5 ms·
I'm not totally grokking the "FB is a store" premise. Mainly because if FB was a store, it'd be a store where the patrons are not buying stuff from the store,
by scarygliders 5y ago
I'm not totally grokking the "FB is a store" premise.
Mainly because if FB was a store, it'd be a store where the patrons are not buying stuff from the store, but are themselves the product.
i.e. FB offers a messaging/contact service for "free" - with the caveat being that FB gets to glean startling - and valuable - amounts of information about its patrons.
- SllX 5y agoReplace “store” with “mall”, “club”, or “bar” and you have the same result. Facebook is hosting on their servers that they own and/or lease which gives them a right to exclude, much like a store, bar, club or mall owner.
- baq 5y agoDoes it? It isn’t obvious. Especially if talking about legislation around the world.
- SllX 5y agoSorry but I flatly don’t respect legal systems that don’t respect property rights. In the Anglo-American tradition and countries which are also Anglo-descended or Anglo-influenced and some other entirely separate legal systems as well, property rights are a big deal. And a core fundamental principle of property rights is the right to exclude.
- heurisko 5y agoThe UK legal system, at least, recognises property rights, but offers varying degrees of exclusion. For example, the right to exclude certain classes of people is different renting a room of your house vs. renting a whole apartment. The ability to exclude is again different for service providers. It sometimes also depends on their size. e.g. larger banks are obliged to provide a free basic bank account. If social media monopolies are seen as excluding people without good reason, their monopoly status might attract attention for regulation in the same manner.
- SllX 5y agoYou’ll find it similar in America but that doesn’t prevent for-cause exclusion if the tenant or account holder damages the property owner or his property. The damages in this case are more abstract, but Facebook arguably has cause to exclude. That said I am much more open to debate the merits of this particular exclusion rather than whether Facebook can exclude at all. I’m also going to go out in a limb and point out that Facebook does not in fact have a social media monopoly, certainly not in the United States which would be the jurisdiction here because in order for that to be true, everything from Twitter, TikTok and iMessage to WeChat and YouTube and Snapchat would simply have to not exist. Social networks tend to have overlapping user bases, with people on both Facebook and Twitter, or Facebook and Snapchat, or some other combination. Nobody has yet convinced me where and how Facebook has any sort of monopoly because they’re too focused on the large user base and that in itself is just not a good argument. Feel free to take a stab at it though.
- pixl97 5y agoUntil you become a monopoly, then it becomes more complex.
- SllX 5y agoYou have to make that case first, and as Facebook goes and as I’ve said repeatedly elsewhere in this thread, I’m not convinced they’re anything of the sort. Prove me wrong, and then go tell the FTC because they’re having a hard time taking Facebook to court over this very issue.
- Aditya_Garg 5y agoIt kinda makes sense to me. Anyone is allowed into bars (21+ of course) without any expectation of making a purchase. The bar is still allowed to kick people out
- inopinatus 5y agoThese bricks-and-mortar analogies don’t work at all, because you can still stand outside the cigarette shop, protest Philip Morris, and hand out flyers. Once deplatformed, there’s no equivalent line-of-sight.
- thehappypm 5y agoI think the Mall analogy is downright perfect. The mall is a beautiful, shiny, clean building where you go to hang out with your friends. The shops in the mall are there to lure you to go buy stuff. You aren't paying the mall, but by being there, you're likely to buy something at J. Crew or the food court. If the mall had an anti-mall lunatic out front, they'd surely remove them too.
- inopinatus 5y agoIn some festering neo-Randite authoritarian’s wet dreams of corporate dystopia, sure. When did so many people internalise the fiction of companies as their new feudal overlord?
- thehappypm 5y agoIs this an AI generated comment?
- inopinatus 5y agoNo more so than "The mall is a beautiful, shiny, clean building where you go to hang out with your friends".
- jreese 5y agoI mean, you're seeing their article on Slate. It's not like they've been banned from the entire internet or all news media.
- inopinatus 5y ago
- lambdasquirrel 5y agoExcept that FB is a monopoly platform that has become too important to ignore. I have foregone quite a lot of social things because I refuse to use it. That much is fine by me but it is not fine for most people. “Most people,” by FB’s own numbers, are a captive audience. They do not get to decide if they go shopping in the mall. This is why Cory Doctorow’s point on forcing FB to open up is the most useful one. It is the most straightforward way to turn FB into a utility.
- smoldesu 5y agoHow is Facebook a monopoly platform? Competitors like Twitter, Clubhouse and Signal have flourished under their incompetence. If our basis for a monopoly was "a captive audience" then Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft need to get dragged into this discussion, since they've been engaging in that kind of unfair business for decades longer than Facebook has.
- SllX 5y agoTurning Facebook into a utility effectively turns it into something it isn’t: a government approved monopoly with special rights and privileges. Perversely Facebook then becomes another tool for people with actual power to abuse in their lawmaking capacity in ways they simply couldn’t now. If your goal is to defang Facebook, that’s probably not what you want. You have a temporary problem socializing in some circumstances without Facebook, which is entirely solvable by you alone. Facebook is nowhere near a monopoly on its core functions, but certain groups, scenes or networks of people may choose to use it exclusively. You are being screwed over by their choices and blaming Facebook for it. Also I don’t read Doctorow. No reason in particular, but if you want to cite him, cite him properly and bring his words here into the discussion.
- lambdasquirrel 5y ago> Perversely Facebook then becomes another tool for people with actual power to abuse in their lawmaking capacity in ways they simply couldn’t now. This needs explanation. If Facebook were forced to open their API, then it would be possible to not use their news feed. "Unfollow everyone" would then be the default. That in turn allows people to build on their "platform" without entertaining any of the "viral" stuff. In particular, everyone who uses FB because it's easy to organize "events" on it won't have to get snagged in all the toxic things that are going on. That is effectively defanging the danger that it currently poses to society. At the end of the day, organizers are trying to organize. It is hard to ignore FB's reach in this manner. You cannot blame organizers for having to use FB. They are subject to market competition and may not have much of a choice in the platforms they use.
- dannyr 5y agoExcept in some countries, Facebook is basically the only store in town. It's a monopoly. It's like the monopoly happened on its own. Facebook spent so much money making sure they are the only store in town.
- SllX 5y agoSo a couple of questions immediately spring to mind. 1. Which countries are these? 2. If we were to take that as a given, do these countries see that as a problem? 3. What would be their remedy, in your eyes, if an American corporation is found to have a monopoly in their jurisdiction but not in the United States?
- mafuy 5y agoI don't know about others, but in Vietnam this is the case. It was the universal go-to tool for everything, used by anyone, both countryside and in the city.
- SllX 5y agoSo is this a problem and what is their remedy? When answering, mind that the Rule of Law is not particularly high in Vietnam to begin with.