not a utility, was Parler

Mon Jan 11 12:19:41 UTC 2021

Declare Facebook a public utility and eliminate advertising by replacing with a fee or what you call a tariff. Breaking up does not always work. Facebook is like a natural monopoly - people want one site to connect with all their 'friends'. No one is going to use several Facebooks as social media platform. They want one.

Regards,

Roderick.

________________________________
From: John Levine <johnl at iecc.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2021 11:57 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org <nanog at nanog.org>
Cc: Rod Beck <rod.beck at unitedcablecompany.com>
Subject: Re: not a utility, was Parler

In article <MWHPR13MB1742905824973AB606D9B80BE4AC0 at MWHPR13MB1742.namprd13.prod.outlook.com> you write:
>-=-=-=-=-=-
>Unless the courts rule or the legislators enact legislation making them a public utility. In legal circles there is a theory that
>platforms like Facebook, messaging services, etc. might achieve such importance to public life and discourse as to merit regulation
>under the grounds they are an essential utility. I am neutral regarding this idea - I have not studied it and also realize that Amazon
>is not strictly speaking a social media. So my point is tangential.

That is a dream of some factions, but it is not realistic.

You can certainly make an argument that Google and Facebook are
monopolies, but the remedies for that are to break them up or to
require them to provide access to their competitors to some of their
internal facilities, e.g., allow other ad networks to bid on and
provide the ads that show up with your Google search or Facebook page.

Utilities have tariffs under which everyone who orders the same kind
of service gets the same service at the same price. I understand how
to apply that to a railroad or a power company or a telephone company,
but I do not understand how to apply it to a search engine or social
media provider or online megastore and neither does anyone else.

R's,
John
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