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Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

> This what is happening in USA right now is nowhere near that

It's going to happen. These platforms are so large they encompass a signification amount of the communication market .. and I don't say that lightly. Look at how Facebook has literally gobbled up all its competition and now is pushing policies that make WhatsApp and Oculus useless without handing over full control of all your accounts and devices?

These companies ARE STATES! They may not look like governments, but the communication power they wield is stronger than many nations.

You can no longer just say "They're private companies" when you literally cannot buy a well supported Mobile device unless it runs Android or iOS, unless you have the skill, ability and time to run something like a PinePhone or PostmarketOS.

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Why this assumption that you need a smartphone? That's patently silly. Your life and liberty do not depend on you owning a smartphone. This is an app on an app store. Do I think it's a great precedent to set? Not really, despite my political beliefs being heavily progressive. But this overblown reaction is bananas.

Like, my life is proceeding just fine without either WhatsApp or Oculus products. Or a Facebook account that I use, for that matter.

(edit: For the record, the reason I am not happy with the precedent is that isolating communities like this seems to usually just serve to increase radicalism rather than remove it.)

> Your life and liberty do not depend on you owning a smartphone

Modern life absolutely depends on being able to connect to the Internet in some way. For a lot of people, that's a smartphone, which is cheaper and more mobile than a computer.

> Why this assumption that you need a smartphone?

I got my first smartphone in 2019 because I watched the world around me gradually change to the point where an Apple or Android phone was expected and became inconvenient not to have.

It'd be a good idea to read through these threads from a day or two ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662215

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669864

Apparently WhatsApp is so integrated into several countries' cultures, you cannot live without it. Like literally - some examples I remember are food deliveries (during lockdowns) are only available through WhatsApp, as are scheduling hospital visits, anything involving schooling, I think I remember lawyers sharing documents, and so on.

the solution to this, obviously, is to break up monopolistic companies, not to force them to be mouthpieces for fascists.

I think the solution is to simply break the network effect by mandating a right to transfer your account and a guarantee of interoperability. This would reinvigorate the competition

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