We are at at a crossroad. Social media has crossed the line from being a frivolity to being an utility, like electricity or telephone. And it needs to be regulated as such. Not censoring. All communications providers need to be regulated and expected to provide the platforms for communications and the tools that users can use to block unwanted content in the same way telephone companies provide blocking tool for unwanted calls. Our electric company does not censor your electricity use by judging the value of its use. This utility regulation would apply to fb, twit, amazon, Google, UTUBE, SNAPCHAT, LinkedIn, and to the smaller utilities as well. Also to cell phone providers and any other communications providers. This will permit us to regain a freer society that has been lost during this technological shake out
True. Many, if not most governments on all levels use Facebook and Twitter exclusively for official announcements
The CEO of Gab.com, I believe, commented yesterday that he was against turning big tech into utilities because it destroys opportunity for competitors such as his company. He makes sense, and God know we don’t need another bureaucratic department established to maintain/regulate technology in the direction that the government deems appropriate.
Let’s see how this Gab thing works out, and let’s see how those monopoly lawsuits work out for big tech. Breaking them up makes more sense than turning them into government entities.
The Commerce Clause of the US Constitution directly applies. The federal government has the power and responsibility to make commerce regular; as in normal. That was the meaning of word "regulation" when our founders wrote the constitution.
Given that the internet is used for commerce between the several states, government should ensure that anyone or any business may gain access to the internet. Specifically, no one can be denied access to internet service to their data center, no matter how large or small. This include physical and higher level tiers of the internet including things like DNS services. There should be a clear demarcation of regulation between internet pipes and fundamental internet services and higher level services, such as data centers, and cloud hosting services. Higher level services should not be regulated.
It should be anyone's choice to use or not use cloud services, such as AWS. I think you will see an exodus of businesses from AWS to private data centers or other providers. This will hurt Amazon's business.
Regulation should not be used to prop up Amazon and make them live by arbitrary and ineffective regulations created by government. More importantly, regulations would create barriers of entry into those markets for smaller businesses. Regulations have costs that always hurt small businesses. Big businesses often ignore regulations and decide to pay fines instead, thus making the regulations moot for them, but costly for small businesses.
We just need to ensure that anyone or any business can get an internet pipe to their computers/servers and internet traffic is not blocked or throttled to those people. The market will take care of the rest.
That would be one step to correct things. The next would be to look at anti-trust laws and break up the big tech olilgopy. That needs to be done one step at a time, tackling the largest companies that display near monopolistic behaviors.
To summarize, the federal government needs to take measures to ensure competition. That should be as near to pure competition (economics definition) as possible.
Social media has crossed the line from being a frivolity to being an utility.
Indeed it has and what was good for Ma Bell is good for the social media.
Those who know anything about the industry know that social media companies are not communications companies.
They are applications. Notwithstanding the debate over whether they are monopolies, they are in no way essential infrastructure as the transport (telecommunications) providers are.
In spite of wishful thinking.
Ping.