Comment by declan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by declan | Hacker News Reader

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>That the government should regulate those peoples' platforms?

I take it you're joking: https://www.google.com/search?q="regulate+twitter"+site%3Ane... No results found for "regulate twitter" site:news.ycombinator.com.

The conventional wisdom around HN nowadays, as I understand it, is to be wary of building your business on someone else's platform. Lots of companies in the Twitter (and to some extent FB and Craigslist) ecosystem have found this out the hard way. The Apple ecosystem too, if you include app store shenanigans, as some wallet makers learned during the bitcoin interregnum.

I don't recall a lot of people here demanding a Federal Bureau of App Store and API Software Licensing and Regulation. Besides, if it existed, the FBASASLR would ban bitcoin wallets even more aggressively than Apple did. :)

I'm guessing it was a reference to "net neutrality" which is a legislative attempt to prevent near-monopoly internet providers from capturing excess profits from web services.

Ah, that makes a bit more sense. But I've never heard of anyone calling AT&T or Verizon or Comcast a "platform" that a developer might choose to build a business on.

BTW even if you like the ideas of Net neutrality, it makes sense to look very carefully at the methods of bringing it about that are being proposed at the FCC.

Daniel Berninger at VCXC.org earlier this week put it better than I could:

"The communicating public needs a 'voice' in the future of communication, but expanding FCC authority over IP networks via Title II does not achieve this goal.

"First - Internet access is not 'slow' - we near a one million fold expansion of bandwidth from the days of 300 baud modems.

"Second - The advocacy for FCC regulation reflects a theory of regulatory virtue not achieved in practice.

"Third - New regulation of IP networks threatens the Moore Law driven forces responsible for progress to date."

> But I've never heard of anyone calling AT&T or Verizon or Comcast a "platform" that a developer might choose to build a business on.

E.g. Netflix is a business built on AT&T and Verizon's and Comcast's platform (namely their customer-facing telecommunications networks).

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