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Comment by satokema_work | Hacker News Reader

This.

A big problem is oligarchic in nature: if you believe that ISPs should be classified as common carrier utilities that should not be permitted to limit or censor the data you receive within reason, then the oligarchic content hubs should similarly be common carriers of speech.

I don't have a rock solid argument on this, this is just an equivalence I'm asserting.

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ISPs are utilities because you only have one option for ISP (running a wire to your house). Content hubs take less than a second to switch, there is no lock in.

The lack of ability to switch providers is what makes it important to have regulations, not just the fact that it is labeled a common carrier.

There is a public lock in. You can switch to another content hub like you can move to a new town for a different ISP. I think that's at the heart of disagreement here: do these content hubs count as public spaces for unregulated communication, or as private spaces, regulated at the will of the owner of the space? For many, due to the population present, other content hubs are not the same thing as facebook/youtube/twitter.

What lock in? There is no friction in typing in a different website's address. Just because other people use Facebook doesn't mean you're locked into that. People watch different TV shows, different movies, read different books, this is no different.

No one is stopping you from making your own forum or website.

> What lock in? There is no friction in typing in a different website's address.

The fact that all your photos, content and friends are on one platform and not the others, obviously.

That you chose to put there, on someone else’s computer. Other than you and your friends’ and family’s willingness to do work, there is no lock in, and I don’t believe that’s a useful way to define lock in.

So the fact that in the 90s you put your sentences into Microsoft's proprietary .doc format, or that you decided to run your business on Microsoft Windows computers is not lock-in either? What definition of lock-in would you propose that would include the above which is widely regarded as lock-in, but exclude FB as lock-in?

The utility of the forum comes from other people. Social graph is absolutely a means of lock-in, and it's long overdue for us to recognize that.

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