3 ms·

Fascinating, thanks to you both for the links. I’m wondering why companies like Yelp and the realtor association have been so effective at maintaining data owne

• pessimizer 6y ago
  Massive efforts using obfuscation, spurious lawsuits, lobbying, and buying up competitors. Only speaking about the NAR, but as a past insider. The NAR only exists because of lobbying to create laws at the state and local that institutionalize themselves as the only legitimate real estate agents, or over-specify the qualifications for being a real estate agent until they are only satisfiable by being a member of the NAR. If all fails, access to MLSes prevents any rebellions below a certain size - the vast majority of Realtors® make no money, and losing MLS access is not an option. In order to create your own MLS, you'd have to pull an Aaron Swartz and get away with it before being cut off (which is probably the main reason why MLSes are a federation rather than a single system), or slightly more realistically get a bunch of no-money making Realtors® on your side and pull an Alexandra Elbakyan with their credentials. The problem with the latter would be that the listings turn over a lot more often than scholarly papers, and you'd have to deal with de-listing.