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Well, many believe that "big tech" (social networks and search engine, I'd say) have essentially replaced traditional news networks. I don't have a clear opinio
by Yoric 7y ago
Well, many believe that "big tech" (social networks and search engine, I'd say) have essentially replaced traditional news networks. I don't have a clear opinion on this yet, but if that's the case, it makes sense to regulate "big tech" in the same manner as traditional news.
- amelius 7y agoYes, and big tech should similarly be regulated like traditional telecommunications, where subscribers of telco A can call subscribers of telco B without problems (unlike most chat services).
- Yoric 7y agoWhat do you mean?
- fragmede 7y agoI can't message my friends on Snapchat from Instagram, but I can call my friends on T-Mobile and ATT from Verizon. Phone companies shenanigans go back a long way, so there are more than a few lawsuits involved, in order to get to our current state for calling.
- mises 7y agoThat's a nonsensical comparison. Phones all have one purpose and mechanism: voice calling. Instagram is based around a public photo-blog. Snapchat is ephemeral photo-mesaging. You would be requiring social media sites to replicate each other's functionality. If I want to send a message to a twitter user, can it be longer than 140 characters? What if I am john.doe one one platform but you have the same name on another? Who keeps it? No, telcos were interoperable by fiat because there can only be so many phone lines.
- chillacy 7y agoI’ll add that laws like that are usually well intentioned but make no sense 30 years later, where the law still exists and everyone is wasting time implementing something from the past. Like IE6 browser requirements in South Korea.
- mindslight 7y agoIt's quite amazing how the purported "free market" viewpoint has an unwavering faith in companies for getting things right, except for when imagining having to comply with any sort of mandate. A good faith interpretation of interoperability is that any service simply has to publish an equivalent API that allows interacting with "its" users in the service's own data model/paradigm. The market of competitors will then happily sort out the details of how to smooth the gaps.
- mises 7y ago> "free market" Why the "scare quotes"? I know you weren't quoting me since I didn't use those words. I don't trust a free market to get everything perfectly right. I simply trust a government even less and believe they will screw it up even more.
- mindslight 7y agoAre any quotes considered "scare" quotes these days? I used quotes because the philosophy is often referred to as such, but it generally gains legs only when it can be used to undermine market competition. I describe myself as libertarian, and if you want to make the argument that regulation will be transmuted by the incumbents to calcify their own positions, I'm right there with you. But it's wholly disingenuous to assert that services could only be obtusely constrained to the lowest common denominator, rather than considering a sensible system of interoperability that would align incentives properly. Putting it in libertarian terms - instituting a demarcation point such that users' electronic data and identities actually belong to the users. Personally I think the real answer is that we need to self actualize and move away from these surveillance companies, period. And in that context yes it is a worry that regulations could be applied to harass down Free software. But given that we're staring down a much worse censorship regime, from both de jure and de facto governments (eg payment processors), I think we're likely to end up needing to avoid packet censorship anyway. A few additional business-consumer regulations aren't going to appreciably worsen that burden.
- tqi 7y agoI think what you're proposing is essentially the Graph API?
- zaroth 7y agoThis seems like a terrible idea which would merely entrench monopolies further. Phone number interoperability was to establish an unbranded phone network that could be serviced by any telco. Making every service deliver messages to and from Facebook would be an absolute nightmare.
- amelius 7y agoWhy would every message need to end up on Facebook? Perhaps you should think of it more as e.g. e-mail.
- gingabriska 7y agoEconomies of scale. Whoever can do it cheaper and at scale gets the job.
- username444 7y agoPerspective is important. Messaging is already so inexpensive as to be free, it's time to move towards the other end of the pendulum. We need privacy and accountability more than the ability to further reduce the cost of a message from $0.0001 to $0.00005
- MereInterest 7y agoHow would requiring use of an open API entrench a monopoly? If I could send messages from IRC to Facebook, that would be one less reason to have a Facebook account.
- mises 7y agoPhone lines are very expensive, and there is limited space. In other words, phone interoperability was regulated into place because no one can have five telephones. Many people have five messaging apps. Its inconvenient, but not like a phone.
- jpollock 7y agoIn the us, tv news is regulated because it is using public frequencies. Newspapers publish lies and propaganda all the time. Ref any supermarket checkout magazine.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y agoSocial media takes anyone’s message right to the bottom - the end user - with no editorial gatekeeper. Today’s problems with tech aren’t tech. They’re all human problems. People forgot and don’t know how to sort through bullshit. If people really rely on Facebook to form opinions, then go vote, America, we have a problem.
- raxxorrax 7y agoAn editor is certainly neither required nor wanted. If you like that, then please read established newspapers and let people have their fun.
- codyb 7y agoI feel like “having their fun” is a bit of a disingenuous means of describing discourse touching billions of people which has resulted in several awful real world situations such as measles outbreaks, discrimination, negative self worth, and even murder around the globe.