[pdonis]

> By “forbid it” I meant “make it illegal”

Yes, I understand that.

> not as in “big government tell everyone what to do”, but as in “let the market do its job properly”

You are missing a crucial point: the current state of Big Social Media is a product of a free market. Users freely choose to take advantage of the opportunity to use these services without paying for them. "Making it illegal" would mean telling all those users that they can no longer make that choice because the government is taking it away, by passing laws that prevent Big Social Media from offering their services for free. And of course Big Social Media will play that for all it's worth in the political debate that would precede the hypothetical passage of any such law. Not to mention that such a law would also be outlawing all the other tech startups that would benefit from a "freemium" business model.

My prediction is that any such law would be taken off the table due to political pressure long before it got anywhere near actually being passed. But in any case, saying that the law is just to "let the market do its job properly" is obviously wrong. "Free market" doesn't mean you get to outlaw freely chosen transactions that you don't like.

> If it’s illegal, they would have no other choice would they!

If we assume the law you propose actually works and isn't gamed (which is already a big if), my prediction is that Big Social Media would either pivot to some new thing that they could charge for (LLM-based "AI", perhaps), or take their cash and effectively go out of business. I don't think they would just say "oh, well" and actually do the hard work it would take to make all their users paying customers.

[strogonoff]

> actually works and isn't gamed

The feeling that law is useless is good for Big Social because it helps uphold the status quo.

In practice, companies don’t like doing things that are obviously illegal, especially criminal.

For example, do phone operators sell your phone records? No, because the penalty is 10 years in prison. One employee with good ethics or bad mood is enough to land top management in jail.

Does “records” mean actual contents of the call? No, it means simply “whom you called and when”.

Does social media contain much more sensitive personal information than phone records? Absolutely.

If the law does not penalize selling that information, it only means the law is inadequate, not that it is useless.

> I don't think they would just say "oh, well" and actually do the hard work it would take to make all their users paying customers.

If they won’t, someone else will. It can even be you or me. This is the beauty of free market where honest competition is possible.

[pdonis]

> If the law does not penalize selling that information

This is a different proposal from what you made before. This proposed law would not require users to be paying customers (so apps could still have a free tier). It would just require that sensitive personal information gained from apps not be sold to third parties for profit, as is now required for phone records. The effect would be similar, since the ad-supported business model largely relies on such selling of information. But it would be a narrower restriction, because there are many apps with free tiers that do not use the ad-supported business model.

That said, the obvious way to game this law is the definition of "sensitive information". This was never an issue for phone operators because their users are already their customers; people pay for phone service. So there is no incentive for phone operators to try to monetize whatever sensitive information they could harvest, so for them "sensitive information" basically means "whatever information you collect from phone calls" and there is no pressure to manipulate that definition. But it would be a huge issue for Big Social Media, and I would expect them to work very hard to gerrymander the definition of "sensitive information" so it doesn't really restrict their operations.

If they failed and a law like this got passed, would they then actually do the hard work to make all their users paying customers? I still doubt it, but perhaps somewhat less than for the broader law I took you to be proposing before.

[strogonoff]

If I didn’t provide the definition for “sensitive information” in my comment that doesn’t mean the law can’t have it.

Same as I did not give you a full definition of what “phone records” means, but the relevant law has it.

> This proposed law would not require users to be paying customers

If it’s made illegal to profit from users through such indirect means, then there would be no choice for companies but to require users to be paying customers.

The core issue is not that users don’t pay, but that they are the product (and that hurts the users and distorts how market works, preventing competition). That’s what legislation could address. Whether users pay or not simply follows from market mechanics.

Companies can still provide subsidized accounts for disadvantaged families and cover the costs by charging premium users more, for example, if they want to.

> But it would be a huge issue for Big Social

Absolutely, it’s probably their worst nightmare ;)

[pdonis]

> If it’s made illegal to profit from users through such indirect means, then there would be no choice for companies but to require users to be paying customers.

Yes, there would. I already addressed this. Plenty of apps have a free tier (which means those users are not paying customers) but don't sell user information to third parties. There is no reason to outlaw those apps, and your proposal wouldn't.

> The core issue is not that users don’t pay

I agree, which is why I went to the trouble of pointing out that apps could still have a free tier under your proposal.

> Companies can still provide subsidized accounts

Yes, but this is by no means the only possibility. See above.

[strogonoff]

> There is no reason to outlaw those apps, and your proposal wouldn't.

It’s not about outlawing any app or service, free tier or not. It’s about making a business model illegal because it is anti-competition and anti-free-market.

[pdonis]

> It’s not about outlawing any app or service, free tier or not.

I agree that your more recent proposal isn't, but your original proposal was--your original proposal was to legally require all users to be paying customers. You have now changed that to only legally require that user information not be sold for profit to third parties. I am simply emphasizing the difference (a very important one, IMO) between those two proposals.

> It’s about making a business model illegal

I'm not sure I would dignify "selling user information to third parties for profit" with the term "business model". Especially since, as you have already pointed out, there is already a context in which it is illegal (phone call information).

[pdonis]

> If I didn’t provide the definition for “sensitive information” in my comment that doesn’t mean the law can’t have it.

Sure, it would, but that doesn't mean the definition in the law that ended up getting passed would be what you want it to be. Regulatory capture is a thing.

[strogonoff]

It’s a democracy.

[pdonis]

> It’s a democracy.

Nominally, yes, but most of the actual laws we have on the books are regulations written by unelected bureaucrats, not statutes passed by elected representatives. And even the latter serve special interests far more often than they serve the general interests of the people and the country.