6 ms·

> I think he’s completely misguided about how great government control would be. It's not as though the premise is without precedent. It's easy to port your

> I think he’s completely misguided about how great government control would be. It's not as though the premise is without precedent. It's easy to port your phone number to a new telephone company and all your friends can still call you. That's thanks to government "control" (aka regulation.) Maybe it's even too easy from a security perspective, but it's not as though you have to navigate a byzantine and capricious government bureaucracy to get it done. For the common person it generally works very well, seamless and painless.

dimitrios1 4y ago
I think most people are in favor of government when it comes to utilities, phones and landlines being a classic example (although in the age of wireless, one could argue government regulation actually makes things worse). But social media is not a utility, in the traditional sense.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  What is the intrinsic sense in which telephony is a utility but social media isn't? The wires? Phone companies all share the wires now (thanks again to government regulation), and with VoIP it's becoming less relevant by the day.. but phone number porting still works fine. The physical infrastructure natural monopoly stuff isn't a necessary component of what makes government regulation of phone systems work out well. The government regulation of the phone system works well because the government regulations are well designed, not because there's a limit to how many wires you can hang from a pole.
  - such12 4y ago
    It doesn’t work well. Telephones haven’t changed for decades and are now practically a dead technology. The wires are used for data, and phone service is grandfathered in. You can reasonably say this is the result of a lack of innovation caused by government regulation. Edit: I say this as someone who loved the dial telephone era. I really want one of these: https://skysedge.com/unsmartphones/RUSP/index.html https://skysedge.com/unsmartphones/RUSP/index.html I would have bought one, but then I realized that the phone is useless now.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > Telephones haven’t changed for decades Now you're just being absurd. Do you think we had iphones decades ago? A few decades ago rotary dial phones were still common, cellphones were virtually unheard of, VoIP was a dream, nobody expected a resurgence of the telegraph (e.g. SMS), and switching was still done with in-band signaling. Virtually everything about telephones has changed over the past few decades. It's easier to list the things which haven't changed: we still use phone numbers (kind of... because actually almost everybody uses the contacts app built into their phones.) We still pay phone companies for the service, except now there's tons of phone companies and you aren't stuck with one.
      - such12 4y ago
        SMS isn’t the telephone. VoIP mostly isn’t done using phone numbers, and to the extent that it is, is a way to grandfather in a legacy technology. The iPhone is not primarily a telephone. If you are going to argue that it is, you really aren’t being reasonable. Also, if you look at the history, you’ll discover that these innovations were all held back by regulation and the fixed nature of the phone system.
        MichaelCollins 4y ago
        > SMS isn’t the telephone. Nonsensical distinction. The common person sends and receives SMS using their telephone, using the same phone numbers used to call people, with the same disregard for whether they and the recipient use the same phone company because, like telephone calls, SMS works across companies. When you port your phone number to a new phone company, you continue to receive SMS sent to your number just as you do phone calls.
        such12 4y ago
        How do you explain why landline phones can’t send and receive SMS?
        4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Gigachad 4y ago
  ISPs, domain name registration and DDoS protection should be classified as utilities though.
  - such12 4y ago
    Why? They seem to work fine as they are.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      They are increasingly being used as a tool to censor legal but unpopular websites. You can build your own website but if your domain name get canceled and tier 1 ISPs block you, you can’t do a lot.
      - such12 4y ago
        I’m aware of Parler, but are there other examples?
        Gigachad 4y ago
        KiwiFarms is the latest example. No one is claiming it was a wholesome site, but it was entirely legal in the US and yet the owner is having difficulties getting it hosted because even though they have VPS providers willing to host the site, tier 1 ISPs have blackholed the sites IP. There is no alternative to a tier 1 ISP. You can't run your own, the are the lowest level of internet infrastructure and if they are being weaponized for censorship than it's all over for a neutral internet. There are 16 tier 1 ISPs which basically hold the entire internet in their control. Arguably these companies should be required to route any legal traffic.
        such12 4y ago
        I agree. I have no argument against this.
such12 4y ago
The phone system is a great counterexample. The government effectively established monopolies in phone service. Telephone numbering was not even close to seamless and painless. When dialing was introduced there was pushback and plenty of need for education of consumers, not to mention concerns about the loss of jobs for telephone operators. Establishing international numbering and the ITU has been a costly and slow diplomatic process. The result is a system which is now almost useless because of the lack of spam prevention that facilitates elder abuse at a large scale. If it wasn’t a legacy technology, I certainly wouldn’t recommend the telephone to my mother as a product. The reason we have alternatives now is that there was no regulation preventing us from developing VoIP and other communications services via the internet. Frankly it’s weird that we would even consider the telephone as a model for current regulation. It’s an antiquated legacy stepping stone from the time before computers.
- stale2002 4y ago
  So all this was caused... because people were able to port their phone numbers easily? That was the example that was brought up. Yes, some government regulations are bad. But some are good. And this example of being able to port your phone number... seems to be a pretty simple, uncontroversial, and good feature, that could possibly be applied to social media companies as well.
  - such12 4y ago
    > that could possibly be applied to social media companies as well. No, it can’t because social media isn’t based on phone numbers, and social networks aren’t telephone networks, and each one works differently.
- jrm4 4y ago
  It's really not. It's very hard to argue against a technological system that worked really well for as long as it did; only to be disrupted by the internet. Honestly, it's hard to quantify how well it worked because we got so used to it; it stopped being "technology" and just became "part of life."

dimitrios1 4y ago

I think most people are in favor of government when it comes to utilities, phones and landlines being a classic example (although in the age of wireless, one could argue government regulation actually makes things worse). But social media is not a utility, in the traditional sense.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
What is the intrinsic sense in which telephony is a utility but social media isn't? The wires? Phone companies all share the wires now (thanks again to government regulation), and with VoIP it's becoming less relevant by the day.. but phone number porting still works fine. The physical infrastructure natural monopoly stuff isn't a necessary component of what makes government regulation of phone systems work out well. The government regulation of the phone system works well because the government regulations are well designed, not because there's a limit to how many wires you can hang from a pole.
- such12 4y ago
  It doesn’t work well. Telephones haven’t changed for decades and are now practically a dead technology. The wires are used for data, and phone service is grandfathered in. You can reasonably say this is the result of a lack of innovation caused by government regulation. Edit: I say this as someone who loved the dial telephone era. I really want one of these: https://skysedge.com/unsmartphones/RUSP/index.html https://skysedge.com/unsmartphones/RUSP/index.html I would have bought one, but then I realized that the phone is useless now.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > Telephones haven’t changed for decades Now you're just being absurd. Do you think we had iphones decades ago? A few decades ago rotary dial phones were still common, cellphones were virtually unheard of, VoIP was a dream, nobody expected a resurgence of the telegraph (e.g. SMS), and switching was still done with in-band signaling. Virtually everything about telephones has changed over the past few decades. It's easier to list the things which haven't changed: we still use phone numbers (kind of... because actually almost everybody uses the contacts app built into their phones.) We still pay phone companies for the service, except now there's tons of phone companies and you aren't stuck with one.
    - such12 4y ago
      SMS isn’t the telephone. VoIP mostly isn’t done using phone numbers, and to the extent that it is, is a way to grandfather in a legacy technology. The iPhone is not primarily a telephone. If you are going to argue that it is, you really aren’t being reasonable. Also, if you look at the history, you’ll discover that these innovations were all held back by regulation and the fixed nature of the phone system.
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        > SMS isn’t the telephone. Nonsensical distinction. The common person sends and receives SMS using their telephone, using the same phone numbers used to call people, with the same disregard for whether they and the recipient use the same phone company because, like telephone calls, SMS works across companies. When you port your phone number to a new phone company, you continue to receive SMS sent to your number just as you do phone calls.
        such12 4y ago
        How do you explain why landline phones can’t send and receive SMS?
        4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Gigachad 4y ago
ISPs, domain name registration and DDoS protection should be classified as utilities though.
- such12 4y ago
  Why? They seem to work fine as they are.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    They are increasingly being used as a tool to censor legal but unpopular websites. You can build your own website but if your domain name get canceled and tier 1 ISPs block you, you can’t do a lot.
    - such12 4y ago
      I’m aware of Parler, but are there other examples?
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        KiwiFarms is the latest example. No one is claiming it was a wholesome site, but it was entirely legal in the US and yet the owner is having difficulties getting it hosted because even though they have VPS providers willing to host the site, tier 1 ISPs have blackholed the sites IP. There is no alternative to a tier 1 ISP. You can't run your own, the are the lowest level of internet infrastructure and if they are being weaponized for censorship than it's all over for a neutral internet. There are 16 tier 1 ISPs which basically hold the entire internet in their control. Arguably these companies should be required to route any legal traffic.
        such12 4y ago
        I agree. I have no argument against this.

such12 4y ago

The phone system is a great counterexample. The government effectively established monopolies in phone service. Telephone numbering was not even close to seamless and painless. When dialing was introduced there was pushback and plenty of need for education of consumers, not to mention concerns about the loss of jobs for telephone operators. Establishing international numbering and the ITU has been a costly and slow diplomatic process. The result is a system which is now almost useless because of the lack of spam prevention that facilitates elder abuse at a large scale. If it wasn’t a legacy technology, I certainly wouldn’t recommend the telephone to my mother as a product. The reason we have alternatives now is that there was no regulation preventing us from developing VoIP and other communications services via the internet. Frankly it’s weird that we would even consider the telephone as a model for current regulation. It’s an antiquated legacy stepping stone from the time before computers.

stale2002 4y ago
So all this was caused... because people were able to port their phone numbers easily? That was the example that was brought up. Yes, some government regulations are bad. But some are good. And this example of being able to port your phone number... seems to be a pretty simple, uncontroversial, and good feature, that could possibly be applied to social media companies as well.
- such12 4y ago
  > that could possibly be applied to social media companies as well. No, it can’t because social media isn’t based on phone numbers, and social networks aren’t telephone networks, and each one works differently.
jrm4 4y ago
It's really not. It's very hard to argue against a technological system that worked really well for as long as it did; only to be disrupted by the internet. Honestly, it's hard to quantify how well it worked because we got so used to it; it stopped being "technology" and just became "part of life."