How 'stupid' can a company, with an arguable international monopoly on a major form of communication and dissemination, be before we acknowledge the serious danger it is putting society in?

Monopoly in what, precisely?

Facebook has a monopoly in online, blue-themed social networks owned by Harvard dropouts.

It doesn't have a monopoly on social networks, on communication, on online networks, eve on blue-themed online social networks.

Coca-Cola has a monopoly on cola-flavored soft drinks in many countries, but that isn't relevant, since cola-flavored soft drinks compete with a thousand other types of drinks.

For a massive number of people, FB is the only platform that they and the majority of their friends to share and comment. It is treated as de facto neutral infrastructure. I don't know how it represents itself these days.

[0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/361600/need-a-wo...

For a lot of people, Amazon is the only online marketplace they buy from.

And for a lot of people, Coca-Cola is the only soda they drink.

None of those grant those companies a monopoly on shopping, or on drinks.

- The term 'monopoly' is conventially used in connection with the sale of traditional goods, like soft drinks and train services.

- It represents a boolean state, and was created to describe situations that arise in established economic models.

- The new trade in information, such as propagated by Facebook, does not follow many of the established rules of the trade of goods and services.

- The network effects of buying soda are weak. Maybe if my friends "prefer the taste of X" I will buy that too. But their choosing a given brand of soda does not preclude me from using a different brand of soda.

- The stakes are lower too. Notwithsanding the actual literal crimes committed by Coca-Cola, if people consume more of one brand than other, or Coca-Cola try a different formula, the worst harm that is done is some shareholders lose some money.

- If Facebook controls the flow of information, directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, big social outcomes change. For example the election of the current president of the United States, and countless other decisions round the world.

- Many things are changing. Business models, societal models, communication models, user behaviour. Even the use of the word 'user' sheds light on the situation -- what we might have called "cizizens engaged in converstaion" is now "users on a platform" and, in some dominant sectors is the dominant platform for discussion.

- We need new vocabulary to talk about the effects that technology has brought about. No extant word is a perfect fit. That is not a good reason to not try to talk about them.

Just because you invented a new definition of the word monopoly, doesn't mean it is relevant. It isn't.

> The term 'monopoly' is conventially used in connection with the sale of traditional goods, like soft drinks and train services.

No. At least not when talking about economics. By people who don't understand economics, maybe.

> It represents a boolean state, and was created to describe situations that arise in established economic models.

Also no (to the boolean part).

> The new trade in information, such as propagated by Facebook, does not follow many of the established rules of the trade of goods and services.

You have to prove that it changed the definition of monopoly. You didn't. It didn't.

> The network effects of buying soda are weak. Maybe if my friends "prefer the taste of X" I will buy that too. But their choosing a given brand of soda does not preclude me from using a different brand of soda.

Network effects don't create a monopoly, just barriers to entry in a specific market. But that market might have competing markets, or replacements.

> If Facebook controls the flow of information, directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, big social outcomes change. For example the election of the current president of the United States, and countless other decisions round the world.

Doesn't imply a monopoly.

> We need new vocabulary to talk about the effects that technology has brought about. No extant word is a perfect fit. That is not a good reason to not try to talk about them.

"I'm wrong about the way I use the term monopoly, so we should change the term so I'm right".

Nice try. You were able to get almost ever single point wrong.

Can we automate and get an order of magnitude advantage out of the artificial kind?

This just makes me wonder exactly how automated that feature is, because surely a non-nominal number of people share current event links all the time about something political, sporting event, natural disaster. I wonder if it happens then, or is this a matter of recency....Streisand (there's got to be a better word for it than that) following the news of those 50million accounts being breached.

1. Viral content like "share this or Facebook will delete your account" - may as well shut that down straight away.

2. A security flaw in a Facebook site that lets malicious websites post to your wall automatically from a webpage. In that case, the malicious website will probably post a link to itself, so that it can collect more victims. In this case, this limits the impact of the flaw. Look at the Samy worm as an example.

3. News feed algorithm "breaks" in some way when a lot of people are posting the same thing, so they just prevent that from happening.

Not really. Reddit does exactly this. Posts to /r/news are only allowed from a whitelist of "real news" sources.

My corollary: If you want to instigate against adherents of Hanlon's Razor, it's best to use weaponized stupidity.