Yeah absolutely. This is something I can get behind.

They could but it’s symbiotic. Social Media churns engagement using bots, which generates ad revenue.

Not to mention that large Social Media companies like Meta are almost certainly filtering out bot content to train LLMs on.

I mean, some entity has to control it.

Even if we reign in Corporations, there’s still external governments trying to stir trouble and influence the popular opinion. We can’t realistically stop them from doing this, but have to defend against it. So some entity has to be in charge of that.

I think you’re right though, we have to reign in Corporations first. If each Nation cannot do that, then there’s not much difference between Government and Corporate Interests. This is a problem that isn’t going to go away even after we fix it either - something we’ll have to figure out as a society how to handle.

I can’t think a non-bias medium guardrail system hasn’t eventually fallen under Government control. Government has just as much of a need to protect their interests from external sources as anyone else. It really is a National Security Issue for every Nation, not just EuroAmericana.

“And it’s not a Democracy it’s a Democratic Republic!” /s

Yeah, absolutely. Every Nation should have something like this unfortunately.

I think it makes sense for techies to be able to breach the walls and reach the open internet, tunnel into other countries nets, but the general populace just cannot unfortunately.

Government has to be the wall between corporations and the general mass populace. The general population just does not have the media literacy or means to effectively combat corporations influence on everything in society. Something needs to be that barrier.

I think this greatly undermines the weaponization of the internet from other governments. Society is currently so plugged in and we’ve known that subliminal messaging is a real psychological problem for close to ~100 years now. Free and Open internet is cool, but not for the masses who cannot combat this kind of psychological warfare.

We have to reign in both Corporations and external entities trying to influence a Nations populace. Some how, some way.

Something something… Capitalism

All this does is make people’s data more valuable, and create a valuable repository of people’s personal information.

This happens regardless, there’s no way around the security problem of needing to verify someone’s identify. On a National level, on a State level, on a Country level. We have to, as a society, verify someones identity for security purposes - there’s no getting around that. Decentralization doesn’t solve the security problem here.

Both by governments looking for dissenters

They can already do this.

by advertisers, who will use that data to squeeze every last cent out of you via Surveillance pricing.

This is a separate issue, and they’re already doing this. We already know, as a lemmy users, we need better laws for data protection and tech in general (online and physical).

What do you think will happen when the nations collective web browsing information inevitably gets leaked and anyone can look up anyone’s name, see their license and what they’ve watched on YouTube or elsewhere? It’s creepy tech, not protection.

This is a separate issue, and they’re already doing this. Everything you purchase is available online through data brokers. People are connected to a lot of stuff, and all that data is amassed through brokers. What do you think predictive models were made for?

The solution to these ‘social problems’ is funding education.

You’re 100% right, but Education is a long-term solution already facing an uphill battle. If we were more progressive as a society, then we would have insulated our National Security 10+ years ago, but we’re not, and technology moves fast.

But that doesn’t work quickly, costs money, and various groups of people in power oppose widespread critical thinking. Making sure people aren’t exhausted because they can’t afford anything and are always working would help too, but it’s not ‘sexy’ to uplift people’s standard of living I guess

No rebuttals on the rest, 100% correct.

The number of uneducated, the absolutely absurd amount of data that is already available, and the growing predictive model tech are all reasons why each Nation needs to figure out their tech security, some way, some how - the sooner the better. OS level security is one of the better options. National Firewall, like China, would be the next best bet.

Did they or is that just my collective opinion after growing up with the internet and seeing what it’s turned into?

Do you not think botnets exist or do you not think those botnets pose as citizens?

Maybe you don’t think that the online narratives from social media (Reddit, Facebook, X, Mastadoon, whatever) are driven by botnets boosting signals? Maybe you think online discussion happens organically?

Do you think the average person can distinguish between an AI image and a real image? Photoshop? Do you think the average person would realize that they’re discussing a topic with an LLM? How about a foreign agent?

I don’t know, maybe you don’t think that governments are using this against one-another’s citizens to shake up democracy and promote distrust in their institutions?

I think that both (ours and rival) governments and wealthy individuals (or cabals) use online discourse to drive narratives and through that action (or inaction). I think that by doing nothing we leave the majority of the uneducated at the mercy of those devices. Adding another layer of security makes sense to filter these out.

Personally, I’d much rather have a National Firewall so that there’s the Nations Intranet and then the World Wide Web Internet, but if we have to have something and nobody is fighting for anything better, nobody is finding solutions to these social problems we’ve created, then this’ll have to do. At least a Firewall can be gotten around if you know how - it’s mostly for the general populace. Incoming traffic could be marked and monitored separately.

This isn’t just an issue that’s affecting the U.S. - every Nation has to find a solution to this problem. We either have to combat it with better, alternative solutions, or we have to accept it as a solution to an evergrowing problem.

Nobody has better solutions to fight against botnets and targeted misinformation. Like, these are big deals that every Nation needs account for some way some how. A non-anonymous internet for the masses, and anonymous internet for those who know how to get around it should be the standard.

To boil it down further - this is a individual vs collectivism. YOU want privacy and anonymity because, being on lemmy, you have a higher chance of being more technically literate and inclined. The vast majority are not so inclined and are at a disadvantage.

How Brave

Big outs to The Bloodhound Gang

Those points are valid, but do you really think having better UI/UX is going to win them over customers when compared to Steam? Like, Steam is such a behemoth. Hypothetical, but if I was still a kid, and my brother had his whole library on Steam, where do you think I’d end up buying most my games? I think good UI/UX is only half the battle in this kind of competition.

Maybe, but EGS is also the driving force behind Unreal Engine 5, which despite everyone hating it really is a good engine.

Valve doesn’t even lease it’s engine out to other devs. I don’t even know if they’re still developing their game engine.

So I do give props to EGS for pushing game engines forward and making them available.

You’re describing how you would compete in a normal competition, but Steam has already had a decade to lock in it’s following. The competition is/was over.

I say that as a Steam user, there’s absolutely nothing a competitor can do to convince me to start buying / keeping my games on a platform outside Steam. Steam just has it all AND that’s where all my existing games already are. No amount of UI/UX improvements will convince me. No amount of sales will convince me because Steam will have the same game. Better cuts to developers doesn’t bring in repeat customers.

Like, Steam would need to take a nosedive in quality and care and I just don’t see that happening.

The argument here is not that Steam is, in the current flawed legal American sense, a monopoly, but that it is a monopoly in the sense that it has cornered enough of the gaming market that it could do very serious harm.

Note that “they’re not currently doing harm” is not a great counterargument here. When my neighbor buys a bazooka, I won’t be satisfied by “don’t worry I’m not currently using it”.

Absolutely this. I’m glad you were able to convey it in a way people understand.

Steam is a blackhole for PC gaming/gamers from a marketing perspective. They’ve capitalized on so much of the market, that once a person buys a game on Steam they are unlikely to buy the same game and/or even future games from a different but similar platform. It is in a sense, locking the consumer in and so many consumers are locked in. Nobody competed with Steam in the PC gaming market for an eternity and it’s not Steams fault at all.

Even if Steam went to absolute shit in the next 20 odd years they’ve pretty much guaranteed that I’ll be coming back to play all the games I’ve ever bought on there. Even if EGS or GoG improves their interface to compete with Steam, I’ve no reason to buy elsewhere (though do support GoG please).

Now to pose a question: How does a competitor even compete with Steam to capture even a % of the market?

Lemme knock out the obvious: Better UI and stronger community / community tools. I think these are a given. That being said, I do think EGS is going the correct route by investing in games / unique games and locking them into their platform. Everybody like free market and availability, but to compete against the goliath that is Steams marketbase, you gotta be the only place where to get some things. It sucks, but that’s what I can’t think of a better, to the point method for anyone to capture a similar market for growth, but what do you think?

In the Age of Technology and AI, it does make sense to have any manufacturing operations in house than overseas. Ofc if there were countries we could trust that would be onpar as well, but the U.S. pretty much shit the bed on alliances.

If a World War were to break out, no chance India and Africa are to be able to sit on the outskirts.