Well sure, but there are many many pubs, some require a tux and a tie, some requier shoes and a shirt, and some allow you to be there fully naked. Opening a new

Well sure, but there are many many pubs, some require a tux and a tie, some requier shoes and a shirt, and some allow you to be there fully naked. Opening a new pub is also (relatively) cheap, and getting new users is relatively easy (if users are interested in what you have to offer). While current large social networks are not a real monopoly, they're not far away... if you want profiles, photos etc., you're pretty much stuck with facebook (this also counts instagram), forums are replaced by reddit and chat is concentrated on a few major platforms (whatsapp... so facebook again, whatever the current google chat is, viber, telegram and maybe signal). While saying "fuck you guys, i'm building my own reddit, but with hookers, and blackjack!" is simple, and setting up some reddit-like software is simple, moving users there is hard... that goes double for stuff like twitter or facebook, where in same cases, you need to use those to even get official government info. And even if you do succeed with making your own facebook, due to hookers and blackjack, even if perfectly legal (free spech and everything), hosting providers and domain registrars might turn off your service, because you're doing something perfectly legal, but they still don't like it. Proving a monopoly would probably be impossible, but avoiding one of the big social networks is becoming harder and harder... and who knows what new service someone like facebook or google might buy... could be telegram, could be viber,.. you never know. If you look further (eg china), it becomes ever harder to avoid those, since many real-life services (eg restaurants) accept payment only via WeChat ("ap pfor everything"), and if you get banned from there in china, you're even more fucked than if you lose your google account over here.