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Promoting the adoption of more than one platform might be done by forcing auditable federation of personal data -- with explicit user control and consent.

throwawaysea 8y ago
That's a very interesting idea. And maybe this comes back to the notion of "lock-in" more broadly. That is, not just in the consumer-facing arena but also for enterprise software. Isn't lock-in ultimately working against a competitive market dynamic?
kodablah 8y ago
It won't help once you realize the people don't care and you can't make them care. It's not ignorance that's the problem either, it's intentional apathy. Until you can show a regular person how they are literally (i.e. not in some made-up tech way) harmed, they aren't going to concern themselves with it and rightfully so. If you make up harms or posit unproven or inapplicable-to-most harms, you will actually hurt your case by crying wolf instead of help it.
- Spearchucker 8y ago
  Maybe. Consider something though - In South Africa Twitter is huge. In Germany, Facebook is. Instagram is big in the UK. Now take the possibly not unusual scenario in which a South African lives in London and has family in Germany. Granpappy in Berlin would search for his grandson in London from Facebook but finds him on Instagram. He'd add the grandson as a friend and see the grandson's Instagram photos in his Facebook feed. The South African guy in London searches Instagram for his nephew in South Africa, and finds him on Twitter. And sees that Twitter account's posts in Instagram. If someone on Facebook finds me on Instagram, Instagram could notify me that Mr. X is searching for a profile that matches mine, and ask if I want to allow access to my stuff. If I decline he can't. Federation, with user control and consent. I think it could work. And even if it was useful to a tiny monitory at least there's real choice. Inclusive of all.
  - r_c_a_d 8y ago
    It definitely could work, but who will make it work? I would really like to see my wife's facebook posts without having a facebook account (or just looking at her iPad which is what I currently do...) and she may be interested in my posts elsewhere. I can see how it should be easy to send content from foo#twitter.com to bar#facebook.com as individual messages, format issues not withstanding, if foo and bar have agreed to correspond. But which end would manage the existence of that relationship and push/pull the data? Maybe it needs third-party brokers to do it? Interestingly I can see some parallels here with the current status of banking in the UK. After centuries of operation as "closed systems" there are now rules to force banks to provide APIs so that new entrants can offer inter-operation services. Maybe in a hundred years social-media companies will be forced to do the same? ;-)
    - Spearchucker 8y ago
      In the context of the post's case for regulation - if that were indeed to happen then federation might be an approach.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Kodablah's point is not that it couldn't work technically, only that there's no public pressure to force them to implement it. Also, such federation, if not open to third parties (easy to justify with spam, malicious parties, etc) can actually strengthen the current big platforms against competition.
    - Spearchucker 8y ago
      My suggestion is in the context of regulation. Of course there's no incentive for social networks to do this of their own accord.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        There actually is, probably to avoid the regulation in the first place: https://datatransferproject.dev/ https://datatransferproject.dev/

throwawaysea 8y ago

That's a very interesting idea. And maybe this comes back to the notion of "lock-in" more broadly. That is, not just in the consumer-facing arena but also for enterprise software. Isn't lock-in ultimately working against a competitive market dynamic?

kodablah 8y ago

It won't help once you realize the people don't care and you can't make them care. It's not ignorance that's the problem either, it's intentional apathy. Until you can show a regular person how they are literally (i.e. not in some made-up tech way) harmed, they aren't going to concern themselves with it and rightfully so. If you make up harms or posit unproven or inapplicable-to-most harms, you will actually hurt your case by crying wolf instead of help it.

Spearchucker 8y ago
Maybe. Consider something though - In South Africa Twitter is huge. In Germany, Facebook is. Instagram is big in the UK. Now take the possibly not unusual scenario in which a South African lives in London and has family in Germany. Granpappy in Berlin would search for his grandson in London from Facebook but finds him on Instagram. He'd add the grandson as a friend and see the grandson's Instagram photos in his Facebook feed. The South African guy in London searches Instagram for his nephew in South Africa, and finds him on Twitter. And sees that Twitter account's posts in Instagram. If someone on Facebook finds me on Instagram, Instagram could notify me that Mr. X is searching for a profile that matches mine, and ask if I want to allow access to my stuff. If I decline he can't. Federation, with user control and consent. I think it could work. And even if it was useful to a tiny monitory at least there's real choice. Inclusive of all.
- r_c_a_d 8y ago
  It definitely could work, but who will make it work? I would really like to see my wife's facebook posts without having a facebook account (or just looking at her iPad which is what I currently do...) and she may be interested in my posts elsewhere. I can see how it should be easy to send content from foo#twitter.com to bar#facebook.com as individual messages, format issues not withstanding, if foo and bar have agreed to correspond. But which end would manage the existence of that relationship and push/pull the data? Maybe it needs third-party brokers to do it? Interestingly I can see some parallels here with the current status of banking in the UK. After centuries of operation as "closed systems" there are now rules to force banks to provide APIs so that new entrants can offer inter-operation services. Maybe in a hundred years social-media companies will be forced to do the same? ;-)
  - Spearchucker 8y ago
    In the context of the post's case for regulation - if that were indeed to happen then federation might be an approach.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Kodablah's point is not that it couldn't work technically, only that there's no public pressure to force them to implement it. Also, such federation, if not open to third parties (easy to justify with spam, malicious parties, etc) can actually strengthen the current big platforms against competition.
  - Spearchucker 8y ago
    My suggestion is in the context of regulation. Of course there's no incentive for social networks to do this of their own accord.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      There actually is, probably to avoid the regulation in the first place: https://datatransferproject.dev/ https://datatransferproject.dev/