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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to the natural consequence of social networks becoming important to just do daily business. The phone companies, and other utilities, operate under strict rules. I do wonder how many and type of companies will become internet utilities?

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99.5% of Americans could never log into Facebook, Twitter or anything ever again with no substantial impact on their daily lives. The remaining 0.5% have careers centered around social media and should probably find a real job.

Honest to goodness, the hyperventilation about how "important" social media is just amazes me.

And 100% of people could live without phone companies with no impact to their daily lives, we’ve got internet right? Of course I would be the one defining impact here. You may consider impact to daily lives not substantial, but others see the substantial impact of not being able to reach their family, friends, and customers and the disadvantage that comes with others having that access but you not. It’s not like Facebook actually is making the “social media” you see in your feed, it is 100% carrying social media from users, the same way a phone company aren’t the one making calls.

Are you really comparing the level of effort of setting a phone company to creating a social media platform or a website to get your ideas out there?

Exactly. There is much lower hanging fruit but if you ask someone what is more valuable to their business, phone service or social media, many would choose social media.

So these same companies are complaining that it is harder to target people because Apple has instituted the ability for people to say no to targeting. Should the government come in there? Would Truth Social like the Biden administration coming in and telling them what they can post?

I don’t think that is a common carrier issue. I’m just saying the impact of bans from social media companies, often coordinated among several at once, are more impactful than other companies already listed as common carriers. It’s not like social media is created by these companies, every piece of content shown on the websites was user created and the users deserve protection from malicious and biased actors within the companies.

Do I also deserve “protection” when RedState has banned me twice for not carrying the party line? Do you think Truth Social would welcome my opinions with open arms?

I don’t know what red state is, a social media company?I am referring to places where none of the content produced is made by the owner. Places where all content is user created.

RedState is a conservative website that allows comments. I was banned because I didn’t toe the line. Do you think they would have been okay with the Biden administration saying I must be allowed to comment.

That’s obviously not what I am talking about, I said multiple times places that are 100% user generated content.

No, my job requires me to have internet while travelling. That means phone companies. It could be solved, but would have a huge impact on my life.

This is not true. You need a Facebook account to interact with a lot of businesses.

Many businesses don't have normal websites for better or worse.

Many government agencies announce things through Twitter and Facebook for better or worse (worse in my opinion).

I've been logged out of Facebook for like 10 years, and in that time, I've not once needed my FB account to interact with a business.

> Many government agencies announce things through Twitter and Facebook for better or worse

Twitter seems to be the more common of the two there. They should not do that.

You don’t need a Twitter account to read Twitter post anyway. You can open the page incognito mode and sterilise it when done.

On mobile, it keeps making me log in.

And yet, with no functioning Facebook or Twitter account, I seem to have no problem finding businesses that sell the things I'm interested in. Most local issues of actual importance are still mentioned in the newspaper.

Facebook could get their databases and backups wiped tomorrow and I'm pretty sure nothing would substantively change in my life or my work (and I work in tech). Same goes for Twitter. I might be exposed to less second-hand stupidity on an average day.

I see lots of hand-wringing about them being somehow equivalent to power plants or water districts, but to me it seems like a tortuous justification for "make them act how I want them to act".

I don't have a facebook or twitter account either, but it's not totally frictionless. My wife still has one to join some neighborhood groups and follow some local businesses.

> becoming important to just do daily business

How is any social network today important for daily business? You can live a perfectly normal life after deleting every single one of them, and so many people have done exactly that. Facebook is not equivalent to electricity or running water.

The phone companies and utilities are natural monopolies. Creating a social media platform isn’t. Doesn’t every senior developer interview at a BigTech company involve a question “how would you design Twitter?”.

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