[IncPen]

There's so much wrong with your posts, ctdonath2, that it's hard to know where to start.

First, you're mis-characterizing the problem with these social companies.

What they're doing is setting out the same terms of service for all users– which amount to a contract– then picking and choosing winners amongst those users. There is a real contract here: in using social media you are trading information about your habits in exchange for use of their platform. By favoring some users over others– going so far as to suppress free speech and association– without informing those users, they're denying some users their contractual rights.

Worse, they're doing this while favoring political parties to influence elections.

If you can't see the problem with this, you only have to consider the grievances of the workers who have to pay union dues which go to politics they oppose. It's true that no one if forcing you to use facebook, but according to their own terms of service users expect to be treated equally. Not so.

And breaking up Ma Bell was, in retrospect, stupid.

The breakup of Ma Bell led directly (in less than 10 years) to the rise of the cell phone and the internet, and the ability of everyone to communicate with anyone the world over for a tiny fraction of what it cost only a few years ago.

I think ctdonath2 you may be on the wrong website.

[Jane Long]

Well said, IncPen.

Bravo.

[palmer]

The breakup of Ma Bell led directly (in less than 10 years) to the rise of the cell phone and the internet, and the ability of everyone to communicate with anyone the world over for a tiny fraction of what it cost only a few years ago.

The Ma Bell monopoly was directly and completely responsible for the transistor that made this all this stuff possible.

I think ctdonath2 you may be on the wrong website.

I think IncPen needs to study history a bit more, particularly the advances and ideas even under the monopoly which allowed the explosion of better and cheaper services. The desktop OS was a similar monopoly albeit mainly with government and academic players. The upstarts nibbled away at that until it was destroyed and replaced with better and cheaper. But it's easy to forget the enormous contributions of the Microsoft monopoly.

[ctdonath2]

You can still go somewhere else online.
They’re not monopolies.
The internet is much bigger than Facebook et al.
There’s even DemocraticUnderground.com for those of you who think the government should dictate use & ownership of a mere roomful of file servers.

[dennisw]

The breakup of Ma Bell led directly (in less than 10 years) to the rise of the cell phone and the internet, and the ability of everyone to communicate with anyone the world over for a tiny fraction of what it cost only a few years ago.

I have read that the old Bell Telephone monopoly delayed cell phones and the necessary research and development by 10-20 years. Land lines made them the most money and they had invested zillions in laying them out. Poor third world nations that could not bear the expense of decent landline networks graduated straight to cell phone networks which are 100x easier to set up.

I used to read about Uruguay wealth level nations where it would take you three years to get a land line put in.