Why have we let X (et al) have total control over the content posted by the users ?

Why do the users agree to the limits imposed by them and let the platform decide who gets to see the content they posted ?

Because they're offering the infrastructure. The tech for such a network is now within reach of many, but these apps are heavily dominated by network effects and that makes it impossible for competing apps to take hold.

This is negative for society.

Firefighters who deal with forest fires, police, governments, rescue services (here in Spain) are all posting their updates on X - because, like the users, they have no choice, because no alternative exists.

People who don't have an account are not getting vital information because the company decided to restrict access to the entire network.

This needs to be regulated somehow. At least for public services and major news outlets - as a tax for the network effect these apps benefit from.

>Firefighters who deal with forest fires, police, governments, rescue services (here in Spain) are all posting their updates on X - because, like the users, they have no choice, because no alternative exists.

RSS. Website. Both have been around for a long time. We don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Because open protocols were abandoned, because they generally lacked security, discoverability, and perhaps most significantly of all, moderation.

Even FINGER had .plan files, where you could get status updates from people.

But how are you going to query whose plans you want to read, and who is going to moderate without centralisation?

It's the moderation in particular that dooms most federalised efforts. The web itself is only really moderated through the relative lack of discoverability, with Google and hosting providers having become a form of gatekeeper to remove the very worst of the web.

Twitter in the early days took off because it did solve a technological problem of the time. You only had your SMS enabled phone, no WAP or smartphone, and wanted to provide updates. They gave you a number you could text, which would post updates. Hence the character limit ( less than the SMS limit, to leave space for your credentials ).

Plenty of alternatives exist for getting information out, people just don't know where to look for it.

That technical problem disappeared, but it had by then grown to provide a service to rapidly get updates from people, one that had a sense of authority and the moderating effect and discoverability of centralisation is impossible to ignore.

> are all posting their updates on X - because, like the users, they have no choice, because no alternative exists.

The fediverse is a viable alternative. But most non-tech people don't know about it.

> Firefighters who deal with forest fires, police, governments, rescue services (here in Spain) are all posting their updates on X - because, like the users, they have no choice, because no alternative exists.

Government agencies have communicated to their citizens long before twitter has existed. There's a myriad of ways they can use today: websites (with or without RSS), email newsletters, text updates, other social networks (bluesky, threads, etc).

Choosing to give critical updates only on Twitter is definitely a choice and they are deliberately ignoring a very large segment of their population that doesn't have a twitter account.

I found this post from Nostr. I find it a saner alternative to fediverse, particularly because the identity is just a server-free public-private key pair

But I don't know when if ever we will have a significant mass there.

Hacker News 100 on Nostr: https://njump.to/nprofile1qqsfexztjz4sq05j972pv5h3s9w0gaqvay...

The competing app is e-mail. You can subscribe to important information by e-mail and send out important information to mailing lists.

> This needs to be regulated somehow.

Of course, this is HN so regulation is always the solution to all problems. Instead of making the people who are responsible for doing stuff and are getting paid for it get off their asses. They can easily post updates on government alert websites, on e-mail lists, and on social media and everywhere else to get the attention of the public.

Whatever happened to "Twitter can do what it wants, it's a private platform"?

> Why have we let X (et al) have total control over the content posted by the users ?

Because that's not what happened.

Why have users given control over their content to X?

>Why have we let X (et al) have total control over the content posted by the users ?

Because it is a private enterprise that you signed up for. You don't have a right to Twitter. You don't have a right to Facebook. If you don't like it, leave. The entitlement is massive here. These sites are poison in so many ways. Stop feeding the beast.