Been thinking lately that it could be a good municipal function to provide people with access to an 'online home', analogous to ensuring provision of physical homes.
In the same way it could be social, affordable, in a co-op, heck even (hopefully not) private/rented. The municipality provides some infrastructure and regulations to make sure there's a home for everyone, but equally you can build your own home or move into an intentional community if you want, and have the wherewithal to do so.
Not talking about a StateBook - if the state has any function in it, I think it should be regulating for open protocols and standards, or even just bare minimum access to data and data portability (https://newsocialist.org.uk/do-we-really-need-a-statebook/).
I'm thinking more like Indienet - (https://indienet.info/) - the project in Ghent (coordinated by @aral) to provide each denizen with their own connected node in a wider p2p/federated network.
I mean municipal more in the sense of libertarian municipalism, self-determination and federation of villages, towns, cities.
Obviously access to physical housing is a mess, at least where I'm currently living, so maybe not the best reference point. But I'm finding it an interesting framing.
Every Facebook or Twitter profile is currently a home on the web, and it's as if billions of people all have the same corrupt landlord.
This is kind of implicitly assuming that everyone *needs* a home on the web. That is certainly a debatable point. It is definitely becoming more of a part of the fabric of everyday life, and you could argue that it shouldn't be.
I vacillate on this a bit but overall I tend to think that the benefits can outweigh the negatives, once it has a social motive and not a profit motive.
@dtluna True, more of a skills thing than a financial thing here. Most people just want to login to an account, they don't want to think about servers and hosting.