4 ms·

It's unclear to me that email and CDNs are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated as common carriers

by elil17 4y ago

layer8 4y ago
Look what happened to Kiwi Farms, and what happens to people who try to host their own outgoing SMTP server.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  What happened to Kiwi Farms was that no-one wanted to do business with them from a risk-management and just general good-moral-fiber basis.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    The problem is that there are only a handful companies to do business with in the first place. I think what you would expect in a sane market is that they are forced to negotiate a more expensive deal with the remaining service providers due to the supply/demand imbalance. As there are so few service providers here, there's only a few levels of risk-tolerance/good-moral-fiber that you can negotiate on. Activists only need to push a site above the highest risk-tolerance level (which is unnaturally low due to this quantization)
    - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
      I mean, yes and no. If you're loathsome enough, the asking price is going to be non-commercial for you, even in a perfect and infinitely deep market of providers.
  - nobody9999 4y ago
    >What happened to Kiwi Farms was that no-one wanted to do business with them from a risk-management and just general good-moral-fiber basis. While it's a somewhat different example and a bit reductive, I find this XKCD[0] to be relevant to the issues with Kiwi Farms. I run several websites on my physical hardware and through the internet links for which I pay. I don't want (and won't allow) any speech on my private property that I don't wish to host or amplify. If the government (as Florida's appears to wish to do) tries to tell me what content I must (or must not) publish (assuming it's protected speech under the First Amendment), not only won't I comply, I will scream bloody murder -- as it's a direct violation of the First Amendment -- because the government is involved. What is it that strips other non-governmental entities of those same rights? Absolutely nothing. Do I like much of the nastiness, trolling and disinformation that's out there? Nope. Which is another good reason (I abandoned the big "social media" companies nearly a decade ago because I objected to their business models) not to use the big "social media" players. And whether you agree or disagree with those who do use such platforms, it's their choice to use them or not. Just as it's those (and every) platforms' right to host or not host any particular speech/expression. I don't understand why technical folks don't understand this. If the government can force you to host speech you don't want to host on your own private property, then property rights are irrelevant. As for the whole "common carrier" thing in relation to the big "social media" platforms, they don't have exclusive access to rights-of-way (e.g., last mile conduit for wired internet access, ownership of the cell towers, etc.). Setting up your own site is simple and cheap/free. You have the right to free expression. You do not have a right to an audience. If the big "social media" platforms (and/or platforms like Cloudflare, AWS, etc.) pull a 1357[0] on you, you do have recourse. Do it yourself. This isn't a complicated thing to understand, IMHO. I'll say it again because I want to make it clear: I abandoned all the big "Social Media" platforms nearly a decade ago and find their practices and business models to be deeply offensive. What's more, I don't use Cloudflare or AWS or any other similar platforms. So no, I'm not defending those corporations. At all. Rather, I'm defending the ideals of free expression. [0] https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- elil17 4y ago
  Something requiring decent scale is totally different than being a natural monopoly. There were plenty of DDoS protection options on the market. I can't grow my own wheat, build my own car, or DDoS protect my own website - these all require economies of scale. But they aren't natural monopolies, there's plenty of competition in each space. On the other hand, internet is a natural monopoly because the capital costs are so high and are relatively inelastic with the number of users served.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    >Something requiring decent scale is totally different than being a natural monopoly. There were plenty of DDoS protection options on the market. Is it? There were a few DDoS protection services on the market, but they seemingly all dropped KF, so what then? Is that not analogous to kicked out by every ISP? >I can't grow my own wheat, build my own car [...] - these all require economies of scale. But they aren't natural monopolies, there's plenty of competition in each space. On the other hand, internet is a natural monopoly because the capital costs are so high and are relatively inelastic with the number of users served. You probably can grow your own wheat or build your own car. But I like your definition of monopoly. I would say that more generally, that a monopoly is any business that has insufficient competition to motivate them from abusing their stakeholders (including customers, workers, etc.).
- pwinnski 4y ago
  Kiwi Farms is offline not because CloudFlare refuses to do business with them, but because everybody collectively refuses to do business with them. Otherwise they could just have gone to a competitor. One can still find what happened to them chilling, but that doesn't make CloudFlare a "common carrier."
viridian 4y ago
I disagree, especially in the case of email, as someone who has done the onerous work of running a mail server. You are at a huge market disadvantage, both as a provider, and as a client, if you are not on gmail. Google preferences gmail hosted domains when it comes to spam filtering for email, and it makes a big difference as to whether or not an email can actually land in your inbox. The way things are now, I can't ever in good conscious recommend any small or medium sized business own any part of the email infrastructure except the MX record, I've simply seen too many cases of the financial damage caused by not using gmail as a host. Requiring all hosts to operate on a single, fair, well defined standard would be to the benefit of the people of the United States.

It's unclear to me that email and CDNs are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated as common carriers

by elil17 4y ago

It's unclear to me that email and CDNs are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated as common carriers

layer8 4y ago

Look what happened to Kiwi Farms, and what happens to people who try to host their own outgoing SMTP server.

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
What happened to Kiwi Farms was that no-one wanted to do business with them from a risk-management and just general good-moral-fiber basis.
- cowtools 4y ago
  The problem is that there are only a handful companies to do business with in the first place. I think what you would expect in a sane market is that they are forced to negotiate a more expensive deal with the remaining service providers due to the supply/demand imbalance. As there are so few service providers here, there's only a few levels of risk-tolerance/good-moral-fiber that you can negotiate on. Activists only need to push a site above the highest risk-tolerance level (which is unnaturally low due to this quantization)
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    I mean, yes and no. If you're loathsome enough, the asking price is going to be non-commercial for you, even in a perfect and infinitely deep market of providers.
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >What happened to Kiwi Farms was that no-one wanted to do business with them from a risk-management and just general good-moral-fiber basis. While it's a somewhat different example and a bit reductive, I find this XKCD[0] to be relevant to the issues with Kiwi Farms. I run several websites on my physical hardware and through the internet links for which I pay. I don't want (and won't allow) any speech on my private property that I don't wish to host or amplify. If the government (as Florida's appears to wish to do) tries to tell me what content I must (or must not) publish (assuming it's protected speech under the First Amendment), not only won't I comply, I will scream bloody murder -- as it's a direct violation of the First Amendment -- because the government is involved. What is it that strips other non-governmental entities of those same rights? Absolutely nothing. Do I like much of the nastiness, trolling and disinformation that's out there? Nope. Which is another good reason (I abandoned the big "social media" companies nearly a decade ago because I objected to their business models) not to use the big "social media" players. And whether you agree or disagree with those who do use such platforms, it's their choice to use them or not. Just as it's those (and every) platforms' right to host or not host any particular speech/expression. I don't understand why technical folks don't understand this. If the government can force you to host speech you don't want to host on your own private property, then property rights are irrelevant. As for the whole "common carrier" thing in relation to the big "social media" platforms, they don't have exclusive access to rights-of-way (e.g., last mile conduit for wired internet access, ownership of the cell towers, etc.). Setting up your own site is simple and cheap/free. You have the right to free expression. You do not have a right to an audience. If the big "social media" platforms (and/or platforms like Cloudflare, AWS, etc.) pull a 1357[0] on you, you do have recourse. Do it yourself. This isn't a complicated thing to understand, IMHO. I'll say it again because I want to make it clear: I abandoned all the big "Social Media" platforms nearly a decade ago and find their practices and business models to be deeply offensive. What's more, I don't use Cloudflare or AWS or any other similar platforms. So no, I'm not defending those corporations. At all. Rather, I'm defending the ideals of free expression. [0] https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
elil17 4y ago
Something requiring decent scale is totally different than being a natural monopoly. There were plenty of DDoS protection options on the market. I can't grow my own wheat, build my own car, or DDoS protect my own website - these all require economies of scale. But they aren't natural monopolies, there's plenty of competition in each space. On the other hand, internet is a natural monopoly because the capital costs are so high and are relatively inelastic with the number of users served.
- cowtools 4y ago
  >Something requiring decent scale is totally different than being a natural monopoly. There were plenty of DDoS protection options on the market. Is it? There were a few DDoS protection services on the market, but they seemingly all dropped KF, so what then? Is that not analogous to kicked out by every ISP? >I can't grow my own wheat, build my own car [...] - these all require economies of scale. But they aren't natural monopolies, there's plenty of competition in each space. On the other hand, internet is a natural monopoly because the capital costs are so high and are relatively inelastic with the number of users served. You probably can grow your own wheat or build your own car. But I like your definition of monopoly. I would say that more generally, that a monopoly is any business that has insufficient competition to motivate them from abusing their stakeholders (including customers, workers, etc.).
pwinnski 4y ago
Kiwi Farms is offline not because CloudFlare refuses to do business with them, but because everybody collectively refuses to do business with them. Otherwise they could just have gone to a competitor. One can still find what happened to them chilling, but that doesn't make CloudFlare a "common carrier."

viridian 4y ago

I disagree, especially in the case of email, as someone who has done the onerous work of running a mail server. You are at a huge market disadvantage, both as a provider, and as a client, if you are not on gmail. Google preferences gmail hosted domains when it comes to spam filtering for email, and it makes a big difference as to whether or not an email can actually land in your inbox. The way things are now, I can't ever in good conscious recommend any small or medium sized business own any part of the email infrastructure except the MX record, I've simply seen too many cases of the financial damage caused by not using gmail as a host. Requiring all hosts to operate on a single, fair, well defined standard would be to the benefit of the people of the United States.