> Why don’t we have our governments fund the development and maintenance of infrastructure and platforms that enable competitive products and services?
I agree with you, however for social networks this is dangerous as hell. You can bet it will take only five minutes for the first law-and-order idiots to demand real time access to all data and especially private messages to mine for "terrorists" (=everything that challenges capitalism) or "child porn", and that in reality it will only be another piece of the surveillance state.
Apple, Facebook etc. can at least put up a fight for privacy in the legal system.
> No one has any innovative ideas on how to do both? Disappointing
Because it is literally impossible to run a social network with encryption. It is possible to run a messenger but the demands of police/secret services are already enormous on private companies, what do you think will happen with a government-run service?
There are counterexamples on both sides of this argument.
Government-provisioned messaging services, that is, the post office, offers in many cases strong privacy protections.
Privately provisioned telegraph and telephone systems were long exploited for surveillance (and worse) activities. Protections now taken for granted were not achieved until specifically fought for and won. And of course, the recent expansion into mobile devices has created entire new venues for surveillance, both capitalist and government varieties. You have governments deploying "Starfish" and other mobile-based tracking systems, the infamous Room 641A (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A), and direct collection and selling of real-time phone location data (https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cell-carriers-selling-acces...).
Private control doesn't create an automatic privacy interest on the part of citizens by corporations.
I agree with you, however for social networks this is dangerous as hell. You can bet it will take only five minutes for the first law-and-order idiots to demand real time access to all data and especially private messages to mine for "terrorists" (=everything that challenges capitalism) or "child porn", and that in reality it will only be another piece of the surveillance state.
Apple, Facebook etc. can at least put up a fight for privacy in the legal system.