Abstract
In the past few years, big Social Media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have received intense scrutiny from the intellectual classes. This article critiques the dominant strain of criticism, the neo-Brandeisian School of antitrust, for its narrow focus on “regulated competition” as an appropriate means to “fix social media”. This essay calls for a socialist alternative: a democratic social media commons based on free and open source technology, decentralization, and democratic socialist legal solutions. It reviews how existing solutions like the Fediverse and LibreSocial work, and how they may provide answers for a better way forward.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Kwet, Michael
(2020)
"Fixing Social Media: Toward a Democratic Digital Commons,"
Markets, Globalization & Development Review:
Vol. 5:
No.
1, Article 4.
DOI: 10.23860/MGDR-2020-05-01-04
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/mgdr/vol5/iss1/4
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Author Bio
Michael Kwet is a Visiting Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. He received his PhD in Sociology from Rhodes University. His work has been published in outlets like The New York Times, Vice News, Al Jazeera, The Intercept, Wired, and Mail & Guardian. He is co-editor with Jeffrey Vagle of the forthcoming volume, The Cambridge Handbook of Race and Surveillance.