The behemoth American platforms are consolidating activity such they act and behave like sovereign states; indeed, CEOs like Zuckerberg have long been received during travels as if heads of state of other countries. https://twitter.com/achungerford/status/1353765960058953728

Power now circulates not only in an internal logic not only between their executive and policy branches, but now among/to/from their own judiciary. The consolidation of power is far from insignificant, when one considers geopolitical forces can move by information and soft power.

This is hardly nothing, and hardly as insignificant and silly as it may seem on the surface; a company play-acting at nationhood, hiring in former high-level ministers and Supreme Court shortlisters. Its decisions may seem inconsequential or trite until we recall just days ago...

the inflamed rhetoric that could be directly tied to the Capitol insurrection and the invective of Donald Trump. Yet, because it now has its own branches of its own pseudo-government, rather than go on trial itself for aiding and abetting Trump by holding him to a standard...

too low, they can instead frame the question differently, thus even controlling the mechanism by which “the case” itself is framed. For a corporate entity playing once again at developing pseudo-democratic spaces and institutions, this one is a bit hard to swallow...

even for a longtime watcher like me. I look forward to the next free and fair elections so I can vote for my slate of candidates to run the Republic of Facebook.

By the way, the great communication scholar and theorist Aihwa Ong describes the physical places such as “special economic zones” as being extra-sovereign: floating above the nation-state as an entity enjoying the benefits but returning very little to where they actually exist.

I’ve been thinking about social media behemoths in these terms for some time. There is no other way to consider these moves than as being deeply serious, if for no other reason than how seriously Facebook intends to take itself throughout this process.

It should strike as a problem, for example, that the majority of those either participating in or opining on these matters is a lawyer from the Anglo-American tradition of jurisprudence, steeped in a very particular strain of First Amendment law so narrow as to be impoverished.

I think I have to take a walk outside now.

Or, here: my grandfather made this from a tree he gathered when I was a child. Days ago, I retrieved it (and other such items) from storage, and have been picking it up, marveling at its beauty. He honed it, varnished it, made it useful and made it beautiful. And signed his name.

Maybe I’ll go look at it some more.

Donald Trump’s account to the Facebook court? Please. How about Big Social Media to The Hague?