Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

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I don't know, hardware manufacturers are expected to design and manufacture their stuff with harm prevention in mind. There are tons of regulations intended to prevent not just injuries due to stupidity but also abuses.

If the same goes for the communication tools, maybe we should regulate them too? Software is like the wild west when it comes to regulations and unfortunately, regulations will come because the software developers fail spectacularly to regulate themselves.

Does your software act as a perfect tool for genocide or a decline in the health of a society? You won't be able to stand with straight face counting your money saying "not my problem" simply because a business is supposed to create more value than it takes from the system and if the opposite happens the system will eject that business. Commies will take over, something will happen before people die off for the ideal of the free enterprise. That's why we don't have free organ market.

Anyway, this doesn't mean that Instagram or any other app makers are evil, it simply means that there's a problem that their business enables and some people are asking questions.I hope they don't say "not my problem" because that's how revolts begin, commies take over or guillotines become street attraction.

Are cellphone or walkie talkie manufacturers regulated because those devices can be used to run drug rings? It's easy to make analogies to draw a range of conclusions.

Social platforms are given a hard time for being walled gardens, but they are clearly getting to a kind of scale where they are hard to police, almost like the internet at large. If they weren't owned by a single company maybe this would be seen differently?

> Are cellphone or walkie talkie manufacturers regulated because those devices can be used to run drug rings?

Actually, yes - you’ll have a hard time obtaining SIM cards to use your cell phone without giving ID, precisely for this reason.

Actually, no, that is not related to cellphone manufacturers.

Yep, cellphones, cans containing chemicals that people abuse, knives, car trunks, alcohol bottles etc. There are tons of regulations that are a response to an issue that someone created by using a product the way it was not intended to be used.

Yeah my secondary point that I deleted was that it's the sims that are regulated. Isn't that closer to regulating an ISP? But then a cellphone is more like a computer or iPad, so all these analogies are a stretch.

They obey to other less obvious regulations, manufacturers cannot sell you a phone that transmits in a frequency you desire or let you input your own IMEI number etc.

Seriously, hardware is regulated. Check it out.

It's all about response to some kind of abuse and it's different everywhere. In some places regulators mandate that the alcohol bottles must have special plugs that let out alcohol but cannot be re-filled easily because at some point someone started bootleg alcohol business by re-filling the consumed bottles.

Pre-paid cell phones with minutes dont require ID, real names, credit cards, etc.. You can even buy them with cash.

Depends on where you buy it. If the place didn't have a problem with criminals using burner phones, you would not have ID requirement otherwise they will make a copy of your ID before activating your pre-paid phone.

Different places have different problems enabled through different technologies or goods, therefore different regulations. The place is huge and devided to about 200 parcels all with different approach of handling issues, check it out here: https://www.google.com/maps

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