This meme has to stop. In many countries universities are state-run, and they provide more value than most companies.
There are also countless examples of privatisation disasters. Source: am British.
Although those often are to some degree a result of corruption.
- Universities develop social media algorithms that are provenly secure and respectful of privacy. "Federation" should handle issues of trust over network partitions.
- Governments (not a single one) decide if they want to provide computing infrastructure for said algorithms. Alternatively, users could host their own social networks or partitions thereof.
- Big companies provide hardware and maintenance. (And that's all they do. I.e., hands off of our valuable data).
Basically, that's a lot like how the internet functioned when it just started (Universities and DARPA developing the concepts, and companies doing just hardware).
Efficiency is out of the question as well. You cant argue the State will do it better. It wont. And in this case, it can even be harmful.
Many social groups use Facebook to organize on. If an individual weren't on Facebook, they'd be much more socially isolated in the same way that if they didn't use a phone (considered a public utility), they'd also be more isolated. I suspect for some people, Facebook/Messenger/Whatsapp is more important than a telephone number.
Some services now require Facebook to use their service. For example, for people who can't afford to own a car, GetAround lets you rent neighbors cars, but they don't accept a government issued ID, only Facebook.