This is the behavior of monopolists. The FTC and existing anti-trust organizations would do well to return to their jobs and take a look at these practices broadly across the tech industry.
In my mind this is how these companies see their platforms plucked from their hands and spun off as independent companies.
This is incredibly unfair to users. It's a sign that these platforms have become a mafia protection racket.
It's not just as if they're saying "If you consider the competition, you'll lose everything." They're actually doing this.
Wow.
This should absolutely be a topic of discussion amongst us.
Do we, as individuals with leverage and influence, support these actions? And if not, what can we do to help change the status quo and insure this doesn't happen again so easily?
Crafting a response or opinion piece to submit to lawmakers and the FTC could hold a lot of power, especially if it is undersigned by many of us in the field.
> This is the behavior of monopolists. The FTC and existing anti-trust organizations would do well to return to their jobs and take a look at these practices broadly across the tech industry.
While I am inclined to agree with you, is it anti-competitive to remove phone numbers, etc from apps like Wag or Rover or Airbnb to prevent external communication outside the app?
I personally don't like that but don't think it's monopolistic. Wondering if the two are related somehow.
For example, if you said "check out our other listing on VRBO" in your AirBnB profile, but they were not the same listing - and AirBnB scrubbed your link, I would argue that would be anti-competitive behavior for a large player in the marketplace to remove the link. Why did they edit your content? Was it Spam? Was it against the rules? The only reason to remove it was to remove the competition from the other platform.
I acknowledge that the user acquisition pipeline / discovery chain for sales / rentals is very valuable and these platforms want to maintain the chain so they make their money. That said - you can't have your cake and eat it, and becoming a large player and exhibiting these behaviors has historically been a problem.
I also acknowledge that real moderation of these types of links is a problem. The "easy" answer that happens to benefit the company is removal of all of those links, but that reasoning seems flimsy.
If you're a major player in a market space with huge network effects and you remove links that your users have posted (in-line with your user agreement on your website), that's anti-competitive behavior that has typically not been looked well upon in the United States.
Are you aware of any case law that reflects that sentiment as it applies to link removal? It sounds like you have a specific case or two in mind.
If you want distribution of your thoughts, you have to use the walled garden controlled by giants.
> Everyone is free to move to another platform or start his own.
The reality is that you can't. Not without billions of dollars of funding.
Social networks should be regulated. They can't own the platform and make moves to crush others by threatening to downgrade your voice and participation.
> The reality is that you can't.
The reality is that is was solved a while ago, the solution is rss and email.
Instagram instead offers popularity and nice photo filters and colored ticks on avatars. Which are nothing in common with distributing thoughts.
You are in a very small minority when compared to the average internet user. This is the same attitude that advocates for IRC and Jabber when modern alternatives have taken over due to user friendliness, network power, and corporate ownership/management.
It's not to say these platforms don't have problems (they do), or that a non-open model is preferable (it's certainly not ideal).
> Instagram instead offers popularity and nice photo filters and colored ticks on avatars. Which are nothing in common with distributing thoughts.
We can't ignore that the Internet has moved on from our technical solutions since the rest of the world got online. If we want it to remain open, it's up to us to help reign things back in through legislation when we see such blatantly gross abuses such as this.
If you keep pointing to RSS as the solution while simultaneously discounting all of the moves that are being made by the big players, RSS will wither and die and you will be left with nothing.
Platform control. Regulatory capture. Impenetrable new "standards". DRM. Dropped support for HTTP, RSS, semantic HTML, ad blocking, video...
Just imagine what the Internet will look like in twenty years and tell me that doesn't worry you.
I kind of get the feeling you don't target younger people? I wonder if you would also, in case you for some reason couldn't cell phones, find that totally fine, since landlines are the superior solution.
At the end of the day companies and politicians both have to go where people are, even if we find the platforms used despicable.