And because of that Pidgin is horribly unreliable. Don’t get me wrong, I used it for years, but over time all the plug-ins broke for one reason or another.
Law makers are required here to solve the situation, as platforms themselves refuse to work with each other. If Facebook and Google had to operate a common protocol (just like IMAP), Pidgin would work much better or wouldn't even be needed.
But no, they want to prevent people from talking with each other via other platforms because "we're best" or whatever.
It's probably because they don't want to lose users.
If you have FB, and I have Twitter, and we can chat, why would I ever make a FB profile or you a Twitter profile?
The mutual exclusivity is the competitive advantage. All these companies are competing with one another for your eyes. It wouldn't make sense for them to give that up for no return value.
Exactly! Providing a walled garden just for the sake of keeping users should not be legal, just like abusing any other market position wouldn't be legal.
I get that they want their "network effect" and keep it to themselves, but this is no good for users and the industry doesn't "regulate itself" as we've heard so many times, so time for law makers to step up finally.
My point is that the walled garden is the competitive advantage.
A law like this could regulate businesses out of existence.
Which websites fall under it? Only social? What about forums, etc. What if the companies just rebase to non-US jurisdictions? Even if you make this law, it's unlikely it would actually compel anyone to comply.
> A law like this could regulate businesses out of existence.
Only if they didn't change their business model to something less incredibly antisocial than walling people in and serving them ads.
There are many ways to operate a communications business on-line. That only the bad one is used in practice is a consequence of it being the most profitable of available options. If it weren't available (say, because of being regulated away), companies would pick the next most profitable one.
Yes — this line of argument sounds exactly like the people who very confidently said that the economy couldn’t survive ditching asbestos or CFCs, emissions laws would destroy California, etc.
The key part is having regulations apply the rules evenly so everyone prices it into their decisions. Trying to limit specific companies makes that feedback cycle less effective.
Yes, but what if this is the only way to have a profitable business such as these? Are you okay losing them entirely?
More generally, my view of regulation is that it should only exist if there is some quantifiable harm to an involuntary third party (negative externality). Where is the demonstrative harm here, and who is it impacting? Having one friend on FB and another on MySpace, requiring the user to log into each platform separately isn't harm. The effect is the same as having one friend call you on a phone to communicate and the other only use text.
Every single person using these platforms makes a conscious decision to use them given their limitations. Nobody is forcing anyone to use these platforms. The government still runs a post office. You could use that to communicate with people if you wanted.
Instead of passing legislation to fix your problem, how about you just talk to your friends and get them to agree on using a single platform?
But no, they want to prevent people from talking with each other via other platforms because "we're best" or whatever.