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> I get that people want to see a company crippled but wiping out a quarter of revenue is a death-blow. What do we think would change if "Facebook" as a compan

> I get that people want to see a company crippled but wiping out a quarter of revenue is a death-blow. What do we think would change if "Facebook" as a company went bankrupt? Certainly, the website would continue operating - it's profitable. The technology is still worth whatever it's worth. I have a hard time imagining that a purely financial threat to the corporate entity changes the product too much. What it does change is the incentives to the capital involved. It threatens equity. If we all agree that the Facebook "tech" is morally neutral(ish) then the purposes its being put to are what we should challenge. Breaking the back of the company's financials seems like a reasonable way to do that.

ianai 8y ago
Their data centers can be seized and net connections cut.
- aeturnum 8y ago
  But like...why would bankruptcy do that? The servers aren't worth that much. Their contents are worth more secret! The secrecy of their data is how Facebook makes money. If the company that operates those servers gets shut down, I don't see how the group that takes over the business (whoever it is) shuts down the servers. Maybe everyone freaks out and Facebook loses a lot of people, maybe we don't get updates for a bit. Those seem possible, probable even. But things that make money don't get taken apart in bankruptcy. I could be wrong! But I don't know of any historic examples where things like that happen.
  - jazzyjackson 8y ago
    Facebook did not keep user data secret, they used it as a lure to attract Farmvilles and 'Which Hogwarts House are YOU' surveys to make sure people spent more time on the platform, because having a billion people look at the website every day is how facebook makes money. Using the data they have to make sure ads are efficiently targeted is a par for the course -- but it does no harm to facebook if someone else has all my user data, if I spend all my time on facebook, facebook is the only one who makes money selling ads to me.

ianai 8y ago

Their data centers can be seized and net connections cut.

aeturnum 8y ago
But like...why would bankruptcy do that? The servers aren't worth that much. Their contents are worth more secret! The secrecy of their data is how Facebook makes money. If the company that operates those servers gets shut down, I don't see how the group that takes over the business (whoever it is) shuts down the servers. Maybe everyone freaks out and Facebook loses a lot of people, maybe we don't get updates for a bit. Those seem possible, probable even. But things that make money don't get taken apart in bankruptcy. I could be wrong! But I don't know of any historic examples where things like that happen.
- jazzyjackson 8y ago
  Facebook did not keep user data secret, they used it as a lure to attract Farmvilles and 'Which Hogwarts House are YOU' surveys to make sure people spent more time on the platform, because having a billion people look at the website every day is how facebook makes money. Using the data they have to make sure ads are efficiently targeted is a par for the course -- but it does no harm to facebook if someone else has all my user data, if I spend all my time on facebook, facebook is the only one who makes money selling ads to me.