This would be great, but I'd settle for regulating my goddamn internet service provider like a utility. (At least in those places--which are most places--where there isn't meaningful competition.)
I pay $85/month for Internet service that can only reliably stream a tv show on Netflix without interruptions maybe half the time.
Put another way, I'm ok waiting until the functional monopolies start behaving like evil monopolists to start regulating them as monopolies. (I'm also fine not waiting and regulating them in advance. But that seems unnecessary.) Social media companies aren't really there yet. (Unlike ISPs.)
The simplest solution is for everyone to go back to email and texts.
Yes. Facebook is turning into all videos and it annoys me.
3: They already throttle down content so you basically have no idea if you're seeing all of your actual friends' news, and if you're trying to spread the word on something it's very difficult without paying them.
The second link is really good.
I got some unauthorized charges on my Paypal account from Skype. Holy fuck, dealing with Skype's customer service was some mega-bullshit. First I had to log in to my account, which had been deactivated some years ago, but they believed to be activated. Then they forced me to merge with a Microsoft account. I don't think I have ever had a Microsoft account before, but they acted like they were merging known accounts. Then they made me talk to a robot. Finally I was allowed to send an email to them. But the mandatory fields on the email were INSANE: List five of your Skype contacts. In which year did you first open your Skype account. Etc. All while I'm on a time crunch to wrap up the email before I go to teach. I'm so angry.
6: my feed has abruptly changed recently - I assume I'm part of some experiment - and it's driving me crazy. I'm getting tons of lunch photos and schmaltz from long lost boring people, and none of my interesting news links from interesting people that I interact with.
7: Microsoft's account unification process was bullshit. Somehow logging into my (rarely used) Windows partition ended up being tied to an account I original made to play my Xbox.
In which year did you first open your Skype account
I have no idea when I did. I recently changed my password because I needed it at work and couldn't log on. It turned out it was blocked at work but I thought it was because of a wrong password. So I got notifications from Microsoft Account or whatever that I'd changed my password. Fast forward two weeks and I'm looking at my inbox saying to myself "what the hell is this from Microsoft Account? I don't have a Microsoft Account, am I being phished?" because there was nothing in the email about Skype. So annoying.
Also does Halford know it's safe to come back?
I don't think he can come back until Clinton wins, or something.
Don't tell him. Without us to distract him, he'll be able to overthrow Trump.
Until fascism is comfortably remote. Which is good, but I just can't go that long without bullshitting.
Or end the world in a fireball. I'm down for either, tbh.
Some say the world will end in climate change.
Some say Trump.
From what I've tasted of saltwater,
I hold with those who favor rising ocean levels.
But if I had to redo the last election,
I think I know enough of backwards yokels
To say that for destruction, Comey
Is also a shithead
And this doesn't rhyme.
For destruction Trump
Would sufflump
Some say the world will end in climate chump.
Some say Trump.
From what I've tasted of saltwhump,
I hold with those who favor rising ocean lump.
But if I had to redo the last electiump,
I think I know enough of backwards yumps
To say that for destruction, Comump
Is also a shithump
And this rhumps.
I agree with 1. It's absurd that we don't regulate ISPs like utilities when they have de facto monopolies in so many places.
I could maybe be persuaded to support regulating social media that way too (I haven't read the OP links), but I'm skeptical. The business model is very different, for one thing.
It's absurd that we don't regulate ISPs like utilities
My understanding is that we did. For about five minutes at the end of Obama administration.
My understanding was that that was a type of utility regulation, but less stringent than what, say, electric or gas utilities are subject to. But I don't know the details.
We, or rather you, do. Being an ISP (or a CMRS or an ILEC, CLEC, RLEC, or RBOC) is a regulated activity anyway, and further regulation under Title II of the Comms Act '34 was extended to broadband services (deregulated by GWB's Martin FCC in 2005) and nothing has changed about that.
But you know, wallow in depressive rumination a bit and you won't notice when it's gone.
25: Okay, but what does that regulation entail? Do ISPs have to get their rates approved by the FCC?
nothing has changed about that
You are right, the utility thing is still on the books. I had been under the impression that the new FCC had withdrawn its legal defense of that rule, but in fact, the withdrawal of defense was on the narrower topic of not letting phone companies screw over prison inmates with usurious rates. Now they are able to screw inmates as hard as they want, because freedom.
And now your ISP will be able to sell your browser history to the highest bidder. Hooray!
I don't think ISP regulation extends to absolute rates, just whether different rates can be set for different kinds of traffic. But maybe (probably) I'm wrong and the rates we have are what the industry has convinced the regulators are fair.
Cable was never regulated like a utility. Teh competitive marketplace has shown that it will keep prices down and everybody is happy with their cable provider.
Some states do actually regulate cable TV as a utility. I have no idea how well this has worked.
On the social media topic, I'll refrain from ranting again about how I stopped being able to deal with Facebook, but it still pains me that I kept my friends list almost exclusively to people I know (in person but also online if I could match name and handle), so that seeing every post from them wasn't a problem, and then Facebook took that all away because what's most relevant to me is that someone I do know was tagged in a photo they don't actually appear in as part of an inside joke among people who, except for the one person I know, I've never met.
Ok, I didn't refrain from ranting. But I did refrain from ranting at length.
33 Thanks for the rant; it further justifies my own avoidance of it as I've never had an account and rarely felt the need. I've been waiting for it ho turn into MySpace since 2008.
The phenomenon fa mentions is definitely real, and annoying, but Twitter seems vastly worse along most dimensions.
In the narrow sense of "doesn't do that specific annoying thing" I guess Twitter does come out ahead, admittedly.
At least on Twitter I don't have to see my relatives' racist screeds, only the president's.
27: Not rates except in the special case of builds financed by the state under the REA, CAF and CAF-II etc, which are sometimes either subject to price caps or to the old school rate of return regs. But yes net neutrality, special access to infrastructure, resolution of disputes on things like peering.
Cable TV is quite heavily regulated - it's often required that an operator provide specified channels, for example. But this is more about the TV bit than the cable bit. It was after all Comcast that originally contended that broadband wasn't a telecoms service in the meaning of the '34 and '96 Acts back in 2004.
Mobile (CMRS) is a whole other regulatory domain.
Title II does give the FCC potential authority to impose rate-of-return across the board, though, although they haven't used it and they have pretty much committed to not doing so ("forbearance").
Cable TV is quite heavily regulated - it's often required that an operator provide specified channels, for example.
The content is regulated. The "you can't be a local monopoly and screw over your customers" bit is not.
I'm sorry in advance b/c I know FB rants probably interest no-one at this point but I can't read 33 and keep control of myself:
then Facebook took that all away
This is the essence of what I hate about social media.
I have a FB account that I generally ignore and keep only b/c some of my duller-witted friends and family are unable to communicate on the internets any other way. But I ignore it not because I hate the whole experience or righteously boycott it on principle, but because, like all these stupid social platforms, they've had to figure out their business model on the fly and we the users are the product not the customers and all these companies are run by emotionally stunted boy-men if not outright sociopaths, and so of course contempt for users is built right in and if at any time the user experience becomes pleasant in the least it's guaranteed to change in short order. I enjoyed FB much more than I ever expected when I first signed up but basically just wore out from the constant tweaking to both the UI and the privacy policies/settings, always in favour of the company and its advertisers and never in mine, until I could no longer be bothered. And christ, it's ugly.
I guess it's basically the same phenomenon as Microsoft boogering up Word with every new release, requiring the user to be constantly relearning how to use it, except that with FB the boogering-up is ongoing, not always announced, you have no choice about "upgrading," and there's not even a credible pretence that changes are supposed to be making it better (for the user). It makes the aforementioned contempt for users so transparent that the sign-in page might as well say FUCK YOU, LITTLE SOCIAL MONKEY, GIMME ALL YER DATAS. So fuck them back. I stopped using Word a decade ago.
And I do think my life has been improved on balance by excising all the self-presentation thinking that goes along with social media, especially with a platform like FB where the audience may include people from very different parts of one's life.
Since I couldn't be decent like fake accent and at least keep it short, let me just thank everyone for listening b/c I've been wanting to get that off my chest, and make a passing effort to make this comment on topic: I guess I do actually agree with the premise of the OP even while seeing it as too fantastical to discuss seriously, and also, what urple said in 1 (for the US).
On the subject of things that ought to be regulated like a utility (and social media isn't one of them), Congress just passed a law allowing ISPs to sell your browsing history. There are rumbles in the ether about raising money to buy the browsing histories of people who voted for this. I sincerely hope they manage to pull it off and humiliate some of these assholes.
There's an utterly bullshit-ridden blog post at the Competitive Enterprise Institute's site (not going to link to it), from someone called Ryan Radia. It asserts that dumping the user data regulations is NBD because there are other state and federal laws that apply, and anyway you can always go to another provider: over 90% of Americans have access to high-speed internet from three or more providers! That is to say, "high speed" if it means "5 mbps" or faster. Even better, 40% have access to really super high speed internet from more than one provider. Meaning "25 mbps" or higher.
He does at least mention that the CEI opposed the regulations before and during their span, and still opposes them, in case you were wondering. I wasn't.
I don't know how this fits with the regulation issue, but this election made it pretty clear that social media are inherently political. Politically neutral curation on their part essential defers judgement to whoever is best able to manipulate their rules, especially when coupled with a tolerance for bubbles and balkanization. This same problem is present in old media, of course, but when they came about some effort was made to ensure they would act in a pro-social manner and we've seen the results when those efforts were abandoned. We're living in an uncontrolled experiment in a political environment that is hostile towards systematic review and regulation.
It's possible the Germany or somebody is the control group and this is all a randomized experiment.
Obviously, it wouldn't work if the American public wasn't blinded.