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This is a piece that argues in favor of government regulation of internet communications platforms. I think he’s got a lot of good points about how bad current

by such12 4y ago

This is a piece that argues in favor of government regulation of internet communications platforms. I think he’s got a lot of good points about how bad current social media is as controlled by billionaires. I think he’s completely misguided about how great government control would be. I think he’s equally misguided about the staying power of something like Facebook. It’s decaying and we don’t need to do anything about it. He’s also just plain wrong about not being able to maintain connections with people who are left behind. Younger people don’t bother to sign up, and pretty much everyone I know is steadily moving to signal or telegram for communications. People have multiple apps. I still have Facebook messenger installed for ‘legacy’ contacts, but I barely use it anymore. I frankly think he’s out of date in his thinking. He’s spent years on this political action, but technology is just moving faster than that.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
MichaelCollins 4y ago
> 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.
- 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."
freemrkt8 4y ago
As inequality has grown, so has the deficit. But for decades, government programs ran surpluses. It’s not hard to explain it away in memorized economics terms. The thing is those terms are merely one set of reasonable, generic language. Not immutable laws of reality. Technology is moving faster than that because of government investment; IBM refused to invest in solid state fearing it would undermine sales of old tube computers. Government invested in and gifted them solid state patents. What do you think the cheap money flowing to tech corps was about the last decade? Government subsidy of technology, which is verifiable in that now that rates are down tech genius CEOs are not innovating but pushing traditions of austerity. These companies are middlemen dependent on government subsidies.
- such12 4y ago
  How is this relevant?
  - freemrkt8 4y ago
    You think he’s wrong about how great government control would be, but the government is in control.
    - such12 4y ago
      Don’t be silly. The government doesn’t regulate how these services operate. If you are going to argue that macroeconomic policy means ‘control’, then the government ‘controls’ everything in everyone’s lives at all times. You are welcome to believe this if you like.
      - freemrkt8 4y ago
        The government regulates their existence, their ability to grow, hire, develop services. Section 230 regulates what is allowed. DMCA, etc etc You say I should not be silly but I can believe what I like. Which is it? You are not really selling a strong argument here, just wishy washy opinions decoupled from the negotiated terms of society documented openly. Society, the rest of us, do not have an obligation to your head canon. With the money printer off, tech corp are going where the money is; government welfare, not a free market: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/google-and-amazon-want-more-defense-contracts-despite-worker-protests/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/google-and-... The government does not “own assets” on paper but it has a whole lot of influence over agency
the-printer 4y ago
I think the thing is that people like yourself are probably conscientiously indifferent to the attraction, influence and dependency that “Big Tech” produces. If this isn’t the case for you, then allow me to speak for myself then. I think the very thought that the author is sharing is an overreaction, but it it’s a sign of the times that it even generates a conversation or that some people can even liken it to government intervention in the telephone business. I’m indifferent to the concept itself, but I find the idea in the context of the modern world and the dominant global culture…dramatic.
- such12 4y ago
  > I think the thing is that people like yourself are probably conscientiously indifferent to the attraction, influence and dependency that “Big Tech” produces. Not at all. I just think it’s obvious that the sentiment has been waning for some time now. Who is going around saying how great big tech is?
  - the-printer 4y ago
    > Who is going around saying how great big tech is? I think that that’s the thing. They don’t have to say that. The attention that their products get, good or bad, speaks loudly enough.
jjav 4y ago
I really hate spending any time or effort building connections on proprietary platforms since it is so inevitable all that effort will decay to nothing as the platform dies, as it eventually must because it is controller by a single corporation that isn't interested in interoperability nor maintaining it once it's no longer profitable. To the extent possible I prefer to keep in touch with everyone via email since it is a decentralized open standard, so it will never go away.
jmbwell 4y ago
This is a piece that mentions briefly that regulations promoting federation have been proposed. Otherwise, I don’t see much of an “argument” one way or another.
em-bee 4y ago
He’s also just plain wrong about not being able to maintain connections with people who are left behind. a friend of mine lost his phone and was not able to recover his phonenumber. as a result he lost contact with hundreds of people and was not able to restore that contact to most of them. and that's not the first time i heard about that happening. in china supposedly relationships have been destroyed because someone lost their wechat access, and definitely friendships have been lost. this is my nightmare scenario. there are so many people i am in contact with through only one mode of communication, and if i were to lose that i would have no chance to ever get back to them. i don't even know how many people i lost when my email addresses stopped working. because i didn't just want to blast out a global notice to all my contacts. of course there the important ones i could inform about the new address but the less important ones are gone snd they have no way to find me. i am struggling to establish alternate contacts (like get the email addresses) of people to avoid that nightmare scenario for myself. so no, i don't think he is wrong about not being able to maintain connections with people who are left behind. maintaining connections across multiple modes of communication is extremely hard.

by such12 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

MichaelCollins 4y ago

> 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.
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."

freemrkt8 4y ago

As inequality has grown, so has the deficit. But for decades, government programs ran surpluses. It’s not hard to explain it away in memorized economics terms. The thing is those terms are merely one set of reasonable, generic language. Not immutable laws of reality. Technology is moving faster than that because of government investment; IBM refused to invest in solid state fearing it would undermine sales of old tube computers. Government invested in and gifted them solid state patents. What do you think the cheap money flowing to tech corps was about the last decade? Government subsidy of technology, which is verifiable in that now that rates are down tech genius CEOs are not innovating but pushing traditions of austerity. These companies are middlemen dependent on government subsidies.

such12 4y ago
How is this relevant?
- freemrkt8 4y ago
  You think he’s wrong about how great government control would be, but the government is in control.
  - such12 4y ago
    Don’t be silly. The government doesn’t regulate how these services operate. If you are going to argue that macroeconomic policy means ‘control’, then the government ‘controls’ everything in everyone’s lives at all times. You are welcome to believe this if you like.
    - freemrkt8 4y ago
      The government regulates their existence, their ability to grow, hire, develop services. Section 230 regulates what is allowed. DMCA, etc etc You say I should not be silly but I can believe what I like. Which is it? You are not really selling a strong argument here, just wishy washy opinions decoupled from the negotiated terms of society documented openly. Society, the rest of us, do not have an obligation to your head canon. With the money printer off, tech corp are going where the money is; government welfare, not a free market: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/google-and-amazon-want-more-defense-contracts-despite-worker-protests/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/google-and-... The government does not “own assets” on paper but it has a whole lot of influence over agency

the-printer 4y ago

I think the thing is that people like yourself are probably conscientiously indifferent to the attraction, influence and dependency that “Big Tech” produces. If this isn’t the case for you, then allow me to speak for myself then. I think the very thought that the author is sharing is an overreaction, but it it’s a sign of the times that it even generates a conversation or that some people can even liken it to government intervention in the telephone business. I’m indifferent to the concept itself, but I find the idea in the context of the modern world and the dominant global culture…dramatic.

such12 4y ago
> I think the thing is that people like yourself are probably conscientiously indifferent to the attraction, influence and dependency that “Big Tech” produces. Not at all. I just think it’s obvious that the sentiment has been waning for some time now. Who is going around saying how great big tech is?
- the-printer 4y ago
  > Who is going around saying how great big tech is? I think that that’s the thing. They don’t have to say that. The attention that their products get, good or bad, speaks loudly enough.

jjav 4y ago

I really hate spending any time or effort building connections on proprietary platforms since it is so inevitable all that effort will decay to nothing as the platform dies, as it eventually must because it is controller by a single corporation that isn't interested in interoperability nor maintaining it once it's no longer profitable. To the extent possible I prefer to keep in touch with everyone via email since it is a decentralized open standard, so it will never go away.

jmbwell 4y ago

This is a piece that mentions briefly that regulations promoting federation have been proposed. Otherwise, I don’t see much of an “argument” one way or another.

em-bee 4y ago

He’s also just plain wrong about not being able to maintain connections with people who are left behind. a friend of mine lost his phone and was not able to recover his phonenumber. as a result he lost contact with hundreds of people and was not able to restore that contact to most of them. and that's not the first time i heard about that happening. in china supposedly relationships have been destroyed because someone lost their wechat access, and definitely friendships have been lost. this is my nightmare scenario. there are so many people i am in contact with through only one mode of communication, and if i were to lose that i would have no chance to ever get back to them. i don't even know how many people i lost when my email addresses stopped working. because i didn't just want to blast out a global notice to all my contacts. of course there the important ones i could inform about the new address but the less important ones are gone snd they have no way to find me. i am struggling to establish alternate contacts (like get the email addresses) of people to avoid that nightmare scenario for myself. so no, i don't think he is wrong about not being able to maintain connections with people who are left behind. maintaining connections across multiple modes of communication is extremely hard.