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> Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies Monopolies of what, exactly? I admit to sometimes looking at entertaining videos on yo

> Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are basically monopolies Monopolies of what, exactly? I admit to sometimes looking at entertaining videos on youtube. About an hour or maximum two hours a week worth. I'm not sure what you're suggesting that facebook and twitter are monopolizing. I haven't used the former in years and the latter just about ever -- aside from maybe five tweets over the course of twitter's existence. Monopolies of online discourse? Attention? Entertainment? Clearly we're not using any of those platforms now.

toasterlovin 8y ago
I'm not fully thought out on this, but I think a decent starting analogy would be to a public square or space in a city. These companies hold a monopoly on the online equivalent of that because of the way network effects work.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- simongr3dal 8y ago
  In someway these social networks amplify voices by their sharing and recommending and suggesting based on what users do, a normal city square doesn't amplify your voice. So this is different from walking past a demonstration or assembly in the city, it is more of an Inception movie-like warping of the entire city to bring everyone closer to these peoples voices.
  - speedplane 8y ago
    > these social networks amplify voices by their sharing and recommending and suggesting based on what users do, a normal city square doesn't amplify your voice. Actually, a city square does exactly that, amplify your voice to all those that pass. The difference is that there are many city squares to stand in, whereas there are only a handful of social media companies. The problem here is Facebook's monopoly power, not the medium of communication.
    - toofy 8y ago
      > The difference is that there are many city squares to stand in, whereas there are only a handful of social media companies I’m just not sure this holds up to any kind of scrutiny. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of forums online where people can speak. It’s a problematic analogy anyway, Facebook is not a public space, if we’re going insist on applying a real world physical analogue, they would be much closer to a city’s incredibly popular nightclub with a stage, which of course would never be required to give extremists or provocateurs free-reign of their equipment or stage. But even this analogy has problems. I think the real argument is whether or not a company is free to associate its brand with whatever it likes.
- Throwway32 8y ago
  USENET was the equivalent of a public square on the Internet. It was overwhelmed by spam. These networks have been curated from the get-go, for no reason other than to control spam. Then, to keep people hooked, they emphasized virality and controversy. These aspects make them quite unlike a town square.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    A king's court, then. Even worse.
  - toofy 8y ago
    > USENET was the equivalent of a public square on the Internet. It was overwhelmed by spam. Our situation is even better than this, the entire internet is our town square, anyone can spin our own metaphorical soap box online and say whatever we want, and the entire worlds internet connected public can hear us if they choose to do so.
chii 8y ago
> Monopolies of what, exactly? Monopoly on platform reach. The reach of facebook, or the reach of youtube, twitter etc, is so high, that if you want to disseminate a message, those _must_ be the platforms you use. It's as if they own the radio spectrum, and you have to acquiesce to what they demand to use said spectrum. Of course, i am free to use smoke signals to send my message, but who will receive it?
- candybar 8y ago
  If you can use facebook, youtube or twitter to reach lots of people, how could any one of them be a monopoly on reach?
  - speedplane 8y ago
    > If you can use facebook, youtube or twitter to reach lots of people, how could any one of them be a monopoly on reach? Even though they are competing for attention, they each use different mediums. As an analogy, it's like only having one radio station, one TV station, and one magazine. There needs to be dozens of each for there to be a true marketplace of ideas.
    - toofy 8y ago
      There are many many video content hosting sites, there are countless twitter clones, and there are a crazy amount of sites doing things like Facebook with profiles and such. Because people are choosing to use mainly those doesn’t stop anyone from using others. This isn’t like a utility or phone company where people literally had no alternatives. No one is stopping any of us from connecting to Mastodon for example and even better, no one is stopping us from setting up our own Mastodon servers and connecting that very server up to the wider Mastodon network... There is no Monopoly here. Because more people choose to eat McDonalds burgers than the local dive bar burgers, does this mean McDonalds has a monopoly on burgers?
      - Zeppin 8y ago
        Again, it's about reach. My local dive bar can serve me burgers whether it has a customer base of 1.000 or 1.000.000. A social network, however, cannot function without hundreds of millions of users. Otherwise it's an anti-social network. As a result I can post my video to DailyMotion instead of YouTube but how am I going to build a following without engaging with Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter? These networks require mass user engagement to be effective which precludes a myriad of competition. I don't think breaking these companies up as Elizabeth Warren suggested is the correct solution because it fundamentally handicaps their ability to function. But I think there does need to be regulation around how they do business which sadly does not exist.
3131s 8y ago
> Monopolies of what, exactly? In many smaller countries Facebook is nearly synonymous with the internet itself.
- rahuldottech 8y ago
  Don't even have to be "smaller". Many have huge populations. They're just less developed than the likes of the US.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
dredmorbius 8y ago
Monopolies may be divided into four kinds. I. Where the monopolist lies not the exclusive power of production but only certain exclusive facilities as a producer, and can increase, with imdimimished or even increased facility, the amount of his produce.... II. A second kind of monopoly is in the opposite extreme. It exists where price is checked neither by the hopes nor by the fears of the producer, where no competition is dreaded, and no increased supply can be effected. The owners of some vinyards have such a monopoly.... III. A third and more frequent kind of monopoly lies between these two extremes, and is neither so strict as the last, nor so comparatively open as the first. This comprises those cases in which the monopolist is the only producer, but, by the application of additional labow and abstinence, can indefinitely increase his production. The book trade affords an illustration.... IV. The fourth and last class of monopolies exists where production must be assisted by natural agents, limited in number, and varying in power, and repaying with less and less relative assistance every increase in the amount of the labour and abstinence bestowed on them. -- Nassau William Senior, An Outline Of The Science Of Political Economy, (1836, 1872) pp. 103-106. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.59405/page/n117 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.59405/page/n11... Arguably, FB are a monopoly of all four types.

toasterlovin 8y ago

I'm not fully thought out on this, but I think a decent starting analogy would be to a public square or space in a city. These companies hold a monopoly on the online equivalent of that because of the way network effects work.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
simongr3dal 8y ago
In someway these social networks amplify voices by their sharing and recommending and suggesting based on what users do, a normal city square doesn't amplify your voice. So this is different from walking past a demonstration or assembly in the city, it is more of an Inception movie-like warping of the entire city to bring everyone closer to these peoples voices.
- speedplane 8y ago
  > these social networks amplify voices by their sharing and recommending and suggesting based on what users do, a normal city square doesn't amplify your voice. Actually, a city square does exactly that, amplify your voice to all those that pass. The difference is that there are many city squares to stand in, whereas there are only a handful of social media companies. The problem here is Facebook's monopoly power, not the medium of communication.
  - toofy 8y ago
    > The difference is that there are many city squares to stand in, whereas there are only a handful of social media companies I’m just not sure this holds up to any kind of scrutiny. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of forums online where people can speak. It’s a problematic analogy anyway, Facebook is not a public space, if we’re going insist on applying a real world physical analogue, they would be much closer to a city’s incredibly popular nightclub with a stage, which of course would never be required to give extremists or provocateurs free-reign of their equipment or stage. But even this analogy has problems. I think the real argument is whether or not a company is free to associate its brand with whatever it likes.
Throwway32 8y ago
USENET was the equivalent of a public square on the Internet. It was overwhelmed by spam. These networks have been curated from the get-go, for no reason other than to control spam. Then, to keep people hooked, they emphasized virality and controversy. These aspects make them quite unlike a town square.
- acct1771 8y ago
  A king's court, then. Even worse.
- toofy 8y ago
  > USENET was the equivalent of a public square on the Internet. It was overwhelmed by spam. Our situation is even better than this, the entire internet is our town square, anyone can spin our own metaphorical soap box online and say whatever we want, and the entire worlds internet connected public can hear us if they choose to do so.

chii 8y ago

> Monopolies of what, exactly? Monopoly on platform reach. The reach of facebook, or the reach of youtube, twitter etc, is so high, that if you want to disseminate a message, those _must_ be the platforms you use. It's as if they own the radio spectrum, and you have to acquiesce to what they demand to use said spectrum. Of course, i am free to use smoke signals to send my message, but who will receive it?

candybar 8y ago
If you can use facebook, youtube or twitter to reach lots of people, how could any one of them be a monopoly on reach?
- speedplane 8y ago
  > If you can use facebook, youtube or twitter to reach lots of people, how could any one of them be a monopoly on reach? Even though they are competing for attention, they each use different mediums. As an analogy, it's like only having one radio station, one TV station, and one magazine. There needs to be dozens of each for there to be a true marketplace of ideas.
  - toofy 8y ago
    There are many many video content hosting sites, there are countless twitter clones, and there are a crazy amount of sites doing things like Facebook with profiles and such. Because people are choosing to use mainly those doesn’t stop anyone from using others. This isn’t like a utility or phone company where people literally had no alternatives. No one is stopping any of us from connecting to Mastodon for example and even better, no one is stopping us from setting up our own Mastodon servers and connecting that very server up to the wider Mastodon network... There is no Monopoly here. Because more people choose to eat McDonalds burgers than the local dive bar burgers, does this mean McDonalds has a monopoly on burgers?
    - Zeppin 8y ago
      Again, it's about reach. My local dive bar can serve me burgers whether it has a customer base of 1.000 or 1.000.000. A social network, however, cannot function without hundreds of millions of users. Otherwise it's an anti-social network. As a result I can post my video to DailyMotion instead of YouTube but how am I going to build a following without engaging with Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter? These networks require mass user engagement to be effective which precludes a myriad of competition. I don't think breaking these companies up as Elizabeth Warren suggested is the correct solution because it fundamentally handicaps their ability to function. But I think there does need to be regulation around how they do business which sadly does not exist.

3131s 8y ago

> Monopolies of what, exactly? In many smaller countries Facebook is nearly synonymous with the internet itself.

rahuldottech 8y ago
Don't even have to be "smaller". Many have huge populations. They're just less developed than the likes of the US.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

dredmorbius 8y ago

Monopolies may be divided into four kinds. I. Where the monopolist lies not the exclusive power of production but only certain exclusive facilities as a producer, and can increase, with imdimimished or even increased facility, the amount of his produce.... II. A second kind of monopoly is in the opposite extreme. It exists where price is checked neither by the hopes nor by the fears of the producer, where no competition is dreaded, and no increased supply can be effected. The owners of some vinyards have such a monopoly.... III. A third and more frequent kind of monopoly lies between these two extremes, and is neither so strict as the last, nor so comparatively open as the first. This comprises those cases in which the monopolist is the only producer, but, by the application of additional labow and abstinence, can indefinitely increase his production. The book trade affords an illustration.... IV. The fourth and last class of monopolies exists where production must be assisted by natural agents, limited in number, and varying in power, and repaying with less and less relative assistance every increase in the amount of the labour and abstinence bestowed on them. -- Nassau William Senior, An Outline Of The Science Of Political Economy, (1836, 1872) pp. 103-106. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.59405/page/n117 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.59405/page/n11... Arguably, FB are a monopoly of all four types.