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Why? I get no discernible benefit as a user / customer from Facebook operating at this scale. Why would I "just accept" this? Your comment reads like this: ht

Why? I get no discernible benefit as a user / customer from Facebook operating at this scale. Why would I "just accept" this? Your comment reads like this: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

koonsolo 5y ago
Ok, so which ones of your family/friends will move to a different platform? How will you divide it? Restrict each platform by age and geolocation? Only people born in 1980 USA can be on Facebook, the rest has to go the the platform they are allowed on.
deleted 5y ago
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jimmaswell 5y ago
People on HN won't admit it for some reason, but the population really does get a lot of value using Facebook to find old friends, organize family gatherings, post their business info, buy/sell things, and yes, advertise. Services at this scale are genuinely useful to society. Does any other comparable service have a team of millions of humans to manually comb over every single ad when AI gets it right 99.99% of the time?
- dangerlibrary 5y ago
  Why does the advertising platform need to be the same service as the tool for finding old friends? Why do either of those things need to be bundled with an event planning tool? Why is that combined service serving the vast majority of the populations of both Indonesia and Canada (for example)? My point is simply that I, and the vast majority of businesses, would get the exact same value from Facebook if it operated at the scale of a single country or even more locally. Or if it were one of many competing platforms that each had a far smaller market share. To be clear: I know the answer, in economic terms - economies of scale, network effects, etc. But also I don't care about that, because none of that matters to me. And the downsides (and externalities) of having a single giant service functioning at this scale are massive. The costs are large, and the benefit to me is small. That's why "we just need to accept it" is an absurd argument to me - I don't personally benefit from Facebook being as large as it is, and I would experience no great personal or professional loss if Facebook were far, far smaller.
  - jimmaswell 5y ago
    The internet is supposed to bring us together. I shouldn't be walled off from friends in other countries because they're on Canadian Facebook and I'm on Eastern American Facebook. I really don't see how a tiny fraction of bad ads slipping through and immediately being caught and making the news for being so rare means we should throw the whole thing out. Those things need to be bundled because something has to pay for it and poor people shouldn't have to decide between groceries and being connected to others online.
    - dangerlibrary 5y ago
      Competition (as opposed to a monopolist) is not the dystopian nightmare you make it out to be. Some people even think it's a good thing.

koonsolo 5y ago

Ok, so which ones of your family/friends will move to a different platform? How will you divide it? Restrict each platform by age and geolocation? Only people born in 1980 USA can be on Facebook, the rest has to go the the platform they are allowed on.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jimmaswell 5y ago

People on HN won't admit it for some reason, but the population really does get a lot of value using Facebook to find old friends, organize family gatherings, post their business info, buy/sell things, and yes, advertise. Services at this scale are genuinely useful to society. Does any other comparable service have a team of millions of humans to manually comb over every single ad when AI gets it right 99.99% of the time?

dangerlibrary 5y ago
Why does the advertising platform need to be the same service as the tool for finding old friends? Why do either of those things need to be bundled with an event planning tool? Why is that combined service serving the vast majority of the populations of both Indonesia and Canada (for example)? My point is simply that I, and the vast majority of businesses, would get the exact same value from Facebook if it operated at the scale of a single country or even more locally. Or if it were one of many competing platforms that each had a far smaller market share. To be clear: I know the answer, in economic terms - economies of scale, network effects, etc. But also I don't care about that, because none of that matters to me. And the downsides (and externalities) of having a single giant service functioning at this scale are massive. The costs are large, and the benefit to me is small. That's why "we just need to accept it" is an absurd argument to me - I don't personally benefit from Facebook being as large as it is, and I would experience no great personal or professional loss if Facebook were far, far smaller.
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  The internet is supposed to bring us together. I shouldn't be walled off from friends in other countries because they're on Canadian Facebook and I'm on Eastern American Facebook. I really don't see how a tiny fraction of bad ads slipping through and immediately being caught and making the news for being so rare means we should throw the whole thing out. Those things need to be bundled because something has to pay for it and poor people shouldn't have to decide between groceries and being connected to others online.
  - dangerlibrary 5y ago
    Competition (as opposed to a monopolist) is not the dystopian nightmare you make it out to be. Some people even think it's a good thing.