Tech monopolies have expanded economic rent into the cyberspace; without their existence, I could not write this lines. We will see, if these extra-profits will normalize as earned income or persist as unearned income (economic rent). The key to balance this new phenomenon is taxation.

Dear Dr. Ganic,

Very interesting question.

I agree that it causes problems of peoples attention. But I don´t think that it´s a threat to democracy. Indeed, I believe that it has been helping democracy in many countries, like mine (Brazil), where we have no other way to say the truth other than social media. TV channels are not trustable and by no other means we would have trowed out bad politicians.

All my best wishes.

Hess

Dear Prof Hess,

Thank you for your contribution. As every coin, social networks have two sides: both advantages and disadvantages . At this moment I am not planning to broadly discuss about some advantages and disadvantages. But as you know , over the past year, social networks have been grossly abused and manipulated for various policy purposes. Also, governments around the world dramatically intensify effort s to manipulate social networks or even have the ability to influence election process and its results , that may influence political parties their respective candidates and openly campaign in individual countries. On another hand, social networks are becoming more and more popular because of the content they offer the possibilities of online interaction among the people. Furthermore, social networks have become a place of growth for economic as well and scientific activities and cooperation and interaction among people where people interact with one another and the world around.

Tech monopolies have expanded economic rent into the cyberspace; without their existence, I could not write this lines. We will see, if these extra-profits will normalize as earned income or persist as unearned income (economic rent). The key to balance this new phenomenon is taxation.

Here is George Soros's phrase from

http://mmr.ua/show/dzhordzh_soros_raskritikoval_facebook_i_google_v_davose (in Russian)

"Open societies are in crisis, but different forms of dictatorships and criminal states (as example Putin's Russia) are on the rise".

From this phrase, I was surprised to learn that Putin's Russia is now on the rise and it was strongly helped by dictatorship and crime. In Russia, allowed Facebook, Google, Twitter, Youtube as well as all other social networks. In this respect, Russia is no different from any other country in the world. However, from the phrase Soros, it follows that these social networks have benefited Russia, and other more civilized countries than Russia, they have done it to the detriment. How can this be? And this is the same Soros who spent a lot of money on financed textbooks to destroy education in Russia. These textbooks aimed to falsify the history of Russia and other subjects in order to inculcate false values. And now it turns out that "Open societies in crisis," Facebook and Google are enemies of democracy,  but a bad Putin raised the "criminal" Russia. Yes, Russia could indeed become a "criminal territory" under the rule of ISIS, if a bad Putin would not have defeated this ISIS in Syria. This phrase is a wonderful compliment to Putin, especially before the election of the Russian president on March 18, 2018.

Social media have played a vital role in democracy. It has given politician the power to reach all and sundry via the virtual spaces. However, to say social media is a threat to democracy, I fined it difficult to accept. I believe it is rather diversifying democracy.

Whatever are the short-term benefits, in the long-run any kind of monopoly (or oligopoly in this case) is highly detrimental to both democracy and development.

So we can only hope the competitive market of social media will emerge.

To me, federated social media provide a promising option.