Not disputing this possibility. But we should also keep in mind that the company itself has admitted in the past it has censored certain speech (for right or wrong reasons) on its platforms [0] and that it wasn't the first or the only time when it has done that. [1][2]

It has censored content for a variety of reasons, including to comply with government requests (which may very well be the case here, I don't see why it's not possible) [3]. In fact, the company has backtracked a number of it previous promises, when it positioned itself as a bastion for accurate information. [4]

I'm not trying to portray it as some kind of Big Tobacco monster, but it would be naive to believe that it's here for the benefit of anyone other than the shareholders.

[0] https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/google-admi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google

[2] https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/2010-...

[3] https://www.manchesterdigital.com/post/manchester-digital/go...

[4] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/26/how-google-abandoned-facts-f...

It's hard not to answer to such titles with versions of "Eating food is a mistake; here's how to cut down on food so you can die with more money in your pocket".

While Hayek - the article mentions his elucubrations - wasn't altogether a hack, he wasn't exactly a well-meaning economist when he recast economic inequality and private power as secondary problems, while portraying state planning as the primary threat to liberty; not only that it's not actually supported by evidence (unlike the opposite comclusion), but liberty is very much a wishy-washy concept that can be shaped into multiple meanings without saying or doing anything tangible (basically he managed to convince lawmakers that universal freedom is really perfectly aligned with business interests - we knew back then that it was a ridiculous claim and it is painfully obvious now why).

He's also put quite a bit of effort into blurring the distinction between authoritarian central planning and ordinary democratic intervention such as public ownership, redistribution and economic regulation. So, no thank you. We've had so, so much of this nonsense already.

Whilst I understand that reasoning, I disagree with it. Private insurance should not be necessary to begin with, and if it must exist for whatever rational reason, the insurance should be public as well. Anything that has to do with healthcare (not talking about optional cosmetic surgery, of course) should be handled by / via public healthcare services.

Furthermore, I would say that it's wrong to look at the situation in terms of "reducing the burden on the NHS Dental", since that is literally what's there for. If people don't opt for cosmetic surgery, then it's a healthcare issue and we created this institution/branch for this very purpose. Otherwise we can easily end up speaking in terms of how much of a burden being alive is, and how eating (regular) food and drinking water are poor economic decisions, a topsy-turvy way of looking at the very reason to have an 'economy'.

Are we going to pretend that this is what's in the article, or are we going to engage with the substance of the article?

AI development is not purely a private-sector achievement, it never was. Governments fund research, infrastructure, education, energy systems, procurement and industrial policy that make large-scale AI possible. So taxpayers already absorb part of the cost and risk, while private companies seek to keep the resulting assets and profits for themselves.

If we look at how (or on what) AI is built, it becomes obvious that it's not even a public funding matter only, since these tools effectively extract humanity's accumulated language, writing, research, culture and knowledge. Not private info, not private resources, not some person's secret invention, but our shared knowledge. The companies have enclosed a collectively produced resource and converted it into private property.

Furthermore, we either accept that IP is legitimate / a strong argument, in which case humanity should have a easy claim over the knowledge used to build AI, or that IP is weak / a bit of a joke, in which case AI companies' claims to exclusive proprietary control are automatically weak and we have even more reason to nationalise these services.

No, thank you. As long as better options exist - and they do - I shan't.

It should be noted that what Americans often define as left (Kamala Harris), most of the world correctly defines as right. Bernie Sanders and AOC are left, but even they are centre-left.

Otherwise, good observations.

> Why not a donation system?

> We considered this option: letting everyone contribute an amount of their choice to support the initiative. But Cartes.app is not a charity, nor is it a free software component on a shelf: it is a service that consumes resources with every use and must handle the load of thousands of daily users.

> Moreover, we still have many features to add to compete with Big Tech, which requires investments.

So you want the public to fund your business and what it gets in return is the honour of improving your business and "compete with Big Tech"?

I think there's a strong incentive to take their chances with Big Tech until a better alternative pops up. In my view, a public service should benefit (and be controlled by) the public. If it's not controlled by the public, there's little difference between a big US provider and a big Chinese or European one.

> So you want the public to fund your business and what it gets in return is the honour of improving your business and "compete with Big Tech"?

To fund an open-source and open-data business, yes.

> I think there's a strong incentive to take their chances with Big Tech until a better alternative pops up.

How do you think an alternative to duopolistic apps valued hundreds of billions could emerge without funding ? The problem is hard, we know it. We think the startup way, raising millions for a map app to compete with Google, has less chances of success than building a modern common.

> In my view, a public service should benefit (and be controlled by) the public.

Isn't open-source software the closer model to what you desire ? A "public" map app in the sense of "developed and hosted by the government" could enable large funding, but could also be quite frightening.

Actually, it's one of the reasons some Europeans want to quit Google & Apple maps : on top of being economic mastodons, they are excessively close to the US, a state that has gone the way of government corruption, to say the least.

> How do you think an alternative to duopolistic apps valued hundreds of billions could emerge without funding ?

Government or non-governmental public bodies. Or new legal / administrative entities that are not driven by profit; we are not, as a matter of fact, tied to a binary choice situation whereby private businesses are the better option for such a crucial service.

> Isn't open-source software the closer model to what you desire ?

It can (and it should) definitely be open source, I concur. But that's not necessarily an ownership and control discussion, even less so when we're taking into consideration the infrastructure required for such a project. Genuine public ownership / control assumes giving the leverages (decision-making, governance, choices, infrastructure, model etc.) to the public itself in one form or another. It can be done via a government, but there are reasons to suspect that governments will eventually abuse it or under-fund it, like they often eventually have done; however, that is still a better option than private ownership and control.

> A "public" map app in the sense of "developed and hosted by the government" could enable large funding, but could also be quite frightening.

I disagree. If it's a dictatorship, then private ownership and governance are already not very credible or private. If it's a real democracy, then the public should be able to exert control over it via its institutions and democratic processes. That said, I also prefer a model where the government doesn't own such a platform and dictate how it's developed and used.

In a hierarchy of ownership and governance models from worst to best, private is likely the worst (Google, Apple & the like), followed by governments, and genuine public ownership where citizens themselves can decide how it operates and evolves. The question of money is also partially real: private companies themselves don't create money out of thin air, they rely on public infrastructure (from currency, to legislation/operating rules, to the economy) to operate and need paying consumers that have money, especially a b2c company like this one. In other words, the money is already there, it's just out of reach.

Do you know of any of these public bodies that would have the agility and competence to back such a project ? I don't.

In France, where cartes.app is built and incorporated, the government is far from being ideologically equipped to envision the launch a (privacy-focused) general public map application. IGN provides map, but they are still far from a general public usage, they're more useful for experts.

Even the professional office suite dedicated to agents (LaSuite) is in risk because it's said to destroy French companies (trying to) deliver these tools.

Meanwhile, a private company, if necessary with capped profits and salaries, seems by far the most practical solution in my experience. Hence the choice.

Only joking, but I would not be surprised to find a "number four will shock you" on that page.

I don't think that you're necessarily wrong but I tend to doubt it. Who exactly has advocated for that? What is commonly referred to as "the left" is in fact an extremely fractured set of subgroups and political nuances. So perhaps it's more of a case of "some people"?

It's worse than that, its "Some people I disagree with" on the part of OP.