> That being said, I don't believe it's as important, just that some kind of a comparison can be made.. "Some kind of comparison" can be made between literally

> That being said, I don't believe it's as important, just that some kind of a comparison can be made.. "Some kind of comparison" can be made between literally any two things; that is not in dispute. When I say "they cannot be compared" I don't mean that they are literally incomparable, I mean that the comparison is wildly inapt because the two things are so fundamentally different in terms of value, scale and necessity. > FB and a few other websites are the new public square and are a major driver of social trends. FB is not a public square, it's a publishing platform exclusively owned and funded by a corporation. Just because Facebook is popular doesn't mean it's a public square. Don't misunderstand, I definitely believe that Facebook needs to be regulated (primarily around privacy, tracking, and user-data rights), but not on the basis that people need to use or are entitled to use Facebook; this is demonstrably false. If you were to shut down the electrical grid tomorrow, hundreds of thousands would be dead within 24 hours, if you were to shut off Facebook tomorrow, it would be a moderate inconvenience to a lot of people but everyone would survive and most would move on within a month. > a major driver of social trend So is HBO; just because a company wields powerful social influence doesn't mean we need to regulate their platform. > Curation of this platform could be what kills them, if some people realise they can only speak corporate-friendly speech. So let them die? Facebook is a business and if they make bad business decisions they should feel the consequences. What's the problem?