Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/07/05/trust-us-were-facebook.html
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It’s very difficult to take down Goliath. Just like it’s hard to wrest back stolen liberties.
Oh! Is that what Facebook has been focused on? Privacy, and not growth? Silly us for thinking they don’t give a shit about our privacy. Zuck says he cares, so it must be true.
I hope at some point what they’ve been getting away with will go on the books as a crime with a real penalty. Maybe if Zuck’s looking at losing his fortune and finishing out his days in prison, he may finally start giving a real shit.
I would also be content to just go back to the pre-Regan era antitrust laws, and have Facebook rent asunder. It won’t happen under this administration. Fingers crossed that there’s positive change from the next election and the new administration doesn’t continue to bask and grow fat under the laws enacted by the past administrations.
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If you want to be exempt from something you’re proving that the regulation is needed to keep you in check.
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I’ll say it again: Don’t break up Facebook – utterly destroy it. Facebook is the poisonous fruit of a sociopath’s dream. It needs to receive the corporate death penalty.
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All of those are great points about old-school monopolies… but the greatest positive value of Facebook for us as users is that… more of our friends are signed up there than anywhere. That’s why it “works”… to the extent it works.
Balkanization of the largest social… media… platform(s) will simply, automatically destroy their greatest feature.
(I’m not saying we shouldn’t. I’m not a super fanboy… but I have gotten a lot of joy, pleasure, depth, connection out of finding old and new friends there.)
I’ve been saying for a while that the best way to break up Facebook is to simply not allow them to buy any more companies. Somebody will break their monopoly simply because it seems like every generation of kids needs their “own” platform to communicate on.
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Well, it would be in the interest of all the “Baby Books” (after Baby Bells) to have interoperability. Which would be great for all the non-FB social networks too.
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Ah. I was thinking of The Phone Company as a metaphor for the value of universal interconnectivity, but I hadn’t thought of that as a model for future social media.
Good thinking! (One of the reasons I like BoingBoing)
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