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Comment by dogcomplex | Hacker News Reader

An excellent counterargument. Yes, one might concede that protocols have not and probably will not win out over platforms in a free market. But if we're advocating that the big tech utilities be required by law to open source their protocols then your argument doesn't apply, as of right here:

> Overtime, the most popular client will get a quasi-monopoly and will become incompatible with the rest of clients, no one will notice except for us nerds on HN.

As soon as those popular clients get incompatible, they cross the line into a new protocol - and we force them by law to open-source license that too. Sure, the major platforms will still own 90% of the traffic since the public is mindless (for now, until its educated over generations), but third party options will again be possible.

So all this advocating for protocols is still very relevant, it's just probably not going to happen by itself or from some magic invention.

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I also think regulation is important. Like energy markets, some software, particularly communication systems, favor big players due to network effects.

So regulators should prevent anticompetitive behaviors such as what happened with Google Talk. When Google Talk was a new product, it was a fantastic XMPP implementation. They even contributed the Jingle extension to implement VoIP.

Once they became a dominant force, XMPP federation was removed effectively making it impossible to communicate with Gmail accounts from other providers. Later on, with the transition to Google Hangouts, XMPP was replaced by a proprietary protocol making it impossible to use even a different client other than Google's.

An open-source protocol won't prevent a platform from accepting content only from approved sources and serving it only to approved clients.

Facebook could start using on open protocol today, then block anyone not signed in through facebook and the result is nothing at all would change.

Maybe you're thinking platforms will somehow also be required to accept and share content from anyone? If so, all platforms become like 8chan (or worse). If not, there's someone, somewhere deciding what can and can't be shared on each platform (like there is now).

I think the fundamental confusion here is the idea that some kind of protocols vs. platform dynamic even exists.

Social media platforms are trying to achieve a captivating user experience built off our social nature to monetize our attention. Protocols are used, but they are deeply buried implementation details.

I don't know about that. Authentication mechanisms seem within scope of any protocol, and if an implementation refuses service based on some extra requirement (such as being signed in to Facebook) then that implementation is simply not up to spec.

> Facebook could start using an open protocol today

Richard Stallman would prefer you to use the term "free protocol", which I think is what we're all trying to say here ;)

Authentication mechanisms are in scope (obviously). The set of authorized accessors is not, right? I guess people are not accounting for the distinction, but it’s rather critical here.

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