this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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You host stuff in your house, and create a monopoly. Does a guy in a suit show up at your door to claim it? How does running a service as a hobby compare to oil?
How can I have a monopoly by hosting something in my house? If you create a forum, you don’t have a monopoly over all forums, you have control over your own forum.
Your confusing one product with an entire sector/industry.
Why can't you have a monopoly with something you host yourself? What product am I confusing with another sector?
Can you give me an example of something being a monopoly that you host yourself?
A monopoly is a product or service that has no or little competition and has become a household name, like YouTube.
Vimeo. Yeah it’s not as big easy for them to point to.
That you can host yourself? Isn’t that another big company?
Ironically I go to Vimeo when the age restriction thing stops me from watching what I want (I don’t log in).
I'm speaking to Youtube having competition or not
Everything is hosted by someone's effort and will. Where the service is hosted or how well the service operates under load is irrelevant. You could have racks of metal in a data center that you rent, host infra with SaaS providers, or have a single host at home. A person can absolutely set up whatever they want at scale, and it's not in bad form to have someone help them and pay them for their effort.
In my opinion, it's the content and practices that matter, not how well the service works. People choose to use most providers because they want to use them. As an example, there are thousands of social media sites, yet Facebook is one of the dominant platforms. Every user could never log in forever starting tomorrow, and they would dry up, but realistically, this won't happen. Personally, I don't mind that lots of people are on Facebook. I just don't like their practices, which are so exploitative that they regularly break laws.
My point in asking all these questions is that I don't think it matters if 5 users choose to use something you're hosting or 5 million, or even if you make money off it. If your service is successful because it's a good service, and you're being ethical about it, I don't think that someone should come take it away. I do think that you should be obeying laws and paying taxes, but that just reinforces my ethics position.
However, this is just my opinion, which is just as valid as yours. You made an example with YouTube; what opinions do you have about YouTube, and what actions would you take? How would you describe little to no competition, and how would you create competition? What problems do you see with a product name?
In that case you should agree that a publicly traded company should not be left to their own devices since their main goal is increasing shareholder value, regardless what practices they use.
That’s not true, many people use WhatsApp outside of North America since it has become the defacto mode of communication. There are plenty of people who use them but wish not to.
But that totally makes a huge difference, the more people use your service, the more or an impact you have on society. And the more responsible you should be with how your service affects people’s lives.
My entire point is that when a company, who has become a monopoly, is no longer being ethical, there should be intervention. If anything, you should be agreeing with that based on what you said.
Look up how much taxes google paid last year.
I do like YouTube overall, would change a few though. But regardless of what I like or dislike, I think YouTube has become so influential that it should not be solely controlled by a for profit company. There at least needs to be some oversight.