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The only good solution is for social media to be a neutral service provider open to all. It would destroy Facebook’s business model but that’s a good thing.
by throwaway316943 6y ago
The only good solution is for social media to be a neutral service provider open to all. It would destroy Facebook’s business model but that’s a good thing.
- dalbasal 6y agoOr put another way, the problem isn't what facebook (or twitter) chooses to do... it's what they are. The problem is "neutral service provider" means something very different to nerds than it does to policy wonks that can actually do something about it. To us, FB should be a protocol like email, rss or www. That means there is no FB, no $1trn market cap, no $90bn revenue stream. To them, it means something like "common carrier." That means keeping fb, but regulating it so they can't exclude anyone. The whole thing will be written with an eye to keeping revenue streams intact. FB are already making the argument that such things will make it impossible for them to "compete with China." That already smells of too big to fail. The absurd thing here is that FB's service is not scarce at all. No matter what happens with fb, there will be no shortages of social media. FB can exist. It can be a $5trn company. It can cease to exist. It can shrink 1000X. The quantity and quality of online social media is not more or less because of those things. All those books about "abundance" 10-15 years ago were (in typical internet fashion) 10-15 years too early. FB is the real life example of abundance economics at work.