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> It’s clearly monopolistic behavior to interlink your service with a basic infrastructure service Not very clear at all, IMHO. Would you prefer that iMessage

> It’s clearly monopolistic behavior to interlink your service with a basic infrastructure service Not very clear at all, IMHO. Would you prefer that iMessage conversations didn't "interlink" with SMS recipients? Is that a better outcome? This is yet another example of the power of the "network affect" and the difficulty of crafting a reasonable regulatory framework. I'm just pushing back at your assertion about "monopolistic behavior" but not at the general difficulty of regulating these sorts of ecosystems.

kennywinker 5y ago
> Not very clear at all, IMHO. Would you prefer that iMessage conversations didn't "interlink" with SMS recipients? Is that a better outcome? Possible non-monopolistic solutions: - an open standard for phone-number linked messaging. - Allow any messaging app to assume imessage’s role and send/receive sms messages instead of the imessage app. - separate imessage and sms into separate apps. As you pointed out, this is probably the worst option since nobody really wants this experience. As for regulation: “All general-purpose communications platforms with over 10mil users must allow and enable open access to 3rd party client developers and inter-platform communications gateways” - problem solved
- x0x0 5y ago
  > “All general-purpose communications platforms with over 10mil users must allow and enable open access to 3rd party client developers and inter-platform communications gateways” - problem solved This is frankly delusion. What is the SLA for a feature? Who decides? How fast can they be deprecated? In the face of security bugs? In the face of active exploitation? Who controls feature additions? What if the operator doesn't want to build the feature? What about abuse? Are they allowed to remove encryption guarantees? Strip e2e encryption? etc etc etc. It's nothing like a trivial problem.
  - etchalon 5y ago
    It's not just delusion. We have an example of numerous open-standard communication platforms that existed, and then failed, because they couldn't keep up with competition. All a "Well, if you get big enough!" law would do is ensure a constant cycle of competitive death.
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      > because they couldn't keep up with competition I think you mean because they couldn’t be monopolized and monetized as effectively as a proprietary solution.
      - etchalon 5y ago
        No. They couldn't keep up with it feature or experience wise. Money was secondary.
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    Those are all solvable problem. Messaging is the phone network of our time. Yet it’s fragmented and sliced up into little kingdoms. Imagine you couldn’t call someone who used at&t without switching to your at&t phone? That’s how dumb this is

kennywinker 5y ago

> Not very clear at all, IMHO. Would you prefer that iMessage conversations didn't "interlink" with SMS recipients? Is that a better outcome? Possible non-monopolistic solutions: - an open standard for phone-number linked messaging. - Allow any messaging app to assume imessage’s role and send/receive sms messages instead of the imessage app. - separate imessage and sms into separate apps. As you pointed out, this is probably the worst option since nobody really wants this experience. As for regulation: “All general-purpose communications platforms with over 10mil users must allow and enable open access to 3rd party client developers and inter-platform communications gateways” - problem solved

x0x0 5y ago
> “All general-purpose communications platforms with over 10mil users must allow and enable open access to 3rd party client developers and inter-platform communications gateways” - problem solved This is frankly delusion. What is the SLA for a feature? Who decides? How fast can they be deprecated? In the face of security bugs? In the face of active exploitation? Who controls feature additions? What if the operator doesn't want to build the feature? What about abuse? Are they allowed to remove encryption guarantees? Strip e2e encryption? etc etc etc. It's nothing like a trivial problem.
- etchalon 5y ago
  It's not just delusion. We have an example of numerous open-standard communication platforms that existed, and then failed, because they couldn't keep up with competition. All a "Well, if you get big enough!" law would do is ensure a constant cycle of competitive death.
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    > because they couldn't keep up with competition I think you mean because they couldn’t be monopolized and monetized as effectively as a proprietary solution.
    - etchalon 5y ago
      No. They couldn't keep up with it feature or experience wise. Money was secondary.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  Those are all solvable problem. Messaging is the phone network of our time. Yet it’s fragmented and sliced up into little kingdoms. Imagine you couldn’t call someone who used at&t without switching to your at&t phone? That’s how dumb this is