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Comment by unethical_ban | Hacker News Reader

We've never had communications platforms so centralized, nor had comms companies with so much editorial control over peoples' exposure to information.

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The United States Postal Service? Although it's illegal for them to open mail without a specific warrant.

The USPS is my go-to example of why “Net Neutrality” is a requirement for communication.

The USPS mail service is frankly bullshit. It exists to spam the hell out of you.

it actually exists to guarantee service of court documents and government records. Without it the courts and government couldn't function properly. it's so vital that the USPS has their own police force that punishes mail crime. Once I got a piece of mail about a postal worker who stole a $20 gift card in route to me. She got sentenced to several years in jail. I'd sooner screw with the IRS than the postal service.

How narrow-sighted can you be?! The USPS is the latest incarnation in a lineage of postal services that go back centuries and that for many generations served as a neutral, transparent, reliable, and capillary means of allowing epistolary contact between individuals.

Note: I’m not American, I’m not in the USA, but this applies to most postal services worldwide.

USPS disallows 3rd party Mail aggregation and sorting / scanning services.

Why? The biggest USPS customer base (unsolicited bulk mail) got pissed.

If you saw how much spam I get via snail mail maybe you’d understand a little more.

AT&T?

Which was broken up in 1984 via antitrust regulation?

Responding to this specifically:

>We've never had communications platforms so centralized

>editorial control

And as mentioned elsewhere, it was broken up, and then allowed to recongeal.

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