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What a bizarre set of beliefs and claims. 1. That Facebook is maliciously and mostly singlehandedly responsible for the death of the newspaper and journalism.

What a bizarre set of beliefs and claims. 1. That Facebook is maliciously and mostly singlehandedly responsible for the death of the newspaper and journalism. Except newspaper readership has been on the decline since the 90's. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/01/circulation-and-revenue-fall-for-newspaper-industry/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/01/circulation... - the article frames Facebook's grand plan as taking money from newspapers, but Facebook's revenues in 2019 were nearly twice what the whole newspaper industry had as revenue in 2008. In that same window of time the ad industry grew 50%. Facebook makes money by making products that engage people and then presenting them with ads that are of interest to the individual in question. That makes them in the broader attention market but the framing of "Facebook versus newspapers" seems peculiar here. 2. That "monopolism" is rampant and anti-democratic. Besides the fact that this is poorly defined in the article (perhaps as incentive to purchase his book?), it sure is an curious turn of phrase that there are "endless numbers of monopolists" in healthcare. Perhaps one could say there are millions of monopolists in music because each work is copyright? Over what does the author claim Facebook have true monopoly? On attention? On information dissemination? 3. The thread of conversation implies that breaking up Facebook will somehow help, for example, the decline of the newspaper industry. It's not clear how any of the author's goals will be accomplished by this and the OP alludes to this in "there's a lot more you need to do than just break them up". But what? If the point of the article is to claim Facebook's present mode is a threat to democracy (claimed in title) they A: need to actually articulate this case and B: ought make an argument for how they'd propose to remedy the situation. Instead the former was done barely at all and the latter was omitted.

glasss 6y ago
I generally believe Facebook and other social media platforms are bad. I can also absolutely recognize that most people complaining about them don't seem to articulate their reasoning well or in some cases at all. In the article, Matt claims >There's a lot more that you have to do than just break them up. But the answer is, it would improve things dramatically if they were broken up, and you don't have to imagine it. Facebook has been doing their practices that deserve criticism before they became a "financial conglomerate". If they are broken up, they will not stop poisoning people's news feed overnight. Things will NOT dramatically improve. In fact I believe if Facebook is forced to break off instagram and other companies, things may get worse. They would need to try harder to make more revenue using less users / screen time. Breaking up Facebook would most likely be a good thing, but I personally believe as long the news feed exists, the negatives that Facebook brings will be there.
- specialist 6y ago
  > ...forced to break off instagram and other companies, things may get worse. Empathic agreement. If the outrage machines are left intact, all the baby Facebooks will be incentivized to accelerate their race to the bottom.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> That Facebook is maliciously and mostly singlehandedly responsible for the death of the newspaper and journalism. The mistake here is in blaming Facebook in particular when it was really the internet in general. Ironically what really happened here is basically the opposite of the premise. You used to have local media monopolies, or at least sufficiently concentrated local media markets that the players were making ad money hand over fist. Then they used some of that money to pay for local reporting. The internet leveled the ad market. No longer did you need to buy advertising from the local Los Angeles media outlets to reach customers in Los Angeles. You could still buy it from them, but also Facebook, Google, Apple, a million independent blogs aggregated by third party ad networks, national media outlets that now allow you target adds to specific regions or demographics instead of having to buy nationwide ads etc. It dramatically increased competition for ad space, which lowered prices and thereby grew the size of the market (Jevon's paradox) but made it so that the incumbents weren't making as much money as they used to because the price for a given amount of advertising fell as a result of increased competition. > That "monopolism" is rampant and anti-democratic. This is the part that's actually true. Democracy requires the free exchange of ideas. A handful of oligarchs deciding what people see is the opposite of that. To give two examples from the recent election, there is some decent evidence that Twitter and Facebook suppressed a negative story about one of the candidates prior to the election as "Russian disinformation" even though it appears to be true, and there have been claims that social media sites showed voting reminders to users on a partisan basis, skewing voter turnout. > it sure is an curious turn of phrase that there are "endless numbers of monopolists" in healthcare. This is pretty obviously the case. Healthcare is not a single market, individual products in healthcare are. If you're diabetic you need insulin and can't substitute an SSRI. If you have severe allergies you need epinephrine and can't substitute acetaminophen. It's frequently the case that the individual markets are controlled by one or two players, not just because of patents but also regulatory burdens that constrain new entrants etc. > The thread of conversation implies that breaking up Facebook will somehow help, for example, the decline of the newspaper industry. Breaking up Facebook et al could help the anti-democratic concentration of influence over the political discourse. A larger number of entities would reduce the influence of any one of them and increase the availability of a diversity of viewpoints. It might even help local news reporting, if Facebook et al were sufficiently atomized, because smashing them into tiny pieces could mean that each city has one or more independent local Facebook which uses some of its revenues to fund local news reporting.
specialist 6y ago
1. Yes, the decline of print news predates social media. Most blamed popular media like radio and television. Treating social media as the next iteration of TV would strengthen most criticisms. 2. Gross inequity is axiomatically anti-democratic. 3. The sole flaw in Stoller's anti-monopolistic advice, eg break up the titans, is that half-measures are insufficient. Critics are not advocating either pro-competition or pro-consumer policies. a. Prohibit all conflicts of interest, self-dealing. "Chinese walls" between business units are insufficient. b. Prohibit aggregators from competing with their clients. c. Normalize the rule of law, allowing plantiffs to appeal to a fair and impartial judiciary to resolve dispute and grievances. d. Regulatory oversight and enforcement, with real teeth. Impose mandatory punishments onerous enough to alarm activist investors.

glasss 6y ago

I generally believe Facebook and other social media platforms are bad. I can also absolutely recognize that most people complaining about them don't seem to articulate their reasoning well or in some cases at all. In the article, Matt claims >There's a lot more that you have to do than just break them up. But the answer is, it would improve things dramatically if they were broken up, and you don't have to imagine it. Facebook has been doing their practices that deserve criticism before they became a "financial conglomerate". If they are broken up, they will not stop poisoning people's news feed overnight. Things will NOT dramatically improve. In fact I believe if Facebook is forced to break off instagram and other companies, things may get worse. They would need to try harder to make more revenue using less users / screen time. Breaking up Facebook would most likely be a good thing, but I personally believe as long the news feed exists, the negatives that Facebook brings will be there.

specialist 6y ago
> ...forced to break off instagram and other companies, things may get worse. Empathic agreement. If the outrage machines are left intact, all the baby Facebooks will be incentivized to accelerate their race to the bottom.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> That Facebook is maliciously and mostly singlehandedly responsible for the death of the newspaper and journalism. The mistake here is in blaming Facebook in particular when it was really the internet in general. Ironically what really happened here is basically the opposite of the premise. You used to have local media monopolies, or at least sufficiently concentrated local media markets that the players were making ad money hand over fist. Then they used some of that money to pay for local reporting. The internet leveled the ad market. No longer did you need to buy advertising from the local Los Angeles media outlets to reach customers in Los Angeles. You could still buy it from them, but also Facebook, Google, Apple, a million independent blogs aggregated by third party ad networks, national media outlets that now allow you target adds to specific regions or demographics instead of having to buy nationwide ads etc. It dramatically increased competition for ad space, which lowered prices and thereby grew the size of the market (Jevon's paradox) but made it so that the incumbents weren't making as much money as they used to because the price for a given amount of advertising fell as a result of increased competition. > That "monopolism" is rampant and anti-democratic. This is the part that's actually true. Democracy requires the free exchange of ideas. A handful of oligarchs deciding what people see is the opposite of that. To give two examples from the recent election, there is some decent evidence that Twitter and Facebook suppressed a negative story about one of the candidates prior to the election as "Russian disinformation" even though it appears to be true, and there have been claims that social media sites showed voting reminders to users on a partisan basis, skewing voter turnout. > it sure is an curious turn of phrase that there are "endless numbers of monopolists" in healthcare. This is pretty obviously the case. Healthcare is not a single market, individual products in healthcare are. If you're diabetic you need insulin and can't substitute an SSRI. If you have severe allergies you need epinephrine and can't substitute acetaminophen. It's frequently the case that the individual markets are controlled by one or two players, not just because of patents but also regulatory burdens that constrain new entrants etc. > The thread of conversation implies that breaking up Facebook will somehow help, for example, the decline of the newspaper industry. Breaking up Facebook et al could help the anti-democratic concentration of influence over the political discourse. A larger number of entities would reduce the influence of any one of them and increase the availability of a diversity of viewpoints. It might even help local news reporting, if Facebook et al were sufficiently atomized, because smashing them into tiny pieces could mean that each city has one or more independent local Facebook which uses some of its revenues to fund local news reporting.

specialist 6y ago

1. Yes, the decline of print news predates social media. Most blamed popular media like radio and television. Treating social media as the next iteration of TV would strengthen most criticisms. 2. Gross inequity is axiomatically anti-democratic. 3. The sole flaw in Stoller's anti-monopolistic advice, eg break up the titans, is that half-measures are insufficient. Critics are not advocating either pro-competition or pro-consumer policies. a. Prohibit all conflicts of interest, self-dealing. "Chinese walls" between business units are insufficient. b. Prohibit aggregators from competing with their clients. c. Normalize the rule of law, allowing plantiffs to appeal to a fair and impartial judiciary to resolve dispute and grievances. d. Regulatory oversight and enforcement, with real teeth. Impose mandatory punishments onerous enough to alarm activist investors.