> "or any other company's services" is a bit to wide, the obvious biggest counter example to this would be utilities, everyone is somewhat entitled to access to their power company's services. But going outside utilities, what if I live on an island that is serviced by a single ferry company, shouldn't I be entitled to paying service?
True, your 'island ferry example' is a monopoly. It is also not at all analogous to this situation and Tinder in general.
I'm no expert, but I don't think you understand what the 'network affect (sip)' is, as it does not apply to US Railways at all, and is a relatively new term that only arose in the 1970s. That aside, your example doesn't survive further scrutiny because railways were often the only practical way of moving between two generally public places — cities or towns. With Tinder though, they are providing you access to their own private network of users. Your example is like saying the monorail in disney is a monopoly, but that doesn't make any sense, since it's for transporting you within their own park.
Lastly, Tinder is not the one and only way to meet people. Yes, they have are of the most widely-used companies in the space. But there are others. And, you know, people can still meet in real life — through friends, at work, at activities or interest-based groups. On other social media like Twitter, et al.
> they do not resemble utilities at all, not even a little bit.
I think that these large communication platforms absolutely resemble other large communication platforms that are currently covered by common carrier laws.
Specifically, a lot of the functionality that these platforms provides, fulfills a usecase that is similar to the phone network.
And the phone network is both a large communication platform, and is all covered by common carrier laws.
The laws need to be updated to recognize that many of the online communication platforms are now as important as the phone system, and therefore should be covered by our existing common carrier laws.
Yep, pretty much. Do you expect multi-billion dollar companies to do something just because it sounded nice? Acting like that only works if they can get enough users onboard to commoditize the service. IM is far from that point (see the rise of new messenger apps/networks, decades after the first ones). These companies want their users inside their apps as much as possible.
Not to mention, allowing federation doesn't help the vast majority of their users, who are on other closed networks. So for it to be relevant, two networks need to interconnect. Without any solid reason or threat, why would they do that?
SMS BTW is a rather crappy example; I don't think I've ever used any other service that was so unreliable, slow, and expensive. And the only reason you have competition in many companies is due to the government coming in and breaking things up or allowing competition. Even today on phones, various companies are still doing their best to create lock-in or jam users, by, say, charging ridiculously high prices to call into their networks.
> And yet you can literally pick up a phone, dial some numbers, and reach everyone else who has a phone number.
And yet you can literally pick up a [product engineered to a phone company’s specifications], dial some numbers [assigned by a phone company] and reach everyone else who [also agreed to the phone company’s TOS] [as long as you and them have paid a large monthly fee].
This isn’t freedom. Companies still decide how you can use their services.
> If you include network effects, does everyone really have that choice?
The network effects just increase the value-add of the platform, making foregoing the platform more costly (in terms of unclaimed utility). There is still a choice.
> For example, I can't choose not to use WhatsApp to keep in touch with my family and friends in Brazil. It's simply not possible because some of them won't use another messaging app... I'm not really choosing it
Having a compelling reason to use a service is not remotely the same as being forced to use a service.
> it's shadier than that
High-value-add services are not shadier than violence.
>Now there is 1 single megacorp that a sizable portion of humanity depends on for phone/text communication.
Not out of necessity. It's not as if any one corporation controls the internet and has a monopoly on mobile communication the way JP Morgan used to control the railroads. Plenty of options to text and communicate other than through Facebook exist. People are dependent on one specific app because they choose to be, not because they have to be.
And "sizable portion of humanity" is overstating it. For the vast majority of humans, this was a non-event, or at worst, a slight annoyance.
Well not everyone (the first one was sent 7 years after the first mobile phone call). And if you want to consider it to be everyone, then it's an example of something where everyone has it yet it's not free.
> People do not want to use another messaging service
No, and therefore you need to offer something better to make up for the annoyance of changing.
I understand your point, it's the clearest example of a network effect and given two identical products the cheaper should be more attractive. However, this doesn't mean it has to have everyone and has to be free. Those are beneficial, but not absolute requirements.
Right now, I'd pay money for a decent messaging service with push & pull, with a simple API that supports sending images. It doesn't even have to have many users, I simply want this service at the moment and will pay money for it.
> I don't think you really have a "right" or entitlement to just access everyone. You're not entitled to use someone else's business, even if it's a good one.
And yet you can literally pick up a phone, dial some numbers, and reach everyone else who has a phone number.
No. In the dating sphere, people have a thousand things that go into their preference.
If someone living a 25 minute drive away can be a deal-breaker, having them sometimes not get your message asking if they want to go do something can be too.
The problem is that the choices are entirely in between proprietary systems, or a system like SMS which has a bunch of crappy behavior, or the new contender RCS which is kinda both. (missing arguably essential privacy features, still isn't really deployed as a standard since Google is running all of the infrastructure rather than carriers).
So we have no clear winner; instead we have tribes. Any time two tribes have to fall back to SMS it is going to be miserable.
Can we stop labeling everything that people like a "public utility"? What is ridiculous phrase. At any point in time I can open 10 chat apps and talk to my friends.
There are _existing_ public utilities that have way more, _actual_ monopoly power than iMessage and federal, state and local governments do nothing - nay - support it.
> We are not free to provide services to other devices on our own devices.
Of course you are. I'm speaking from an American perspective, but this is the very foundation of liberty.
> The network does not provide the required environment to make this possible. Why? It's not the hardware.
I do not own the network that my phone operates on, and the people that do have decided to control what they allow on it. I can start my own network and attempt to compete.
>Some of these services cannot be dialed via some VOIP providers (like Google Talk) for that reason.
I always knew this was the case, but I was never really bothered by it. Both the law (see intercarrier compensation[1]) and the subsequent ban make sense.
However I've recently run it to a rash of people who I can't call because my carrier and Google Voice block their numbers. Each of them has a Puerto Rican area code. They are all cell phone numbers, they all live in Chicago like me, but I can't call or text them because their phone number is Puerto Rican. It doesn't make any sense, because Puerto Rico is a part of the United States, we are both in the US, and we each ostensibly have US phone numbers.
I can be reached by telephone. What I don't have is a unique telephone number. This works perfectly fine for actual voice communication. If you think I can simply afford an extra monthly expense, you're wrong.
> You are like 0.0000001% of the market.
Made up statistics reveal your presuppositions.
There are a lot of people that don't have a unique phone number. It's a minority position, but that's kind of my point: chat services do not inherently depend on traditional phone numbers, and requiring one is going to exclude more people than you probably realize.
This is only because the telephone cartels control the networks. The same is more or less true of Internet. Operators have advocated for anti-open-wifi laws across the globe so they can sell their internet access plans (xDSL/3G), when we could have free networking for all in all places.
Seriously though, why couldn't we have FREE privacy-friendly networking as a public service?
> with little to no real world experience on the specific issue being discussed.
I lived in France and now I'm in Germany, still using my French sim card, for no additional cost. I can change carriers whenever I want with no delay and transfer my number to the new carrier, all of that for much cheaper than what was available in the US when I was living there.
No contract, no hidden fees, no loops to jump through to cancel a subscription, it just works. I really don't see what one more monopoly would solve.
Feel free to publish your list of grievances, I suspect they're extremely out of the ordinary
>iMessage makes me fairly angry because they're using & dividing people's social connections for profit.
Can you point me to a company that doesn't do this? I would think "but $hardware to use $network" is preferable to "use $network for free, but sell everything you put on the $network"
True, your 'island ferry example' is a monopoly. It is also not at all analogous to this situation and Tinder in general.
I'm no expert, but I don't think you understand what the 'network affect (sip)' is, as it does not apply to US Railways at all, and is a relatively new term that only arose in the 1970s. That aside, your example doesn't survive further scrutiny because railways were often the only practical way of moving between two generally public places — cities or towns. With Tinder though, they are providing you access to their own private network of users. Your example is like saying the monorail in disney is a monopoly, but that doesn't make any sense, since it's for transporting you within their own park.
Lastly, Tinder is not the one and only way to meet people. Yes, they have are of the most widely-used companies in the space. But there are others. And, you know, people can still meet in real life — through friends, at work, at activities or interest-based groups. On other social media like Twitter, et al.
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