4 ms·

This is perfect. FB quits Europe, a European competitor springs up, the whole world joins it because of network effects, and we all get European data-safety law

This is perfect. FB quits Europe, a European competitor springs up, the whole world joins it because of network effects, and we all get European data-safety laws applied to our personal data.

lazyasciiart 6y ago
No, Facebook would geofence Americans out. Sorry, the US government says your data is theirs.
- dijit 6y ago
  You mean the US would block the European competitor? I mean, I know the lobby is powerful but that does strike me as a bit improbable. Hope I’m right.
  - slg 6y ago
    Why is that so far fetched? Isn't this what we are doing with TikTok?
    - TheCoelacanth 6y ago
      It remains to be seen whether they will actually get away with doing that, and I think it would be much harder to get away with doing that to a popular European app rather than a popular Chinese app.
rtx 6y ago
How will this new company make money? If its funded by the government it could work.
- anthropodie 6y ago
  Check out Okuna https://youtu.be/tGrP80GVkW4 https://youtu.be/tGrP80GVkW4 It is from Europe.
  - xtracto 6y ago
    Reminded me of Disapora, the other project that was going to kill Facebook. How many of them have come and go over the years?
  - dewey 6y ago
    The website that's linked in the video description seems to be down (http://open-book.org http://open-book.org) and there's no mention of "Okuna". Seems like yet another app.net, diaspora,...
    - anthropodie 6y ago
      That video seems old. It was open-book first but then FB decided to sue them. So they changed to https://okuna.io https://okuna.io
- pjc50 6y ago
  Advertising to Europeans?
- gamegoblin 6y ago
  1/4 of the US pays $13 per month for netflix. I have a hard time believing people wouldn't pay say, $5/mo for a social network that was ad-free and didn't do questionable things with their data. And I'm sure you could work out some kind of subsidy scheme for truly impoverished people who legitimately can't afford that. The problem is network effects and getting people to switch. But if you regulate any company not adopting this model out of existence, it could work. That said, I do acknowledge that the nature of social networks strongly leads to a natural monopoly situation more akin to a utility. It's not an easy problem. But I think paying for it isn't the hard part.
  - nickff 6y ago
    The problem with network effects business is that the difference between having 1/4 and 3/4 of the population involved is a 9x change in value to the user. If Facebook is currently worth $5/month to the average user, this competitor would only be worth $0.56. edit: I see you added a statement saying that Facebook is a natural monopoly, and I really don't understand how that can be true. From the late 90s until now we have had many people running multiple IM clients, and we currently have many people running multiple social networks simultaneously.
    - gamegoblin 6y ago
      At the peak of IM I personally had at least 5 IM clients running simultaneously (or, when I became savvy enough, a single client that unified them all), so I definitely hear you. I think two critical differences between the manner IM was used historically and social networks are used now is the (mainly) 1-to-1 nature of chat content (as opposed to mainly 1-to-N nature of social network content) and the usage of persistent state. Without any actual data, my intuition is that the main use case of chat for most people is ephemeral, mostly-synchronous 1-to-1 communication. I only rarely went back through chat history, usually to find some obscure link or something. And because most people's main use of chat is 1-on-1 communication, there is no need to curate persisted content for external viewing. A key component of Facebook is curated and formatted personal content that their connections can asynchronously view. Most people do not want to maintain duplicate photo albums on several platforms, post the same thoughts or essays or rants on multiple platforms, etc.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

This is perfect. FB quits Europe, a European competitor springs up, the whole world joins it because of network effects, and we all get European data-safety laws applied to our personal data.

lazyasciiart 6y ago

No, Facebook would geofence Americans out. Sorry, the US government says your data is theirs.

dijit 6y ago
You mean the US would block the European competitor? I mean, I know the lobby is powerful but that does strike me as a bit improbable. Hope I’m right.
- slg 6y ago
  Why is that so far fetched? Isn't this what we are doing with TikTok?
  - TheCoelacanth 6y ago
    It remains to be seen whether they will actually get away with doing that, and I think it would be much harder to get away with doing that to a popular European app rather than a popular Chinese app.

rtx 6y ago

How will this new company make money? If its funded by the government it could work.

anthropodie 6y ago
Check out Okuna https://youtu.be/tGrP80GVkW4 https://youtu.be/tGrP80GVkW4 It is from Europe.
- xtracto 6y ago
  Reminded me of Disapora, the other project that was going to kill Facebook. How many of them have come and go over the years?
- dewey 6y ago
  The website that's linked in the video description seems to be down (http://open-book.org http://open-book.org) and there's no mention of "Okuna". Seems like yet another app.net, diaspora,...
  - anthropodie 6y ago
    That video seems old. It was open-book first but then FB decided to sue them. So they changed to https://okuna.io https://okuna.io
pjc50 6y ago
Advertising to Europeans?
gamegoblin 6y ago
1/4 of the US pays $13 per month for netflix. I have a hard time believing people wouldn't pay say, $5/mo for a social network that was ad-free and didn't do questionable things with their data. And I'm sure you could work out some kind of subsidy scheme for truly impoverished people who legitimately can't afford that. The problem is network effects and getting people to switch. But if you regulate any company not adopting this model out of existence, it could work. That said, I do acknowledge that the nature of social networks strongly leads to a natural monopoly situation more akin to a utility. It's not an easy problem. But I think paying for it isn't the hard part.
- nickff 6y ago
  The problem with network effects business is that the difference between having 1/4 and 3/4 of the population involved is a 9x change in value to the user. If Facebook is currently worth $5/month to the average user, this competitor would only be worth $0.56. edit: I see you added a statement saying that Facebook is a natural monopoly, and I really don't understand how that can be true. From the late 90s until now we have had many people running multiple IM clients, and we currently have many people running multiple social networks simultaneously.
  - gamegoblin 6y ago
    At the peak of IM I personally had at least 5 IM clients running simultaneously (or, when I became savvy enough, a single client that unified them all), so I definitely hear you. I think two critical differences between the manner IM was used historically and social networks are used now is the (mainly) 1-to-1 nature of chat content (as opposed to mainly 1-to-N nature of social network content) and the usage of persistent state. Without any actual data, my intuition is that the main use case of chat for most people is ephemeral, mostly-synchronous 1-to-1 communication. I only rarely went back through chat history, usually to find some obscure link or something. And because most people's main use of chat is 1-on-1 communication, there is no need to curate persisted content for external viewing. A key component of Facebook is curated and formatted personal content that their connections can asynchronously view. Most people do not want to maintain duplicate photo albums on several platforms, post the same thoughts or essays or rants on multiple platforms, etc.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]