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What happens when a Kiwi firm founded and run by your friends gets sold to an American firm. They promptly take your personal data and upload it to Facebook without your permission. Why are companies so obsessed with giving information to Facebook? Do they owe Mark something?
in reply to Jack Yan (甄爵恩)

Dave Lane 🇳🇿
Dave Lane 🇳🇿
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that sucks. Sorry to hear it. Companies, even our friends' , are untrustworthy, because they don't stay our friends or owned by our friends. Sad.
in reply to Dave Lane 🇳🇿

Bob Mottram ✅
Bob Mottram ✅
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As a general strategy, we need to avoid creating organizations which can easily be bought by #BigTech, or where cash can be conveniently converted into influence. So cooperatives, non-profits and so forth.
in reply to Bob Mottram ✅

Dave Lane 🇳🇿
Dave Lane 🇳🇿
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agreed. I also think that our gov't needs to stop subsidising 'startups'. They're a huge waste, and they make it easy for foreign corporates to buy up our best and brightest, with no benefits for NZ. Any gov't support for them is tantamount to supporting "trickle down economics". In other words, a bad joke.

reshared this

in reply to Dave Lane 🇳🇿

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •

Exactly what I told the EU parliament: ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of…

#stayUps #commons


The Future of Internet Regulation at the European Parliament

A brief write-up of my talk at the EU Parliament last week with embedded videos of my talk and a link to my slides.
Aral Balkan
#commons #stayups
in reply to Aral Balkan

Dave Lane 🇳🇿
Dave Lane 🇳🇿
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I think the best companies *boot strap* and employ great people with good remuneration. Those people *are* the value of the organisation. They should also have a share of the ownership. That's how we achieve equitable societies.
in reply to Dave Lane 🇳🇿

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
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Let’s take it even further: good societies bootstrap great people; they should also have a share of the ownership. If an org agrees to a charter that stipulates that they cannot be sold/bought and that their work must remain in the commons (eg., mandated AGPL license), then they should be an independent org that is funded from the commons for the common good. The independent bit is crucial though. You don’t want it to turn into govt control.
in reply to Aral Balkan

Literally
Literally
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@aral haven't you just described venture capitalism? They aren't just gifting money, they get ownership as well.
@Aral Balkan
in reply to Literally

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
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mastodon.ar.al/@aral/108447631…

So, no, I wasn’t describing VC.


ar.al🌻 (@aral@mastodon.ar.al)

Venture Capital is when a group of rich douchebags get money from a group of even richer douchebags for some likely-not-rich-yet douchebags to create things that exploit the rest of us so all the douchebags involved can get richer still.
Aral’s Mastodon
Unknown parent

Literally
Literally
• •

Sorry that was meant to be more hopeful - it seems so possible that just a group of people could join under the common cause of supporting common good X, and pool funds, and we already have the mechanisms for doing the "we gave you money so you must now do X".

It seems so close!

in reply to Literally

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
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Hah, no worries. You led me to formulate a thought I wanted to express succinctly for a while now :)

@lightweight @bob

@Dave Lane 🇳🇿 @Bob Mottram ✅
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