> How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? If you want to compete in the drinks market, you need to find a different vert

> How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? If you want to compete in the drinks market, you need to find a different vertical (sports, energy, fruit, health, etc.) and build up your own trusted brand. The trust relationship with a brand is a direct and personal relationship, and people can change their idea of trust at little cost. People can choose to drink Pepsi without having to convince their friends/business associates/renters/drivers/etc to also drink Pepsi. The same is not true in a market which is built on a network of trust. If I want to rent out space in my car to people I go to the provider with the biggest trust network because that's the biggest market. I can choose to join a new startup's competitor network as well, but there's little I (or the startup) can do to convince everyone else on the competitor's network to join too. And, crucially, if the people I want to offer rides to aren't on the competitor's network, my participation in the network has less value. > But do we really need to oversee/nationalize a social network/content aggregator such as Linkedin or Facebook? It depends how comfortable we all are with the private monopolies that seem to be the outcome of the way the economics play out at the moment. If everyone is happy being a freelancer working for multiple multinational trust network monopolies, then maybe not. But if the relationship between the individual and the network are exploitative (some recent articles about the reality of driving for Uber take this line) then I can imagine people calling for some kind of regulation to break the monopoly and restore some kind of competition in the market. At least if there are multiple Uber's operating on a shared trust network, drivers (and passengers) have some choice over where they take their business, for example.