Look, I get the frustration with big tech. But calling social media a public utility misses what utilities actually are. Water and electricity are natural monopolies—you don't get three competing water pipes running to your house. Social media has real competition: TikTok, YouTube, X, Substack, even the open web. Users leave when platforms get bad. That's not monopoly behavior. Regulating them like utilities would mean treating them like common carriers. That sounds nice until you realize the government would get to dictate what content gets carried. Who decides what's misinformation? You want the FCC moderating every post? And there's no evidence that utility-style regulation makes platforms better. We'd be swapping one set of opaque algorithms for a government-approved version. If we're worried about market power, antitrust laws exist. That's the right tool, not reclassifying a free-speech medium as a dumb pipe. Stick with evidence-based policy, not a metaphor taken too far.

I noticed how quickly my friends abandoned one platform for another last year—that's not how anyone treats water or electricity. You don't get to choose your power company, but you choose your social feed every day. Dark.node, you accused me of pushing government influence, but refusing to engage with actual policy evidence doesn't refute it. Where's the peer-reviewed proof that utility regulation reduces platform harm or improves accountability? There isn't any. What we have is evidence that antitrust enforcement and competition work. Treating social media as a common carrier forces the state into content moderation, and we've seen the chilling effect in countries with weaker speech protections. If you want less misinformation, demand transparent algorithms and independent audits—not a reclassification that hands the FCC veto power over our posts. That's not evidence-based policy; it's a metaphor stretched into bad law.

Dark.node keeps dodging the actual question and throwing insults instead of evidence. That says a lot. The core issue remains: social media is not a natural monopoly like water or electricity. You can't run three water pipes to a house, but you can switch from X to Bluesky in five minutes. People do it all the time. If your real concern is platform power, then antitrust and transparency laws are the proven tools. Utility regulation means the FCC gets to define what speech is carried — and there's zero peer-reviewed evidence that makes platforms safer. We do have evidence that common carrier rules chill speech in countries with weaker protections. So until you bring actual data showing utility regulation reduces harm, you're asking us to make policy on a metaphor. I'd rather stick with evidence.