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Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies. You can run a telephone cable to y

by digiown 8mo ago

Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies. You can run a telephone cable to your neighbor, but good luck reaching anyone else. I can run a chat server to talk with a few specific friends too in the same way, but will you be able to use it to talk to a random company/store/stranger? > It seems like there's a lot of easy to access competition in this space. If I give you the money to buy and operate the required amount of servers and a couple developers, will you be able to launch a Facebook competitor in the next year? I doubt so. Fundamentally the idea is that you ought to be able to participate in society without undue hardship solely by the whim of the (power,phone,water,communications) company. I don't think it is that unreasonable to regulate Facebook in that sense. Also a lot of government agencies themselves basically only post up to date information on Facebook/Twitter. Do you think I should have to go through a hostile third party just to receive information from the government?

vel0city 8mo ago
> Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies They're natural monopolies and yet I don't use any of them and somehow successfully talk to you here, right now. Strange huh, I thought they were a monopoly on internet communication. Can't possibly make a platform for people to talk without Facebook or iMessage and yet here we are. I guess Discord is also really Facebook? Signal? Telegram? I guess this is really just Facebook or iMessage behind the scenes for all of these things? > If I give you the money to buy and operate the required amount of servers, will you be able to launch a Facebook competitor in the next year? I doubt so. If you give me less than a week and some budget that scales with users I'll have something thrown together that can scale to at least several hundred thousand users. How long did it take for Moltbook to be made? How much do you think they spent building it? You think they spent years and millions on that? Do you really think it actually cost them that many millions to make Truth Social? > You can run a telephone cable to your neighbor, but good luck reaching anyone else. The lines are already run, it's called the internet. We're already all connected to each other. We can reach practically anywhere on the planet with the wire or signal coming into your home. That is a natural monopoly. There is probably only one fiber or coax provider, there's only so much useful RF bandwidth, etc. If you give me an hour I'll give you a page on the Internet saying anything you want it to say, and everyone in the world (outside of Iran or North Korea) will be able to see it and interact with it. Competition is a click away. Compared to the industries where there's often only one telephone provider, only one train company, only one major airline, etc. > Also a lot of government agencies themselves basically only post up to date information on Facebook/Twitter. Those agencies have websites and other means to disseminate information. They are in no way limited to only Facebook. Many have the ability to make every single phone and radio and TV station say whatever message they need to get across. They have lots of means to get information to you.
- digiown 8mo ago
  > I don't use any of them and somehow successfully talk to you here There's no train monopoly, I can just walk to the office! A monopoly does not have to exert total control to be a problem. I shouldn't have to walk to the office because the train company has a problem with my viewpoints. I shouldn't have to spend a ton of extra effort to communicate with people and businesses because Facebook doesn't like my viewpoints, either. No private company should have that kind of power. > that can scale to at least several hundred thousand users It can scale for sure. Will it have all these users though? I can also go buy several containers worth of fiber optics cables. But that doesn't make me a competitor to the local ISP because there is such an incredible amount of human friction I must go through to compete with their network that it effectively locks out competitors.
  - vel0city 8mo ago
    You're not carrying a train load of stuff on your back. They're inherently different things. A chat website is a chat website. You can say whatever you want and talk with people without using Facebook. We're doing it right now. It's insane for one to argue you can't talk on the internet without Facebook on a website other than Facebook. This website is an example that Facebook isn't a monopoly on communicating! There are legal limitations to installing fiber in a city or laying track. There isn't in hosting a website, at least in most jurisdictions. Open port 80 and 443, register a domain name, and you're hosting whatever you want to say to whoever wants to listen anywhere on the planet. > I shouldn't have to spend a ton of extra effort to communicate with people and businesses because Facebook doesn't like my viewpoints, either. No private company should have that kind of power. You don't have to. It took you the same effort (probably a lot less!) to come here and talk. There's thousands of other places on the internet you can go talk as well with about the same effort as Facebook. Go talk on X. Go to Truth Social. Or Bluesky. Or Mastodon. Or Reddit. Or Nextdoor. Or this or that and on and on and on... Alex Jones and Infowars and such content has been banned from platforms like YouTube and Facebook and the like. I guess they just can't post their content on the internet anymore. What's this? https://banned.video/ https://banned.video/ Sure seems like they're still making all kinds of nonsense videos despite Facebook having a monopoly on the internet! They were even sued into oblivion for the things they said on the internet, and yet somehow they're still getting their message out. Once again, you're telling me it's impossible for you to talk to me on the internet, that without Facebook it's just so onerous to do so that it's just unworkable, and yet here we are communicating and they are not involved in the slightest. How does that work? Going back to your earlier comment, it really shows a lack of understanding of what it means to be a natural monopoly. > because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies This is wrong. It's not just the network effect, it's the totality of it. That there's only one train line, and the economic, physical, and political realities practically guarantees there will only ever be one or two companies operating that market. That it's practicallyimpossible for competitors to even access that market. This is untrue of Facebook. There's loads of competitors, anyone can just as easily use them. These companies come and go. Friendster? MySpace? Even the relevance of Twitter massively changed in a few years. If X bans your account or you don't want to do business with them anymore you can go talk on Threads or Mastodon or Bluesky. Nothing is preventing you from using their competing services, which is unlike having the only train line or the only fiber ISP or the only major airline servicing the area. If you want to compete against Facebook, it's incredibly easy to get access to the market of all Internet users. Just open port 443 and run some free software. If you want to compete in the market of transnational rail, it's a bit more difficult wouldn't you say? Like, practically impossible to enter into that market at all? One can be done with a $20/mo VPS and an afternoon to get started, and the other takes probably a trillion dollars, years of political negotiations, decades of building, and then you can start to compete. Seems a little different, no?

by digiown 8mo ago

vel0city 8mo ago

> Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies They're natural monopolies and yet I don't use any of them and somehow successfully talk to you here, right now. Strange huh, I thought they were a monopoly on internet communication. Can't possibly make a platform for people to talk without Facebook or iMessage and yet here we are. I guess Discord is also really Facebook? Signal? Telegram? I guess this is really just Facebook or iMessage behind the scenes for all of these things? > If I give you the money to buy and operate the required amount of servers, will you be able to launch a Facebook competitor in the next year? I doubt so. If you give me less than a week and some budget that scales with users I'll have something thrown together that can scale to at least several hundred thousand users. How long did it take for Moltbook to be made? How much do you think they spent building it? You think they spent years and millions on that? Do you really think it actually cost them that many millions to make Truth Social? > You can run a telephone cable to your neighbor, but good luck reaching anyone else. The lines are already run, it's called the internet. We're already all connected to each other. We can reach practically anywhere on the planet with the wire or signal coming into your home. That is a natural monopoly. There is probably only one fiber or coax provider, there's only so much useful RF bandwidth, etc. If you give me an hour I'll give you a page on the Internet saying anything you want it to say, and everyone in the world (outside of Iran or North Korea) will be able to see it and interact with it. Competition is a click away. Compared to the industries where there's often only one telephone provider, only one train company, only one major airline, etc. > Also a lot of government agencies themselves basically only post up to date information on Facebook/Twitter. Those agencies have websites and other means to disseminate information. They are in no way limited to only Facebook. Many have the ability to make every single phone and radio and TV station say whatever message they need to get across. They have lots of means to get information to you.

digiown 8mo ago
> I don't use any of them and somehow successfully talk to you here There's no train monopoly, I can just walk to the office! A monopoly does not have to exert total control to be a problem. I shouldn't have to walk to the office because the train company has a problem with my viewpoints. I shouldn't have to spend a ton of extra effort to communicate with people and businesses because Facebook doesn't like my viewpoints, either. No private company should have that kind of power. > that can scale to at least several hundred thousand users It can scale for sure. Will it have all these users though? I can also go buy several containers worth of fiber optics cables. But that doesn't make me a competitor to the local ISP because there is such an incredible amount of human friction I must go through to compete with their network that it effectively locks out competitors.
- vel0city 8mo ago
  You're not carrying a train load of stuff on your back. They're inherently different things. A chat website is a chat website. You can say whatever you want and talk with people without using Facebook. We're doing it right now. It's insane for one to argue you can't talk on the internet without Facebook on a website other than Facebook. This website is an example that Facebook isn't a monopoly on communicating! There are legal limitations to installing fiber in a city or laying track. There isn't in hosting a website, at least in most jurisdictions. Open port 80 and 443, register a domain name, and you're hosting whatever you want to say to whoever wants to listen anywhere on the planet. > I shouldn't have to spend a ton of extra effort to communicate with people and businesses because Facebook doesn't like my viewpoints, either. No private company should have that kind of power. You don't have to. It took you the same effort (probably a lot less!) to come here and talk. There's thousands of other places on the internet you can go talk as well with about the same effort as Facebook. Go talk on X. Go to Truth Social. Or Bluesky. Or Mastodon. Or Reddit. Or Nextdoor. Or this or that and on and on and on... Alex Jones and Infowars and such content has been banned from platforms like YouTube and Facebook and the like. I guess they just can't post their content on the internet anymore. What's this? https://banned.video/ https://banned.video/ Sure seems like they're still making all kinds of nonsense videos despite Facebook having a monopoly on the internet! They were even sued into oblivion for the things they said on the internet, and yet somehow they're still getting their message out. Once again, you're telling me it's impossible for you to talk to me on the internet, that without Facebook it's just so onerous to do so that it's just unworkable, and yet here we are communicating and they are not involved in the slightest. How does that work? Going back to your earlier comment, it really shows a lack of understanding of what it means to be a natural monopoly. > because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies This is wrong. It's not just the network effect, it's the totality of it. That there's only one train line, and the economic, physical, and political realities practically guarantees there will only ever be one or two companies operating that market. That it's practicallyimpossible for competitors to even access that market. This is untrue of Facebook. There's loads of competitors, anyone can just as easily use them. These companies come and go. Friendster? MySpace? Even the relevance of Twitter massively changed in a few years. If X bans your account or you don't want to do business with them anymore you can go talk on Threads or Mastodon or Bluesky. Nothing is preventing you from using their competing services, which is unlike having the only train line or the only fiber ISP or the only major airline servicing the area. If you want to compete against Facebook, it's incredibly easy to get access to the market of all Internet users. Just open port 443 and run some free software. If you want to compete in the market of transnational rail, it's a bit more difficult wouldn't you say? Like, practically impossible to enter into that market at all? One can be done with a $20/mo VPS and an afternoon to get started, and the other takes probably a trillion dollars, years of political negotiations, decades of building, and then you can start to compete. Seems a little different, no?