Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by parkingrift 1547 days ago
Complete control of the presentation of content, editorializing said content, and arbitrarily deciding what is and isn’t allowed. And they also still don’t want to be treated as publishers.

It’s hard for me to muster up even the smallest amount of sympathy for these vampires.

I expect this will take a decade to shake out as US tech firms work tirelessly to protect their spyware walled garden models.

3 comments

You’re severely overreacting. These features you so passionately hate are an important part of the reason why the general population is using the apps, and the business model of the large majority of chat apps is definitely not ‘spyware’.

What’s going to happen, if this ever goes through, is that the networks will open some kind of api so outsiders can send and be sent basic messages. And you will never be happy using it because you’ll always look like an outsider.

And there is no way to fix this because a big draw of these networks is that they keep adding new features and they are not in the old api so you can’t use them.

And of course it’s going to be a big source of spam so users will get the ability to block the outside from sending messages to them, which means you can’t reach half the people you want.

>These features you so passionately hate are an important part of the reason why the general population is using the apps, and the business model of the large majority of chat apps is definitely not ‘spyware’.

Disagree, and disagree. Access to friends and family is why people use these apps. Once these tech companies are forced to tear down those walls people will be free to use the app of their choosing to communicate with whomever they prefer. Spyware is harvesting data without the explicit consent of the user.

>What’s going to happen, if this ever goes through, is that the networks will open some kind of api so outsiders can send and be sent basic messages. And you will never be happy using it because you’ll always look like an outsider.

They'll be fined 10% of their global revenue for trying to play such an obvious and silly game.

Since we’re talking about the messaging component of services , what messaging service “[editorize] said content?

[arbitrarily deciding what is and isn’t allowed] Everything so arbitrary. Either allowing everything or nothing is not sustainable for anything on the internet so you need arbitrary rules to stop arbitrary things.

This proposal covers more than messaging. I don't know of any messaging services which editorializes content.

>Either allowing everything or nothing is not sustainable for anything on the internet so you need arbitrary rules to stop arbitrary things.

It doesn't need to be so complicated. Allow lawful content and maintain your neutral status, or only allow content you choose and become a publisher.

Can you explain what TikTok does differently that makes it so open and free compared to evil US tech companies?
The only difference between TikTok and any other big tech company would be their (lack of) Congressional bribery.