[throwaway_ocr]

Instead of regulating whatever social media platform happens to be trendy at the time, your anecdote suggests we should regulate companies so that they offer direct support through conventional means, rather than exclusively through third parties.

[alex3305]

Yes, but that would be rather hard to do. You would end up in a semantic discussion of the term "conventional means"? Is that support through telegraph, mail, phone, e-mail or social media? And what determines a third party? The telephone company or mail provider can also be a third party.

In my opinion when we have a oligopoly of social media providers (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), they should be regulated by local laws and government. Same for providers such as Microsoft, Google and Apple. It must be unacceptable that you have to provide your private details for usage and can get banned from a service without any prior communication. And without the ability to appeal or arbitration.

[jjav]

> You would end up in a semantic discussion of the term "conventional means"?

A definition could be a means which is itself regulated to be available to any customer.

So a phone support line is one because phone service is regulated, available and interoperable. Email counts because it is open, standard and decentralized (an email provider like gmail can block you but you can simply go elsewhere or self-host). A support office staffed by humans is also good because everyone can walk/bike/drive there. (But as a counterexample, a support office inside a military base wouldn't count since most people can't get to it, unless 100% of the customers are in that base.)

A support line controlled by a private entity which arbitrarily blocks people from access, such as FB, clearly doesn't count.