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We can't know what the Web would look like without spying, data-moated giants wandering the landscape, making everything "free". The thing about a "free" spying

We can't know what the Web would look like without spying, data-moated giants wandering the landscape, making everything "free". The thing about a "free" spying service is that it competes with paid services and with actually-free ones. There's a reason open protocols have stagnated over the last couple decades—it's less rewarding to work on and promote a free, open social network based Email + a hypercharged, dynamic, living and evolving RSS (or whatever, maybe Mastadon, who knows) when the competition is Facebook and Twitter, and they're both "free" and the teams you're competing with are funded at eight, nine, or even ten figures.

FranksTV 5y ago
And let's not forget that every time some promising alternative appears Facebook either fast follows (i.e. plagiarizes) it, or buys it and buries it in a hole somewhere.
- annadane 5y ago
  This. That's the problem. It's not just one company unfairly being screwed by Apple. They've lied about everything else.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Has Facebook ever done this to an alternative that wasn’t just ‘Facebook 2’, ie. it would have solved the problems and grievances people here have with the Facebook platform?
  - tobylane 5y ago
    Hard to say, as many of the industry’s more famous acquisitions/destructions were before any effective attempts to monetise.
danijelb 5y ago
I think there's a possibility it would resemble similar industries like mobile services - you would subscribe to a social media service provider of your choice and you'd use their service which is interoperable with other social media service providers. They could sell different monthly plans with some amount of allowed photo/video uploads, messages, etc. To us it might sound strange now, but it would feel entirely normal to people in a world who never experienced free services powered by spying. Not sure if that would be better or worse than what we have now.
- learc83 5y ago
  That’s almost exactly how Usenet worked back when I was a kid.

FranksTV 5y ago

And let's not forget that every time some promising alternative appears Facebook either fast follows (i.e. plagiarizes) it, or buys it and buries it in a hole somewhere.

annadane 5y ago
This. That's the problem. It's not just one company unfairly being screwed by Apple. They've lied about everything else.
judge2020 5y ago
Has Facebook ever done this to an alternative that wasn’t just ‘Facebook 2’, ie. it would have solved the problems and grievances people here have with the Facebook platform?
- tobylane 5y ago
  Hard to say, as many of the industry’s more famous acquisitions/destructions were before any effective attempts to monetise.

danijelb 5y ago

I think there's a possibility it would resemble similar industries like mobile services - you would subscribe to a social media service provider of your choice and you'd use their service which is interoperable with other social media service providers. They could sell different monthly plans with some amount of allowed photo/video uploads, messages, etc. To us it might sound strange now, but it would feel entirely normal to people in a world who never experienced free services powered by spying. Not sure if that would be better or worse than what we have now.

learc83 5y ago
That’s almost exactly how Usenet worked back when I was a kid.