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That is a bad analogy. You can start a family diner tomorrow and compete with McDonalds. There is nothing preventing that 80% to eat at your place. However, yo

That is a bad analogy. You can start a family diner tomorrow and compete with McDonalds. There is nothing preventing that 80% to eat at your place. However, you cannot start a social network tomorrow and expect to make a reasonable income. People will not join your network, because their friends are not there. Facebook holds a significant part of the world population hostage, because they cannot 'dine' somewhere else. Contrast this with a situation where social networks are federated. You could opt to go to a competing network because their service is better, without losing contacts to your friends. I would not know if that qualifies as a monopoly legally, but there is clearly a huge difference between McDonalds and Facebook.

icebraining 10y ago
While network effects exist and are worrying, this is a bit too strong - you can have two accounts concurrently, and many people do. Hence why FB had to buy Instagram and Whatsapp, and why Snapshat has more than a hundred million users.
- danielpatrick 10y ago
  "You can have two accounts concurrently"... on all the sites that Facebook owns. They tried to buy Snapchat too. Some interesting reading on how we might measure the unusual cost of Facebook's monopoly to society. https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopoly/ https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopo...