Legally, public utilities generally are natural monopolies and are either publicly owned or regulated precisely because of that fact. To say that any company t

Legally, public utilities generally are natural monopolies and are either publicly owned or regulated precisely because of that fact. To say that any company that has a dominant market share of a product category or service that people depend upon is a public utility would have meant, over the years, that IBM (mainframes), Microsoft (desktop computers), Apple (digital music players), and many other companies should have been or should be treated as targets for regulation. Public utility regulation means setting tariffs that regulate pricing, requiring the regulated companies to file formal applications and to provide justifications for requesting pricing increases, and setting detailed rules and regulations about making sure all customers have reasonable access to the service, etc. These various concepts make perfect sense for a monopoly that provides electricity, water, or some such thing to the public at large; they make no sense whatever outside that context. I interpret this piece as saying, in effect, that many people use Facebook in their daily lives and that FB is asking for it if it goes about tricking and deceiving its users with respect to the use of their data. That is a fair point, and who knows what the legal ramifications will be if FB continues to abuse the trust of their users. That said, it does not really fit to try to classify FB as some sort of public utility - perhaps rhetorically, for effect, but certainly not legally.