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Re:Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support by maxerickson on Monday January 11, 2021 @10:15AM (#25729964)
Yes, power companies have different regulations than AWS.

Which means the analogy is boring.

There's probably a good discussion to be had about how to regulate services like AWS though. The dynamics are probably different, with power companies not quite having the same potential for wanting to disassociate from noxious customers.

Re:Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support by blamestross on Monday January 11, 2021 @10:54AM (#25730570)
I think the interesting takeaway is that so many people consider social media and internet hosting to essentially be public services. The hidden premise/misunderstanding in the "social media censorship" concept is that they are so critical to participation in society that they should be a right like power or water. There are arguments for moving things like internet access into being a public utility. It is interesting that they have skipped directly to wanting to socialize social media.
Re:Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support by chillacy on Monday January 11, 2021 @11:58AM (#25731739)
Internet hosting doesn’t have as strong a geologic component though. Power and water are utilities because they are “natural monopolies”. UPS and FedEx are not utilities since they have less fixed infrastructure.
Re:Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support by blamestross on Monday January 11, 2021 @03:00PM (#25735552)
geologic component isn't relevant. In our current legal system, the only way to ensure equal access to a service is via regulation as a public utility.
Re:Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support by chillacy on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @05:09PM (#25754623)
> the only way to ensure equal access to a service is via regulation as a public utility

Right, but afaik the reason water/power/etc are made public utilities is because they are natural monopolies:

> Public utilities, the companies that have traditionally provided water and electrical service across much of the United States, are leading examples of natural monopoly. It would make little sense to argue that a local water company should be broken up into several competing companies, each with its own separate set of pipes and water supplies. Installing four or five identical sets of pipes under a city, one for each water company, so that each household could choose its own water provider, would be terribly costly. The same argument applies to the idea of having many competing companies for delivering electricity to homes, each with its own set of wires. Before the advent of wireless phones, the argument also applied to the idea of many different phone companies, each with its own set of phone wires running through the neighborhood.

https://opentextbc.ca/principlesofeconomics/chapter/11-3-reg...

This same is harder to say for AWS. The physical wires? Yes, but your hosting provider? It's not as clear cut.

Re:Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support by ABeeSea on Monday January 11, 2021 @11:12AM (#25730879)
Plus AWS does actually make their own power. The own and/or fund wind and solar farms across the globe. They also run their own fiber and are part of undersea cable consortiums.