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You may want social media to be pipes, not platforms. Convince the government to forbid the business model in which most of users are not paying customers but

You may want social media to be pipes, not platforms. Convince the government to forbid the business model in which most of users are not paying customers but a product offered to advertisers. Then, social platforms will not care if you use whatever client you desire. Big Social shareholders don’t want it, though. Being a double-sided market is addictive, and no one can compete with them if they capture the market by not charging money.

sokoloff 3y ago
> Convince the government to forbid the business model in which most of users are not paying customers but a product offered to advertisers I like broadcast TV and radio (especially radio while driving) and think that most Americans would object to their removal. Just look at the uproar over a few NFL games being unavailable on broadcast TV for a hint as to how well such a ban might go.
- strogonoff 3y ago
  > I like broadcast TV and radio (especially radio while driving) If you suggest to apply the same model to social media (where they don’t get to know about a single thing about the user, strictly one way ads) then I’d be totally for it. However, I don’t think they’ll find this model profitable enough (advertisers like to target), and because charging users is easier with social media compared to radio broadcasting the barrier to start doing that is lower. That is, disallowing profiting from PII and only allowing one-way ads in social media, while difficult to enforce will also mean they start charging users anyway. So why not skip that model altogether. Local broadcast models don’t work on global scale anyway.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    It sounded like your proposal would ban the business model of broadcast TV and radio, which I think would be difficult policy for Americans to accept.
xyzzy123 3y ago
New issue is AI. Even sites with no ads will want limits on scraping / apis / composability.
Kye 3y ago
Another future was possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid... It's too bad the silofication of the 2010s killed it off.

sokoloff 3y ago

> Convince the government to forbid the business model in which most of users are not paying customers but a product offered to advertisers I like broadcast TV and radio (especially radio while driving) and think that most Americans would object to their removal. Just look at the uproar over a few NFL games being unavailable on broadcast TV for a hint as to how well such a ban might go.

strogonoff 3y ago
> I like broadcast TV and radio (especially radio while driving) If you suggest to apply the same model to social media (where they don’t get to know about a single thing about the user, strictly one way ads) then I’d be totally for it. However, I don’t think they’ll find this model profitable enough (advertisers like to target), and because charging users is easier with social media compared to radio broadcasting the barrier to start doing that is lower. That is, disallowing profiting from PII and only allowing one-way ads in social media, while difficult to enforce will also mean they start charging users anyway. So why not skip that model altogether. Local broadcast models don’t work on global scale anyway.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  It sounded like your proposal would ban the business model of broadcast TV and radio, which I think would be difficult policy for Americans to accept.

xyzzy123 3y ago

New issue is AI. Even sites with no ads will want limits on scraping / apis / composability.

Kye 3y ago

Another future was possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid... It's too bad the silofication of the 2010s killed it off.