4 ms·

Then they are too big and must be broken up.

trhway 5y ago
And who is going to break up TikTok or whatever comes next/instead? The social media is like tobacco, and FB increasing the engagement at all costs is like when Big Tobacco were increasing addictiveness of the cigarettes. Like with tobacco, the way to deal with the issue is to wean the population off by in particular educating the population about the damage it does to them . Btw, "Statement from Mark Zuckerberg" - that reminded that foundational tenet of Facebook : Zuck: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard Zuck: just ask Zuck: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns Friend: what!? how’d you manage that one? Zuck: people just submitted it Zuck: i don’t know why Zuck: they “trust me” Zuck: dumb fucks
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  To be fair to the guy, he was 19 then. Who amongst us hasn't said something (many things, in my case at least) stupid at 19?
  - trhway 5y ago
    how many stupid things you said at 19 made you $100B? I'm pretty sure that if a stupid thing you said at 19 had made you a $100B by the age of 30 and continued to made many billions after that you'd pretty much continue to believe and follow that stupid thing.
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      This wasn't about Facebook, it was about a different, non-commercial project (as far as I know, anyway).
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    [flagged]
  - solveit 5y ago
    Also, he was right. People shouldn't have sent Zuck their private info even if Zuck were a saint, because there was no way they could have known Zuckerberg was a saint.
sofixa 5y ago
I can't see it working. Instagram and WhatsApp should be spun off, absolutely no question about it. But Instagram and Facebook still remain way too big. And how do you break them up? By geographic area? People would be pissed because they have contacts with, or maybe want to watch vacation videos from people from different areas. IMHO the only options would be: * non-profit run by the UN or similar * forced to open all data and APIs to make it a platform, with rules to make it an even playing field In both cases with much less, and why not zero, "engagement" focus ( just show the latest stuff chronologically from the things you've liked/subscribed to). Could either work? No idea, but seems to me that they have better chance than a Facebook per country or region.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  It's probably too late for any specific publicly traded company that already exists, but social media as a protocol, with forced interoperability if necessary, is the way to solve this. Many regional phone carriers doesn't prevent people from communicating across regions. Of course, it does cost more, so the question becomes who is willing and able to pay for a socially less harmful means of networking individuals without having to put them all on a single data hoovering ad platform? Whether it's direct charge to consumers or subsidized by government, the money still ultimately has to come from people.
  - prirun 5y ago
    > social media as a protocol, with forced interoperability if necessary, is the way to solve this Hey, if they get that implemented for Facebook, maybe they can try to make it work with health care records too. Good luck with that...
    - riffic 5y ago
      here's a business model for it: Implement ActivityPub (an existing protocol recommended by the W3C), and offer their underlying social networking services as hosted and managed software for big orgs to operate on their own domain. With interoperability, they'll work across domains. Target customer is anyone with at least 100K followers (so gov, institutions, media, et cetera).

And who is going to break up TikTok or whatever comes next/instead? The social media is like tobacco, and FB increasing the engagement at all costs is like when Big Tobacco were increasing addictiveness of the cigarettes. Like with tobacco, the way to deal with the issue is to wean the population off by in particular educating the population about the damage it does to them . Btw, "Statement from Mark Zuckerberg" - that reminded that foundational tenet of Facebook : Zuck: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard Zuck: just ask Zuck: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns Friend: what!? how’d you manage that one? Zuck: people just submitted it Zuck: i don’t know why Zuck: they “trust me” Zuck: dumb fucks

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
To be fair to the guy, he was 19 then. Who amongst us hasn't said something (many things, in my case at least) stupid at 19?
- trhway 5y ago
  how many stupid things you said at 19 made you $100B? I'm pretty sure that if a stupid thing you said at 19 had made you a $100B by the age of 30 and continued to made many billions after that you'd pretty much continue to believe and follow that stupid thing.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    This wasn't about Facebook, it was about a different, non-commercial project (as far as I know, anyway).
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  [flagged]
- solveit 5y ago
  Also, he was right. People shouldn't have sent Zuck their private info even if Zuck were a saint, because there was no way they could have known Zuckerberg was a saint.

sofixa 5y ago

I can't see it working. Instagram and WhatsApp should be spun off, absolutely no question about it. But Instagram and Facebook still remain way too big. And how do you break them up? By geographic area? People would be pissed because they have contacts with, or maybe want to watch vacation videos from people from different areas. IMHO the only options would be: * non-profit run by the UN or similar * forced to open all data and APIs to make it a platform, with rules to make it an even playing field In both cases with much less, and why not zero, "engagement" focus ( just show the latest stuff chronologically from the things you've liked/subscribed to). Could either work? No idea, but seems to me that they have better chance than a Facebook per country or region.

nonameiguess 5y ago
It's probably too late for any specific publicly traded company that already exists, but social media as a protocol, with forced interoperability if necessary, is the way to solve this. Many regional phone carriers doesn't prevent people from communicating across regions. Of course, it does cost more, so the question becomes who is willing and able to pay for a socially less harmful means of networking individuals without having to put them all on a single data hoovering ad platform? Whether it's direct charge to consumers or subsidized by government, the money still ultimately has to come from people.
- prirun 5y ago
  > social media as a protocol, with forced interoperability if necessary, is the way to solve this Hey, if they get that implemented for Facebook, maybe they can try to make it work with health care records too. Good luck with that...
  - riffic 5y ago
    here's a business model for it: Implement ActivityPub (an existing protocol recommended by the W3C), and offer their underlying social networking services as hosted and managed software for big orgs to operate on their own domain. With interoperability, they'll work across domains. Target customer is anyone with at least 100K followers (so gov, institutions, media, et cetera).