If you look at section 2 of bill S.2658[0], you will see that the bill only applies to "Large Communications Platform Providers". You bank is not that. Spotify and Netflix are not that. The bill doesn't apply to them. And note that the current threshold is 100M monthly active users in the United States*. A third of the population using the communications platform monthly. Relevant passage of section 2:
(7) LARGE COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM.—The term “large communications platform” means a product or service provided by a communications provider that—
(A) generates income, directly or indirectly, from the collection, processing, sale, or sharing of user data; and
(B) has more than 100,000,000 monthly active users in the United States.
> (A) generates income, directly or indirectly, from the collection, processing, sale, or sharing of user data; and
OK, this is substantially better than any other proposal I've seen. It means that any platform that doesn't make money off of user data (e.g. one that makes money in some more ethical way) is exempt.
That seems overly broad. The whole point of a communications service from the user's point of view is to process user data, namely the messages that the user sends or receives via that service.
As pointed out, in section 4 of S.2658 this is explicitly prohibited:
C) PROHIBITED CHANGES TO INTERFACES.—A change to an interoperability interface or terms of use made with the purpose, or substantial effect, of unreasonably denying access or undermining interoperability for competing communications services shall be considered a violation of the duty under subparagraph (A) to facilitate and maintain interoperability based on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms.
As the bill S.2658 text currently stands [0], if iMessage has more than 100M monthly active users, then yes. It is hard to find such statistics on a quick search, but the surest way to make sure it applies to iMessage is to call your representative and tell them the threshold should be lowered from 100M to 10M MAU :)
What did you find? I only see a global number, but this proposal requires 100million MUA in the USA
With some quick searches, multiplying iPhone's 39% marketshare with 328million Americans gets me to 127million, but that's probably too high - not everyone has a smartphone, and how many users actually use iMessage at least once a month, and not say, WhatsApp exclusively ?
I have a hardtime imagining users with a MacBook or iPad but not having an iPhone adding a significant number of iMessage users
But the question was if there are a 100 million MAU in the US, let alone how to find that information in a simple google search. I couldn't find any breakout of iMessage users per country
No it doesn't, you need to impersonate an user and login with your password in order to relay messages outside of FB messenger. That said, it has been done: https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-facebook
It discusses 20 topics for potential legislation, listed below. Look at items 13 and 16 in the whitepaper, they go very much along the lines of what you said.
1) Duty to clearly and conspicuously label bots
2) Duty to determine the origin of posts and/or accounts
3) Duty to identify inauthentic accounts
4) Make platforms liable for state-law torts (defamation, false light, public disclosure of private facts) for failure to take down deep fake or other manipulated audio/video content
5) Public Interest Data Access Bill
6) Require Interagency Task Force for Countering Asymmetric Threats to Democratic Institutions
7)Disclosure Requirements for Online Political Advertisements
8) Public Initiative for Media Literacy
9) Increasing Deterrence Against Foreign Manipulation
10) Information fiduciary
11) Privacy rulemaking authority at FTC
12) Comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation
13) 1st Party Consent for Data Collection
14) Statutory determination that so-called ‘dark patterns’ are unfair and deceptive trade practices
15) Algorithmic auditability/fairness
16) Data Transparency Bill
17) Data Portability Bill
18) Interoperability
19) Opening federal datasets to university researchers and qualified small businesses/startups
20) Essential Facilities Determinations
I highly recommend that everyone reads it - it is extremely short, well written, and probably the single most important piece of legislation to HN folks in the past decade.
As the bill is right now, it require communications platforms with 100M monthly active users in the US to make their services interoperable with other platforms. The bill presumes that platforms using open protocols already (like email) are fine. Facebook and it’s messenger platform is likely to be the only one meeting the threshold.
I'm not American, but if you are and you care, I would suggest you to call your representative and explain why you support (or not) this bill. Remember that as it goes through congress, it can, and most likely will, be heavily edited or gutted to fit the many competing interests whispering in their ears. If you think the bill is good as is, tell them that! Personally, I think the bill is perfect, except for the 100M user threshold to start demand compatibility, which I think should be lowered to 10M.
> the bill is perfect, except for the 100M user threshold to start demand compatibility, which I think should be lowered to 10M
I kinda like the high number, as it means the spirit is to prevent monopolies, which is one of the most compelling reasons for regulations to exist. Make the number too low, and it would invite criticism from people about regulations being overbearing. I don't know if that number is 100M, 10M, or 1M, but just something to be mindful about.
My sense is that if Facebook is legally forced to interop, then all other smaller/future players will voluntarily interop anyway.
Different strokes for different folks as they say, but I don't think "preventing monopolies" has to be the only motivation of this bill. I think interopability (and as a consequence, greatly improved customer choice and competition) is a value in its own right.
The anti-monopoly benefits of interoperability can be offset by the regulatory capture of forced interoperability if companies too small are subject to such rules, placing them at a disadvantage relative to largest players and increasing the likelihood that the status quo remains in place. That's the "Can't have your cake and eat it too" that's being referred to above I think—in other words, if you regulate the second-tier like the first-tier, the second-tier will never have a chance at becoming the first tier.
Slightly off topic, but you managed to clearly articulate what bothers me about a lot of well meaning regulation. GDPR in particular comes to mind - I was never worried about what some small time blogger was doing with my personal info, only (for example) Google and PayPal.
The number I think I'd like is something like 1/3rd or greater of a market. However that has the semantics issue of defining a market.
Instead I'd like to see the targets be an ANY OF (logical or):
A) Userbase of 25% or greater of the target demographic.
B) 33% or greater of the userbase files a request with (E.G. the FCC) for this service to be recognized as large enough to be under the requirements.
C) Any company making a 'sales revenue' (or other income side) of 500x the minimum wage, or 50x the 'net profit' (income after expences) could also be compelled by a regulatory body (court, FCC, FTC, whatever) without any other evidence.
But the interoperability API would be created by private entities, not Federal government works, and AFAIK even federal-but-subcontracted work is copyrightable.
>But the interoperability API would be created by private entities,
That's true. I was wrong.
However, the interoperability specs will be developed by NIST as specified in Section 6(c):
"(c) Technical standards.—Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology shall develop and publish model technical standards by which to make interoperable popular classes of communications or information services, including—
(1) online messaging;
(2) multimedia sharing; and
(3) social networking."
Those standards certainly can't be copyrighted, and as such, it's still not really an issue.
It absolutely is. In fact, in the email I sent to my senators/representative (included in another comment[0] in this discussion), I write:
"I'd further urge you to introduce amendments to this bill to accomplish the following:
[...]
2. In addition to tasking the National Institute for Standards and Technology with creating the protocols and interfaces required to implement this bill, invite the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to participate as well. The IETF (https://ietf.org/about/ ) are the people who have, for more than 30 years, been developing, documenting and implementing the technical standards that have made the Internet the economic and cultural dynamo it is today."
[0] Is it possible to reference a specific comment via URL that is a reply to someone else's comment? Not sure how to do that.
Methods of communication should (imho) never be copyrightable. That would include APIs, filesystems, codecs, programming languages, and possibly fonts.
Those are good questions. My take is that it would be similar in spirit to the way government can act to prevent price gouging with drug patents. Notice that platforms are allowed to charge and regulate access to the API, but it has to be "reasonable". Here is what is stated on section 4 on interoperability:
------------
SEC. 4. INTEROPERABILITY.
(a) General Duty Of Large Communications Platform Providers.—A large communications platform provider shall, for each large communications platform it operates, maintain a set of transparent, third-party-accessible interfaces (including application programming interfaces) to facilitate and maintain technically compatible, interoperable communications with a user of a competing communications provider.
(b) General Duty Of Competing Communications Providers.—A competing communications provider that accesses an interoperability interface of a large communications platform provider shall reasonably secure any user data it acquires, processes, or transmits.
(c) Interoperability Obligations For Large Communications Platform Providers.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—In order to achieve interoperability under subsection (a), a large communications platform provider shall fulfill the duties under paragraphs (2) through (6) of this subsection.
(2) NON-DISCRIMINATION.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—A large communications platform provider shall facilitate and maintain interoperability with competing communications services for each of its large communications platforms through an interoperability interface, based on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms.
(B) REASONABLE THRESHOLDS, ACCESS STANDARDS, AND FEES.—
(i) IN GENERAL.—A large communications platform provider may establish reasonable thresholds related to the frequency, nature, and volume of requests by a competing communications provider to access resources maintained by the large communications platform provider, beyond which the large communications platform provider may assess a reasonable fee for such access.
(ii) USAGE EXPECTATIONS.—A large communications platform provider may establish fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory usage expectations to govern access by competing communications providers, including fees or penalties for providers that exceed those usage expectations.
(iii) LIMITATION ON FEES AND USAGE EXPECTATIONS.—Any fees, penalties, or usage expectations assessed under clauses (i) and (ii) shall be reasonably proportional to the cost, complexity, and risk to the large communications platform provider of providing such access.
(iv) NOTICE.—A large communications platform provider shall provide public notice of any fees, penalties, or usage expectations that may be established under clauses (i) and (ii), including reasonable advance notice of any changes.
(v) SECURITY AND PRIVACY STANDARDS.—A large communications platform provider shall, consistent with industry best practices, set privacy and security standards for access by competing communications services to the extent reasonably necessary to address a threat to the large communications platform or user data, and shall report any suspected violations of those standards to the Commission.
(C) PROHIBITED CHANGES TO INTERFACES.—A change to an interoperability interface or terms of use made with the purpose, or substantial effect, of unreasonably denying access or undermining interoperability for competing communications services shall be considered a violation of the duty under subparagraph (A) to facilitate and maintain interoperability based on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms.
(3) FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENCE.—A large communications platform provider that maintains interoperability between its own large communications platform and other products, services, or affiliated offerings of such provider shall offer a functionally equivalent version of that interface to competing communications services.
(4) INTERFACE INFORMATION.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—Not later than 120 days after the date of enactment of this Act, a large communications platform provider shall disclose to competing communications providers complete and accurate documentation describing access to the interoperability interface required under this section.
(B) CONTENTS.—The documentation required under subparagraph (A)—
(i) is limited to interface documentation necessary to achieve development and operation of interoperable products and services; and
(ii) does not require the disclosure of the source code of a large communications platform.
(5) NOTICE OF CHANGES.—A large communications platform provider shall provide reasonable advance notice to a competing communications provider, which may be provided through public notice, of any change to an interoperability interface maintained by the large communications platform provider that will affect the interoperability of a competing communications service.
(6) NON-COMMERCIALIZATION BY A LARGE COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM PROVIDER.—A large communications platform provider may not collect, use, or share user data obtained from a competing communications service through the interoperability interface except for the purposes of safeguarding the privacy and security of such information or maintaining interoperability of services.
(d) Non-Commercialization By A Competing Communications Provider.—A competing communications provider that accesses an interoperability interface may not collect, use, or share user data obtained from a large communications platform provider through the interoperability interface except for the purposes of safeguarding the privacy and security of such information or maintaining interoperability of services.
(e) Exemption For Certain Services.—The obligations under this section shall not apply to a product or service by which a large communications platform provider does not generate any income or other compensation, directly or indirectly, from collecting, using, or sharing user data.
So Sec.4.2.B.iii says the large communication providers are allowed to charge a fee to access the network but doesn't say anything about the same charges being applicable to themselves. Wouldn't this create a competitive advantage to the larger network ?
Also, it seems awfully similar to the treatment for cellular communication providers. What are the differences here ? Or would Verizon/ATT be rolled into this since the statute just mentions large communications provider ?
This bill is pretty smart (agreed about the limit though, I'd even put it at 1M MAU). Could it be we're finally at a point where Congress is listening to competent tech lobbying instead of just megacorp media/tech companies?
I'm every bit as surprised as you. I don't think it's a significant fraction of congress though, I think it's specifically senator Mark Warner. He did work with tech before, and my take is that he knows what he is talking about and was waiting for a good political moment to present such unpalatable proposals (unpalatable to the tech companies, that is).
Last year he (meaning, most likely his staff under his supervision) put out a "whitepaper" outlining 20 possible proposals to regulate social media and tech companies. Notably, 4 of the things discussed were introduced as bills in one form or another.
Unfortunately I don't think the act as written would apply to iMessage. Seems like section 4e:
> Exemption for certain services.—The obligations under this section shall not apply to a product or service by which a large communications platform provider does not generate any income or other compensation, directly or indirectly, from collecting, using, or sharing user data.
would cut iMessage (and any other Apple service) out. I guess the argument could be made that Apple indirectly generates income from collecting data and making it available across their devices as a form of vendor lock-in, but that's shaky.
Cost of iMessage (software & service) is included in the price of iPhone/Mac. This is similar to MacOS/iOS - both are free to use but only on Apple hardware.
iMessage is end-to-end encrypted. It is unlikely that Apple collects any personal data from it -- at most, they might be collecting some aggregate data, like the frequency with which various features are used.
As far as the user is concerned, imessage does mostly operate with another "open" platform, SMS. Certain features don't work for apple users texting others, but core functionality is intact. This is also because apple innovated by creating those features while retaining SMS interoperability, and RCS didn't exist at the time.
Why not? I have loads of different accounts from gaming services with friend lists and chat: Steam, Epic Games Store, Blizzard's Batte.net, etc. It would be nice if those were interoperable.
If you open the text and look at section 2 of bill S.2658, you will see the definition of "Large Communications Platform Providers":
(7) LARGE COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM.—The term “large communications platform” means a product or service provided by a communications provider that—
(A) generates income, directly or indirectly, from the collection, processing, sale, or sharing of user data; and
(B) has more than 100,000,000 monthly active users in the United States.
I think there are a lot of things that the bill is not clear about, and in fact I don't think it would live up to any legal standards in its current form (IANAL). It is very easy to read though.
I have installed trillium twice before, when trying to find a better alternative to a bunch of google docs, but didn't end up using it. The reason is that you cannot readily share an editable copy of a document with a link, which ends up happening with half the documents I write in Google docs. If that was an option, I think it'd be preferable to Google docs in every way (for me).
I have installed trillium twice before, when trying to find a better alternative to a bunch of google docs, but didn't end up using it. The reason is that you cannot readily share an editable copy of a document with a link, which ends up happening with half the documents I write in Google docs. If that was an option, I think it'd be preferable to Google docs in every way (for me).
Nice to see this here, I spent the last weekend reading about quadratic voting/funding. The core idea is that in order to decide how much "endorsement" each project amongst many receives, you take the square root of how much each person gave to that project, sum that, then square it to decide how much of a matching contribution to be given.
It has a couple interesting properties that make it appealing for the funding of "public goods" (such as software) via grant matching mechanisms. The main ones:
- Projects with distinct supporter bases will receive more funding if they join forces as a single project with more supporters
- Projects with few supporters that give a lot of money/endorsement will receive very little boost from this
- You can also implement the possibility of "negative votes/funding" that allow people to "short" the projects that they consider a net negative
In september 2018 Vitalik together with one of the book authors and another person put out a preprint describing their ideas for quadratic funding, which is very interestingly written:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1809.06421.pdf
The broader field under which this fits is called "mechanism design", which means inverse game theory: instead of specifying the rules and seeing what the outcome is, you decide which outcome you want and try to design a game that leads to it...a very enticing idea.
Original bill text: [0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/265...