soberirishman t1_j6gmahm wrote on January 30, 2023 at 4:19 AM

Reply to comment by [deleted] in FCC Threatens to Disconnect Twilio for Illegal Robocalls by BasedSweet

You will when you can’t log into any service with SMS MFA because almost all of them are built on twilio. This would impact you as a consumer they’re that big of a deal..

Modest_Ubermensch t1_j6gso1u wrote on January 30, 2023 at 5:17 AM

Dude is probably 14 and doesn’t really understand how this tech can be used for both good and bad purposes.

jackzander t1_j6gw1ov wrote on January 30, 2023 at 5:52 AM

Sounds like a Too Big to Fail scenario.

My vote in such scenarios is: Fail.

Philip_Marlowe t1_j6gwyfw wrote on January 30, 2023 at 6:02 AM

That's a shortsighted way to look at it though. If Twilio goes bust, there will be a mad scramble to replace thousands of MFAs and automated SMS messages for just about every software platform and PPI-protecting app and website on the planet.

We're not only talking corporate software outages, which would grind our economy to a screeching halt, but also major impacts on consumer life when email, online banking, utility billing, chain restaurants, e-retailers, Venmo, Uber/Lyft, eBay, etc. all need to reauthenticate every user all at once.

I'm not as familiar with the space Twilio is in as I would like to be, but I know they're a market leader and they have thousands of enterprise customers. Shutting them down would have a massive ripple effect.

jackzander t1_j6hy66t wrote on January 30, 2023 at 1:40 PM

Yes, basically the same argument made to defend the existence of any monopoly in history.

If it's an essential service, it surely should not hinge so critically on one for-profit institution.

Philip_Marlowe t1_j6i1cq2 wrote on January 30, 2023 at 2:06 PM

Absolutely, which is why I think Twilio needs to be regulated instead of shut down. That in itself is also pretty tricky though, because they're legally prohibited from knowing what their customers use their service for.