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> It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies I get where you're going, but I thi

> It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies I get where you're going, but I think far more costly to them and advantageous for us is to simply show them that they are unnecessary. If we can drop them so easily, they can't pull stuff like this anymore. It is possible to drop Google and Facebook. They do this stuff because people _need_ them and they know that people won't just drop them en mass.

vonwoodson 6y ago
> drop them en mass The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true. And, I know enough to know that any public policy that essentially says “Everything will be fine if everyone just does [X]” is bad policy, regardless of what ‘X’ is.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  > The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true. And that's also why monopolies and giant corporations can and will always form in the current economic system. Crony capitalism is not a bug, it's a feature.
ryanbrunner 6y ago
What's stopping the next Google from doing the same? Providing poor justification for bans and removal from platforms is by no means limited to the big companies - it's endemic throughout tech - we just hear about Google and Facebook more because they're higher visibility and are considered more essential.
- zitterbewegung 6y ago
  Dropping Google / Facebook is not just signing up with another service. You could self host your own email and just quit Facebook entirely.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    > You could self host your own email You can. I might be able to (there’s a lot of crap around spam filtering and SPF that I’d have to fight with). My mother, father, sister, cousins, nieces and nephews? Not a chance in hell.
    - FlownScepter 6y ago
      The only people who recommend self-hosting email are ones that haven't tried it. We have an admin who spends a good 40% of his workweek doing just our email servers. They are a massive PITA.
      - gowld 6y ago
        No, also people who host themselves and enjoy the hobby time and don't understand how the general public lives.
        FlownScepter 6y ago
        I'm one of those people, generally, but even I'm not signing up to host an email server. Screw that.
      - ryandrake 6y ago
        I have self-hosted E-mail for myself and my family for years, probably close to a decade now--I lost count. It's a learning curve at first but once it's dialed in and working, there's really nothing to touch. Occasionally, like once every two years or so, I find my spam filter process crashed and failed to relaunch or something, causing delivery delays.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
newswasboring 6y ago
> It is possible to drop Google and Facebook. Its also possible to live without electricity and running water. This disproportionate power model doesn't work there because some people implemented regulations on them. I am beginning to suspect we need similar laws for this.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nvahalik 6y ago
  Yes, but Google and Facebook are not public utilities, nor should they be.
  - newswasboring 6y ago
    Why not? The qualification being for public utility should be "is this basic infrastructure humans need to live now?". And the answer is yes. Facebook controls most of the big public speaking forums and google controls so much and in so many spaces that it would be foolish for me to even try listing. I hope in america public utilities are not only controlled by the government. Because where I am from public utilities can be publicly or privately controlled. As long as they are all playing by the same rules many private companies have made lots of money providing public utilities. I don't see the impediment here.
    - Emendo 6y ago
      In reality, there is no impediment to designating Google as a public utility other than the elected representatives making it so.
    - jsmith45 6y ago
      > I hope in america public utilities are not only controlled by the government. Because where I am from public utilities can be publicly or privately controlled. As long as they are all playing by the same rules many private companies have made lots of money providing public utilities. Water/Sewage and Trash are typically run by the city/county government, although it is common for the actual work to be handled by a contracted company. Power, natural gas, phone, and most others is almost always a private company.
whimsicalism 6y ago
Oh yeah, far more easy than the government taking regulatory action is coordinating a massive consumer choice boycott. Sometimes, it is so abundantly clear to me that this site is full of former teenage libertarians who grew up and still haven't shed all of those ideals.
- Negitivefrags 6y ago
  You are on a site called hacker news. “Former teenage libertarian” is practically in the name.
- nvahalik 6y ago
  If all of the latest Facebook news can get my family to start questioning their usage/dependency on Facebook—I think it's fairly possible. There have been a number of really great projects coming through HN and other sites recently that are aimed at solving some problem that people on Facebook have: photo sharing, event planning, etc. Discoverability is really the only problem left.
thw0rted 6y ago
The OP is about a personal Google account, with access to mail, etc. at stake, but it's also about a developer who was going to create content for their platform. Granted, Stadia is not exactly a make-or-break gatekeeper for publishing games, but that same dev account could well be used for Google Play Store, which controls about half of the mobile market. We've certainly seen plenty of those stories here -- app developer gets locked out, only recovers account / gets app un-banned by making enough noise to get attention. IOW, it's "possible" for you or me to drop Google or Facebook, but for some lines of business, you're basically stuck working with them.

vonwoodson 6y ago

> drop them en mass The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true. And, I know enough to know that any public policy that essentially says “Everything will be fine if everyone just does [X]” is bad policy, regardless of what ‘X’ is.

pietrovismara 6y ago
> The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true. And that's also why monopolies and giant corporations can and will always form in the current economic system. Crony capitalism is not a bug, it's a feature.

ryanbrunner 6y ago

What's stopping the next Google from doing the same? Providing poor justification for bans and removal from platforms is by no means limited to the big companies - it's endemic throughout tech - we just hear about Google and Facebook more because they're higher visibility and are considered more essential.

zitterbewegung 6y ago
Dropping Google / Facebook is not just signing up with another service. You could self host your own email and just quit Facebook entirely.
- falcolas 6y ago
  > You could self host your own email You can. I might be able to (there’s a lot of crap around spam filtering and SPF that I’d have to fight with). My mother, father, sister, cousins, nieces and nephews? Not a chance in hell.
  - FlownScepter 6y ago
    The only people who recommend self-hosting email are ones that haven't tried it. We have an admin who spends a good 40% of his workweek doing just our email servers. They are a massive PITA.
    - gowld 6y ago
      No, also people who host themselves and enjoy the hobby time and don't understand how the general public lives.
      - FlownScepter 6y ago
        I'm one of those people, generally, but even I'm not signing up to host an email server. Screw that.
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      I have self-hosted E-mail for myself and my family for years, probably close to a decade now--I lost count. It's a learning curve at first but once it's dialed in and working, there's really nothing to touch. Occasionally, like once every two years or so, I find my spam filter process crashed and failed to relaunch or something, causing delivery delays.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

newswasboring 6y ago

> It is possible to drop Google and Facebook. Its also possible to live without electricity and running water. This disproportionate power model doesn't work there because some people implemented regulations on them. I am beginning to suspect we need similar laws for this.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nvahalik 6y ago
Yes, but Google and Facebook are not public utilities, nor should they be.
- newswasboring 6y ago
  Why not? The qualification being for public utility should be "is this basic infrastructure humans need to live now?". And the answer is yes. Facebook controls most of the big public speaking forums and google controls so much and in so many spaces that it would be foolish for me to even try listing. I hope in america public utilities are not only controlled by the government. Because where I am from public utilities can be publicly or privately controlled. As long as they are all playing by the same rules many private companies have made lots of money providing public utilities. I don't see the impediment here.
  - Emendo 6y ago
    In reality, there is no impediment to designating Google as a public utility other than the elected representatives making it so.
  - jsmith45 6y ago
    > I hope in america public utilities are not only controlled by the government. Because where I am from public utilities can be publicly or privately controlled. As long as they are all playing by the same rules many private companies have made lots of money providing public utilities. Water/Sewage and Trash are typically run by the city/county government, although it is common for the actual work to be handled by a contracted company. Power, natural gas, phone, and most others is almost always a private company.

whimsicalism 6y ago

Oh yeah, far more easy than the government taking regulatory action is coordinating a massive consumer choice boycott. Sometimes, it is so abundantly clear to me that this site is full of former teenage libertarians who grew up and still haven't shed all of those ideals.

Negitivefrags 6y ago
You are on a site called hacker news. “Former teenage libertarian” is practically in the name.
nvahalik 6y ago
If all of the latest Facebook news can get my family to start questioning their usage/dependency on Facebook—I think it's fairly possible. There have been a number of really great projects coming through HN and other sites recently that are aimed at solving some problem that people on Facebook have: photo sharing, event planning, etc. Discoverability is really the only problem left.

thw0rted 6y ago

The OP is about a personal Google account, with access to mail, etc. at stake, but it's also about a developer who was going to create content for their platform. Granted, Stadia is not exactly a make-or-break gatekeeper for publishing games, but that same dev account could well be used for Google Play Store, which controls about half of the mobile market. We've certainly seen plenty of those stories here -- app developer gets locked out, only recovers account / gets app un-banned by making enough noise to get attention. IOW, it's "possible" for you or me to drop Google or Facebook, but for some lines of business, you're basically stuck working with them.