Comment by throw10920 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw10920 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Wouldn't it be better to try to regulate the necessity of needing these services out of existence?

For the sake of reducing complexity in an already very complex world, I'd rather that it be illegal to require an email address to sign up for an account (or, alternatively, make it illegal to require an account for things like making a reservation at a restaurant) then being provided with an email by the USPS.

Doubly so given the interactions that I've had with digital services provided by my country's government and the bad (and in several cases extremely bad) experiences that I've had with them.

To be clear - I don't object to e.g. an address from the USPS complementing my existing email - I just don't want to be forced to use it for anything due to it being given some special properties that normal email providers aren't.

> Wouldn't it be better to try to regulate the necessity of needing these services out of existence?

No because these things are genuinely useful. As much as people lament that we are going cashless, it's very convenient to be able to just carry one card and it's genuinely useful to just give my email as an identifier when registering for stuff.

Regulating their necessity means forcing people to accept cash and then using this as a reason why MasterCard and Visa should be allowed exist. In practice if something is that ingrained into daily interaction, then it should have something like the common carrier rules, set the fee to a static percentage of the transaction and that's it. The current 50% profit margins rent-seeking approach is just inefficient.

I completely agree with a lot of what you said! I'm not against technology in general or think that things like email aren't useful.

I think my argument is harder to make for payment processors, but in the case of email, it is preferable to not need an email address to create an account (even if it's convenient to have the option), and have other identifiers that can be used, like OAuth using an existing account or phone number, for instance.

Or, like I said, even better if you don't even need to create an account to participate in a one-time transaction (instead of a service relationship) with an entity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com