5 ms·

This is a good point, and often overlooked. A helluva lot of people joined these networks and got captured by the network effect because we were told or believ

This is a good point, and often overlooked. A helluva lot of people joined these networks and got captured by the network effect because we were told or believed that they were open sites, just like the rest of the net. If content (or types of content) came along that folks didn't want? Nerds like us would make and give away (or sell) tools for getting rid of that garbage. In a big way, what we're going through right now is fraud, plain and simple. It may not meet the legal definition, but to grow and scale using one model and then switch to another once you have a monopoly is a form of bait and switch. There's no way in hell I would have joined either site, and I would have vociferously told my friends and family not to join either, if they had been clear up front that this was what they were planning to do. NOTE: I am not making a legal claim. I mean fraud in the moral sense. I understand with a zillion corporate lawyers that everything these guys do is wonderfully legal, no matter what the long-term social effects end up being. I am speaking in the vernacular, not legal sense. We were tricked.

LegitShady 6y ago
You didn't make the legal claim, but Clarence thomas has started going down that path in the recent Malwarebytes judgement https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/101320zor_8m58.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/101320zor_8m...
- DanielBMarkham 6y ago
  The more you think about this the more ticked off you can get. Voters, and their representatives, made a deliberate effort to be as hands-off as possible to the early internet. It remained tax free. Public facilities were used. Section 230 was passed to remove the specter of liability and so on. We all did the most we could to stay away and let the net develop, knowing that if we came in too heavy-handed, not only would we destroy this new creation, we'd forever taint it in the world's eyes as just being some kind of US thing. We had high hopes. We were open-minded and experimental. And here's where we freaking ended up: just another Standard Oil or United States Steel Corporation, only this time there wasn't any kind of behind-the-scenes mucking around in politics. It's directly in our face. (And when you point that out, the monopolies themselves will beg for regulation, knowing full well that by the time their money finishes paying off the legislators, the fix will be in. They'll set the wall so high they'll never have true competitors) Not a happy political place to be, no matter what your particular political views.

LegitShady 6y ago

You didn't make the legal claim, but Clarence thomas has started going down that path in the recent Malwarebytes judgement https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/101320zor_8m58.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/101320zor_8m...

DanielBMarkham 6y ago
The more you think about this the more ticked off you can get. Voters, and their representatives, made a deliberate effort to be as hands-off as possible to the early internet. It remained tax free. Public facilities were used. Section 230 was passed to remove the specter of liability and so on. We all did the most we could to stay away and let the net develop, knowing that if we came in too heavy-handed, not only would we destroy this new creation, we'd forever taint it in the world's eyes as just being some kind of US thing. We had high hopes. We were open-minded and experimental. And here's where we freaking ended up: just another Standard Oil or United States Steel Corporation, only this time there wasn't any kind of behind-the-scenes mucking around in politics. It's directly in our face. (And when you point that out, the monopolies themselves will beg for regulation, knowing full well that by the time their money finishes paying off the legislators, the fix will be in. They'll set the wall so high they'll never have true competitors) Not a happy political place to be, no matter what your particular political views.