181–190 of 748 posts
While Google is functionally a public utility, it's not something that I want to be regulated like a public utility. If the government can't be trusted to law lines on a map that aren't blatantly rigged to favor their own political party, I can't trust that they won't tamper with search results the same way.
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Sure it does. It undercuts their entire argument by making it look much more like a political stunt than any kind of serious action.
ISPs don't abuse their power like Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. do.
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> ...their monopoly, which is why Google should be broken up. Not denying their monopoly position, but how could Google meaningfully be broken up? It's really just a single business (advertising) with a gaggle of loss leaders adding up to less than 20% of revenue. Even pushing advertising down to 80% took a huge amount of effort. It's not like Standard Oil which was a vertically integrated trust of several points in…
I think the suggestion is breaking up alphabet, which is quite literally loads of companies. YouTube, Google search, deep mind, Google fiber, waymo, Fitbit etc Seems pretty easy to break up if you want to.
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They may start doing so, if said providers start banning and censoring people based on political beliefs as Google does.
I don't think I've seen anyone get banned from any major platform for their political beliefs. It has always been for hate speech, inciting real-world violence, or spreading blatantly false misinformation that lead to incitements of violence (such as the unfounded claims that the election was stolen). Funny how none of the Republicans pushing this censorship narrative batted an eye last summer when Facebook was takin…
By the way, spreading misinformation like the infamous lab leak theory? Facebook fact checkers are a joke, they're fact checking stupid memes.
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I wish they would do that as well, but that certainly doesn't invalidate these concerns
Sure it does. It undercuts their entire argument by making it look much more like a political stunt than any kind of serious action.
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You can as easily have the same problem with physical mail, but that doesn't confer an indefinite right to a particular physical address. I do encourage keeping backups of your email to reduce this risk -- at least you can search your records that way.
> You can as easily have the same problem with physical mail, but that doesn't confer an indefinite right to a particular physical address. Of course not! But the USPS has (virtually) free change-of-address forwarding[1], and we have an entire set of social and governmental institutions pre-built around the impermanency of physical addresses. No such institutions exist for digital addressing. I agree, re: backups, an…
I do think it would be optimal if there were a fallback option for all types of digital accounts. It is not Google's fault, though, that there isn't, as they are not the cause of the assumption of email address permanence. You need to lay your blame at the feet of the service providers.
I do also think it might be ideal if Google would forward emails to an address of your choosing in the event they closed your account.
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> How can something on the internet be a common carrier when the internet itself is not a common carrier? Because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen. Maybe Google is the last straw that leads to proper governance of utilities in the public's interest.
The problem is that the Republicans trying to declare tech companies "common carriers" pretty much lied through their teeth 4 years ago when they argued that ISPs are absolutely not common carriers, in opposition of overwhelming popular opinion to the contrary.
But I have multiple choices for email, search, video hosting and browsers. I don’t have any choice for water, electricity, sewer, on any other public utility. I am sure there are a bunch of people on here that don’t use any Google products and are using DuckDuckGo, Firefox, ProtonMail, Vimeo. There are many choices.
You have multiple choices for water, dig a well, buy it from the local grocery store. Same for sewage because self composting toilets exist. Also electricity isn't a utility just use a stationary bike as a generator or buy solar panels... Just because you have multiple choices doesn't mean something is/isn't a utility. Its pretty arbitrary. They also aren't talking about Google products (most of which are completely…
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Freedom of association is important, and you shouldn't have to do business with people you don't want to.
I may be misunderstanding this. Does this mean "You [a business] shouldn't have to do business with people you don't want to"? If so, why should rights of people extend to businesses? People already have the freedom of association of employment that seems to cover this. ie: if someone doesn't want to associate with someone else as an employee of a business, they can simply not work at that business.
Businesses aren't people, they're legal fiction. The individuals who make these decisions do and should have the right to do business with whomever they want, based on any criteria they deem appropriate. This constitutes the distinction between the private and public sphere.