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It is extremely distressing that a few companies, all located in the same country, and many located in the same state, if not quite the same city, run by a few
by ThinkBeat 5y ago
It is extremely distressing that a few companies, all located in the same country, and many located in the same state, if not quite the same city, run by a few men with similar politics has the immense power that they do.
Some people do not quite understand why.
Imagine in they were all Russian and owned by friends of Putin.
It should be a matter of national security for other nations to develop regional competitors. It should also be in the inrest of the US to have more internal competition.
This is not easy.
Making Facebook 3.0 is not the problem, though running at Facebook scale is a challenge.
It is how to get users to adopt it.
As has been the problem for US upstarts as well.
Thankfully a lot of younger people want other social network platforms than Facebook, but it is a bit pointless when the owners of the new networks are the same people who own the old ones.
I guess TikTok proves it can be done.
It also proved how upset US social media gets when competition knocks on their doors.
China, by locking out competition, developed products that are used domestically. There are drawbacks and negative effects of that as well.
I dont know how big VK is in Russia.
Ideally Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram would be broken into 250 or so different companies spread out among different nations and regions.
- danielmarkbruce 5y agoIf you zoom out, it's not especially concerning. The history of media companies suggests all of these companies will become less influential in little time. A few people used to own radio stations. Then it was TV stations. Overlapping them was newspapers/magazines. Things come and go, they tend to concentrate power, but they don't seem to last very long. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube are young. There is little indication they'll have much influence in 20 years.
- alanlammiman 5y agoTrue, but lots of harm can be done in 20 years and lots of harm was done by concentrated media in the past (eg all the cases in Manufacturing Consent)
- deltron3030 5y agoThey won't get broken up because western govs want to compete with China and have similar control while still being able to fly under the freedom flag. FB is a virtual China, "soft authoritarianism" basically.
- Jensson 5y agoThey will get regulated by governments though, there is no reason those companies should have that kind of power.
- alanlammiman 5y agoIndeed. I can see the logic for the US - accept that these guys milk your own citizens a bit in exchange for bringing in loads of cash from abroad plus massive spying and influence capabilities wrt the rest of the world. But why GB, EU etc go along with it is beyond me. Seems like a strategic blunder.