Should the Internet be a utility? - If so should "essential" websites like YouTube also be utilities?

[Preacher ✝]

The Internet is almost an essential part of life in the modern world, and living without it is an increasingly difficult task.

Therefore the first question is whether or not the Government should start treating Internet Access as a utility like power, water, and gas?

If so the follow up question is whether the same should apply to "essential" websites like YouTube.

The case for the former is fairly self evident, but the case for the latter requires a bit of context. It is well documented that running a website like YouTube is not profitable, this causes it to be infested with advertising and other money making schemes that push it closer to being unusable. At the same time its become one of the cornerstones of the Internet and many would struggle to imagine the modern world without it. Treating it as a utility would, in theory, guarantee its continued existence without concern for profitability, which in turn would help promote a higher quality user experience that isnt plagued by advertising and money grabbing.

YouTube is the easiest example but the same can be said about other websites in similar positions of importance.

Thoughts?

 

[Retrodogkiller]

Internet is basically the same as power at this point. You can live without it but life is incredibly inconvenient without it and impossible in some aspects. Not even talking about work from home email jobs either but just applying for jobs, housing, loans and signing up for utilities usually requires internet to some degree.

When it comes to YouTube and other social media sites I really struggle to consider them essential. I could argue search engines and knowledge bases like Wikipedia as essential but youtube as a whole I can't. If youtube made a separate service that was nothing but repair videos, tutorials and education I would consider that essential.

 

[Wilson The Ball]

The Internet is not essential. It is and has been since integration of Dial Up, a toy. About roughly ten to fifteen percent is actually business, health, or government related activity whereas the rest of it is mindless consumption and echo chambers that actively make children autistic. I argue that the Internet should only be a luxury for the rich. Let them destroy themselves in degeneracy while us peasants return to the land and heal from this sickness

 

[The ATF Disliked That]

They don't necessarily have to define it as a utility. I would just force it that any ISP can operate anywhere if they can lay the lines for it, or pay for the cross connects over existing lines. For ISPs for a general customer, they need to do where all consumer end-points meet at an MMR (within a given area or building) and any ISP who operates in the area can connect customers with their equipment. Bulk billing is such a horseshit idea and Brendan Carr's decision to scrap the proposed ban is retarded. Competition lowers prices, so why the fuck would you allow places to force a single ISP on customers? I can't pay a lower price for Internet if I even wanted to because my apartment complex forces me to pay $95 for internet. I am not allowed to change the plan. So if there is a bulk billing ban and a ban on complexes from forcing tenants to use a specific internet, I can choose a plan that is appropriate for me.

The Internet is not essential.

It's essential when your power company only accepts digital payments and have closed all their field offices and outsourced their jobs to India.

 

[Wilson The Ball]

It's essential when your power company only accepts digital payments and have closed all their field offices and outsourced their jobs to India.

You merely need to get paperwork to your bank so they can handle the transactions monthly. There's no need for you to interact with the Internet at all beyond indulgence.

 

[The ATF Disliked That]

You merely need to get paperwork to your bank so they can handle the transactions monthly. There's no need for you to interact with the Internet at all beyond indulgence.

They don't accept any paperwork. Everything they do is digital.

 

[Banquet Meal]

if the government started treating it like public utilities, wouldnt that mean that they would make up retarded rules and regulations, and add more taxes though?? its bad enough that adults get their hand slapped for wishing their fellow fb friends to get hit by a truck, i can only imagine how ridiculous it would be then.

 

[Wilson The Ball]

They don't accept any paperwork. Everything they do is digital.

That's a lie. They are obligated by law to send you paperwork in certain instances

 

[The Last Stand]

The Internet is not essential. It is and has been since integration of Dial Up, a toy. About roughly ten to fifteen percent is actually business, health, or government related activity whereas the rest of it is mindless consumption and echo chambers that actively make children autistic. I argue that the Internet should only be a luxury for the rich. Let them destroy themselves in degeneracy while us peasants return to the land and heal from this sickness

You say that as you’re on the Internet now.

That’s a good question. If Internet becomes a utility, I suspect that it would allow more moderation or restriction from its usage. Example: what if an ISP monopolizes their services in a particular town, thus eliminating potential choice?

 

[Pedophobe]

Ideally no but it's basically impossible to access government services without it. If you call them up and wait on hold for two hours so you can talk to someone, or go into an office, line up and get to a service counter they just tell you to go away and fill out the form on their website. Which only works on Chrome.

 

[gagabobo1997]

If the government is gonna provide anything, it should be roads, water, power, and communication networks. I'd rather that than missiles for Israel.

 

[Retrodogkiller]

what if an ISP monopolizes their services in a particular town, thus eliminating potential choice?

Until fiber allowed for smaller providers to exist, it was basically the reality for awhile that entire towns, or entire sections would be limited to a single provider, at least when it came to cable internet providers.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

What irks me about the OP is that the reasoning rests on the unstated notion that widespread reliance on xyz turns xyz into a public obligation.
Once people in society organize around something, that something might become extremely important to daily life, there are many cases of that happening. However, that does not create a claim against the people who built and maintain it.
If a service exists because someone invested capital, built infrastructure, and operates it under voluntary exchange, then the fact that millions of people find it useful does not convert it into something that others may be compelled to provide.

"essential" websites like YouTube.

"This platform has become central, it struggles to remain profitable, therefore it should be preserved as a utility."
That reasoning rests on the assumption that historically dominant services deserve guaranteed survival. Let's look at the consequences if you were to apply this reasoning consistently.
Imagine the world of today if, in the late 90s and early 00s, dominant services had been declared utilities. AOL becomes the permanent communications utility. Internet Explorer 6 becomes the protected browser. Yahoo is the official central portal. Geocities is the permanent hosting service. AOL Instant Messenger is the protected messaging platform. Once something receives such a status, the question stops being "does this still deserve to exist under voluntary conditions?" and becomes "how do we preserve and administer it?"
That is, turning something into a utility means freezing the competitive environment around what happened to be dominating at the time. Instead of an ecosystem like we're used to, where platforms can rise, evolve, and fall, you get a system that increasingly preserves past winners through regulation, subsidies, and political administration.

Another issue that's not really been raised in the discussion so far is the fact that infrastructure and particular services built on top of it are distinct things.
That is, the lowercase L lnternet is a network of privately owned lines, routers, servers, data centers, and exchange points that were built up over decades by thousands of different actors. Platforms like YouTube are applications that operate on said infrastructure. Treating such platforms like utilities would not just mean preserving cables and routing capacity, it would also mean that the state becomes entangled with specific speech-hosting platforms, their moderation rules, their ranking systems, and their operational decisions.

Ultimately, the fact that something has become widely used is evidence that people value it, but it is not evidence that others can be compelled to guarantee its existence indefinitely. When a service stops being sustainable under voluntary conditions, it disappears or gets replaced. That process is exactly how new platforms emerge and old ones fade away. All you'd achieve by turning dominant services into utilities would be locking the lnternet in place rather than somehow "protecting" it.

 

[Retrodogkiller]

What irks me about the OP is that the reasoning rests on the unstated notion that widespread reliance on xyz turns xyz into a public obligation.

Agreed, thats why we should abolish electricity as a utility. All you really need is water.

 

[Taser Confetti]

The Internet is not essential

I dare you to find a job without it. I’ve only had two jobs that didn’t require Internet access to even apply - one was the Marines and the other was a gun store.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Agreed, thats why we should abolish electricity as a utility. All you really need is water.

That's a reply that only works if the point I made had been "nothing people rely on should ever be treated as a utility"
The point I made was narrower:

[widespread reliance on a thing] does not create a claim against the people who built and maintain it.

OP reasoned specifically "people rely on X -> therefore X should be treated as a utility", and my objection was to that step.
Whether electricity, water, or anything else should be treated as a utility involves a completely different set of questions about infrastructure, property, and institutional arrangements. I'm happy to have that conversation, but it would derail this thread massively.

 

[meager]

Wouldn’t that mean more Indians and other third-worlders get Internet access?

 

[pink cupcake frosting]

Wouldn’t that mean more Indians and other third-worlders get Internet access?

why would US pay for utilities in India?

 

[Preacher ✝]

OP reasoned specifically "people rely on X -> therefore X should be treated as a utility", and my objection was to that step.

To be clear, while I personally think that some form of Internet access should be a utility, it's not simply a matter of people relying on it.

The issue is that it keeps getting more difficult to function in the modern world without Internet access.

Imagine the world of today if, in the late 90s and early 00s, dominant services had been declared utilities

For one, the difference is that in the 90s and early 00s it was still feasible to navigate life without Internet access.

Second, I don't necessarily think that specific Internet based services like YouTube should be utilities, I just recognize that as the next logical step if the Internet becomes a utility and wanted to hear what others had to say on the matter.

That said...

AOL Instant Messenger is the protected messaging platform.

...I would unironically love to have AIM be a dominant communications platform again. AIM was awesome and I have many fond memories of it.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

it's not simply a matter of people relying on it.

The issue is that it keeps getting more difficult to function in the modern world without Internet access.

I understand the distinction, but the underlying phenomenon hasn't changed meaningfully. Institutions, businesses, and individuals organize themselves around a technology and participation in society becomes easier if you use it.

It seems to me that I've been too abstract in a point I made earlier, so I'll try to explain it better.

The term "utility" is often used as if it simply meant "very important service", but in practice it refers to a very specific institutional arrangement.
In most cases, when something becomes a utility, it ends up operating as a regulated monopoly or a tightly controlled set of providers. That means that entry into the market is restricted, infrastructure deployment is regulated, and pricing and service obligations are overseen by regulators.
Now, granted, that model already exists to some extent in the Internet access market. In many places, it's true that broadband developed through local franchise agreements, right-of-way controls, spectrum licensing, and other regulatory arrangements that limited who could build infrastructure and where. That's part of the reason why many people are effectively limited to just one or two providers.
The thing is, declaring Internet access a formal utility would expand that structure.
Decisions on network coverage and upgrading infrastructure would increasingly be run through regulatory processes, rather than emerging from a mixture of private investment, new entrants, competition pressure, and technological shifts (e.g. cable -> fiber -> wireless). Infrastructure investment, service obligations, and pricing would become matters of policy and administrative oversight.
That's a model that tends to stabilize (read: freeze) markets around the providers that already exist. Which is why I brought up examples from the late 90s and early 00s, for, at the time, services like Yahoo and Geocities and Internet Explorer looked like permanent pillars of the Internet. Today, most of them have either disappeared or become marginal because the ecosystem evolved and replaced them.

The Internet has kept improving because old technologies and dominant platforms were allowed to die.
What you would achieve by turning the Internet into a utility would be the opposite. You can reasonably expect that existing infrastructures and providers would be locked into place and decisions about the future of the network will be made by regulators through political processes.
I hope I don't need to go too in-depth on why placing one of the most rapidly evolving technological ecosystems under a structure whose primary design goal is to preserve incumbents and administer them politically is a terrible idea.