More Stratechery, this time on government intervention. I actually believe that interopability and API disclosure would be beneficial, as it would lead to more innovation and lower margins as in lower prices for consumers. Airbnb and Uber are cash machines due to their monopoly positions, and that’s not ideal in neither short- nor long-term.
Talking about government intervention, another thing that concerns me even more is the lack of presence when it comes to controlling how large players like Facebook are “engaging their users”. The world’s top psychologists these days are working on getting you to spend as many minutes as possible on different social media sites. Put differently, they’re trying to get you as addicted as possible, because the more time you spend on a site – the more advertising can you be shown.
This space is completely uncontrolled these days, there are no restrictions as to eg. how many notifications an app can send to your phone. These things matter when it comes to driving addiction, and many of the addictions that are created are unhealthy to say the least. I would love to see governments around the world come in and regulate this, the same way they’ve done with tobacco, alcohol and other things which have been proved unhealthy for mankind. I wholeheartedly believe that would make the world a better place.