4 ms·

Twitter is the worst of the social media platforms. Apart from these dark patterns that frustrate, abuse, and bully visitors into installing the app or logging

Twitter is the worst of the social media platforms. Apart from these dark patterns that frustrate, abuse, and bully visitors into installing the app or logging in, they also force you to reveal your identity by adding a phone number. That’s leaving aside their constant propagandizing of the world via their censorship and imposition of their employees’ moralities on the diverse customers they claim to serve. We need to convince everyone to stop using Twitter, stop paying attention to those that use it and give it power and credibility, seek regulation to treat it as a telecom utility, and evangelize a new decentralized politically neutral replacement.

riffic 5y ago
> seek regulation to treat it as a telecom utility This is the absolute wrong approach. What needs to be regulated are those in the sphere of public influence. These groups (government bodies, media licensees, anyone taking public money but has an account on a commercial third-party social service) should be required to adopt open web protocols to become part of the federated social web. W3C recommendations exist and they can be implemented by anyone with a content management system suitably powerful enough to run the software.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  > This is the absolute wrong approach. You didn’t actually say ‘why’ you think it is the wrong approach. My ‘why’ is pretty simple. Twitter (and social media giants more broadly) are ubiquitous and virtually all societal communications take place on their platforms. Having the ability to speak on the street is no longer as relevant as having access to these platforms, and upholding the spirit of a free society with classically liberal values requires that ideas have equal access to these platforms. Put another way, social media is the new public square and it must be regulated as such for society to function. Leaving that aside, there is lots of reason to believe social media companies are common carriers already (https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/05/social-media-platforms-as-common-carriers-2/ https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/05/social-media-platforms-...). As for your technological note on W3C recommendations - I don’t think that’s really relevant. The tech giants are all shielded from competition due to network effects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect) and their sheer size (access to capital). The network effects are a huge barrier to entry for any competition (even if an alternate product technically works) and the access to capital makes it easy for them to simply copy others’ innovation, which we’ve seen repeatedly. These companies need to be broken up for anti-trust reasons, and they need to be also regulated as the telecom utilities they are.
  - riffic 5y ago
    Why is it the wrong approach? Well, for one, they aren't telecoms and they aren't utilities. This has been discussed on this site ad nauseam. Feel free to search for the counter argument. edit: lmgtfy: https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+not+public+utility+site:news.ycombinator.com https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+not+public+utility+s...
    - throwawaysea 5y ago
      Twitter is telecom because their primary service is to facilitate communication over a network. They are a utility because communication across society is inherently social infrastructure and fundamental to our modern democratic process. Oh and they’re a natural monopoly due to network effects. All good reasons to regulate them heavily. It seems like you don’t have an actual argument. Deflecting to a lazy google search does not count.
      - riffic 5y ago
        The very first search result Google provides is a comment I wrote myself on this site in 2012. Like I said already, it's been discussed to death. There is not any new thought here. I don't owe you an argument stating why Twitter is not and will not ever be considered a public utility.
        throwawaysea 5y ago
        > The very first search result Google provides is a comment I wrote myself on this site in 2012. Like I said already, it's been discussed to death. I looked at that comment and did notice it was from you. But like your comments here, you just made a claim that Twitter isn’t a utility without any argument as to why. > I don't owe you an argument stating why Twitter is not and will not ever be considered a public utility. If you don’t have any argument to offer then don’t engage at all in the first place. You’re not using HN in good faith.

riffic 5y ago

> seek regulation to treat it as a telecom utility This is the absolute wrong approach. What needs to be regulated are those in the sphere of public influence. These groups (government bodies, media licensees, anyone taking public money but has an account on a commercial third-party social service) should be required to adopt open web protocols to become part of the federated social web. W3C recommendations exist and they can be implemented by anyone with a content management system suitably powerful enough to run the software.

throwawaysea 5y ago
> This is the absolute wrong approach. You didn’t actually say ‘why’ you think it is the wrong approach. My ‘why’ is pretty simple. Twitter (and social media giants more broadly) are ubiquitous and virtually all societal communications take place on their platforms. Having the ability to speak on the street is no longer as relevant as having access to these platforms, and upholding the spirit of a free society with classically liberal values requires that ideas have equal access to these platforms. Put another way, social media is the new public square and it must be regulated as such for society to function. Leaving that aside, there is lots of reason to believe social media companies are common carriers already (https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/05/social-media-platforms-as-common-carriers-2/ https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/05/social-media-platforms-...). As for your technological note on W3C recommendations - I don’t think that’s really relevant. The tech giants are all shielded from competition due to network effects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect) and their sheer size (access to capital). The network effects are a huge barrier to entry for any competition (even if an alternate product technically works) and the access to capital makes it easy for them to simply copy others’ innovation, which we’ve seen repeatedly. These companies need to be broken up for anti-trust reasons, and they need to be also regulated as the telecom utilities they are.
- riffic 5y ago
  Why is it the wrong approach? Well, for one, they aren't telecoms and they aren't utilities. This has been discussed on this site ad nauseam. Feel free to search for the counter argument. edit: lmgtfy: https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+not+public+utility+site:news.ycombinator.com https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+not+public+utility+s...
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    Twitter is telecom because their primary service is to facilitate communication over a network. They are a utility because communication across society is inherently social infrastructure and fundamental to our modern democratic process. Oh and they’re a natural monopoly due to network effects. All good reasons to regulate them heavily. It seems like you don’t have an actual argument. Deflecting to a lazy google search does not count.
    - riffic 5y ago
      The very first search result Google provides is a comment I wrote myself on this site in 2012. Like I said already, it's been discussed to death. There is not any new thought here. I don't owe you an argument stating why Twitter is not and will not ever be considered a public utility.
      - throwawaysea 5y ago
        > The very first search result Google provides is a comment I wrote myself on this site in 2012. Like I said already, it's been discussed to death. I looked at that comment and did notice it was from you. But like your comments here, you just made a claim that Twitter isn’t a utility without any argument as to why. > I don't owe you an argument stating why Twitter is not and will not ever be considered a public utility. If you don’t have any argument to offer then don’t engage at all in the first place. You’re not using HN in good faith.