I’m always amazed about the lack of conversation around nationalizing telecom. We have sasktel as a great example of how it can work, and hydroquebec as a great historical representation of the benefits of publicizing infrastructure. Seems about time to start recognizing internet as a necessary utility that the government directly provides to the people.
SaskTel and MTS were great. MTS is a great example of what can happen when Conservatives allow telecom to privatize. Never vote Conservative.
We have sasktel as a great example of how it can work
Bruce Telecom, Tbaytel, and CityWest are also government-owned. Funny how nobody ever wants to talk about them.
Privately-owned social media already took way too much space for the online discourse, to a point where the government is unable to effectively communicate crucial information to its citizens when needed.
They need to take it back, and establish a foundation on open standards and protocols. Our government should strive for openness and accessibility.
It’s hard work to deploy and maintain at scale, but it’s better than the status quo.
And this is where the fediverse could really shine. Forget Twitter, Facebook, and what have you, spin up an official instance of Lemmy, Mastodon, or whatever, and put official notices on there. Build tools that will automatically propagate those onto previous platforms for those that actually use them - summaries and web links would be enough, and also drive people to the new systems in a low-pressure way. After all, it’s not like you need an account to open the links like you may with the other social platforms.
And Mastodon offers RSS feeds out of the box, allowing anyone to subscribe to an account without requiring an account.
And this is where the fediverse could really shine.
Because it worked so well for Usenet…
I almost responded in good faith until I noticed your username. Go troll elsewhere.
Just so I am clear, you almost wrote a comment in good faith for the betterment of the community, but the mere sight of a particular arrangement of letters flipped some kind of switch that made you think it would be worthwhile for the community to see an off-topic, bad faith ramble that means nothing?
And if recognition of your name wasn’t enough to identify you as a troll, your subsequent follow-up nailed that coffin shut.
We need this everywhere, not just in Canada. A public google maps would do wonders, especially with the government’s ability to communicate important geographical live data (road work, wildfires, etc.)
OpenStreetMap has joined the chat
@walrusintraining @grte I completely agree. In my previous home in the BC interior, Google Maps was completely wrong. It meant that services like Telus that depend on Google Maps couldn’t find us, so they wouldn’t send crews to solve connectivity issues.
Because they forgot how to use actual paper maps to solve it?
@BCsven With their online integration, I couldn’t even request the help online because our address was unknown. When I called in (a big chore to do) and explained, the person I talked to used the same system and was unable to dispatch anyone either.
I guess this shows how we become too reliant on tech, with less flexibility, when old school directions would have given a better customer experience
This is what I’ve been wanting in the US for ages. Many of our laws and rights are effectively useless because most modern life is conducted online, entirely within a private entities domain. My ability to communicate with loved ones, operating my business, and shopping for goods and services can all be dependent on the whims of a handful of rich executives. People who can suddenly change their policies and drastically damage my ability to operate my business or interact with the economy.
It’s extremely shortsighted to allow private companies near total control of money movement, communication and modern business practices.
Ah, and in there lies the rub, Governments are not in the business of developing new technology anymore, it’s been farmed out to the private sector, and the private sector wants to make a profit off of their inventions, so the Government must use private sector technology whether it’s physical computer hardware, to operating systems, to web hosting, even open source has to run on something, and private sector tech is always advancing which means Governments must use advancing private sector tech. The dream of detaching completely from private sector tech and not be “beholden to private interests” only works if there are no private interests and all tech development is performed by the state, because private sector tech, the good goods, the new shit, the stuff everybody wants to use will by it’s very nature be beholden to private interests.
I don’t think reducing the conversation to a binary state really furthers the conversation in a productive way.
The government already does deploy tech services with varying levels of cooperation with the private sector. “MyCRA” login is a prime example: you don’t NEED to login with credentials governed by the CRA, you can optionally authenticate with your bank which may be easier.
If they ONLY relied on banking authentication, that creates an obvious surrender of a critical piece of the service infrastructure.
“Nationalizing” services in part or entirely is a discussion that can be had without reducing it to “but Intel makes the CPUs and they have private sector interests so unless the government makes chips then it’s a doomed endeavour”
