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Facebook Can’t Be Fixed, It Needs to Be Broken Up
- downer61 9y agoThis is basically the worst possible course of action. Facebook is neither a utility nor monopoly. Facebook will be irrelevant in a generation or less. Even if Facebook manages to leverage the network effect of its alternative subsidiaries, there will always be the treadmill of evolving trends, and there’s not such thing as one true mode of electronic social interaction.
- unicornporn 9y ago> Facebook will be irrelevant in a generation or less. A lot of harm can be done in one generation. Don't you think the history shows us that?
- downer61 9y agoI’m being extremely generous with that approximate duration of relevance. Look at Microsoft. Windows’ golden period lasted from 1998 until 2006 with the release of Vista. With the release of Vista, Microsoft’s strangle hold on relevance disintegrated in a summer. And now what? Microsoft technically “exists” but who cares? We are witnessing Facebook’s Vista moment right now. Donald Trump is Facebook’s Windows Vista. Think about that for a second.
- quotemstr 9y agoAnd even more harm can be done in the attempt to avoid harm. Ever read Sophocles?
- apotheothesomai 9y agoWhat history teaches us is that past generations have been ruined by serious things, like war, political upheaval, disease, and economic collapse, not by a frivolity in their social lives like FB. Modern marketing has ensured that everyone in the US born after the'80s has grown up in an environment of marketing saturation, but modern marketing/propaganda was invented in the early 20th century. (Thanks, Edward Bernays) It changed our lives and the way we think, from Fascist propaganda to Coldwar rhetoric, and to the belief that orange juice is a breakfast drink and the engagement ring is a thing. FB is one of thousands of powerful entities continuing the tradition, but of course, data mining has reached obscene levels, but FB is only one of many players.
- sgtmas2006 9y agoWhile they're only one of many players, they are a big player, and from experience it's mostly boomers that use Facebook. They have a lot of power, but I do not think they should be broken up. Things have been allowed to be this way, and I doubt they will change for the better.
- ovao 9y agoWhile true, I think it’s worth remembering that history is being written constantly. Facebook’s position and scale has no precedence, and we’re just now really beginning to understand what the consequences of such a position can be. Today’s event was historic in its own right (even though I think it was mostly unproductive). We’ll emerge from this a little wiser, and maybe with some new regulations. Whether regulation is good or bad I can’t say, but this is all very much a learning process as a society and, to some potentially great extent, as an industry. Frankly, I think crossing this line was necessary.
- onetimemanytime 9y ago>>Facebook is neither a utility nor monopoly. Facebook will be irrelevant in a generation or less. assuming what you said is true, should we allow the next FB a generation of leeway too? A generation here and a generation there...
- Terr_ 9y ago> Facebook is neither a utility nor monopoly. I agree: I don't have the same concerns with Facebook as with, say, a monopoly ISP. That said, in both cases I think there's an opportunity to define customer data as containing a responsibility and liability, so that collecting it is a double-edged activity and there are potential repercussions causing companies to guard its dispersal with more care.
- barkingtoad 9y agoI'm trying to think of what it is, exactly, that Facebook has a monopoly on. The nearest I can come up with is: Facebook has a monopoly on Facebook users. The followup question would be: how can that be broken up?
- saudioger 9y agoYou could spin off an easy dozen companies out of existing Facebook services.
- wvenable 9y agoSeems somewhat ridiculous to allow companies to acquire other companies/services just to force them to spin them off. I'm for regulation, if you can come up with sensible ones. But targeting a specific company to be split up doesn't seem like it actually solved the problem in the long run. I mean look what happened with AT&T -- we're almost back to complete consolidation again.
- Lionsion 9y ago> Seems somewhat ridiculous to allow companies to acquire other companies/services just to force them to spin them off. Not really. If Facebook can answer "we're sorry, we'll change and fix it" to every problem, why can't a regulatory regime do the same? E.g. "We're sorry we allowed this acquisition to go through, but it turned out to actually be anticompetitive and our prior mistake doesn't change that..." > I mean look what happened with AT&T -- we're almost back to complete consolidation again. The unfortunate thing with AT&T is the regulators, over time and political changes, weren't consistent. I don't think we really want a politically lowest-common-denominator regulatory regime, but that's what we have.
- jld 9y agoMany (most? all?) newspapers have a firewall between ad sales and news/editorial. Since news and editoral on FB is pretty much the news feed, I think duplicating the newspaper model here might be something like so: One could split Facebook into a "connecting the whole world" company that Zuck talks about constantly and the ad company FB actually is. The ad company would have exclusive license to fill of all the ad slots on the platform, and the social company would request ads through some kind of interface which had strict privacy controls. The ad company would take a cut and pass the rest of the cash to social network. Just one way I think it could splitting the company could work.
- Slansitartop 9y ago> Facebook will be irrelevant in a generation or less. Even if Facebook manages to leverage the network effect of its alternative subsidiaries, there will always be the treadmill of evolving trends, and there’s not such thing as one true mode of electronic social interaction. Maybe so, but Facebook has shown a willingness to spend the money to acquire control of those evolving trends to maintain its dominance (see: Instagram, Whatsapp, and the failed attempt to buy Snapchat). At a minimum I think it should be divested of Instagram and WhatsApp.
- millstone 9y agoMaybe Facebook.com fades to irrelevant, but Facebook.the.company evolves to dominate that treadmill, purchasing or replicating any threats for a long period. In this scenario Facebook is not a classical static monopoly protecting its rentier status, but instead a dynamic monopoly whose massive resources enable it to leapfrog from one trend to the next. Facebook-the-company is clearly aware of the history of its predecessors and is poised to pivot.
- onetimemanytime 9y agothey should have never been allowed to buy Whatsapp and Instagram in the first place.
- yuhong 9y agoI mentioned Facebook and WhatsApp in my essay.
- apotheothesomai 9y agoUm, neither WhatsApp nor Instagram were competitors to Facebook. Both of the acquired companies simply did something that Facebook tried to do, but very successfully. The government can only prevent acquisitions and mergers, when such would greatly harm the consumer by giving a company too much control of a vital market, like health insurance or phone service. Moreover, it didn't stop banks from consolidating 30 separate entities into 5 between 1990 and 2005 or so.
- mantas 9y agoHow would you describe competitors if it's not someone who tries to do same thing? On top of that, there was very move of youngsters to WhatsApp and Instagram as their social media of choice. Instead of lame old man's Facebook. That's very clear competition for new users.
- partiallypro 9y agoWould you argue that Google should have been allowed to buy them then? How about Google buying YouTube? Where do you draw the line? Because so far it seems to largely stem on whether the people proposing this like the company or if they think (wrongly) it swayed the election outcome away from their perceived world view.
- onetimemanytime 9y agoNope, not Google and maybe not even Microsoft. YT with today's reach: no buyout from Google. Simple as that
- panarky 9y agoA good first step would be to force Facebook to let users easily take out their data in machine-readable form, including their social graph, posts and media.
- rock_hard 9y agoThey already let you...since many years
- matte_black 9y agoWhat’s the next step exactly?
- ajdlinux 9y agoMy problem is what exactly you do with that data, beyond being able to scrape email or phone contact details - there's no competing social network that allows you to import your Facebook data export.
- partiallypro 9y agoThey have done that voluntarily for years. It's under your settings. One thing they don't currently allow is a complete and utter, real, deletion of your profile and all of its assets. You can delete your account, but it's more or less just held in a suspended state.
- Lionsion 9y ago> A good first step would be to force Facebook to let users easily take out their data in machine-readable form, including their social graph, posts and media. > They have done that voluntarily for years. It's under your settings. Only kinda sorta. I exported my data and the photos were clearly lower-res versions from the ones that are currently live on my profile. Also I doubt the export contains all the data they have linked to you, as I bet they have far more from their tracking, analytics, and shadow profiles that they won't export.
- Shywim 9y ago
- xbmcuser 9y agoMy only problem with Facebook is that it was allowed to purchase Whatsapp and Instagram it's future competitors. I was glad Snapchat did not sell to Facebook. Personally I only use WhatsApp of these 4 as it is something I can't do without for work.
- dingo_bat 9y agoLet's break up Google too while we are at it. They exert far too much influence via Google search and YouTube and Android.
- Slansitartop 9y agoI agree. The momentum seems to be focused on Facebook mainly because they played it too fast and loose for too long. But many of the issues that apply to Facebook apply to Google as well, but it just hasn't provided as much reason for this level of scrutiny.
- Mononokay 9y agoThat's the least rational thing I've ever seen. Look at what happened to Bell. Forced corporate breakups are the dumbest thing possible.
- gibybo 9y agoWhat would be a better way to deal with monopolies? Surely the breakup of Bell is better than if they were allowed to continue as a monopoly right?
- Mononokay 9y agoNot at all, actually! Ever heard of Verizon, AT&T, and Centurylink? All of them came from the Bell breakup. Bell used to do things that were cool as fuck; post-breakup, prices rose for everyone, and innovation stopped really happening. Monopolies aren't inherently bad - especially not ones like Bell, where they're beneficial to everyone.
- tyingq 9y ago>post-breakup, prices rose for everyone Any citations for this? The rise of MCI cut my phone bills by more than half in the 80's. Bell was killing us with 3 figure/month residential phone bills. And, I pay 10x less now per month in non inflation adjusted dollars than I did in 1986. Out of state calls back then were commonly double digit cents per minute. Now they are typically 1 cent per minute or even less.
- bartart 9y agoIt was actually an issue after the breakup because the successor companies started making much more money as a group than they did when they were together. They did all sorts of creative accounting to make it look like the breakup was a big success that led to lower profits, when in reality cutting bloated bureaucracy and the R&D budget led to really bumper profits.
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- MediumD 9y agoI don't see how breaking up Facebook changes the fact that companies are financially incentivized to track and sell as much information on their customers as possible. Whether a monopoly or a collection of small companies, people follow incentives.
- mlb_hn 9y agoThat and one can't help notice the irony that on all these articles they're still trying to load the Facebook trackers in addition to the others (not to beat a dead horse).
- Lionsion 9y ago> That and one can't help notice the irony that on all these articles they're still trying to load the Facebook trackers in addition to the others There's no irony here, just the fact that the author doesn't manage or control the website team that put the trackers there.
- mmsimanga 9y agoAgreed, I wish governments would ban something like diamonds in wedding rings instead. Like Facebook, we don't need diamonds to survive. Diamonds have been a the cause of much conflict in Africa.
- kgwgk 9y agoI wish governments would ban weddings. We don’t need weddings to survive and they cause so many conflicts around the world.
- Moru 9y agoOh, and religion, the cause of most problems per person on any continent!
- mmsimanga 9y agoI should have been more specific. I was refering DeBeers through advertising created the myth that diamonds are a girl's best friend. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...
- robotresearcher 9y agoThere is a very simple alternative to Facebook: don’t use Facebook. That’s the competition. There is nothing quite the same but there are lots of other things to do online.
- tyingq 9y agoThere is a strong draw for many of us. It's the only reasonable way I have to see pictures and updates from my family that's pretty far flung across the world. Convincing all my kids, grandkids, siblings, cousins, in laws, nieces, nephews, etc to move away from FB isn't really practical. I do use FB mostly read only, but there isn't really a way for me to leave.
- killjoywashere 9y agoyou would live a longer, healthier life without those pictures, at least as presented in that medium. How many pictures of kids covered in chocolate cake do you need?
- tyingq 9y agoI'm guessing you don't have adult children, nieces, nephews or grandkids? There isn't any number of pictures, stories, etc of them I wouldn't look at and that wouldn't please me more than anything else. To be fair, I shared your attitude in my 20's. My mother would snail mail a yearly newsletter with printed pictures and I yawned at the effort.
- killjoywashere 9y agoFair enough, mine are 16 and 13, so perhaps I'm a little child-worn right now.
- thejerz 9y ago> but there isn't really a way for me to leave. You speak as if you have no agency in the situation. But, you do have agency. Using, or not using, facebook is 100%, entirely your choice. There was a happy (happier?) world before 2005, where families shared photos and stayed in touch, without Mark Zuckerberg.
- paxys 9y agoBroken up into what exactly? If you don't like Facebook don't use it. How about the Senate and the internet outrage machine spend time on companies like Equifax instead, who (1) we literally cannot opt out of, (2) have private data that we didn't choose to share with them, and (3) have broken actual laws but haven't received as much as a slap on the wrist for it.
- peteretep 9y ago> If you don't like Facebook don't use it Fine, I won't. That won't stop society in general being surveilled though, and all the attendant ills of that that the article suggests. Further: more and more apps require me to use Facebook to sign in.
- colinjoy 9y agoWhy do you suggest one can “opt out” of facebook? They profile non-members and encourage users to disclose personal data of non-members by installing apps or helping them to “find my friends” based on sharing such data (e.g. address books). #1 and #2 apply to facebook as well. We might find out about #3.
- hailk 9y agoHow do they profile non-members or even people who've either deactivated their accounts or aren't using them? If I don't log in how does invites affect me? All they could possibly have is my phone number and email. Which aren't exactly private information anyway.
- ravenstine 9y agoFacebook is already dying. Why even bother?
- manigandham 9y agoDying by which metric exactly? The billions in USD profit or the billions of monthly active users?
- return1 9y agobut newspapers say it is dying , so it must be dying. And that's just a taste of what 'objective' news means.
- ravenstine 9y agoYes, it's because newspapers are telling me it's dying. Right. Newspapers. I don't know if you mean newspapers in a literal sense, but if you do, well, nobody except my parents reads those anymore. ;) Profit and number of users are not good metrics for the future of a platform. Facebook the company probably isn't going to die, but Facebook the platform can and will inevitably become a ghost town in short order, just as all its predecessors. Remember, Facebook is a parent company to other revenue sources. The company will continue to survive. Then again, the same can technically be said of Myspace. Facebook's user growth in North America is in decline. https://techcrunch-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/techcrunch.com/2018/01/31/facebook-time-spent/amp/ https://techcrunch-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/techcrunch.com... Being someone who works for a media company, we've already seen a significant drop in Facebook followers since the Cambridge Analytica fiasco. No, I don't think Facebook the social media platform has a bright future. The fact that Gen Z isn't using Facebook is a sign that Facebook has entered the initial stages of apoptosis. https://amp-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.businessinsider.com/generation-z-facebook-2018-1 https://amp-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.b... I can't say I blame Gen Z. Why would any young person want to use Facebook at this point when it's highly censored and your mom and grandma are peering at every post you make or like?
- twblalock 9y agoBack in the 90s people thought Microsoft was too dominant, could not be fixed, and needed to be broken up. It turns out they were wrong, because competition from companies and technologies nobody saw coming knocked Microsoft off its pedestal. Few would have predicted the dominance of Facebook back in 2004. And few will predict the next big thing that will break Facebook's dominance. All this talk about the government breaking up Facebook is likely just as short-sighted as the talk about the government breaking up Microsoft in the 90s.
- paxys 9y agoI really don't understand the line of thinking that starts with "Facebook is broken" and immediately goes to "Congress should fix it".
- rejschaap 9y agoNobody mentioned the FTC yet, but haven't they failed in a big way regarding Facebook? They allowed them to buy Whatsapp, Instagram, tbh. There is no competition because Facebook buys them before they get dangerous.
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