So what laws do you want the government to pass and do you trust government politicians to actual make intelligent laws regarding the internet?
Are you familiar with existing fair practices, consumer rights, and consumer protections acts?
As far as email, create a domain name and use your own email address.
Free will is great isn’t it? Everything doesn’t require the nanny state to step in and solve all of your problems.
It's all well and good for you - someone who's aware of the risks and issues - to say "just don't use Google/Facebook", but laws would protect the average person who just wants the quickest/easiest way to get an email account or to sign in to websites.
Also even if consumers were all highly educated in the pitfalls of Google etc., major websites still force you to use Google technologies whether you like it or not. Google Recaptcha is everywhere; eBay forces you to use it to sign in to your account. Are people now supposed "just don't use eBay" now as well?
Yes, if you don’t like the tradeoffs that eBay gives you - don’t use EBay. You can use Amazon, Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, etc. to sell and buy stuff.
Dependencies create defacto requirements with the alternative of severe disadvantageous if opting out.
Corporations answer to shareholders, creditors, business partners, and management long before they do individual users. Who, in the case of Google aren't even direct customers (advertisers are). Representative governments answer, however imperfectly, to the governed.
Email self-provisioning has significant hurdles for even technically-competent individuals let alone the general public.
Your suggested alternatives ignore the problem and create more.
So now we are going to go down the whole “Minority Report* rabbithole and make laws just in case? You don’t tie your login infrastructure with Google, you use Oauth 2 and plugin any third party you wish.
Representative governments answer, however imperfectly, to the governed.
How well is that working out in the US between gerrymandering, the electoral vote having an opposite outcome than the popular vote, and how it is almost impossible to get rid of an incumbent?
Email self-provisioning has significant hurdles for even technically-competent individuals let alone the general public.
I didn’t say set up your own email server. I said create your own domain. You can create your own domain with your own email address with a few clicks on Godaddy. If you don’t like GoDaddy, there a dozens on other places that will transfer your MX record to them and you keep your own email address.
Regulations serve to create a common and uniform floor of service levels.
The problem with a strictly voluntaryist, free-market, laissez-faire approach is that it tends strongly to a Gresham's law "bad terms drive out good" race-to-the-bottm dynamic, particularly unfortunate when there is but one monopoly provider on the market.
This occurs well before reaching the far end of the slippery slope on which you seem to be perched.
Several of my earlier comments have been badly misapprehended, I'll not belabour them though I'll note the fact.
If people read the conditions of the free google account they realize that the service can be terminated at any time for any reason without warning, and there's absolutely nothing there about any corrective mechanisms.
Contrast this with terms of [especially national] domain name ownership.
Anyway, given the number of people who will give their data to such a service under such conditions, you may well be right that some regulation would be useful, especially around getting your data out in some short time period after account termination. (But only to holders of the valid authentication credentials.) Forced email address portability would be also nice (provider would have to forward incomming emails for a reasonable fee or for free), for some limited time, maybe a year.
(0) https://www.cnet.com/news/some-senators-in-congress-capitol-... (1) https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9869308/donald-trump-clos...
You've gone off the rails here, mate.
You can also get to another website just as easily.
How about you?
1. The average tenure of Senator or Representative in the US is steadily increasing. (https://www.termlimits.com/new-research-congressional-tenure...) and because of how much money it takes to win an election, it’s really hard to get rid of a member of Congress.
2. Because of how both the Electoral College was designed and the design of the Senate with 2 senators per state regardless of population, if you live in a more populous state, you have less voting power.
3. The more tenured Senators have more power and they have the power to block legislation. The people of the state where the leaders live are the only ones that can oust the Senate leaders.
4. Most rules aren’t done by legislators they are done by committees led by Presidential appointees who are approved by the Senate - again appointments can be blocked by the leaders of the Senate. Many of their policies are approved and struck down by unelected judges.
5. Then there is always gerrymandering.
6. You really don’t believe politicians - many of whom basically did insider trading pre-Covid - are greedy rich people? The President himself is a billionaire.
Could you point out where I said that? Please don't put words into my mouth just to "win" a discussion. That's pretty cheap.
So the alternative between trusting greedy rich people who both don’t have the power of the state, and I can choose to use alternatives, is to trust greedy rich people with the power of the state - most of which I have no power to get rid of because a) they aren’t in my district, b) the alternatives don’t have the money to get elected, and c) get elected by the flyover states because they have two senators just like the more populous states