> Market dominance does not transform a proprietary product into a basic utility
Agreed. Isn't it more that it becomes so ubiquitous and expected that it starts to be considered a basic utility by the public? In the case of social and IM it's the network effect that matters - where are family and friends.
Once a certain tipping point was reached you'd be hard pushed to find many willing to live without mains water or electric. These days you'd be hard pushed to find many willing to live without internet, social networking, and IM chat. They're becoming utilities, and quotes like from their counsel "well just don't use it, it's optional" ring, for the majority of the public, increasingly hollow.
Just as our definition of essentials, poverty, minimum income and inflation (in the UK at least) have all been adjusted to reflect the internet age and provide for internet connections, mobile phones etc, our defnition of utilities should too.
A utility is indicated by, requiring so heavy an investment in infrastructure that would be onerous to the public to support duplicates.
If all of my friends choose to use WhatsApp messenger, my options are to not communicate with them at all (a non-starter), or to also use WhatsApp.
Hey guys, I know ALL of you chat with WhatsApp, but can we move to email just for me and my concerns around security that you don't care about at all?
Seriously... you can make completely unreasonable suggestions until you're blue in the face but it's not going to change reality. There are very real social pressures at play in this discussion. Yes, it turns out peer pressure is a real thing and has a very prominent role in this discussion.
Do you really think Facebook would've spent $19* BILLION on WhatsApp if they thought people would be willing to drop it at the first sign of inconvenience? They know they've got lock-in through sheer market adoption of the platform. If they didn't, they would've just stuck with the facebook messenger path they were already heading down.
Let me guess - in your world they're all assholes for not constantly inconveniencing themselves to cater specifically to what you want. Or you just literally have no social life, because picking up a phone isn't really a viable option to plan a party with a large group of friends. And while email will work, when nobody else wants to use it and you try to force the issue, you're an asshole.
It is probably this. It is not a hard concept to understand. I do not force my friends to use other services, and doing so would just be causing them an inconvenience and annoy them. Yes they are friends, but having to be a special butterfly doesn't mean they have to like that.
Switching messengers or social networks can have the obvious consequences that you lose your network. That way, even if there are plenty of competitors in theory, the lock-in can be the same as with a monopoly.
Which is to say, market dominance has transformed products into utilities in the past.
You can argue that should not be the case, but, historically, it very much has been.
There's surely a balance to be struck between incentivising firms to innovate by allowing them to earn profits when they develop a good product and allowing a firms to lock-in economic rents forever.
How you strike that balance is a value judgement about the kind of society you want to live in.
Almost any activity you can think of has been carried out by both the public and private sector in different societies (or the same one).
In all industries, very dominant firms are likely to see action from the state.
(Emphasis added). Messaging services are special because of network effects. The postal service, the telegraph, the phone system, the Internet are all special services.
I would argue that email should probably have some special regulation beyond SPAM - the way big players like Google and Microsoft handle email is actually a problem already - perfectly good email, from a perfectly valid domain, from an ip without any terrible history - can sometimes end up as SPAM. This in turn makes it harder for people to compete by hosting their own email, in essence market dominance prevents competition -- and harms the commons.
(Yes, the initial harm has been caused and is being caused by spammers -- but the dwindling possibility of running decentralized services on the Internet could very well end up being much more damaging than the cost of SPAM ever was).
And IM and video chat and so on could probably also need some more regulation at some point - because it seems obvious the big players are actively working towards artificial monopolies in order to control the flow of data, so that they can sit on the biggest pile of meta-data (and sometimes data/content) in order to make money (in the short term from simple meta-data/network analysis and advertising, in the long run from having the richest data set on which to do more advanced, automated machine learning).
In this crazy world in which water and other natural resources, previously controlled by and for the public, I can see how people would argue that it somehow makes sense for a private entity to curate and profit from the information that hides in the rich metadata of all human electronic communication -- I think it would be a very good idea to regulate this along the lines of other commons. An example might be parks and spaces accessible to the public - where there are certain things that owners cannot do - or have to do.
They also have the power to impose regulation on any kind of activity not already protected by precedent or constitution, if they can use the democratic process of the courts and lawmakers to impose it.
And actually yes they do have that right! A corporation is given the privilege to exist by the state, that privilege can also be taken away.
This is precisely because there are no real alternatives. In fact, when and if solar + batteries becomes an actual viable solution to powering you + your neighbors, ...
As for rights, yes, you do have the right, and in fact, personally, while i'm not in favor of trying to turn internet companies into regulated utilities, i am pretty much in favor of killing the LLC and going back to "officers and shareholders are liable" model that used to exist.
Interestingly, what led to What's App? Telephone company monopolies on SMS. The internet itself could be considered a public utility -- not what flows over its wires.
One solution to this, assuming we want to take the public utility route, is to start charging users like it were a utility. Perhaps €10 per month for German users to offset the lost revenue from the data FB won't be allowed to collect. Then the Germans can tax that €10 just like it taxes phones and everyone will be happy. What's App isn't 'free.' Using that service has a cost. Should Facebook just give away their product? Why would a business do that? Facebook employees don't work for free, so why should Germans get to free ride? A really popular service ought not be regulated by the virtue that it's really popular.
There is a mostly free market. What's App isn't essential or even necessary. It's about as 'vital' as Instagram. It isn't like it's the only game in town.. not even close.
It is not fair to ask people concerned about privacy to pay a toll in terms of professional outreach.
This is pretty irrelevant. they have the power to change.
There are plenty of alternatives, in fact, you listed them!
With whatsapp, I can plan a birthday party in 20 minutes, on the same day as the birthday, while also ensuring everyone who couldn’t answer a call got the message.
Once a critical mass uses a messaging service, it's not a completely voluntary decision, especially when there is no open standard with interoperable competing apps.