Laws work best when they outlaw the harm, not the method. Strengthening privacy rights and pursuing antitrust action around that [1] will deter similar business models in the future. If Zuckerberg willfully violated the FTC consent decree, there are ways to make him pay that discincentivise similar behavior in future.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust...

We need to make social-discovery and network services a function of the OS and not a 3rd-party service over which the user has no agency.

In my opinion we are in this dilemma because OS vendors fell asleep at the wheel, and such things as a well-working, inbuilt common system service are instead a behind-the-walled-garden/-data-center service that has been usurped from the user.

So, same as it ever was: the corporate control over social networking (and lets just call it that, because that's what these systems are) is only 'a thing' because our systems - our computers - and the OS they run, out of the box - have been usurped for the purpose.

So, lets just continue with seeing iron-grip over single points of the network (i.e. Facebook, et al.) as the damage it is, indeed, and route around it.

i.e. we don't need legal harassment - just better system services which allow discovery and sharing with our peers without discarding near-full agency to a sinister, shady, corporate third-party.

I wonder whether there's a way to make spying so unprofitable that the business model simply isn't attractive anymore?

Legislation that would force businesses to pay for collecting user data (maybe a tax on user data) might be a start, but I don't see how something like that could be implemented successfully.

It’s quite difficult to stop using Facebook, but it’s effectively impossible to get an electoral outcome changed over a niche technical issue, or even a general one like the trains not working.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-...

And repressive governments already use Facebook to disappear their people:

>The Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. Instead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for ethnic cleansing, according to former military officials, researchers and civilian officials in the country.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

So, the notion that it's somehow "safer" for Facebook to engage in omnipresent surveillance doesn't prove true.

oh for sure bud

"The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli...

Yes, no true Scotsman would do such a thing.

Facebook is just some website.

There's not even a comparison.

Facebook is controlled by a single person who even the board cannot force out.

There's not even a comparison.

There have been other candidates to make bids: Google+, WeChat, etc.