I recently heard a podcast by the comedian Kevin Hart. In the early 2000s, when he was an unknown and social media didn't exist, he would have a sign-up sheet at his shows, where people could enter their names and email addresses. This way, he'd maintain an email list for each city.

Each time he scheduled a return appearance in that city, he'd send out an email letting people know the date and time of the show and a link to buy tickets.

Today, people build their followings on social networks that barely let you even post links to your own site (Instagram). Had Twitter/IG/FB existed back then, people would have no way to maintain independent contact lists.

Now, I would probably never seen his email because it would be filtered out with or lost in the thousands of other promotions.

Spam is a huge problem.

Agree. The big platforms make it all way too comfortable for everybody.

And I get it completely. Over the course of years, Google and the likes probably have more phone numbers of my contacts than I have. Only three weeks ago I made a text file with every name and number in it, so I have a safe copy for myself.

This is the type of thing people mean when they bring up regulations for big tech companies.

You shouldn't have to worry about suddenly losing your list of contacts. Google should be required by law to provide your data to you in cases such as account termination.