Canada needs a digital infrastructure that isn't beholden to private interests
Canada needs a digital infrastructure that isn't beholden to private interests
Canadians really need: more control over the digital universe that increasingly dominates our lives.
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.
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.
For the life of me I can't understand why Canada allows the main mechanism of bank transfers be privately managed (Interac).
A public service concession to a monopolistic company is the worst of all worlds. Well, at least it exists, so it's already better than the real worst of all worlds that is US inter-banking shitfest. Still, being second-to-last isn't occasion for celebration.
Absolutely agree INTERAC should be nationalized. This is why I like CBDCs it's because we'll have the opportunity to further strengthen public sovereignty and interests in our own currency.
I'm actually curious as to who/how interac is governed. In the USA it's also private and TERRIBLE compared to Canada. I don't know if that's just the result of private sector success or if there is a bigger story there.
No idea how it works elsewhere in the world, but your comment suggests there are others that do it even better?
Interac is a private company acting as a payment processor just like MasterCard or Visa.
Each bank have an interface with Interac, and each terminal/cards that supports Interac as well.
This simplifies a transaction. The banks, terminal manufacturer and card manufacturers just need to make sure that their products are certified by Interac (or MasterCard or Visa) and they can make a transaction between them without interfacing with each banks, terminal and card manufacturers directly.
In exchange, the payment processor takes a cut. Usually it's a base fee + a percentage of the transaction. But each bank and merchants are free to negotiate these fees.
I think that all payment processors are private, but I could be wrong.
From memory, MasterCard and Visa are heavily based on EMV while Interac did their own thing first and then tried to somewhat converge towards EMV. So they have a funky specification. I think that Discover are based on EMV as well, but they do their own thing as well with a legacy payment processing (Diner's club or something like that)
Banks are risk averse, so trying to get into the payment processor market today would be extremely hard as all the major players already have an interface with the banks, and the terminal/card manufacturers want to ship as many unit as possible, so they pick popular payment processors.
Development and certification is expensive, so they try to do as less payment processor they can get away with.
No idea how it works elsewhere in the world, but your comment suggests there are others that do it even better?
Some countries have an instant payment system managed by the central bank, like Brazil (BCB & Pix) and Hong Kong (HKMA & FPS). Looks like the US is trying with FedNow but let's see how that goes... hoping for the best really, and that Canada catches on.
Even if a complete instant payment system isn't federalized, there are other ways central banks can at least enforce some interoperability of money transfers. That should be the bare minimum.
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.
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"
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.