Legally, public utilities generally are natural monopolies and are either publicly owned or regulated precisely because of that fact.
To say that any company that has a dominant market share of a product category or service that people depend upon is a public utility would have meant, over the years, that IBM (mainframes), Microsoft (desktop computers), Apple (digital music players), and many other companies should have been or should be treated as targets for regulation. Public utility regulation means setting tariffs that regulate pricing, requiring the regulated companies to file formal applications and to provide justifications for requesting pricing increases, and setting detailed rules and regulations about making sure all customers have reasonable access to the service, etc. These various concepts make perfect sense for a monopoly that provides electricity, water, or some such thing to the public at large; they make no sense whatever outside that context.
I interpret this piece as saying, in effect, that many people use Facebook in their daily lives and that FB is asking for it if it goes about tricking and deceiving its users with respect to the use of their data. That is a fair point, and who knows what the legal ramifications will be if FB continues to abuse the trust of their users. That said, it does not really fit to try to classify FB as some sort of public utility - perhaps rhetorically, for effect, but certainly not legally.
if facebook is indeed committing fraud, they should be prosecuted.
I don't agree about the "natural monopoly" reasoning. Companies are dominant because they deliver a better value proposition. And if they stop, as they often do, competitors creep in and take away their customers. Except where the government gets involved to establish a legal regulated monopoly. Then the competition is all over and then nothing improves after that.
We went through this with package delivery, phone service, and airlines with monopolies on specific routes. All significantly improved after competition was reintroduced. Competition is the ultimate regulator.
The government should start regulating MySpace. Social networks are only useful in proportion to how many of your friends are on them, so there's no possibility of MySpace ever being dethroned from the dominant market share it's held in the US for most of this decade. They could make their service as awful and morally repugnant as they wanted, and nobody would ever leave because no viable competitor could ever exist.
It sounded like she just wanted to call Facebook a utility so she could keep repeating the phrase "utilities get regulated." How about "utilities are typically paid for."
A public utility can still harm you, even if they aren't competent enough to make any money off of you. If anything, Facebook is so desperate for revenue that they might be willing to "push the envelope" in a way that directly harms you.
Anyway, I don't care, because I don't use Facebook. But a lot of people are being strung along in ways they don't understand, and that's generally a bad thing. (It's also bad for me -- if everyone is willing to give up their privacy in exchange for pictures of their friends drinking beer, it means it will become socially unacceptable for other people to want privacy. And that is bad for me -- someone who does want privacy.)
HN should steal Vox's "canned replies". That way, you could just select "I'm a libertarian" from the dropdown, and save yourself the effort of thinking of a clever way to bring that up in every discussion.
Water, electricity, natural gas, and Facebook? I just don't think we can classify Facebook as a utility (in the sense suggested in the article), no matter how useful it is to so many people. We don't pay for it and we don't need it.
I don't pay for radio stations and yet I bet they're regulated.
Arguments that rely on 'it's free' are weak.
Just because much of the web is free, with it's low running costs, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be regulated. News sites are covered by plenty of regulation just because they originally came out of print media.
Although I agree calling it a utility is wrong to try and convince people it should be regulated.
It's only a matter of time before facebook gets thwacked with regulation over here in the EU. Not because it's a utility but because it can cause so much social harm with its desire to make money. The bait and switch going on at facebook should definitely be stopped.
Radio stations are granted access to a public resource: the airwaves. Hence they are subject to regulation. That doesn't map well to the current discussion.
How about "phone book"? You can't deny there are network effects. How sticky the network effects end up being is questionable, but denying them is stupid.
Sure. I can visit a webpage to see who on Facebook is having rectal surgery surgery today. But I bet each person that used the words "rectal surgery" in their status update didn't really want me to know that -- Facebook took their private information and made it available to me without their consent. This is mostly embarrassing rather than harmful, but I think you get the idea.
(And sure, you can say they consented when they signed up for Facebook and didn't opt out of whatever you're supposed to opt out. Doesn't mean they aren't embarrassed.)
Personally, I really don't care who knows what surgeries I've had, who I'm sleeping with, or how much I enjoyed either experience. It's not so much a matter of my being clueless if you find out about my horrible secrets on Facebook unless I genuinely didn't want you to find out about them. And I'm not the only one who feels this way.
I agree that some people don't understand their current privacy settings. I don't know if the number amounts to "a lot". Regardless, I don't think they're being strung along. The privacy transition dialogs back in December were very clear and not misleading at all. Making the changes opt-out isn't necessarily evil, and they were only opt-out for people who hadn't touched those settings in the past.
There are 25 hits for rectal surgery since April 27. Most of them are innocuous.
No incriminating results I could find. (This search has a much higher turnover, so the results you see will be different from mine.)
My point stands: You're making accusations without solid evidence. Neither the "rectal surgery" search nor the "slept with" search prove that "a lot of people are being strung along in ways they don't understand".
{
"id": "709527250_127568693924655",
"from": {
"name": "Heather Smith Kiessling",
"id": "709527250"
},
"message": "never going home to doug he is nothing more than a wife beating raping cheeting asshole who fucked my gay friend in the same bed he slept with me in. plus kept my dildo and wouldnt let me have it hhhhmmm yeah wonder where he sticking that at? sry i ever snuck you in to justin an megs house this last tuseday and fucked you and let you tell me you wanted me to have you baby.",
"type": "status",
"created_time": "2010-05-16T05:15:18+0000",
"updated_time": "2010-05-16T05:15:31+0000"
},
Most people would consider that oversharing even among friends, so I don't think this is a privacy settings issue. I'm sure there are plenty of blog posts with the same kind of content, and there was never any semblance of privacy there. You can't pick a couple of potentially embarrassing posts and conclude that Facebook has misled a large portion of its userbase. Some people make bad choices.
I shouldn't be able to see this, as I have no idea who this person is. If she only shared it with her closest friends, the damage would have been more localized.
Yes, I did. I don't see any incriminating posts there. A few are borderline, but they seem to be calling out other people for cheating, not talking about their own escapades. In that case, privacy isn't the point.
the reason utilities are regulated, as I understand it, is that it costs a lot to switch. there's a lot of infrastructure and digging involved.
but the last time I switched social networks, I don't think there was much digging involved. and I don't think my neighbors were affected
even if something is regulated, coercive regulation is not necessarily justified. people in an area or building can own their local infrastructure together and bargain with competing providers. and such arrangements would be very common if government weren't handing out monopolies
Switching social networks by definition “affects your neighbors.” That’s why so many people feel trapped — the value of Facebook is the connections we have made there over time.
seriously, if you're going to lose them if you leave facebook, they may not actually be your friends.
and haven't we all been through this before? I do recall leaving friendster for myspace and then myspace for facebook. I can't recall thinking that the government should have stopped that from from happening.
which is the real reason for regulation/monopoly. keeping those pesky competitors out of the picture while pretending its to protect the customers.
I too was going to jump in to rant that she misused the concept "utility", but since this is HN not /., I decided to read the article. Her point is that it may not be a utility in the hole in the street kind, but people are using it as such. She believes that the breaches in trust and privacy and trust are going to engender heavy handed regulation to the determent of everyone. She may have a point. It's not just a privacy issue, but an abuse of expectations.
Her point that Facebook's privacy issues will bring (possibly heavy handed) regulation to social networks doesn't seem far off to me. Senator Chuck Schumer has already written a letter to the FTC requesting that the agency set up "guidelines" for how social networking sites may use personal information. Four senators have also written a "letter of concern" to Facebook over recent privacy gaffes. Legislation is almost certainly currently in the works. If not at the federal level, then at the state level. The end result probably won't be pretty, and has the potential to hurt a lot more than just Facebook. Imagine if a small project like Diaspora had to worry about something similar to HIPAA compliance...
Great, we go from startup-loving independents to promoting Soviet-style control of a social networking site. If you don't like it, quit. It won't make any real difference in your life. You can't say that about water or electricity.
To say that any company that has a dominant market share of a product category or service that people depend upon is a public utility would have meant, over the years, that IBM (mainframes), Microsoft (desktop computers), Apple (digital music players), and many other companies should have been or should be treated as targets for regulation. Public utility regulation means setting tariffs that regulate pricing, requiring the regulated companies to file formal applications and to provide justifications for requesting pricing increases, and setting detailed rules and regulations about making sure all customers have reasonable access to the service, etc. These various concepts make perfect sense for a monopoly that provides electricity, water, or some such thing to the public at large; they make no sense whatever outside that context.
I interpret this piece as saying, in effect, that many people use Facebook in their daily lives and that FB is asking for it if it goes about tricking and deceiving its users with respect to the use of their data. That is a fair point, and who knows what the legal ramifications will be if FB continues to abuse the trust of their users. That said, it does not really fit to try to classify FB as some sort of public utility - perhaps rhetorically, for effect, but certainly not legally.