that people use voluntarily is not a taxing authority; taxing authority is being able to force people to pay, being able to take their wages against their will, backed up by threat of force), no serious ability to issue currency, and it has no independent financial capability not directly tied to a nation's central bank. (yet, maybe crypto-currencies change this in 20 years). That is, it's hostage to where it operates, and inherently subservient to large nations. The EU broadly can end Facebook's ability to operate within most of Europe any time it decided to do so (with likely consequences on trade, but non-the-less). Facebook's recourse? Cry in the corner, similar to Google's recourse when it gets massively fined by the EU.
4) Facebook has no ability to dictate domestic terms to the people or government in a nation in which it operates (several European & Asian nations are actively demonstrating this). What I mean by that, is: any given nation can turn off Facebook at any given time, plenty of nations have demonstrated that type of ability and willingness over the years (China being the ultimate example, but others such as Turkey or Brazil have done similar things). The mere fact that it can't even manage to control this vector, reveals how weak it actually is compared to nations (why? because it has neither the financial power of a small nation nor any physical might at all (no physical might means even weak small nations can ignore you at will with few consequences)).
Your argument presupposes that the sole purveyor of power is money, with a secondary vehicle of physical domination. It's true that money makes the world go round but there are many subtler ways to influence markets and public discourse. These also constitute power and if we are to support free expression we should recognize its threats now and be proactive about countering the actions that lead to negative consequences.
Changing hearts and minds might just be easier done with a search result or a like button than with... wait, remind me what power Standard Oil had to do something like that again?
The power to transform culture and the trek of civilization is real power. And unlike many I don't see that being a being entirely a bad thing.
The actual article title is: "Net States Rule The World; We Need To Recognize Their Power"
That 2nd clause after the semicolon is not a throwaway line -- it's the essence of her essay.
(EDIT: I originally thought the submitter editorialized the title but I now notice that the html meta tags have the same misleading title: "<title data-react-helmet="true">Facebook and Google Are Actually 'Net States.' And They Rule the World | WIRED</title>")
The editorialized title makes it sound like the author criticizes Google and Facebook like a million previous articles have already done.
However, if one actually reads the article, her main thesis is for governments to use Google/Facebook's influence as a force for positive change. She says a hearts & minds type of campaign by spreading ideas is more effective than military drones and missiles. Since Google/Facebook are the current rulers of information, governmenments should explicitly recognize their power and use them for winning the new battle of ideas. (E.g. she wrote: "The world needs net-states in order to defeat the non-states.")
(I also appreciate the sibling comment from adventured but author Alexis Wichowski's background[1] makes it looks like she's aware of the history of transnationals. Her essay is about proactively harnessing internet giants' power to spread ideas as opposed to overstating their power compared to historical transnationals.)
[1] https://sipa.columbia.edu/faculty-research/faculty-directory...